While 2020 marks Formula One’s milestone 70th anniversary, April has also featured an historic 70 years since Maserati not only competed in the first Formula One World Championship season, but also recorded a famous Formula One “double” win – achieved by two different Maserati racing cars driven by two audacious racing drivers, on two different circuits, on the same day.
This feat began with the 1950 Pau Grand Prix – an official, but non-championship Formula One motor race – held on April 10, 1950, at the Pau circuit, in France. In what was regarded as the first race of the 1950 Formula One season, the 110-lap race was won by none other than legendary driver Juan Manuel Fangio in his Maserati 4CLT.
On the very same day across the channel, Reg Parnell completed a Maserati double in his privately-owned Maserati 4CLT, to lift the Richmond Trophy at Goodwood Motor Circuit, marking a Formula One “same day double” win.
At the heart of both these extraordinary April 1950 wins, was the Maserati 4CLT. Developed in 1947, by Alberto Massimino, who became Maserati’s chief engineer, he evolved the Maserati 4CL-derived 16-valve Formula One/A car to become the 4CLT. The additional letter ‘T’ stood for ‘Tubolare’, reflecting the car’s new tubular chassis frame.
The first pair of 4CLTs made their successful debut in June 1948 at San Remo. Alberto Ascari and Luigi Villoresi finished first and second, earning the model the name the ‘San Remo Maserati’, as they went on to complete an extremely successful season in the shapely new Fantuzzi-bodied cars.
British driver and private Maserati race car owner, Reg Parnell, a haulage contractor from Derby in the North Midlands, became one of England’s leading racing personalities in the 1940s, most notably behind the wheel of his pre-war Maserati 4CL. After acquiring his 4CLT in the years that followed, Parnell went on to win several Goodwood Trophies, as well as The Richmond Trophy both in 1949 and in April 1950.
Maserati went onto even greater success in future Formula One World Championship’s, especially with the 250F, which saw Sir Stirling Moss finish 2nd overall in the 1956 season, and Juan Manuel Fangio win his fourth consecutive, fifth in total, World Championship title in 1957.
Hi Guys,
Just to be clear, the great car you are showing is the 4CLT/48, which made its debut at the San Remo race you mention. The 4CLT was its predecessor, looking not so low and more on earlier Maserati lines but with a tubular frame.
Wonderful cars, the ones that Fangio drove to earn his first European reputation.
thanks Karl!