RACING REVIEW, 1953

THE season of 1953 will take its place in the history of motor racing as a vintage year, a fitting ending to the outgoing Formula II, for in that season not only did the major teams discover even more power from their unsupercharged 2-litre engines, but the six-cylinder, 12-plug Maserati which, for the first time, challenged the Ferrari in the Italian Grand Prix of 1952, found such new reliability and improved fuel consumption that Ferraris were no longer supreme and virtually unassailable. And in addition to this new challenge, which at last disrupted the pattern of a Ferrari procession in the lead at race after race, the season will be ever memorable for two of the most sensational races ever run-again due to the new speed of the Maserati. In the French Grand Prix, on a circuit yet again revised to produce higher lap speeds, the British driver, Mike Hawthorn, won the event with a Ferrari by just one second from Fangio's Maserati after a duel which lasted 130 miles, while the two drivers raced wheel to wheel or nose to tail, now one, now the other, leading. And the Italian Grand Prix which, with the cancellation of the Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona, brought the season to a close, was even more dramatic. From start to finish, for 312 miles, the four leading cars were rarely more than three or four seconds apart-two Maseratis matched against two Ferraris, and what the former seemed to lack in brakes and road holding, they more than countered by slightly higher speed and a devastating performance in third gear. Latest reports give for the Maserati an output of 207-210 b.h.p. as against 190-195 b.h.p. for the Ferrari.