It didn’t take long for rumors of Ferrari’s secret CART plans to spread, as IndyCar officially remembered, and Ferrari officially recognized that they were looking into something, or maybe going to halfway review something else, generally admitting that they were serious about racing at Indy.
Legend has it that this all changed in 1986, when Ferrari supposedly invited all of the people who had given him a hard time about F1 and made his intentions about Indy as clear as possible, as 8W recounts:
The story goes that somewhere in the second half of 1986 FIA and other F1 representatives came to Maranello to speak with Enzo Ferrari about the future of F1 and tried to persuade him to remain in F1. It is said that Enzo told them he was willing to do so but if V12s would be disallowed he couldn’t guarantee his company not pursuing other options. Hardly had Enzo spoken these words or everyone in the room heard an engine being started, which could be identified as a turbocharged V8 of about 3 litres, with Ferrari pointing out to the people in the room what they were hearing. The attendants supposedly all of a sudden realized that Ferrari was indeed in an advanced state with its Indy project. At that moment, the deal was struck that V12 engines would be allowed in F1, under the condition that Ferrari wouldn’t further pursue its Indycar plans. The project 637 came to an instant standstill as a result.(Jalopnik.com)
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