History

The Forgotten Victory

The first Ferrari win outside Italy came in the 1948 Swedish Grand Prix. Although Ferrari listed the result among other victories in the early factory literature, little has since been written about this seemingly important event. Peter Haventon, our Swedish correspondent, wondered why. The records of the race, buried under five decades of dust, gave him the answer as well as a cache of never before-seen photographs.

Grand Prix Racing was slow to resume in Europe after World War Two, even in nations not directly involved in the hostilities, such as Sweden. As in most other European countries, club racing had been popular in this land of the Midnight Sun. The Royal Automobile Club of Sweden, as well as various smaller national and local dubs, had put on quite a few events during the period before the war-even a few races qualifying for the grandiose appellation of Grand Prix. Some of these events were run on frozen lakes in the middle of the winter.
The first few years after the peace was a time of recuperation. Automobile racing was not exactly a top priority and die-hard motorsport fans had to live on memories. During the war some excitement had been generated in Sweden from so-called gengastavlingar, trials for cars running on producer gas, a wartime substitute that did nothing at all for performance.
Late in the spring of 1948, however, Swedish race fans were awakened from their long hibernation by the exciting news of a Swedish Grand Prix to be held on the last weekend in May. Since there were no race tracks at all in Sweden at the time, the event was to be staged on an airfield, Skarpnacksfaltet, located about six miles south of downtown Stockholm.
The first postwar Swedish Grand Prix was to be quite an affair, with the big draw being Tazio Nuvolari, who was to pilot a new, virtually unknown car called Ferrari. The organizing club, SMK (for Svenska Motor Klubben) took every opportunity to have the event mentioned in the daily papers, so as to build expectation among a population that hadn't seen real racing in years. Most people in Sweden didn't even own a car in those days, and the lucky few who did had problems finding enough gasoline to keep them running. But fuel we' not the only commodity in short supply; tires, too, were hard to find. This fact is comically illustrated by the case of Sture Svensson, who managed to get a spot on the Grand Prix grid with the big boys driving his homebuilt monster powered by a Pagani-tuned Lancia engine. Lacking proper tires, the eager enthusiast robbed a farm tractor of its front-wheel rubber, and unfortunately made a complete fool of himself by spinning repeatedly due to the inadequate grip. He was immediately black flagged for reckless driving.

Organizers of the Grand Prix weekend spent SK180,000 (roughly $30,000) on the event. This did not include the prize money, which was a respectable SK47,000 (about $8,000).

The two-day event, scheduled for Saturday May 29 and Sunday May 30, was to be packed with excitement. The club had put together a number of classes, some of them specially invented for the Grand Prix weekend.
Class A was for big engines (over two liters), and at the time this meant specials, the so-called Nordic Special Class. These cars were, with very few exceptions, openwheeled backyard machines powered by American prewar engines, often with dubious handling characteristics.
Class B (up to two liters) attracted a field of prewar BMWs pitted against a Citroen Special, among other curious machinery. In Class C (sports cars up to 1100cc) Karl Evert Anderson from Sandviken entered, of all things, a four-door Fiat 1100. The car was a prewar model and had chalked up an impressive 228,000 miles in the hands of its previous owner, a baker with far-ranging morning deliveries. As it happened, Anderson and his Fiat won their ten-lap event. Class D (open to small-bore two-stroke machines) was to be run first on Saturday, and was dominated by German DKWs, their engines specially prepared by SAAB's shops in Trollhattan.
The track had been laid out on the landing strips of the airfield and was flimsily bordered by a scattering of hay bales- 112 tons worth. The 1.8-mile long course, which for the main event was to be lapped 67 times, included one long straightaway, three shorter ones, three hairpins, and a long, fast turn. The layout was unexciting for the drivers and did not offer the spectators any good views, except for in the hairpins, which gave the fans time to watch cars and drivers in close-up action.
Came race day the weather was cold, rainy, and windy. The Class D warm-up race was greeted with cheers, as the 18,000 spectators needed more than coffee and hotdogs to get the excitement going. This first race was won by one Rolf Mellde, who would soon become a well-known Saab racing personality. The rest of the first day's races included a special class for Fiat Topolinos. Nine of these beloved machines circulated the airfield at what seemed like a snail's pace, but the close racing was nevertheless appreciated.
The second day saw twice as many spectators gather on the bleachers and line up along the rows of hay bales-the Nuvolari legend had lured quite a crowd despite the awful weather, which was again cold and wet. However, once the air began to reverberate from the sounds of revving high-performance engines, the chill was soon forgotten.
The first race to grab the spectator's attention was that of the big-engine Nordic Specials. Three cars were lined up side by side in the first row at the start of the event: Gunnar Olsson's Kaiser Special, (nicknamed Go-On), a Ford belonging to Danish competitor Robert Nelleman (later to successfully race an Allard J2 in Scandinavia), and Sulo Keinanen's Chrysler Special (ferried over from Finland). These three favorites were followed by several rows of other specials, among them a slew of rather mundane Ford coupes. After a tight race, the Kaiser Special won, Keinanen's Chrysler capturing second.
It was now, finally, time for the big event, the Swedish Grand Prix, and just as the excitement began to grow around the track it was announced that Nuvolari had been forced to cancel due to failing health. The Ferrari factory had instead sent their veteran endurance ace Clemente Biondetti, the recent victor of the Mille Miglia, where he had shared a Ferrari Allemano Coupe (s/n 003S) with Felipe Navone. Despite all his impressive accomplishments, Biondetti was a virtual unknown outside Italy, and although Ferrari had sent along Raymond Sommer of prewar fame to pilot a second Ferrari, Nuvolari's absence hung as a damper over the proceedings.
Adding to this air of disappointment was the meager field. About a dozen cars had been signed up, but only about half of them arrived for start. Among those missing was a Simca-Gordini that Olle Landbu should have been driving. Why he and his potent little mount did not show was never fully explained, but the grapevine had it that the hot-head driver had crashed the car on the way to the race.

