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Case History of the Maserati - Part I
by Norman Smith - Reprinted from Autosport
Irony plays a great part in all our daily lives, and in the motor racing sphere ironic situations crop up with much the same astonishing frequency as they do in the larger world outside cars and car racing, and it is indeed an irony of fate that the name Maserati holds such a position of high esteem in British motoring circles.
You see, many years ago, in 1924 to be precise, one Alfieri Maserati, Italian driver of an Italian Diatto machine, irritated the British Sunbeam team and their followers at the San Sebastian Grand Prix race by his pointed condemnation of their car and of its marked similarity to the famous Fiat racers of the era. As the same designer had had a hand in the building of both cars this was not unnatural and the Italian driver's skits - he might have been excused had he been one of the day's "aces"! - were taken none too kindly by the British representatives at San Sebastian. However, time, that mighty eraser, has forgotten and forgiven Alfieri Maserati his derogatory remarks about our Sunbeam racers, and in 1956 the cars that today bear the Sign of the Trident and which he, again ironically, first devised out of the Diatto, are undoubtedly the best loved and respected of Continental racing machines operating on the British circuits of modern times. |
Alfieri Maserati was one of five brothers, Carlo, Ettore, Bindo and Ernesto being the others. He was the head of a small firm at Bologna in Northern Italy that bore his name, and made amongst other things sparking plugs, a sparking plug that in the '30s became quite popular amongst Italian motorists, although the firm in its infancy was not concerned with the manufacture of cars, racing or otherwise. Alfieri Maserati's love of motor racing - an Italian characteristic! - found its outlet in driving the racing car of the Diatto factory and he drove one in the second Italian Grand Prix, run at Monza in 1922. Eventually he so modified the Diatto that it became almost a one-off special, and two years after the San Sebastian episode Alfieri Maserati had divorced himself from his Diatto connections and began to race his car as a Maserati pure and simple.
"Have received some comments from a very knowledgeable source and amongst the comments made on Norman Smith's Case History it is stated that it is filled with holes. "To name one of the first, Alfieri Maserati was one of the six not five brothers born in Voghera. Mario not being particularly mechanically minded became rather an accomplished artist and painter of note and still is apparently living in Liguria, near Genoa, and is a man much respected in his own field of endeavour. The rest of the Norman Smith account apparently suffers not from lack of good intention but lack of homework. Possibly lack of real interest in things Maserati or things Italian". The much more recent work by Anthony Pritchard which apparently has sins of omission compounded by sins of commission, such as in the case of the invented named A6SSG (Sweet Suffering God) all really a lack of knowledge of who did what. One of the best books about any automobile is Jenkinson's 250F Maserati Book published by Macinillan, but then Jenks likes cars, Maseratis and Modenese and does his homework with a sense of history." - Secretarial Ramblings, Spring 1977.
As far as can be recalled at this interval of time the marque Maserati competed in its first race in the 1926 Targa Florio, over the wild and mountainous Madonie circuit in Sicily, and in such company as Costantini, Minoia, Conelli and Materassi the 1,500 cc-engined Bolognese racer and its owner-designer-driver must have seemed small fry indeed. Yet the merit of Maserati's challenge to the big guns can be judged in a comparison of his and the winner's time for the 336-mile five lap race, "Meo" Costantini scurrying his blue Bugatti over the distance 1 hr 16 mins and 26 secs quicker than Maserati, whose actual running time of 8 hrs 37 mins 11 secs made him ninth - and the first 1,500 cc finisher. He had three cars behind him on time and speed, all Bugattis, whilst 21 machines did not even equal the Maserati's feat of finishing.
Having established the fact that his machine was basically sound, Maserati's next step was, inevitably, to reproduce his prototype in the same, or improved, form and, once built, to race them as finance and/or inclination or success dictated. This plan of action he put into practise in the summer months of 1926, the September races at the Monza speedway (the Italian Grand Prix and decider in the 1926 World Championship) offering him his first chance to race his cars in a major International Grand Prix.
Run on 5th September that Italian Grand Prix drew a very poor field; so poor, in fact, that the 1,100 cc class ran concurrently with the Grand Prix cars, but amongst that field the spectators beheld two eight-cylinder supercharged 1,500 cc Maseratis. They were driven by Alfieri Maserati and Emilio Materassi, and, both mechanically and in appearance, they clearly betrayed their Diatto ancestry. Neither car had an opportunity to prove if the promise of the Targa Florio was more than a flash in the pan, for both suffered serious supercharger trouble that ended in retirement, without either doing 40 miles.
Fortunately for motor racing history the debacle of Monza didn't blunt Maserati's enthusiasm and in an event at Bologna of a type unusual to Italy, Maseratis scored a success when Emilio Materassi drove his 1,500 cc car over a flying kilometre at just over 104 mph to win the 1,500 cc class of the Bologna speed trials, this achievement, relatively unimportant as it was, doubtless giving them the encouragement needed to carry on with their plans.
