Met slechts drie gebouwde exemplaren is de Ferrari 312 P een weinig bekende Ferrari. Het feit dat er nog slechts twee exemplaren bestaan in hun originele gedaante en er één al jaren in een Franse privé-collectie verblijft, vergroten de kans er een te bewonderen niet. Na een jarenlang verblijf in Amerika is er sinds 2007 weer een te zien én te horen op de Europese circuits. Een unieke kans voor een nadere kennismaking met een zeldzame Ferrari Sports Prototype.

Dit artikel is ook gepubliceerd in Forza #92, April 2009 (http://www.forza-mag.com/).

COMING FROM AMERICA

Nearly four decades after it was last seen on the track, a 312 P returns to the European vintage-racing scene. 

STORY AND PHOTOS BY WOUTER BRAND (contact: Dit e-mailadres is beveiligd tegen spambots, u heeft JavaScript nodig om het te kunnen bekijken )

Its career as a works car was short: one lap. It started this race as a coupe, pretending to be its older sister. Later, it was raced by a privateer team with a roof bubble, and then with a newly built open body. Towards the end of its career, its mechanical parts were transferred to a non-Ferrari chassis. And many years later still, after a painstaking restoration, it was resurrected in a form it had never appeared in before. This, in short, is the intriguing life of Ferrari 312 P s/n 0872.

With just three 312 Ps built, there are few opportunities to see one. So when I learned that s/n 0872, which had spent most of its life in the United States, would not only be shown but would actually be raced during the 2007 Ferrari Racing Days at the Hockenheimring, it was an easy decision to travel to Germany.

Seeing a 312 P in real life is like kissing your lover for the very first time: You will never forget the moment. I wasn’t lucky enough to witness the car’s racing career in the late 1960s and early ’70s, so for me, that memorable first time came in May 1999, when I visited Pierre Bardinon’s famous collectionat Mas du Clos in France. Although it was surrounded by unique Prancing Horses which all screamed for attention, Bardinon’s 312 P (s/n 0870) stole my heart. That berlinetta was a time capsule, appearing exactly as it qualified for the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1970. (Bardinon bought it before the race and hasn’t altered it since.)

The car’s proportions were unbelievable: Flat and wide, it had a very curvaceous side view as well as an incredibly low overall height.At the Hockenheimring in ’07, s/n 0872 differed from the Bardinon car in at least one very dramatic way—it didn’t have a roof. (Interestingly, the car was never raced this way in period, although the two other 312 Ps were.) While this no doubt increases headroom for the driver compared to the notoriously compact berlinetta, the lack of a roof also emphasized just how low the 312 P really is. The berlinetta version stands just 37.4 inches high, while the Spyder measures only 35 inches—less than three feet! S/n 0872’s short stature is emphasized by its 80-inch width and 166.5-inch length.



Even more impressive is that a few inches of the Spyder’s height are attributable to its tall mirrors; mounted on small pillars, they look like the ears of an alert hare and allow the driver to see over the large airbox on the engine cover. The stunning body is very swoopy, with a very low, wide and clean front. Covered headlights are integrated into the slowly rising front fenders. The line of the fender drops behind the front wheels, stays horizontal near the doors and rises again near the engine before ending in two wide rear fenders and an integrated rear spoiler.

This is the vision of aerodynamicist Giacomo Caliri; while he had worked on Ferrari’s earlier 612 P Can-Am car, the 312 P was his first design, and it’s beautiful. One detail that caught my eye was the three-light cluster on each of the rear fenders. The 312 P is the only Ferrari sports prototype with this feature: The ’68 612 P, the ’67 330 P4 and most of the latter’s forerunners had a single light on each side, while the ’70 512 M had two. It’s quite rare on the production cars, as well. Only a handful of 365 models—specifically the GT 2+2, GTC/4, GT4 2+2 and GT4 BB—feature this taillight treatment. 

S/n 0872 was entered at the Hockenheimring by its owner, a Swiss collector, and driven by vintage racer David Franklin. According to Franklin, there isn’t much room in the cockpit, the steering wheel (located on the right side) is small and the gear lever is very close to the driver’s right side. The driver sits toward the middle of the car; the fuel tanks are located on either side of the cockpit. A very low Plexiglas windscreen is fitted and the doors, which extend inwards to partially enclose the cockpit, are hinged on the top leading edge.

Franklin, of course, was far more interested with how the 312 P drives. “It is a very well balanced but heavy car,” he said. “It has a peaky engine, a proper ‘race’ engine; there’s no power under 7,500 rpm, then it goes! We have a problem with the gearing and lack of parts, so it is geared for a top speed of 330 km/h [205 mph]. This makes it difficult to drive on many circuits, like Laguna Seca.”

