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The Ferrari of the Scuderia years was very much the hands on team manager quite unlike the Ferrari of later years when he did not attend any of the race and was given information over the telephone and in reports from his employees. Ferrari continued to be successful after he stopped attending the races but it is not hard to imagine that in this were the seeds of Ferrari’s future decline.
After the war Ferrari set out to create his own Grand Prix car and in 1947 a 1.5-liter Tipo125 entered the Grand Prix of Monaco. The car was designed by his old collaborator Gioacchino Colombo. Ferrari’s first Grand Prix victory came in 1951 at the British Grand Prix in the hands of Argentine Froilan Gonzalez. The team had a chance for a World Championship evaporate at the Spanish Grand Prix. Before the most important race in the young team’s history Ferrari decided to experiment with new Pirelli tires. The result was thrown treads, which allowed Fangio to win the race and his first title.
Guy Vandervell supplied Ferrari with the special ThinWall bearings that were used in all of their engines. Vandervell had been a part of the BRM group but quit in disgust. After purchasing and racing a pair of Ferrari's he built his own cars that eventually beat the Italian cars. It was only by outlasting the Vanwalls, as the cars were named was Ferrari able to climb back on top. But this was only the beginning of the British invasion. These manufacturers did not produce their own engines but concentrated on chassis design and aerodynamics, areas of traditional weakness for Ferrari. During this period Ferrari began to produce his famous Gran Turismo car in conjunction with Battista "Pinin" Farina. Victories at Le Mans and other long distance races made Ferrari famous the world over.
Unfortunately while Williams did their best to regress, McLaren with their partner Mercedes produced a car that even Michael Schumacher couldn't stop on its way to a championship for Mika Hakkinen. Yet Ferrari was back and if team stability is maintained a championship will come their way whether at the hands of their hired German driver or another.
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About this
time he took up racing and in 1919 he finished ninth at the Targa Florio. Through his
friend Ugo Sivocci he got a job with Alfa Romeo who entered some modified production cars
in the 1920 
After some more success he was
promoted to full factory driver. His racing career up till that time mostly consisted of
local races in second hand cars but now he was expected to compete driving the latest cars
at the years most prestigious race the 
Alfa Romeo would continue to support the Scuderia either as a
client or as the official racing department of the factory. But soon everything would
change as Alfa Rome announced another withdrawal; from racing starting with the 1933
season due to financial problems. At first this seemed to be just the opening that Ferrari
needed but then it was realized that their own supply of new racing cars would soon dry
up. Luckily for the Scuderia, Pirelli interceded and convinced Alfa to supply Ferrari with
six P3's and the services of engineer Luigi Bazzi and test driver Attilio Marinoni. The
Scuderia would now be in effect Alfa Romeo's racing department. In 1932 his first
son also named Alfredo after his father, and known as Dino was born, and Ferrari took this
opportunity to retire from driving. A more professional turn was also taken by the team.
This upset Alfredo Caniato and he was bought out by Count Carlo Felice Trossi who was a
part-time driver as well as a full-time millionaire. All looked set for Ferrari to
make his true mark on the racing scene. What he did not count on was a German tidal wave
in the form of Auto Union and Mercedes. In 1935 Ferrari signed the French driver Rene
Dreyfus who most recently drove for Bugatti. He was struck by the difference between his
old team and Ferrari. 
"The difference between being a member
of the Bugatti team and Scuderia Ferrari was virtually night and day, recalled
Dreyfus. I lived with Meo Constantini, the Bugatti team manager, I visited with
Ferrari. "With Ferrari, I learned the business of racing, for there was no doubt he
was a businessman. Enzo Ferrari was a pleasant person and friendly, but not openly
affectionate. There was, for example, none of the sense of belonging to the family that I
had with the Maserati brothers, nor the sense of spirited fun and intimacy that I had with
Meo Constantini. Enzo Ferrari loved racing, of that there was no question. Still, it was
more than an enthusiast’s love, but one tempered by the practical realization that
this was a good way to build a nice, profitable empire. I knew he was going to be a big
man one day, even then when the cars he raced carried somebody else’s name. I felt
sure that eventually they would carry his.
