3.1.12

One of our new GP reporters John Marshall based his report of the 2011 Brazilian GP on the fact that it was Felipe Massa's 100th GP for Scuderia Ferrari. This prompted me to go to the excellent Chicane F1 website to see what facts I could glean about the men who had occupied the most prestigious seat in F1.

The first thing I learned was that Brazil was actually Massa's 101st entry by/for the Scuderia because of course he did not start the 2009 Hungarian GP after being injured in qualifying by a spring from Rubens Barichello's Brawn.

Massa is one of 77 drivers to have been entered in 832 GPs by Scuderia Ferrari. 36 drivers have won 215 of them for the Scuderia with Giancarlo Baghetti adding the 216th for the marque, the 1961 Grand Prix de l'ACF, whilst driving for FISA (no relation). The first win was by José Froilán González in the 1951 British GP and the last to date by Ferrari's latest winner, Fernando Alonso 60 years on at the same race.

Pretty well half of the piloti who have raced for Ferrari have won a GP with them. However they are not very evenly distributed with one man winning almost five times as many as any other - Michael Schumacher of course with 72 wins. Niki Lauda is next with 15, then Alberto Ascari with 13 and Massa with 11. Only these four have scored double figures, the great Schuey taking more than a third of all Scuderia Ferrari's victories; however he does not have the best "conversion rate" of starts to wins, that honour falls to Alberto Ascari. He scored 13 wins from 30 races, a conversion rate of 43.33%, albeit most of them in the "F2 Era" of 1952 and '53. It's no surprise that the worst conversion rate, with one win from 79 entries (1.27%), falls to Jean Alesi. It's fair to say he drove some of the worst F1 cars Ferrari has produced and how the Tifosi loved him!

The average number of wins per driver is 5.97 and the Modes (most common number) are 3 and 1 with Jody Scheckter, Michele Alboreto, Mike Hawthorn, Nigel Mansell, Peter Collins, Phil Hill and René Arnoux scoring 3 each and Jean Alesi, Lorenzo Bandini, Ludovico Scarfiotti, Mario Andretti, Maurice Trintignant, Nino Farina and Piero Taruffi scoring a solitary victory apiece. I've credited Luigi Musso with half a win as he shared his Ferrari D50 with Juan Manuel Fangio in the 1956 Argentine GP. The full list of race winners can be found below. Scuderia Ferrari piloti have won the Drivers' Championship 15 times.

The most entries for the Scuderia is unsurprisingly Michael Schumacher with 181 with Rubens Barrichello (104) and Felipe Massa (101) breaking the 100. It's (slightly) interesting that Phil Hill, Stefan Johansson, Nigel Mansell & Alain Prost all did 31 races. The average number of races per driver is 23.9 and the Mode 1! Dorino Serafini, Peter Whitehead, Piero Carini, Robert Manzon, André Pilette, Cesare Perdisa, Nino Vaccarella, Bob Bondurant, Jonathan Williams, Andrea de Adamich, Ernesto Brambilla, Nanni Galli and Gianni Morbidelli all being entered in just one race by the Scuderia.

We'll maybe take a look at some of the one-timers in another article but as a taster: Theodoro "Dorino" Serafini was a successful pre WW2 motor cycle racer. After the war he switched to cars racing first sports cars and later Cistilia and Maserati monoposti and finally Ferrari in F1, F2 and sports cars. He made his only GP appearance aged 41 in the 1950 Italian GP driving a 4.5 litre Ferrari 375. He qualified sixth and completed 47 laps before being called in to hand his car over to Alberto Ascari, the engine of whose car had expired. Ascari took the car to second and Serafini is still the only GP driver with a 100% start/podium finish record!

His greatest result in a racing car was his second place for Ferrari in the 1950 Mille Miglia. In the 1951 Mille Miglia he crashed and was severely injured. This effectively was the end of his motor racing career. He recovered and lived to July 2000, days short of his 91st birthday.