Beschreibung:

This magnificent sports-prototype Ferrari was the fifth and last of the select batch of 6-cylinder big-engined projectiles that provided the absolute spearhead of the factory Ferrari team’s endurance racing campaign for 1955. These gorgeously aggressive and exquisitely well-proportioned cars were powered by Tipo 118 and Tipo 121 6-cylinder twin-overhead camshaft engines in 3.7 and 4.4-litre form. This particular individual was assembled upon a Ferrari Tipo 509 (510) Allungato chassis, and it proved to be the most prominent of the three Ferrari 121LMs to be built new to this specification at Maranello. It made its racing debut on April 3 that year, as a fully-fledged Scuderia Ferrari works team entry driven in the punishing Giro di Sicilia (Tour of Sicily) road race on a one-lap course which essentially followed the coastline of the Mediterranean island for no fewer than 1,088kms – some 620 miles. Ferrari 121LM serial ‘0558 LM’ was driven there by the talented new young Italian rising star Umberto Maglioli, from Biella. He had begun his competition career as the protégé of another Biellese road racer, 1952 Mille Miglia winner Giovanni Bracco. Now, recognised by Mr Ferrari as a driving talent in his own right, Maglioli brought ‘0558 LM’ offered here home in a fine second place overall, headed only by the veteran ‘Silver Fox’, Piero Taruffi, in a sister 121LM... At the end of that same month, on April 30, 1955, the car now offered here then starred in the most important true road racing event of the era – the 1,000-mile round-Italy Mille Miglia. Mr Ferrari entrusted it to the rather more experienced, better established but also youthful new Italian star - Eugenio Castellotti. This charismatic young man from Milan had shown early promise in private sports-racing Ferraris before being given a works team place by Lancia Corse in 1954-55. He shone for the Torinese factory team in both Formula 1 and sports cars and was effectively on loan to the Scuderia Ferrari for the Mille Miglia since Lancia had withdrawn from sports car competition for the new year to concentrate its fast-dwindling financial resources upon Grand Prix racing with its new V8-engined D50 designs. Castellotti would drive for Ferrari in the sports car events but against them in his Formula 1 Lancia until, after the Monaco GP, the Lancia company collapsed into receivership and eventual sale. Into the autumn of 1955 Ferrari would have inherited not only all of Lancia Corse’s Formula 1 hardware but also – full-time – the services of its best young driver. In the Mille Miglia, Eugenio Castellotti – nicknamed ‘Il Bello’ for his darkly handsome good looks and stylish dress sense - drove this fantastically fast Ferrari 121LM “like the wind”. Wearing the Bologna registration plate ‘BO 46416 PROVA’ and carrying the start-time racing number ‘723’, Castellotti was the last to start from the traditional ramp set-up in Brescia’s Viale Rebuffone, and he quickly caught the eventual race winners, Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson, in no less a car than their works Mercedes-Benz 300SLR. For many miles on those variably-surfaced, deceptive public roads, the Mille Miglia became a two-car duel between 3-litres of German straight-eight, desmodromic-valved, three-pointed star engine against 4.4-litres of twin-overhead camshaft in-line six-cylinder from Ferrari. And ‘0558 LM’ here, driven to the absolute limit by its young Italian star, first harried Stirling Moss and then passed him to lead the great race on corrected time. Consider the stature of this Ferrari 121LM from this first-hand report, written from the navigator’s seat of the Mercedes-Benz 300SLR ‘722’, as Denis Jenkinson recalled: “The car was going really well now, and on the straights to Verona we were getting 7,500 in top gear, a speed of 274kph, or close to 170mph... “Approaching Padova Moss pointed behind and I looked round to see a Ferrari gaining on us rapidly, and with a grimace of disgust at one another we realised it wa