The movie “Ferrari”, a biopic about Enzo Ferrari who founded and ruled over the famous car company that bears his name, was released to movie theaters late last year. I saw it during its opening week, and despite my initial misgivings, I enjoyed it. Much of my doubt centered around two concerns: one, I knew that the movie covered only one year of Enzo’s life (1957), and I could not imagine how a 2+ hour-long movie could do his story justice; and two, with an American (Adam Driver) in the lead role, and a Latino (Penelope Cruz) playing his wife Laura, I had trouble believing that these non-Italian actors could carry their parts. However, Director Michael Mann, who I’m told is famous for many of his previous movies about which I know nothing, brilliantly brought it together. By focusing primarily on the races, race cars and drivers of that year, and all but ignoring the production cars, the plot moved along nicely.

I had read complaints about the crash scenes, which were very realistic, including the depiction of gore. The harsh reality is that in racing, cars crash, and drivers die. The real tragedy in the races of this time, though, is that they were held on public roads, and too often, fatalities included innocent bystanders of all ages. The gore in “Ferrari” wasn’t there for its own sake. Rather, it was a real-world depiction of what happened during this era in racing.

The single most fascinating aspect of “Ferrari” the movie, though, wasn’t what was shown on screen; rather, it was the screenwriters’ source material which piqued my interest. The movie is based on but one chapter from the Brock Yates-penned biography “Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races”, first published in 1991, a year after Enzo’s death. I have known of this book since it was released, and had always intended to read it. Watching the movie finally provided the impetus (it was available at my local public library).

At 453 pages including endnotes, it will take you a while to dig in. Brock had a certain writing style, one that I am well accustomed to from reading his columns and articles in Car & Driver magazine (see my blog post honoring him shortly after his passing here). He loved sentences that could snake across the page with a litany of adjectives or nouns, like “a lusty man who embodied the image of the wild-living, extroverted, hard-driving international racing star”. He delighted in describing this race scene with as much excess as he could pour out: “They sailed through the twisting downhill of The Hatzenbach with the tires smoking, then hammered, eyeballs bulging and palms dripping sweat, through the terrible, blind humps of the Flugplatz. Two Rip Van Winkles hounded by the Headless Horseman, they skidded and bounced around the ghostly place, the shriek of their Jano V8s slowly being battered away by the baleful yowl of Colombo’s venerable straight-6.” Okay, Brock!

But when Yates wanted to, he could craft a narrative to bring you to the edge of your seat, feeling like you were a first-hand witness to the drama and excitement. From the Ferrari book, here is Yates’s description of how Tazio Nuvolari, driving for the Scuderia Ferrari, blasted past the favored Germans to win the 1935 German Grand Prix. (This excerpt has been edited for brevity.)

There was one final, monumental triumph for the Scuderia Ferrari before the capitulation to the German onslaught was completed. It was only proper that the greatest living race driver – and perhaps the greatest of all time – Tazio Nuvolari, should be the key to that astounding moment in motorsports.

The rise of the Germans had produced a national craze for motorsports, and by July it seemed like the entire population of Germany was descending on the Nürburgring for an event that was sure to fall to either Auto Union or Mercedes-Benz.

The front row consisted of the two Mercedes-Benzes of Caracciola and Fagioli bracketing the Nuvolari Alfa – a mechanical sandwich with a red Italian morsel pinched between a pair of sure winners. But this was Tazio’s day, and he launched the old Alfa off the line as if amphetamines had been mainlined into its fuel tank. On the eleventh lap of the huge circuit Nuvolari made a routine stop for fuel and was delayed when a pump failed and the tank had to be hand-filled from cans sloshing with gasoline. By the time he jumped back aboard the Alfa, apoplectic over the delay, he had fallen far behind into sixth place.

At this point began what many believe to be one of the greatest feats of driving in the history of the sport – a titanic driver on a magnificent racetrack facing overwhelming odds. Nuvolari seemed at this moment to ascend into another sphere of skill entirely. Even the multitudes could sense that a master was at work. He was hardly braking for the corners, those stomach-turning twists and hollows. He was charging into the bends flat out, then yanking the Alfa into a series of lurid slides, elbows akimbo, flailing madly to maintain control.

