The Un-Ferrari: Shaking Down the P4/5 Competizione (2024)

It's a haunting sound—the shriek in the distance of a brand-new prototype race car, alone on a deserted test track in the dead of winter. Muffled behind a rise in the land, the four-cam, 4.0-liter Ferrari V-8 blares. With each finger-snap shift of the sequential gearbox, the engine barks, raw gas detonating like rocket fuel in its blast-furnace-hot exhaust plenum. The sharp reports echo around us like gunfire.

It's early February at Vallelunga, a circuit 40 minutes north of Rome. We're here to witness one of this race weapon's many test sessions. The air is clear, brittle. Hatchet chops of 40-degree wind whack at our faces, the chill soaking in like cold whitewater at a midwinter surfing break.

Suddenly, the machine—the P4/5 Competizione—streaks into view, satin-black, lunging like a bad dog. Jim Glickenhaus, the car's owner, beams. "He's really on it now!"Glickenhaus's smile is sturdy, delighted to underwrite the appalling expense of creating this new car. Yet there is a boyish quality in the smile, too. As a young man, he adored the menacing Ferrari 330P4s and Ford Mark IVs of the Sixties, spiritual progenitors of the P4/5 Competizione. Today, he owns a roadworthy example of each of those

immortals. Unthinkably, he drives the priceless yellow former Bruce McLaren/Mark Donohue Ford Mark IV and the only existing Ferrari P3/4 on New York public roads.

With the P4/5C, Glickenhaus means to relive the purity of racing in the mid-Sixties. In those days, a Le Mans entry wasn't allowed to carry sponsor stickers; the simple beauty of the race cars did the advertising. Fittingly, the black-and-white P4/5C sponsor stickers are miniatures aligned beneath the doors. He wants the car to be "free to be beautiful."

The P4/5 Competizione dives into the infield hairpin in front of us. Unpainted, its black corduroy carbon-fiber skin glints in the sun. It has about it a fierce modernity. But blink for an instant, and you'll see the specter of a 1967 Ferrari P4 racing across the legendary biographies of Gurney and Foyt, of Parkes and Scarfiotti. FROM (RECENT) PAST TO PRESENT

The 430's front track is wider than its rear, and the P4/5C's follows suit, at 65.7 inches up front and 64.6 inches out back. And interestingly, during the test we observed, the car used rubber of the same width front and rear—325/650-18 front, 325/705-18 rear (the second three-digit number refers to approximate inflated diameter)—hoping to generate suitable front grip. The car retains the Ferrari's knuckles and control arms, but the pivot attachments are mounted with four bolts instead of the F430's two. GT2 rules disallow carbon brakes, so the P4/5C's rotors are cast iron. Its 3996-cc four-cam V-8 and sequential six-speed gearbox are built to GT2 specs. Because GT2 does not allow paddle shifters, a lever controls gearchanges.

"We worked very fast," Garella says. "It was a no-frills job, partly because a racing car is simpler and faster to do than a road car." He says it with genuine pride: "The car was on the ground by the end of the year and had no major problems. Our design decisions had to be right the first time." He smiles. "[This approach] was very Japanese. And we had no stylists on the project. Stylists are always saying 'form follows function'—without having a clue what the function is!"

The critical part of the car is the front end, says Garella. "When you force an object through the air at high speed, it automatically wants to lift. It's nature. We worked very hard on our computer calculations for the nose." At the session at Vallelunga, the initial P4/5C nose is a complex affair, with one- and two-element dive planes on the fenders. But in night tests, the six headlight elements cannot be trained forward satisfactorily—a problem that compounds with the lack of sufficient front downforce. So after this test, the nose is to be redesigned, probably with two headlights mounted in the central air intake, allowing more-wedge-like front fenders and aggressive dive planes to plant the front wheels.

The car is fitted with the latest version of Datron, a light-based telemetry system mounted in the bottom of the car. In combination with a gyroscope, it reads the exact speed and linear and lateral acceleration of the car. At dusk, the Datron system can be seen like a little flashlight beam beneath the car. "At the Nürburgring during practice," Garella says, "the officials will be able to read the various cars' handling and performance around the track. This is good, because it allows them to create balance in the field." Garella smiles. "No Colin Chapman effect." That is to say, no sudden burst of technological brilliance—such as the ground effects that forever altered Formula 1—that the competition has no way to match quickly.

A Pirelli tire program is a major element of the P4/5C project. After a pause in GT-class tire development, the Italian tiremaker is using the Glickenhaus project (known officially as Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, Cameron being Jim's wife's maiden name) as a test bed for its newest GT tire. Having tire engineers constantly on the case as the car begins its development curve is a huge advantage. Yet because Glickenhaus is an independent, other teams will be less likely to feel the new Pirellis have been developed for the needs of one factory team.