When the 1927 season commenced Alfieri Maserati returned to Sicily with two 1,500 cc racers, and this time his reward was the knowledge that the name Maserati would at least go down in motoring records for all time, for he scored their first-ever place in an International race by finishing in third position behind a couple of Bugattis, one of which - the winning car, too - was driven by his colleague of the ill-starred Monza race of the previous September, Emilio Materassi. This was indeed the making of the Maserati as a racing car, and before very long Maseratis were winning the smaller Italian races that are run every season in such prolific numbers. That always important first victory came in the 1,500 cc class of the Tripoli Grand Prix, Alfieri Maserati beating two Salmsons to score a 70 mph success and netting third place in the Grand Prix proper as well. Soon further joys cheered the Fratelli Maserati, for one Borzacchini (who drove the third place Salmson at Tripoli) chased two Bugattis into third place in the Coppa Ciano at Leghorn. Then a certain Tonini won the 1,500 cc class in the Coppa Acerbo, actually finishing second to Campari's Alfa Romeo in the big car race, a queer coincidence indeed for Campari (Alfa) also won the 320-mile Targa Abbruzzo sports car race from Tonini's Maserati, both events being fought out over the long Pescara circuit on the Adriatic coast. This selfsame year of 1927 brought Maserati's first race outside Italy, one car going to Spain for the Spanish Grand Prix race, but the journey was fruitless, the Maserati managing three poor laps, the driver's identity, perhaps wisely, being veiled in mystery.
In 1928 the International Grand Prix formula of 1926-27 was withdrawn, but despite the existence of an agreed formula for 1928 Grands Prix it was almost universally disregarded, with the result that what amounted virtually to Formule Libre racing came along, the perfectly natural effect being that engines gradually grew bigger. Maseratis, of course, with a growing national reputation, had perforce to follow this trend and in the 1928 Targa Florio, of the six Maserati cars that started, five were in the 2,000 cc class. These may conceivably have had the 1,500 cc engines bored out over the 1,500 cc class limit, as it is known that the new 1,700 cc 1928 model Maserati definitely ran at Monza in September, which would have been a logical race in which to make a debut. However, to return to the Targa, none of the six Maseratis had any luck but an historic combination arose from the Sicilian classic for amongst the 1½-litre Maser drivers was a swarthy young man by the name of Luigi Fagioli, destined to carry their colours in many a hard fought race in the future.
Although the 1,500 cc car was to play second fiddle to its bigger brothers (at least for a number of years) it did have its successes in 1928, for Ernesto Maserati won the 1,500 cc class in the Coppa Acerbo at 66.45 mph, setting a new record for the class. Fagioli occupied third place at Pescara to his boss, whilst Borzacchini earned a second and Ernesto Maserati a third in the Susa-Mont Cenisio hill-climb. But at Monza in September, for the 1928 Grand Prix d'Europe, all the Maseratis sported 1,700 cc engines and the upward climb, both in engine sizes and the firm's reputation, had started although the four team cars in the tragic 1928 European Grand Prix (drivers Borzachini, Fagioli, Ernesto Maserati and Alfieri Maserati) came away empty handed!
For the next racing season (ie, 1929) the firm built and raced, again principally in Italian national races, a full 2,000 cc engined machine, a machine whose squat looks recalled the 1,500 cc Talbot of 1927, but suggested even greater strength and speed. One could not, however, term the Maserati activities of 1929 as constituting a "works" racing team, as in the opening race of the year (the first Monaco GP) it was the independent driver who represented them, using 2-litre machines, both of the private entries in this then unique race failing to stay the distance. When the Maserati brothers did put their own representatives into the field matters improved considerably. At Alessandria (the Bordino GP), Tripoli and the Targa Florio the dashing and impetuous Borzacchini was extremely prominent, scoring a second place in the Bordino race and a second in the Tripoli event, while in the Sicilian race he actually broke the previous lap record on his first lap. Alfieri's younger brother Ernesto (he was, perhaps, the best driver amongst the Maserati brothers) lent Borzacchini admirable support in these events, for he finished third at Alessandria and third in the Circuito di Cremona, on both occasions using the low-slung 2-litre, a picture of which, cornering in the Cremona race, still remains an outstanding memory of those years.
