1950 British Grand Prix

The 1950 British Grand Prix is generally accepted to be the first grand prix of the Formula One era, and we are always hearing about Ferrari having been in the championship since the very beginning.

I recently bought an original race program from that very first race - which I think is a neat little piece of F1 history.

I was paging through today and was surprised to see Ferrari wasn't in the starting line-up .... this didn't add up.

I did a bit of research and was surprised to see that Enzo snubbed the first race of the new championship format, and they only entered the championship from the second race onwards, at Monaco. Supposedly he was unhappy about the appearance money on offer, so entered some cars in a Formula 2 race in France instead.

So there you have it - Ferrari may have the longest competitive history in F1 - but even they weren't there right at the start.

This is probably old news to you all - but I never knew this.

 

Thank you that's interesting