I saw s/n 0872’s drivetrain close up when the mechanics removed the bodywork to prep the car for the track. The engine, backed by a five-speed transaxle, is a version of Ferrari’s 3-liter 60° V12 Grand Prix engine. This all-aluminum 2,997cc (77.1 x 53.5mm) powerplant features twin overhead camshafts, four valves per cylinder, Lucas fuel injection, single-plug ignition and outside exhausts. In sports-racer form, the engine is slightly detuned, but with its 11:1 compression ratio still develops 420 bhp at 9,800 rpm (compared with the 436 bhp at 11,000 rpm of the F1 version). And yes, it sounds fantastic— raw, deep and angry.

Also visible with the body removed was the 312P’s semi-monocoque chassis, a steel tube frame with alloy panels bonded in place, which was based on that of the 612 P (albeit with a unique wheelbase of 2,370mm). The fully adjustable double wishbone suspension is largely derived from the 312 F1 car, although it features outboard front springs due to the sports-racer’s full-width body.



The car features four ventilated disc brakes tucked inside its beautiful gold-painted 15-inch alloy Campagnolo wheels. In October 2007, the 312 P raced at Mugello during the Ferrari World Finals. Then, over the winter, the car was converted back into a berlinetta, before being certified by the Ferrari Classiche department. In its new, closed form—which features a louvered rear window that beautifully blends into the tail—s/n 0872 returned to America in 2008 for the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and the Monterey Historics.

“We suffered overheating problems at Laguna Seca, but finished both races that we had entered,” continued Franklin. “Then in October, we went to the Ferrari Challenge races at the Nürburgring; we finished first in the dry race and second in the wet race. We still have a little work to do fine-tuning the Lucas fuel injection, and I think we can still improve the handling, but basically it is good. The next thing could be the weight. “In any case, the 312 P is a truly great racing car,” Franklin concluded. “With that wonderful Ferrari V12 engine, it’s something very special indeed. It’s a beautiful-looking car—stunning, in fact—if very small inside as a coupe. But I manage!”

Later that October, the 312 P was successfully raced again at the Ferrari World Finals at the Mugello circuit, where it finished third in the second heat. S/n 0872’s return to racing, along with its Pebble Beach visit, only adds to its fascinating tale. With luck, we will continue to see the youngest 312 P circulating around racetracks for years to come. 

The changing faces of s/n 0872

S/n 0872 was the last of the three 312 Ps built, as well as the first that started life as a berlinetta. Its factory racing career started and stopped at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1969, for which it was entered as its oldest sister, s/n 0868, which had been crashed at Monza a few months earlier. Joining s/n 0872 at Le Mans was the third 312 P, s/n 0870.

It wasn’t a happy debut for the youngest 312 P, though. On the first lap, driver Chris Amon struck the burning fuel tank of a Porsche 917 that had crashed. He pulled off the track, and the car lay abandoned for the rest of the race.

After Le Mans, s/n 0872 was bought by Luigi Chinetti and shipped to theUnited States to run in Chinetti’s North American Racing Team (NART).
The car didn’t return to action until early 1970, at the 24 Hours of Daytona. There, it was discovered that drivers Sam Posey and Mike Parkes didn’t fit inside the cramped cockpit.
The solution wasn’t pretty, but it was effective: A roof bubble was fitted to accommodate the driver’s head and helmet. So equipped, s/n 0872 won its class and finished fourth overall.

In March 1970, NART took the car to Sebring, where it finished sixth overall, fourth in class, driven by Parkes and Chuck Parsons.
That June, the 312 P returned to Europe for Le Mans. Piloted by Parsons and Tony Adamowicz, it finished the rainy race but wasn’t officially classified. It was, however, the only 312 P to run twice at the 24 Hours.

After Le Mans, Luigi Chinetti Jr. had the berlinetta-with-bubble body removed, complaining that the closed car was too cramped and hot, and visibility too poor. In its place went an open-top center section with a pronounced, wedge-shaped front end apparently inspired by the 312 PB and a tail that looked like that of the 512 S.

Chinetti Jr. and Nestor Garcia Veiga drove the car to fifth overall at Daytona in ’71, then Chinetti Jr. and George Eaton finished in eighth place overall atSebring a few months later.

S/n 0872 thus became the only 312 P to run at both races in a single season, aswell as the only 312 P to race in 1971. At Daytona in 1972, s/n 0872 appeared in yet another suit—or did it?

The new car, which wore a new body inspired by the 312 PB, utilized the Ferrari’s running gear (and claimed its chassis number) but was actually assembled on an all-newWayne Sparling-built chassis. Widely known as “The Shingle,” the new car was driven by Chinetti Jr. and Eaton but failed to finish due to problems with the new chassis flexing. The Shingle was later reworked and entered in the 1974 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where it finished ninth overall with Jean-Claude Andruet and Teodoro Zeccoli.

In the 1980s, American Peter Sachs purchased s/n 0872’s original chassis, which had ended up on the scrap heap at the NART garage, as well as The Shingle, and began to reassemble the original car. During this restoration, he had both spyder and berlinetta bodies fabricated.

The project was completed in the early 2000s, and debuted, in berlinetta form, at the 2003 Cavallino Classic. The current owner bought the car in 2007, and returned it to Europe.