Mention of the Circuito di Cremona, one of the smaller and therefore more obscure Italian races, held over a fantastically fast 25-mile circuit on Ist July, brings into our story a unique Maserati, the legendary "Sedici Cilindri", that must, more than anything else, have trumpeted the name Maserati to the four corners of the world, especially after its performance on that hot, sunlit, first Sunday of July. The "Sedici Cilindri" was, as it names implies, a 16-cylinder, but a 16-cylinder with a difference, for the Fratelli Maseiati had taken TWO supercharged 8 cylinder 2-litre engines, mounted them side by side, coupled them together - and there it was! Naturally the completed car was larger in all respects than its original smaller brother, and the monster was always a handful to those courageous enough to slide behind its steering wheel. Its construction was fully justified at Cremona, for although it didn't finish the race the 16-cylinder Maserati was officially timed over 10 kilometres at 152.9 mph, the fastest speed ever recorded at the time on the road, and incidentally the first time an International record had ever been made on Italian soil. The driver credit for this astonishing record, put up in the course of the race, is always given to Borzacchini (whose christian names seem to be Baconin Mario Umberto) yet the day's fastest lap went to Alfieri Maserati on the same car, at an amazing-remember it's 1929! - 124.4 mph, surely again the fastest road race lap recorded up to that time! How this came about, that Borzacchini on one hand and Alfieri Maserati on the other, each achieved the aforementioned figures with one car is a question, but the cheerful Italian custom of interchanging team drivers, not common alone to the present day, would seem to offer the simplest and easiest answer.
The Italian Grand Prix should have been run at the tail end of the 1929 season, but in its place was substituted a formule libre Monza Grand Prix of heats and final, and in all a total of six different Maseratis, from the 8-cylinder 1½-litre to the big 4-litre 16-cylinder arrived at the famous Milan speedway to take part in what turned out to be a day of very high speed. The full 10 kilometre course was not used; instead a variation of 2.8 miles was tried, and on this abbreviated circuit, at a guess roughly the same in outline as the Monza of 1954, a lap record was made that still remained in 1954 the fastest official lap ever recorded at Monza. The car that did this best lap of the day was the 16-cylinder Maserati, driven by Alfieri Maserati, yet, despite his lap speed of 124.2 mph, neither he nor any of the cars that bore his name had the satisfaction of a victory that day. True he only failed by an eighth of a second, but fail he did. Alfieri's sole consolation for Monza must have been the knowledge that at least he'd built a racer that was faster than any other racing car, if Cremona and Monza were taken as proof!
In the ensuing winter months after Monza, besides attention being lavished on the 16-cylinder, a new full Grand Prix racer was conceived, maybe just a larger version of the 2,000 cc job of 1929 but none the less the 2.4-litre "eight" of 1930 was new in a general progressive fashion, although it bore the Maserati hallmark in its outward appearance. The 1930 vehicle was obviously designed for a serious attempt at major Grand Prix racing, and an almost full works team was sponsored although it could not be on as grand a scale as the contemporary Bugatti and Alfa Romeo factories, Maserati securing the services of Borzacchini, Luigi Arcangeli and Luigi Fagioli to aid Alfieri and Ernesto in their first real attempt to break into International racing. That this new approach to the game was going to pay dividends was soon revealed, for out of their first three Italian races alone came two outright wins, and when the year ended Maseratis could look back on a total of SEVEN victories!
The first of the seven was at Tripoli where Borzacchini won with the 16-cylinder, the second was at Rome when Arcangeli (2.4 litres) beat full Bugatti and Alfa works teams, and the third was at Montenero when Fagioli (2.4) won the Coppa Ciano. Following the Coppa Ciano and prior to the next race, the Coppa Acerbo at Pescara, Achille Varzi came over to Maseratis from Alfas, Borzacchino more or less trading places with him in the Milanese line-up. Varzi's arrival in the Maserati ranks signalled a new phase for the rest of that year, the saturnine Achille racing (literally!) to a record speed victory in his first drive for them at Pescara - in the Coppa Acerbo. Next he took (though only by one-fifth of a second in a Maserati 1-2-3) the Monza Grand Prix, and he finished in a blaze of glory with a third victory in the Spanish Grand Prix, a victory that was once again distinguished by those magic words - at record speed and with a new lap record for the course! And the unaccounted for seventh victory was gained by Luigi Fagioli in the Circuito di Avellino, the runner-up place in this event incidentally falling to Arcangeli, the Maserati victor at Rome, but this time Alfa mounted.
Two very significant features stand out from Maserati's 1930 programme: his few failures (one was at Indianapolis in the 500 Miles race when Borzacchini drove the 16-cylinder, minus its blowers and most of its power) and his quiet introduction of a 1,100 cc machine. This latter model which, presumably, made its debut at Pescara in the 1,100 cc class, when Alfieri Maserati was second and Luigi Fagioli third, was to pave the way for a long line of small Maserati racing cars that were to uphold the firm's name and reputation in those dark days when their larger Grand Prix brethren were being constantly humbled by the white "Silver Arrows" from Germany.
