Interesting story on Enzo Ferrari and the 1961 Indy 500

I assume somebody on this board has more details on this, but I thought I'd share a story I heard from Donald Davidson the official historian of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Quick background, of course back in those days, everything Indy wise ran through USAC. Donald worked for USAC starting in 1965, but one of his fellow employees at USAC was directly involved with Enzo's approach to run in 1961.

We all know Enzo was intrigued by the Indianapolis 500 and in 1961 Donald claims that Enzo wanted to run two shark nose Ferrari cars. I think it was said that after a ten year run, it was 1961 that was first year that the 500 didn't count as points towards the F1 World Championship, confirming Enzo wanted to do it simply to win the 500. There was an entry deadline for the race in which papers had to be filled a month prior. Prior to that April deadline, Enzo, along with an interpreter, called USAC to discuss the rules and regulations of the race. Enzo spoke entirely in Italian, although the USAC official was convinced by the end of the call that Enzo at the very least understood everything he was saying but played dumb so to speak. The call went back in forth over one specific thing. The USAC official told Enzo how each car has limit of qualifying runs and the top 33 fastest cars make the race. Well Enzo tried to pull his weight and demanded guaranteed 2 spots for the 500 irregardless of how fast or slow his cars were against the competition. After going back and forth on this, the call ended and as the April entry deadline came to be, nothing from Maranello was sent to USAC.

Never heard this story before, so thought I'd share with you.