The Ferrari 156

Phil Hill, Ferrari 156, Casino Square,  Monaco, in his World Championship year.

The Ferrari 156 was a surprise to the Brits and Porsche at the first race of the 1961 season at Monaco.  While Stirling Moss took the pole (and won the race) in a Lotus 18, Ferrari filled the next three grid spots with a new car, the Tipo 156.  Enzo had done his first rear-engined car, a Formula 2 racer with the V-6 Dino engine, a year earlier.  But it was large, heavy, and slow.  Cooper and Lotus saw little threat from Ferrari for 1961, when Formula 1 dropped from 2.5 to 1.5 liters.

Enzo caught them napping with the 156.  It was a much smaller, lighter car, although still not as light as a Lotus 18/21.  The basic suspension (A-arms front and rear) was copied from the most refined Cooper design.  But the spring rates were soft, so Ferrari used extreme negative camber at all four corners to keep the outside tires upright when the car rolled.  Pictures of 156's with steering input showed each wheel with an odd and amusing suspension travel arc of its own.

 Nobody was smiling after Monaco but Ferrari.  The car was an out-of-the-box winner.  Moss scored another victory at the Nurburgring by running sticky rain tires in a dry race (against Dunlop's advice).  But Ferrari won the rest of the races through Monza, clinching the driver's title for Phil Hill.  Enzo didn't even bother to send cars to the last race of the season at Watkins Glen.  The 156 won five of seven races, and probably would have won six of eight had it contested the U.S.G.P.

The centerpiece of the 156, like all Ferraris, was its engine.  The Dino 156 began life as a 170 h.p. Formula 2 engine in 1957.  By 1961 Ferrari had found an additional 10 h.p.,  20% more than his rivals.  And he sprung a further surprise on them midway through the season: a 120-degree V-6 Dino with 190 h.p. that lowered the car's center of gravity.  The 156 was Ferrari's first car to use engine size and number of cylinders (1.5 liters, 6 cylinders) instead of individual cylinder size to designate a model.  The 156 didn't handle as well as the Lotus 18/21, but it didn't matter.  Rivals were buried under an avalanche of power.  No original 156's survive.  This car is a tribute in Ecurie  Francorchamps's yellow national colors to replicate the car Olivier Gendebien drove to 4th place at Spa in 1961--preceded by the three Scuderia Ferrari cars.

"If it looks right, it is right."  Ricardo Rodriguez in the (older) 65-degree Dino 156 he drove to a DNF at Monza in 1961.  The engine was so powerful that Ferrari's traditional Borrani wire wheels with knock-off hubs were not a significant give-up to the alloys run by Cooper, Lotus, and Porsche.  The 156's "shark nose" was the inspiration of Ferrari's body-builder, Scaglietti.  Enzo liked his cars to look the part, not just act the part. 

The sad note to Ferrari's 1961 season was the death of Wolfgang Von Trips and 15 spectators at Monza after he touched wheels with Jim Clark's Lotus.  Von Trips was Phil Hill's only rival for the driver's championship.  This eerily prefigured Mario Andretti's championship year in 1979.  Mario's only rival was his Lotus teammate, Ronnie Peterson--killed at Monza.  As many readers of these lines will know, only two Americans have won the World Championship: Phil Hill and Mario Andretti.