6 replies to this topic

[The Mountaineer]

For this long distance race, the Scuderia Filipinetti had entered three cars:

 

2      a Matra MS 650 for Jean Guichet and Edgar Berney

72    a Ford GT40 für Brian Redman and Herbert Müller

112  a Mercedes entered in GT 1600+ for Hans Herrmann and Dieter Glemser

 

None of them started the race, and the Autosport report from July 25th revealed a more than strange story:

 

" A rather sick practical joke telegram had cancelled the Filipinetti Matra entry - Filipinetti involving Interpol to find the culprit, who had also cancelled his entries for Redman and Müller in the Ford 5-Litre and Herrmann in a G3 Mercedes. "

 

In Internet sources, the Matra and the Mercedes are listed as DNA, the Ford as DNS or DNP, What happened really?

 

It is interesting that neither Autosprint nor the German specialised press nor Ed Heuvink in his Filipinetti book mentioned anything about this weird story.

 

Does anyone know more?  

[Roger Clark]

There is no mention of the Filipinetti entries in Motoring News but the report says: “there had been a Serenissima 3-litre entered but the story goes that a practical joker sent a telegram to the club cancelling the entry.”

[Ray Bell]

It is interesting that the two British weeklies carried the tale...

Yet AutoSprint, which would consider the event to be a local race and one on which they would carry a lot of detail, missed out.

Perhaps the 'sick practical joke' was played on the British writers?

[The Mountaineer]

Thank you, Roger and Ray. Maybe the question has to be changed to: What did the British journalists smoke that day?

[The Mountaineer]

According to team manager Claude Sage, Filipinetti didn't enter any cars for that race. So I think the story was more about fake entries than fake cancellations.

[Jager]

Did Scuderia Filipinetti ever run a Matra ? I don't recall every seeing one, but a red Matra MS 650 with the signature white stripe would have looked fantastic.

 

At Le Mans in 1969, only a month before Mugello, Filipinetti was running a Lola T70, Corvette L88 and a Ferrari 275 GTB/C. If they did enter Mugello, I would have assumed they would have entered their regular stable of cars at the time.

[Arjan de Roos]

Did Scuderia Filipinetti ever run a Matra ? I don't recall every seeing one, but a red Matra MS 650 with the signature white stripe would have looked fantastic.

 

No Matra. In the end their Lola did have Gitanes sponsorship, could be deceiving.