Among the cars that did make it were the Ferraris, number 2 (s/n 0031), driven by Sommer, and number 4, piloted by Biondetti (recent discoveries have caused a revision of early Ferrari serial number history, and it now appears that this car could have been s/n 01C, the first Ferrari-turn to the feature on pages 2228), a D46 Cisitalia in the hands of Parisborn American Harry Schell, and two Simca-Gordinis, one driven by Franco Rol, the other piloted by His Royal Highness Prince Birabongse of Siam-Prince Bira in racing circles. All the cars were open wheelers, with the exception of an Alta driven by John Heath, which had a fully enveloping body that closely resembled those of the German Veritas. Two oddities rounded off the field: the tractor-tired Lancia Special mentioned earlier and a prewar BMW with its fenders removed.

Just moments before the cars were to be flagged off, a sudden commotion erupted around the two Simca-Gordinis. It looked as if neither car had been fueled and that the unfortunate mistake had been discovered this late in the proceedings. The mechanics worked feverishly, but while Rol'smount soon came to life, Prince Bira's would not start. The entire team, temporarily aided by Sweden's Prince Bertil-a close friend of Bira's-now came running out on the tarmac trying to roll-start the car. All efforts were without success, however, until somebody thought of turning on the fuel tap. By the time the engine finally caught, the car had already crossed the starting line-lust before the flag fell. There was no restart, and the rest of the field thundered off with Bira left behind in confusion. The confusion apparently included the officials', and Bira finally took off on his own, now having quite a bit of catching up to do.
Bira and his Simca-Gordini turned out to be the fastest on the track, and very soon "the little Oriental," as contemporary reports referred to him, was battling for the lead with Raymond Sommer. It was soon clear that Biondetti could not keep up with these two. But the chase took its toll on Sommer's Ferrari, for somewhere along the way-the contemporary reports do not tell why and when-Sommer had to throw in the towel. About halfway through the race, after 30 laps and just over one hour of hot pursuit, Bira led Biondetti by one and a half minutes. Rol was nineteen seconds behind Biondetti, with Schell and his Cisitalia wedged somewhere in between.
Grand Prix Bira easily kept his lead and crossed the finish line after two hours and sixteen minutes. Biondetti took the flag three minutes later. Schell was one lap down when he was flagged off, and Rol four laps down, as was Heath in the Alta.

No sooner had Bira gotten out of the car than he was faced with a protest. You do not fuel up while on the grid, and you do not get push-started, especially not by spectators, not even if you are royalty-not even if you are pushed by another prince!

The protest was accepted, and the second car to cross the finish line was declared the winner. Clemente Biondetti, the endurance racer par excellence, had scored Ferrari's very first victory on foreign soil. Unfortunately-and perhaps this is the reason why this victory seems to have been forgotten-the win was by default.
However, further research into the affair revealed that there was yet another aspect casting a shadow over Biondetti's win, for the good Prince of Siam disputed the ruling, and the whole affair came to be dragged through the various motor sport governing bodies. After almost a year, the organizers were ordered to pay first-prize money to Prince Bira as well.
At the end of this cold and rainy day, many a spectator left the track quite disappointed. It hadn't been much of a race for being billed as a Grand Prix-and then there had been the curious ineptness of the officials in not calling for a restart or an immediate disqualification.
But if the fans were moderately unhappy, the newspapers were openly critical. Nobody blamed the weather, however, nor even the organizers-foreign drivers were the target. "The Continental stars are as erratic as spoiled artists and regrettably it appears that not even the firms the drivers represent are to be trusted," wrote Svensk Motor Sport (Swedish Motor Sport) magazine in its commentary on the race.
But in the forgiving light of nearly 50 years, the Swedish Grand Prix takes on new importance, and many a Ferrari enthusiast would gladly have suffered through this freezing spring day to watch Ferrari's first international win-however shaky.

Want more information? Search the web!

Google

Search The Auto Channel!


*