The three-day test at Vallelunga howls on, the P4/5C's secret cravings being satisfied one by one. Every five or so laps, there's a stop to retune the shocks, anti-roll bars, or aero. With no historical data to draw on, the car's sensitivities and preferences emerge datum by datum. The ride height is raised and lowered to learn its sensitive aerodynamics. Different front-fender air guides reduce its front-tire drag and lift. Gurney flaps on the rear wing and the air dam at the body's trailing edge are changed and rechanged to get a bead on downforce and high-speed drag.

After a couple of hours in the co*ckpit, Mika Salo, showing he's lost no speed over the years, says they should make a massive leap to much, much stiffer springs all around. The current springs allow too much dive and squat, causing aero downforce to fluctuate as the car hobbyhorses under braking and acceleration. Stiffer springs are fitted, and the improvement is immediate. The car's lap times have decreased from an initial 1:45 by Luca Cappellari on a green track (i.e., with no rubber laid down) to 1:38 with Salo at the helm. A good GT2-class lap time at Vallelunga is in the mid-1:34s.

The four drivers are old hands at tuning new race cars—in fact, as racers go, they're just plain old. Luca Cappellari, at 48, is the "specialist." Least known of the foursome, he is a gentleman driver with massive experience driving the Nürburgring in night and rain. Mika Salo is 44 and well respected for his tremendous speed. Similarly, Nicola Larini, 47, was a fast and steady driver in F1 in the late 1990s. Fabrizio Giovanardi, 44, is a two-time series champion in the British Touring Car Championship and the European Touring Car Championship, some of the fiercest racing anywhere.

Why are all of them so old? Because they will be racing on the Nürburgring's fiercely demanding full-length Nordschleife, all 12.9 miles and 73 turns of it, for 24 hours. To keep a car in one piece—and your mind in fewer than three or four pieces—requires patience, toughness, discipline, and the sage judgment to let the "rabbits" leap out ahead to break the lap record and their own cars. These four seasoned racing drivers, with a little stubbornness and a healthy black car, might just find a way to be around at the end. Near the completion of the test session's final day, the P4/5C's lap time is down to 1:34.8 at Vallelunga—exactly where it needs to be after a first test—when the six-speed gearbox eats a bolt after a total of almost 300 laps. The team is done for now; this failure is typical for an early test. They have a race car that looks and sounds the part, but the prevailing attitude is that whatever happens in Germany this June will happen.

That pragmatic approach makes sense. Racing is a notoriously stern judge. Esteem for a racing car can be won or lost in the blink of an eye, as can the race itself. And even if the car doesn't win, or if the P4/5C doesn't get coaxed into another major international race or two (its overwhelming charisma, however, makes this more and more likely), Glickenhaus will be content. Following the original plan, he'll take his Nürburgring-veteran P4/5C race car home to Westchester County; it's registered and races with a New York state license plate on its tail. He'll drive it on public roads, waving to bystanders, until finally he runs out of gas, which doesn't appear as if it will happen any time soon.

And if the P4/5 races again? This Competizione began years ago with a passing remark from Glickenhaus to Paolo Garella about his 2006 P4/5 road car. "Wouldn't it be great," he said then, "to take this to Le Mans?"

Well, yes, it would.

In November 1962, Ferrari began testing prototypes for the 250P using a chassis from a 246SP with a longer wheelbase and the famed Testa Rossa engine. As a member of the elite Prototype category, the 250P didn't need to meet the same hom*ologation regulations as did the GT class, which required 100 or more units to be built. Prototypes were eligible for overall wins in FIA endurance races such as the 24 Hours of Daytona, the 12 Hours of Sebring, the Spa 1000 Kilometers, and the granddaddy of them all, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. By March 1963, the 250P was ready to compete. First up: Sebring, where 250Ps piloted by John Surtees/Lodovico Scarfiotti and Willy Mairesse/Nino Vaccarella/Lorenzo Bandini placed first and second overall, respectively. The cars would go on that year to win Le Mans and the Nürburgring 1000 Kilometers. Bodied by Fantuzzi, the first 250Ps used a 310-hp, 3.0-liter V-12. They had a dry weight of 1676 pounds and a top speed of 180 mph. Only four 250Ps were built, and all were raced by the factory.

