Enzo Ferrari

Enzo Anselmo Giuseppe Maria Ferrari was born on 18 February 1898 in Modena, Italy, while his birth certificate states 20 February. His parents were Alfredo Ferrari and Adalgisa Bisbini; he had an older brother Alfredo Junior (Dino). The family lived in via Paolo Ferrari n°85, next to the mechanical workshop founded by Alfredo, who worked for the nearby railways. This site is now the Enzo Ferrari Museum.

Alfredo Senior was the son of a grocer from Carpi, and began a workshop fabricating metal parts at the family home.

Enzo grew up with little formal education. Unlike his brother, he preferred working in his father's workshop and participated in the construction of the canopy at the Giulianova station in 1914. He had ambitions of becoming an operetta tenor, sports journalist, or racing driver. When he was 10, he witnessed Felice Nazzaro's win at the 1908 Circuito di Bologna, an event which inspired him to become a racing driver. During World War I, he served in the 3rd Mountain Artillery Regiment of the Italian Army. His father, Alfredo, and his older brother, Alfredo Jr., died in 1916 as a result of a widespread Italian flu outbreak. Ferrari became seriously sick himself during the 1918 flu pandemic and was consequently discharged from the Italian service.

"Second place is the first loser".(Original: "Il secondo è il primo dei perdenti".)

After the collapse of his family's carpentry business, Ferrari searched for a job in the car industry. He unsuccessfully volunteered his services to Fiat in Turin, eventually settling for a job as test-driver for CMN (Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali), a car manufacturer in Milan which rebuilt used truck bodies into small passenger cars. He was later promoted to race car driver and made his competitive debut in the 1919 Parma-Poggio di Berceto hillclimb race, where he finished fourth in the three-litre category at the wheel of a 2.3-litre 4-cylinder C.M.N. 15/20. On 23 November of the same year, he took part in the Targa Florio but had to retire after his car's fuel tank developed a leak. Due to the large number of retirements, he finished 9th.

In 1920, Ferrari joined the racing department of Alfa Romeo as a driver. Ferrari won his first Grand Prix in 1923 in Ravenna on the Savio Circuit. 1924 was his best season, with three wins, including Ravenna, Polesine and the Coppa Acerbo in Pescara. Deeply shocked by the death of Ugo Sivocci in 1923 and Antonio Ascari in 1925, Ferrari, by his admission, continued to race half-heartedly. At the same time, he developed a taste for the organisational aspects of Grand Prix racing. Following the birth of his son Alfredo (Dino) in 1932, Ferrari decided to retire and form a team of superstar drivers, including Giuseppe Campari and Tazio Nuvolari. This team was called Scuderia Ferrari (founded by Enzo in 1929) and acted as a racing division for Alfa Romeo. The team was very successful, thanks to excellent cars like the Alfa Romeo P3 and to the talented drivers, like Nuvolari. Ferrari retired from competitive driving, having participated in 41 Grands Prix with a record of 11 wins.

During this period, the prancing horse emblem appeared on his team's cars. The emblem had been created and sported by an Italian fighter plane pilot Francesco Baracca. During World War I, Baracca's mother gave her son a necklace with the prancing horse on it before takeoff. Baracca was shot down and killed by an Austrian aeroplane in 1918. In memory of his death, Ferrari used the prancing horse to create the emblem that would become the world-famous Ferrari shield. Initially displayed on Ferrari's Alfa Romeo racing car, the shield was first seen on a factory Ferrari in 1947.

Enzo Ferrari lived a reserved life and rarely granted interviews. He seldom left Modena and Maranello and never went to any Grands Prix outside of Italy after the 1950s (because his passport was confiscated while he was on trial following the Guidizzolo tragedy). He was usually seen at the Grands Prix at Monza, near Milan, and Imola, not far from the Ferrari factory, where the circuit was named after the late Dino. His last known trip abroad was in 1982, when he went to Paris to broker a compromise between the warring FISA and FOCA parties. He never flew in an aeroplane (always using a car or train for their travels) and never set foot in a lift (always preferred using stairs, although he himself said it was more tiring).

