Ferrari won its first 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1949, when Luigi Chinetti and Peter Mitchell-Thomson drove a Ferrari 166 MM to victory.
The race, held on 25 and 26 June 1949, was the first Le Mans event after the Second World War. Ferrari was competing at the circuit for the first time, yet its small-displacement 2.0-litre V12-powered 166 MM outlasted the opposition. Chinetti drove for roughly 22 and a half hours, an extraordinary endurance effort for the 47-year-old driver.
The Ferrari finished only about 15 kilometres, or just over one lap, ahead of the second-place Delage. The result was especially notable because Ferrari also won the Index of Performance, completing a clean sweep of the event’s major awards. The victory established Ferrari as a serious force in international endurance racing.
This was not Ferrari’s first overall victory in every major endurance event, but it was the marque’s first outright Le Mans win. Ferrari later became one of the race’s defining manufacturers, with victories spanning several decades.