1956 Lancia-Ferrari D50.
The subject of this model is Juan Manuel Fangio's car when he took 4th place in the 1956 French GP. 61 laps of the 8.3km Reims circuit provided the test for the 1956 F1 world drivers championship's fifth round.
BRM were absent but Vanwall were there with Mike Hawthorn driving on loan. Also driving for Vanwall was Colin Chapman who set a time good enough for 5th on the grid. Chapman didn't make the race as later in qualifying he a locked a brake and collided with Hawthorn, both cars suffered damage but Chapman's Vanwall couldn't be fixed in time for the race. French interest centred on Maurice Trintignant driving the new Bugatti T251 to 18th place on the grid. Fangio took pole for Ferrari with the Vanwalls of Schell 4th and Hawthorn 6th.
Ferrari's D50s dominated the race. Schell's Vanwall engine expired on lap 4 and Moss' 250F gearbox gave up on lap 8. Bugatti dropped out on lap 18 with throttle problems. Soon after Schell took over Hawthorn's car and began to catch the Ferraris. Initially Ferrari didn't notice Schell was in Hawthorns car and they weren't worried as they knew Hawthorn was still tired from a recent all-night race, even when Schell overtook Collins and Castellotti Ferrari didn't catch on, they thought Schell was a lap down. Once they noticed their mistake the Ferraris sped up and re-took Schell, Fangio was making the most of the opportunity and pulling away in the lead. The Schell/Hawthorn car then had fuel pump problems and slowed drastically before retiring on lap 56. Shortly after that Fangio was forced to pit to repair a leaking fuel line, he dropped to 4th and despite setting the fastest lap time of 2:25.8 on the last lap couldn't quite catch Jean Behra. Collins fought closely with Castellotti and pipped him at the line by just 0.3 of a second.
Ferrari received the Lancia D50 chassis in July 1956. It turned out to be a real gift. Not only did Ferrari get the chassis and designs, but all of the spares, tools, tooling and bucks too. If that wasn't enough, designer Vittorio Jano now made Maranello his home too!
Being Ferrari they had to put their own ideas into this new car. So for 1956 the car was modified mostly by the return of fluid tanks to the tail and the fairing in of the panniers on each side, these now contained nothing more than the exhausts. Slowly Ferrari changed the D50 until little of the original design remained intact. This created a strained relationship between Jano and team boss Enzo Ferrari. Especially when some of Ferrari's technical improvements didn't work out so well.
When Fangio pitted with a broken steering arm at Monza, for the Italian GP, the problem was traced back to the idea of drilling the arm to save weight! This was the last race of the season and at that point it looked as though the title was going to slip away from Fangio until a most extraordinary act of sportsmanship occurred. Team mate, and closest rival for the 1956 title, Peter Collins pitted his car, saw Fangio out of the race and passed his car over, surrendering any chance for the title at the same time.
Fangio took the 1956 Drivers title with 30points to Moss 27. Collins accepted 3rd with 25.
The kit
This Hawk 1/32nd scale kit of the 1956 Lancia Ferrari D-50, kit# 1-39, was released as an all new model in 1965. Apparently for the slot market world the kit had no cockpit of floor; just the wheels, body and upper exterior. A second release of this kit with new parts, possibly the parts to make a decent static model, also came in 1965. The kit was further re-released through the 1960s with the last run, as far as we know, being in 1970 under the Testors/Hawk label.
- Ian found the kit in a second hand trader at the IPMS UK “Nationals” as we called back in the early 1990s. He was with wandering around looking at kits with Rod when this one screamed “pick me up, now”.
- It was a new kit to both parties and both 'umd and aaghed' at the deficiencies. But, it was fairly priced at a time when the Merit D50 version was hard to find and around £60 when you did see it (that was a fair chunk of cash around 1995).
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- Ian had a lot of scratch building to do as our kit was one of the very first run, the no floor or interior type. A floor, underbody, seat and driver, front grill and radiator, suspension, wheels, wing mirrors and better looking exhaust pipes were all needed. Ian also opened out the top engine vents too, the first time he had tried it.
- Finding a driver in the spares and a seat that could be converted was the easy part. All the rest had to be scratch built using plastic card, tube and rod.
It is painted with Humbrol enamels throughout, decals came from after market sets and some hand painting. Ian hadn't moved onto Halfords car paints when this one was built which makes the build 1995 or earlier. The model doesn't look much today, but at the time it was a challenge to Ian's fledgling scratch-building skills.
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