Ferrari will run its original prancing horse emblem on its Formula One cars at this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix to mark 90 years since it first appeared on a Scuderia Ferrari racing car.
The famous logo made its debut on an Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 MMs entered by the company’s founder Enzo Ferrari at the Spa-Francorchamps 24 Hours on July 9, 1932. The cars took a one-two victory and the logo remained in place on Scuderia Ferrari cars thereafter.
Ferrari’s prancing horse insignia initially belonged to an Italian fighter pilot, Francesco Baracca, who flew with it painted on his planes during World War I and shot down 34 enemy aircraft.
The link to Ferrari comes from Enzo’s older brother, Dino, who worked on the ground crew of Baracca’s squadron.
Dino died from disease during the war and Baracca was shot down in 1918, but once the fighting ended a chance meeting between Enzo Ferrari and Baracca’s father, Count Enrico Baracca, led to the creation of one of the best-known logos in world.
“From that first meeting another followed with the mother, Countess Paolina,” Ferrari later wrote. “It was she who told me one day, ‘Ferrari, put the prancing horse of my son on your racing car. It will bring you luck.’
“I still keep the photograph of Baracca with the dedication by the parents in which they entrusted me with the emblem. The horse was, and has remained, black, but I myself added the yellow background, this being the colour of Modena.”
Other than Ferrari’s account of the meeting, there is very little evidence to support the story, and some historians argue it was made up by Ferrari to add a deeper meaning to the now-famous logo.
One reason for the scepticism is that there was a period of nine years between the meeting and the first time a prancing horse appeared on a Scuderia Ferrari race car.
Another reason is that it may not have been a Baracca family crest at all but in fact the horse of Stuttgart that Francesco Baracca had added to his war plane after shooting down a German fighter using the same logo.
Regardless of its provenance, the logo became a permanent fixture on the engine covers of the Alfa Romeos run by Scuderia Ferrari in the 1930s. It then made a return when Ferrari started producing his own cars from 1947 onwards.
Source: www.espn.com