Manfred von Brauchitsch (in a Mercedes Benz) had assumed the lead in the later stages, as the other German aces had either faltered or stopped. There was little doubt that he could hold off the mad thrusts of Nuvolari – who had now, amazingly, preposterously, surged into second place. Three laps remained and Nuvolari had cut Brauchitsch’s lead to sixty-three seconds. Observers on the circuit were reporting that Nuvolari was gobbling up the distance like a berserk hare. The pressure was becoming unbearable. Could Nuvolari pull it off? One mad fourteen-mile lap remained.

The squad of NSKK troopers in black motorcycle helmets were standing by to hoist an immense swastika on a flagpole that towered over the grandstand. Meanwhile, out on the circuit, Nuvolari continued his banzai drive. The masses in the pit-row tribunes and the assembled teams heard the shocking news from the loudspeaker: “Brauchitsch has burst a tire! Nuvolari has passed him! Brauchitsch is trying to catch up on a flat tire!”

Despair. Humiliation. Defeat. Nuvolari crossed the finish line a clear winner. In the midst of his mad game of catch-up, Nuvolari had also spotted a wind-frazzled Italian flag hanging over the main press tribune. It stood in stark, shoddy contrast to the pristine red, black and white Nazi bunting surrounding it. The first words the sweating, exhausted Nuvolari spoke as he crawled from behind the Alfa’s wheel were: “Tell the Germans to get a new flag!”

Brock Yates apparently spent years researching Ferrari’s life, including multiple trips to The Old Man’s homeland, to produce an impeachable bio. He does not hold back. Many of the Ferrari faithful on both sides of the Atlantic though Enzo was a saint in life and a deity in death. The book, much like the movie, tells a very different story. But in fairness, Brock Yates devotes equal time to the great successes along with the great failings of someone who, by any measure, launched one of the most successful car companies of all time.

I enjoyed the book most of all for what it taught me about Enzo the man. Here are the major points which I either learned from the book, or I thought I knew and were confirmed by it:

Enzo Ferrari did indeed begin his automotive career by racing Alfa Romeo race cars during the 1920s and 1930s (Scuderia Ferrari). However, he was fired by Alfa Romeo in the late 1930s, and held a grudge against the Milanese company for most of the rest of his life.

Ferrari didn’t produce the first automobile (really a prototype) bearing his name until 1947, when he was already 49 years old.

For the first few decades of the company’s racing experience, Ferrari stubbornly clung to the idea that “horsepower is everything”, and all other vehicular components had little impact on the success of a race car. To quote Yates: “ A myth has grown up around the cars relating to their advanced designs, but actually Enzo Ferrari was extremely conservative and was often left at the starting gate by more creative builders (his reluctance to adopt such obviously superior components as mid-engine layouts, coil spring suspensions, disc brakes, monocoque chassis, magnesium wheels and fuel injection exemplifies his crude approach to design).”

The above ties in very neatly with what I have heard from those who have owned Ferrari road cars from the 1950s and ‘60s. One fellow hobbyist described his Ferrari thusly: “It’s an engine on a tractor chassis”.

Contrary to almost everything I’ve read over the last 50 years, Enzo’s son Dino had just about nothing to do with the development of the Ferrari V6 engine which the father named after the son. Simply put, at his young age (25), Dino lacked the education and experience to delve deeply into engine design. The book notes that Jano and Lampredi, world-famous engineers in their own right, had both been working on V6 designs shortly before the Ferrari Dino debuted, and they are given credit for its design.

Ferrari traveled very little. Once his car company started, he rarely ventured more than a few kilometers from his home base. He almost never attended any Formula 1 races; he preferred to hear about results via long-distance phone calls. His trips outside of Italy could probably be counted on one hand.

Racing was everything to him. It is certainly true that the only reason he manufactured street cars at all was to fund the racing business. He grew to detest the wealthy people who gobbled up his cars as if they were precious diamonds, even though it was their funds which fed the hungry racing machine.

It was Fiat’s takeover in the late 1960s which finally propelled the road cars into the modern era. Mid-engine placements, modern manufacturing methods, and up-to-date comfort and convenience features were first found in the mid-‘70s’ 308/328 Berlinettas and Spiders. According to Yates, Ferrari cared even less about the road cars at this point and simply rubber-stamped whatever Fiat churned out for him.

Whether you’re passionate about the Ferrari mystique or simply want to learn more about the man behind the name, I recommend both the movie and the book.