Description
Chassis CRD01, the first of the 10 550 Maranello Prodrives built and the development and test car driven by Peter Kox. The first 550 Prodrive to go racing, to score a pole position and win a race Spiritual successor to the legendary Ferrari 250 GTO and the first front-engined Ferrari GT racing car since the Daytona Gr. IV. Built jointly by Care Racing Developments and Prodrive in a bid to revive GT racing as a whole. 5 years of consecutive racing in the FIA GT and LMES, achieving 3rd place overall in 2003 and 2004 seasons. After the demise of the BPR racing series and the quick rise and fall of the awe-inspiring 1990s GT1 category, the future of GT racing as a whole was looking sombre. Stephane Ratel’s FIA GT series, born from the ashes of the BPR, was initially dominated by the ravenously funded works Mercedes and Porsche teams. With the FIA axing the GT1 category in 1998, most works teams chose to leave endurance racing altogether, leaving FIA GT entries in tatters. Ratel, fearing the end of GT racing, set out to attract new colours to the grid, and decided that colour needed to be red. Ferrari had long been tempted by the return of a V12 Ferrari to GT racing and had instigated a programme to turn their limited edition F50 model into a GT1 class racer in 1996 in hopes of taking on the McLaren F1 GTR and Porsche GT1. That summer Luca di Montezemolo, President of Ferrari had said “I want to find a way to do something in GT races but with our clients, not directly the factory” so despite the F50 project being shelved, the writing was on the wall. The new GT1 rules for 2000, drawn up largely with Ratel’s advice and thoughts on how to make them attractive, included one game-changing caveat. Not only would manufacturers be able to apply for homologation, but reputable tuners would also be able to apply for a technical passbook and cost of development was constrained so private teams could afford to compete. In an unprecedentedly authoritarian move, the FIA would now make a list of desirable cars and give the manufacturer 15 days to respond with a reason why the car should not be used. Ratel had his eyes set on Ferrari and thus the first project under the new rules was the development of the 550 Maranello with Italtecnica in Turin. In just under 3 months, Italtecnica performed miracles to get to the 550 Millennio completed for presentation in Paris on the 13th of February 2000. Four or five cars were to be built but sadly the resulting car was a false start with too many reliability and performance issues detected during testing. Enter Frédéric Dor, ex-Prodrive Subaru driver, and one of the disappointed new owners of a 550 Millennio who still had an insatiable appetite for a Ferrari GT race car. Frédéric and his newly created company Care Racing Development brought his new car to his old friends at Prodrive for their analysis. They determined that there were fundamental design flaws so if Frédéric wanted a successful 550 racing car they would have to start from scratch. The Millennio was returned and replaced with a suitable 550 Maranello road car from a dealer in the UK, chassis CRD01 (107617) which would become the prototype development car. Peter Stevens was the design consultant on the project and recalled “Everybody agreed that we wanted to create a car that was aesthetically pleasing – we didn’t want fussy aero bits and pieces that were lazily stuck on and ungainly. If Ferrari takes a car racing the purpose is to sell Ferraris. But here the aim was to sell Prodrive’s ability to develop a track focused GT competition car. In that respect it was more important that it looked convincing, professional and, most importantly, beautiful.” The 550 Prodrive was to be a modern iteration in a long line of successful Ferrari-born, tuner-influenced GT racers which most notably included two other front engined, 12 cylinder, rear-transaxel models - the 250 GTO and the Daytona. Links to the 250 GTO may seem tenuous but the Ferrari 550 shared the “Gran Turismo Omologato” nomenclature when it was released and both dominated their respective golden eras of GT racing. It was therefore destined that like the 250 GTO before it, the 550 went on to win its class at Le Mans. Parallels could also be drawn with the next V12 to receive competition treatment - the Daytona. The idea to modify one for racing, much like Dor with the 550, came from Luigi Chinetti who wanted one to compete at Le Mans. From 1999 to 2009, the ensuing “GT1 era” is now regarded as a golden age in which the 550 Maranello Prodrive featured top, front and centre. Between 2001 and 2008, the 550s garnered 69 victories, 151 podiums, and 60 pole positions, a GTS class victory at Le Mans in 2003 and an outright win in the 2004 Spa 24 hours, solidifying its place its alongside the greats in Ferrari’s GT racing...