During the course of the 1964 season, 250Ps were updated to the 275 or 330 engine. The 275P engine was a 3286-cc 60-degree V-12 with a bore and stroke of 77 x 59 mm and a compression ratio of 9.7:1; it used six 38 DCN Weber carburetors and made 320 hp at 7700 rpm. The 330P was an evolved 275P with the larger 3967-cc 60-degree V-12. With a bore and stroke of 77 x 71 mm, a compression ratio of 9.8:1, and six 38 DCN Weber carbs, the 330P delivered 370 hp at 7300 rpm. It used Dunlop disc brakes and had a dry weight of 1665 pounds.A 275P driven by Mike Parkes/Umberto Maglioli won Sebring, with Scarfiotti/Vaccarella finishing second. A 330P driven by Surtees/Bandini placed third. In May of that year, a 275P driven by Scarfiotti/Vaccarella won the Nürburgring 1000 Kilometers. Next, Vaccarella/Jean Guichet drove a 275P to win the 1964 Le Mans—Ferrari's eighth overall victory at the 24 Hours. Two 330Ps placed second and third, driven by Graham Hill/Jo Bonnier and Surtees/Bandini, respectively, for a Ferrari sweep of the podium.

With the 1965 P2 variations, Ferrari sought to stave off the Ford GT40 challenge at endurance racing's grand prize, Le Mans. Only distantly related to the initial 250Ps, the P2 series had improved aerodynamics, the result of intensive wind-tunnel testing. With a new tail, new spoiler, and wider, lower stance, it replaced the earlier cars' 6.0-inch-wide wire wheels at the front and 7.5-inch-wide wheels at the rear with magnesium wheels measuring 8.0 inches up front and 9.0 inches out back. The broader wheels were enabled by the spectacular racing-tire revolution that was in progress at the time. Most important, the P2s now used a stressed-skin semi-monocoque and sported the new four-cam engine. The 275P2's 3.3-liter V-12 now produced 350 hp at 8500 rpm, and the 330P2's 4.0-liter V-12 delivered 410 hp at 8200. A bigger but detuned 4.4-liter engine gave the 365P2 380 hp at 7300 rpm.

At Le Mans in 1965, a pair of 250LMs placed first and second in the hands of privateers, and only one of the five (three factory entrants, two privateers) P2s entered—a 365 campaigned by the North American Racing Team—finished the race, winning its Prototype 4001-to-5000-cc class and placing seventh overall. Although unsuccessful at Le Mans, a 275P2 won the Monza 1000 Kilometers and the Targa Florio, a 330P2 won at the Nürburgring 1000 Kilometers, and a 365P2 won a nonchampionship race at Reims.

For the 330P3, Ferrari followed its practice of gradual evolution, with the new car building on the experience of the previous model. The 4.0-liter V-12 made 10 additional hp, now 420 at 8200 rpm. Lucas fuel injection—a first for a Ferrari sports car—was new for 1966 in the upgraded P3, as was a ZF gearbox (as always, a five-speed manual). Girling vented four-wheel disc brakes were employed (they were mounted inboard at the rear), and the 330P3 weighed in at 1940 pounds, giving it excellent performance. The stunningly beautiful 330P3 was overmatched, however, by Ford's behemoth 7.0-liter GT40 Mark IIs, which had vastly greater power and speed at Le Mans. Ford finally achieved overall victory, with the 330P3s proving too slow and, when pressed, unreliable. Victorious at Sebring and Le Mans, Dearborn won the 1966 Manufacturers' World title, and Porsche beat Ferrari for the Prototype championship.

The last season that big-bore prototypes raced for the Manufacturers' World championship was 1967. That year, Ford unveiled the 7.0-liter Mark IV, a major improvement on its Le Mans–winning GT40 Mark II. Ferrari, dwarfed by Ford's resources, fielded the 330P4, thought by many to be the most beautiful car ever built. The P4 was closely evolved from designer Piero Drogo's 330P3. It continued to use the four-cam 4.0-liter V-12, now actuating three valves per cylinder instead of two, and the rear disc brakes moved outboard. The ZF gearbox was replaced with an in-house transmission. With improved Lucas fuel injection, the 330P4's engine now made 450 hp at 8000 rpm, and top speed was 199 mph. The 412P variant was a detuned privateer version of the P4. It was intended to run behind the 330P4s, filling out the factory's finishing order.

The season began for the P4s with factory entrants taking first and second at the Daytona 24 Hours and a North American Racing Team 412P taking third. Finishing in a group of three—on American soil—was Enzo Ferrari's reply to Ford's one-two-three formation finish the previous year at Le Mans. In 1967 at Le Mans, however, the only race where the Ferrari and Ford factory entrants went head-to-head, the Ford Mark IV beat the P4 by four laps. Despite being beaten by its arch rival at Le Mans, however, with victories at Daytona and Monza, second place at Le Mans and Brands Hatch, and third at Spa-Francorchamps, the P4 accomplished what Ferrari intended it to do: win the company's 12th Manufacturers' World Championship.

Of the three P4s, only one remains in original 330P4 form. The two others were reengineered to become stunning but unsuccessful Can-Am cars. Today, the original P4 is regarded as one of the most valuable cars in the world.