Ferrari met his future wife, Laura Dominica Garello (c. 1900–1978) in Turin. They lived together for two years and married on 28 April 1923. According to Brock Yates' 1991 book Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine, Ferrari married to keep up appearances for the sake of his career, as divorce was frowned upon in the predominantly Catholic Italy, and sought sexual conquests not so much for pleasure but for the gratification of his ego. According to Yates, Ferrari once remarked to racing manager Romolo Tavoni that "a man should always have two wives", and at one point in 1961, when he was dating three women simultaneously, he wrote, "I am convinced that when a man tells a woman he loves her, he only means that he desires her and that the only perfect love in this world is that of a father for his son", a comment that came several years after the death of his first son.

Ferrari and Laura's one son, Alfredo "Dino", who was born in 1932 and groomed as Enzo's successor, suffered from ill-health and died from muscular dystrophy in 1956. According to Time magazine, Ferrari and Laura's love for their son is what kept them together. Although Dino never raced competitively, his father provided him with a fleet of cars that he raced for pleasure. He also designed engine parts while bedridden. Ferrari and Laura remained married until her death in 1978. John Nikas, writer and expert on the history of cars who founded the British Sports Car Hall of Fame, said of Ferrari, "His real loves in life were racing and Dino."

Enzo had a second son, Piero, with his mistress Lina Lardi in 1945. As divorce was illegal in Italy until 1970, Piero could only be recognized as Enzo's son after Laura's death in 1978. Piero Lardi's existence was kept a secret, known only to a few of his father's confidantes. According to Yates, "There is no question that at some point in the late 1950s, Laura Ferrari discovered her husband's second life", and openly derided him as a "bastard" when she saw him in a factory. After Laura's death, Ferrari adopted Piero, who took the name Piero Lardi Ferrari. As of 2023, he is vice chairman of the company, and owns a 10% share of it. Piero told the Los Angeles Times that Michael Mann's 2023 biographical film Ferrari was accurate, in particular in its depiction of his father's drive, saying, "My father was a person who was always looking ahead, moving forward, never going back."

Ferrari was made a Cavaliere del Lavoro in 1952, to add to his honours of Cavaliere and Commendatore in the 1920s. He also received several honorary degrees, including the Hammarskjöld Prize in 1962, the Columbus Prize in 1965, and the De Gasperi Award in 1987. He was posthumously inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame (1994) and the Automotive Hall of Fame (2000).

Ferrari's management style was autocratic, and he was known to pit drivers against each other in the hope of improving their performance. Some critics believe that Ferrari deliberately increased psychological pressure on his drivers, encouraging intra-team rivalries and fostering an atmosphere of intense competition for the position of number one driver. "He thought that psychological pressure would produce better results for the drivers", said Ferrari team driver Tony Brooks. "He would expect a driver to go beyond reasonable limits... You can drive to the maximum of your ability, but once you start psyching yourself up to do things that you don't feel are within your ability it gets stupid. There was enough danger at that time without going over the limit." According to Mario Andretti, "[Ferrari] just demanded results. But he was a guy that also understood when the cars had shortcomings. He was one that could always appreciate the effort that a driver made, when you were just busting your butt, flat out, flinging the car, and all that. He knew and saw that. He was all-in. Had no other interest in life outside of motor racing and all of the intricacies of it. Somewhat misunderstood in many ways because he was so demanding, so tough on everyone, but at the end of the day he was correct. Always correct. And that's why you had the respect that you had for him."

Between 1955 and 1971 eight Ferrari drivers were killed driving Ferrari racing cars: Alberto Ascari, Eugenio Castellotti, Alfonso de Portago, Luigi Musso, Peter Collins, Wolfgang von Trips, Lorenzo Bandini and Ignazio Giunti. Although such a high death toll was not unusual in motor racing in those days, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano described Ferrari as being like the god Saturn, who consumed his own sons. In Ferrari's defence, contemporary F1 race car driver Stirling Moss commented: "I can't think of a single occasion where a (Ferrari) driver's life was taken because of mechanical failure."

In public, Ferrari was careful to acknowledge the drivers who risked their lives for his team, insisting that praise should be shared equally between car and driver for any race won. However, his longtime friend and company accountant, Carlo Benzi, related that privately Ferrari would say that "the car was the reason for any success".

Following the deaths of Giuseppe Campari in 1933 and Alberto Ascari in 1955, both of whom he had a strong personal relationship with, he chose not to get too close to his drivers out of fear of emotionally hurting himself. Later in life, he retracted his position and grew very close to Clay Regazzoni and especially Gilles Villeneuve.