Franco Cortese

Today, Franco Cortese is, perhaps, one of motor sport’s forgotten stars—and he shouldn’t be. He was the driver who put Ferrari on the map. All in a career spanning 156 races and 20 victories in 36 years of racing in his own cars and those of the cream of the Italian constructors, among them Alfa Romeo, Maserati and, of course, Ferrari.

Cortese joined Ferrari after 19 years of racing as a test and racing driver at the very beginning of the Scuderia’s racing career with cars it had built itself. The 125 S 90-degree V12s had a small displacement of 1500-cc and were built to a design laid out by the great Gioachino Colombo. They raced for the first time at the Circuit of Piacenza on May 11, 1947, and they lost; Cortese’s car broke down and the other had an accident. So there was a down-in-the-mouth air about the Scuderia after that very first Ferrari lose. Things looked bleak for Ferrari, because he and his colleagues had built the cars and had begun to race them on an extremely tight budget. They just had to win—and soon.