I have spent the last few years travelling the world and driving as many Ferrari Sports-racers as I could. At the end, I was left with only one possible conclusion: That these, not F1, were the cars that created the legend.

Formula 1 is the sport’s ultimate showcase. And Ferrari has been its 50-year constant, its pivot, its most famous team and, by association, the most famous marque in the world. But F1 is not what made Ferrari great. That role fell to its super-successful sports-racers and GTs of the 1950s and ’60s. Everything since has been the icing on an already tasty cake. Henry Ford knew it 30-plus years ago, which is why he wooed Enzo so mercilessly. But on the verge of buckling to the weight of the Yankee dollar, II Commendatore had second thoughts, a snub that triggered the Blue Oval’s scorched-earth Le Mans assault in the ’60s. And before you mention the DFV’s Fl domination, remember that Keith Duckworth’s masterpiece was a £100,000 drop in Detroit’s vast reserve; the GT budget was akin to that of a third-world country’s gross national product.

Jaguar had shown the way, with five Le Mans wins in the ’50s helping it pierce American consciousness and create a global presence. A key man in Ferrari’s worldwide growth, therefore, was Luigi Chinetti, Maranello’s American importer and an arch racing enthusiast. He scored the marque’s first Le Mans win in 1949, and urged Enzo to take the event, and the category, more seriously. While the boss viewed building road cars merely as a way of funding his racing activities, Chinetti saw that there was money to be made here, money for growth rather than simply existence. His victorious 166MM was a 2-litre V12, which he was sure was insufficient to win the race again and/or impress America.