For a small, almost family, business, as indeed it really was, the Maserati firm's cars had come a long way since their first beginnings as a modification of the Diatto, and just as Grand Prix racing boomed in the very early 1930s so did both the fame and the production of the Maserati works at Bologna. Thus, when 1931 arrived, they plunged into the new season with still more irons in the fire, adding sports versions of the 2.4-litre GP car and the 1,100 cc voiturette to their range, and by the time the year had run its course the Grand Prix car had become a 2.8! Not being able to afford a full works team (normally their policy was we'll build any type of car you want if you'll buy it) they had lost Achille Varzi to Bugatti, but in his stead they got René Dreyfus to support the faithful Fagioli, Italian drivers of lesser repute (Biondetti, Ghersi, Parenti and so on) being called upon as the situation demanded to lend a hand. Numerous minor Italian and Continental drivers, however, bought Maseratis of their own to race as independents, but undoubtedly the most famous private purchaser of a 1931 model Maserati was Britain's own immortal "Tim" Birkin.
Fagioli and Dreyfus, using the 2.5-litre Grand Prix car, shared the brunt of the work - and work it was, for the car was not the best of roadholders - on behalf of the factory and if they failed to reproduce the success of 1930 they could hardly be blamed, for 1931's competition was much keener. Nevertheless they were always a threat and the record books show that Fagioli was their most successful driver with one win (Monza), three seconds, a third, and two fastest laps. As far as the major Grand Prix were concerned, Maseratis were not ready for the Italian and they skipped the Belgian to concentrate on the German classic on the Nürburgring, their cars actually taking part in the Monaco, French, German and Monza Grands Prix, the enlarged 2.5 litres (to 2.8 litres) coming out for the final race, the Monza Grand Prix. The 2.5-litre thus scored in 1931 a second and a fastest lap at Monaco (Fagioli), a third and a fastest lap at Montlhéry in the French GP (Biondetti/Parenti the former, and Fagioli the latter), failed on the Nürburgring, and then gracefully gave way as first string to the bigger 2.8, which swept the board on its debut. Both Fagioli and Dreyfus had them at Monza and with 1-2 in the heat and Fagioli's victory in the Final (at 96.6 mph) the description "a clean sweep" is indeed apt, the one blot on an otherwise perfect day being Dreyfus's retirement with a broken piston. The most interesting Maserati on view in this meeting was probably Klinger's new 4-cylinder 1,100 cc car, for although its performance was hopeless it was indeed an important model, being the first of the Maserati voiturettes that have since led, by long and continuous development, to today's Grand Prix model.
In the not so grand Grands Prix of 1931 the marque had numberless places, but wins were not so common, the one and only outright victory apart from those races mentioned in the last paragraph being the Prix Royal di Roma on the Littorio track, when Ernesto Maserati led Dreyfus and Biondetti to a neat 1-2-3 placing, a most gratifying achievement, for 1-2-3 victories were novelty at Bologna in those days. Incidentally the monstrous 16-cylinder was once again used in this race - and it won! for it was this car that Ernesto drove, the second and third cars being the normal 2½ litres. Ernesto had a second drive in the 16-cylinder in 1931, by the way, at Monza, in the first heat of the Monza GP, out in direct contrast to his Rome performance he was LAST!
Tim Birkin's Maserati, however, cannot be passed over without mention for although his 1931 Continental excursions with the car were fruitless (fourth at Montlhéry, 10th at Nürburgring), at dear old Brooklands he set an absolute Mountain record on August Monday, and won the Mountain Championship at the October meeting, putting the lap record up to 75.21 mph. In other hands than Tim's, this machine continued in later years to make history on British and European courses for a long long time.
Of the other machines in the Maserati range, the 1,500 cc and 1,100 cc racing cars claimed a small measure of success, but the sports 2½-litre model, as run at Phoenix Park and Ulster, was merely moderate, the TT being a flop as far as the Mas. was concerned. Campari, however, brought his Maserati into second place in the large car race in Dublin's Irish Grand Prix, feat all the more meritorious as Birkin's winning Alfa threw a stone at, and broke, the huge Italian's goggles. Maserati's best performance in 1931 in the sports car field was actually made in the Mille Miglia, for they won the 1,100 cc class at 82.55 kph, the smaller cars as ever being outshone by the "glamour" of the ace drivers in the unlimited class, this 1931 race being that won by Caracciola's Mercedes, one of the greater of motoring sport's epic drives. The two drivers of the winning 1,100 cc Maserati were Beppo Tuffanelli and Guerrino Bertocchi, two more names that were to have long and successful associations with the Maserati marque. Their success in the Mille Miglia was, however, not actually Maserati's debut in this particular race as a year previously, in 1930, Arcangeli's car had led for quite a long distance before retiring.
(To be continued)
This article first appeared in the Autumn 1976 issue of Trident
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Maserati enthusiasts and collectors who may be interested in acquiring back issues of this highly collectable magazine may do so by contacting Adam Painter of the Maserati Club at
adamkpainter@uk2.net
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