MiniWerks

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Originally posted by glengorse


Not unreasonable to assume they did it again in 1958?

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Originally posted by Patbad

Regarding the color of the Sebring TR57 #0704 TR wheels, it is very difficult to be sure 100% that they were all the time green at the front and blue at the rear. Patrice De Conto and I did a lot of research for our 1/8th scale 860 Monza, 315S, 335S and LM winner 250TR58 and we came to the conclusion that generally works cars wheels of that period (56, 57 and 58) were painted metallic green or green with the outer part of the rim yellow at the front and light metallic blue at the rear, but sometime they had some of their wheels silver. We questioned some people supposed to know the why of the painted wheels and up to now we did not get a definitive answer. Jacques Swaters told me once that a reason could be that those Borrani wheels were quite expensive for the limited budget that Ferrari disposed at the time. And even more for the customer teams, sometimes these wheels had broken wires and needed to be replaced, so when the wheels were sent to Englebert to have new tyres fitted, the temptation was high to take undamaged wheels "by mistake" instead of their own damaged ones even if the guys at Englebert were probably trying to prevent it. Jacques Swaters thought that this was may be the or one of the reasons Ferrari had painted wheels, to make "the error" more difficult. Now when Ferrari borrowed or had new wheels to replace their damaged ones, they probably did not necessarily had the time to paint them which could explain why they sometimes had silver ones. At Sebring 1958, they had three cars running and if, as the picture Peter posted confirms it, the n°16 car had green and blue wheels, I remember seeing a color picture showing that n°14 had sometime during the race silver wheels at the rear. So I guess Peter is as right as Minerva 43 is. Jacques Swaters also told me, and insisted on that point, that Ferrari as well as private teams such as Ecurie Francorchamps did not have a lot of money to race, so the money went primarily to have the car race ready and the paint was the least of their concern, so the question of the correct red or yellow color for the body or green, blue or silver for the wheels was really in fact a quest to find the cheapest et nearest correct color paint to make the work, especially when out of the factory. Quite different today...

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