Car Features

Most fans of the Great Race don’t know that an Italian GP machine won at the fabled Brickyard, in 1939 and 1940. A Maserati 8CTF, going by the handle of the Boyle Special, beat the Yanks at their own game. A sister car later won twice at Pikes Peak.

Goodwood Road & Racing sent us Damien Smith’s report on this unlikely Indianapolis victor, as part of the lead up to the 2026 Goodwood Revival event. We’ve edited it slightly.The famous Maserati marque, with its distinctive Trident badge, was chosen to be the epicentre of the historic motorsport celebrations in 2026: 100 years on from its first success at the Targa Florio.

Only a few years after its Italian racing success the Maserati brand scored two victories at the Brickyard: the first Italian car to do so. Maserati has the wood on Alfa Romeo, Lamborghini, Lancia and Ferrari as the only brand to have conquered the Indy 500. 

This feat is not widely known and neither is the fact that, since 2012, all Indy cars are also Italian-designed Dallara-brand racers.

The Boyle Special

Wilbur Shaw at the 1939 Indy 500 – IndyCar

The 1930s machine was a Maserati 8CTF Grand Prix car, chassis 3032, imported from the factory in Bologna and driven to twin victories by a legend of the Indy 500, Wilbur Shaw.

The dashing Indiana-born racer had already won the 500 in 1937, driving an Offenhauser-powered car that bore his own name. Then he witnessed the potential of exotica from the European Grand Prix scene, while racing at the Vanderbilt Cup in Long Island.

Wilbur Shaw celebrates after winning the 1940 Indy 500, making him the first driver to achieve back-to-back victories at the Brickyard.

That spurred him to proposition his Chicago-based businessman friend and racing enthusiast, Irishman ‘Mike’ Boyle: “If I had a car like that, I’d win the next 500-mile race in it,” promised Wilbur Shaw.

In what may have been a misunderstanding of Mike Boyle purchase request, Maserati shipped one of its 6CM Voiturette-class single seaters to the USA. 

Sam Gilby’s 1500cc Maserati 6CM – Klemantaski Collection/Getty Images

Although powered by a relatively small 1.5-litre, in-line, twin-cam six, the 6CM was good for nearly 180bhp and 140mph, thanks to a Roots blower and Weber carbies.

However, while more than competitive on Europe’s twisty road circuits, it wasn’t competitive enough to shine at the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway. 

So, Boyle’s team manager, Harry W ‘Cotton’ Henning, travelled to Bologna in late-1938 and returned with what’s said to be one of only three 8CTFs ever built. 

The 8CTF was Maserati’s response to the high-performance Silver Arrows from Hitler’s Nazi Germany and was made financially possible by an injection of lire from Adolfo Orsi, who had taken over a financially-strapped Maserati.

Maserati 8CTF engine – NatCarShow

The 8CTF was built around a three-litre, in-line, straight-eight, DOHC engine. This long-stroke (69mm x 100mm), low-compression (6.5:1) engine was cast in two conjoined blocks of four cylinders each and boasted two Roots superchargers. It was good for more than twice the 6CM’s horsepower, giving it a top speed of 180mph. 

That was more like it. 

The car that was to become the Boyle Special had already competed in one European race, but war clouds were gathering fast and the future of car racing was bleak in the short term. 

Boyle’s request to buy it was probably something of a God-sent deal for Maserati, which promptly pocketed US$15,000 (350 grand in 2025).

However, the trip back to the States did not go well, because the car was shipped without anti-freeze in the cooling system, which then froze during the Atlantic crossing and cracked the cylinder blocks. 

That was no problem for the adept Henning, who rebuilt the engine in Boyle’s Gent Street race shop. Fitted with larger wheels and Firestone tyres, it was ready for the Month of May, 1939.

The Maserati wasn’t as powerful as the best of its American rivals, but its pair of Roots blowers gave it potent acceleration out of the turns and torsion-bar, independent front suspension made the set-up easier to tune. 

The Maserati’s huge 16-inch magnesium drum brakes were an Indy game-changer, giving Shaw vastly more stopping power than the smaller-braked competition.

Wilbur Shaw celebrating his victory – Getty Images

He qualified third, but used the Maserati’s brakes to cut through traffic in the short chutes and turns. He led the 200-lap race for 51 laps, to beat Louis Meyer’s Stevens-Winfield and Jimmy Snyder’s Adams-Spark – making good on his pledge to Mike Boyle.

A year later, he repeated the feat, making  Shaw the second to achieve three Indy wins and the first to score two consecutively. 

A Boyle Special hat-trick looked on the cards in 1941,  until a wheel broke and sent Shaw crashing into the wall. 

Then came Pearl Harbour and the United States’ late entry into World War II, so there was no Indy 500 until Wilbur Shaw and Tony Hulman re-established the abandoned Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) in time for the first post-WWII Indy 500, in 1946.

The Boyle Special was on the grid, in the hands of Ted Horn, who took the car to a third-place finish.

Ted Horn in the Boyle Special – IndyCar

Horn was third again in 1947, with chassis 3032, then renamed the Bennett Brothers Special. The combo finished fourth the following year.

Ten years after its maiden victory, in 1949, the car was entered as a Maserati for the first time, but the ‘Offys’ were very strong that year.

In 1950, a promising young sprint car driver by the name of Bill Vukovich used the Maserati to pass his rookie test at a track he would soon come to dominate.

Shaw served as IMS president until 1954, when he was tragically killed in a plane crash. 

As for chassis 3032, it was lovingly restored in amaranth-coloured Boyle Special splendour and preserved in the Indianapolis Speedway Museum.

Boyle Special cockpit – IndyCar

Another US-based 8CTF deserves its share of the Trident limelight: chassis 3030. This car was imported and also raced at Indy, but earned greater fame as a mountain climber.

Hill climbs were prestigious events in Europe in the 1920s and 30s, culminating in the dual-rear-tyred M-B W125 Silver Arrows piloted mainly by Hermann Lang, and the powerful Maserati 8CTF was hill-climb competitive, However, the USA’s mighty Pikes Peak climb was on…dirt.

The Maserati 8CTF took Louis Unser to consecutive wins at Pikes Peak in 1946 and ’47. Note the hand-cut rear tyre treads, to enhance dirt-track traction – Getty Images

Along came this European Grand Prix car that was designed to run on bitumen tracks and it conquered the Peak, not once but twice, in the hands of Louis Unser, in 1946 and ’47. 

This blue beast – part of the cherished Rev Institute collection – was a visitor to the Goodwood Revival in 2014, when it finished third in the Goodwood Trophy, in the hands of Andy Willis.

War in Europe blighted the Maserati 8CTF’s intended GP career, but its Stars ’n Stripes successes showed what this magic Trident could accomplish.

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