Through the years the Scuderia Ferrari would employ
such great drivers as Giuseppe Campari, Louis Chiron, Achille Varzi and the greatest of
them all 
I looked at
him," Ferrari goes on. "His rugged face was calm, just as it always
was, and certainly not the face of someone who had just escaped a hair-raising spin. I had
the same sensation at the second bend. By the fourth or fifth bend I began to understand;
in the meantime, I had noticed that through the entire bend Tazio did not lift his foot
from the accelerator, and that, in fact, it was flat on the floor. As bend followed bend, I discovered his secret. Nuvolari
entered the bend somewhat earlier than my driver's instinct would have told me to. But he
went into the bend in an unusual way: with one movement he aimed the nose of the car at
the inside edge, just where the curve itself started. His foot was flat down, and he had
obviously changed down to the right gear before going through this fearsome rigmarole. In
this way he put the car into a four-wheel drift, making the most of the thrust of the
centrifugal force and keeping it on the road with the traction of the driving wheels.
Throughout the bend the car shaved the inside edge, and when the bend turned into the
straight the car was in the normal position for accelerating down it, with no need for any
corrections." Ferrari honestly admits that he soon became used to this exercise,
because he saw Nuvolari do it countless times. "But each time I seemed to be
climbing into a roller coaster and finding myself coming through the downhill run with
that sort of dazed feeling that we all know." 
In 1937 Ferrari suggested to Alfa that they build
1.5-liter voiturette class cars but what he got was Alfa Romeo's decision to bring the
racing effort back in-house. After being the man in charge at the Scuderia he found
himself, the new Direttore Sportivo, working under Alfa's engineering director,
Wilfredo Ricart. This was a situation he could not stomach and soon decided to quit. As
part of his severance agreement he could not compete against his former bosses for four
years. Ferrari started a new company called Auto-Avio Costruzioni S.p.A. which produced
machine parts for various clients. For the 1940 
Production sports cars were also an important
endeavor for Ferrari but in marked difference with other car manufacturers, racing was not
used to sell more cars, rather cars were sold so that the team could go racing! Many of
the cars that were sold were last year’s models to private entrants. Ferrari was not
a sentimental person when it came to his cars and those that were not sold were turned to
scrap or scavenged for parts. Ferraris would become common feature at all major sports car
events including Le Mans, the Targa Florio and the Mille Miglia. It was at the Mille
Miglia that Ferrari would claim some of its greatest victories. In 1948 Nuvolari already
in bad health was scheduled to drive a Cisitalia but the car was not ready in time.
Ferrari gave him a car intended for Count Igor Troubetzkoy, an open Ferrari 166C. Nuvolari
realizing that his body was failing him drove as if the devil himself was in pursuit. By
the time the field reached Ravenna, Nuvolari was already in the lead. Despite losing his
fender and later the engine bonnet nothing could stop the "
In 1975 Ferrari attained something of a renaissance
at the hands of Niki Lauda winning two World Championships and three Constructor titles in
three years. It was three years after Renault had inaugurated the new Turbo Era when
Ferrari joined the bandwagon. Their current Flat-12 engine had reached the end of its
development to be replaced by a 1.5-liter turbo V6. As with most Ferraris the engine
turned out to be the car's strong point while the chassis was based on an antiquated
multi-tube spaceframe. The brilliant driving of Gilles Villeneuve gave the new Ferrari
several victories in 1981 but it was evident that the chassis needed to be upgraded before
the car could seriously challenge for the title. At mid-season the team was joined by Dr
Harvey Postlewaite whose job it was to build an improved chassis for the following season.
Postlewaite wanted to build a carbon-fibre composite chassis but had to settle on a
monocoque with a Nomex honeycomb skin because of Ferrari’s lack of experience with
the new material. Still with a half decent chassis much was expected of the team in 1982.
It all ended in tragedy with the death of its star driver, Villeneuve and the maiming of
his estranged teammate, Didier Pironi, in different accidents. With the earlier retirement
of its last World Champion, Jody Scheckter, Ferrari was now bereft of any frontline
drivers and years would go by before it could count a top driver as one of its own. 
Enzo Ferrari would not live
to see that day; he died at the age of 90 in 1988. Ferrari continued to drift even though
the brilliance of a 
