Fabrizio Giovanardi – racing driver

Touring car specialist has won 10 titles

Fabrizio Giovanardi has been racing
for more than 30 years

One of the most successful touring car racers in history, the former Alfa Romeo and Vauxhaul driver Fabrizio Giovanardi, was born in Sassuolo, not far from Modena, on this day in 1966.

Giovanardi has won the European Championship twice, the European Cup twice, the British Championship twice, the Italian Championship three times and the Spanish touring car title once.

His best season in the World Championship came in 2005, when he finished third behind the British driver Andy Priaulx.

At the peak of his success, Giovanardi won a title each season for six consecutive years.

Like many drivers across the motor racing spectrum, Giovanardi had his first experience of competition in karting, winning Italian and World titles in 125cc karts in 1986, before graduating to Formula Three and Formula 3000.

He was hoping from there to step up to Formula One but although he won a number of races the opportunity to drive competitively for an F1 team did not come about.

It was during the 1991 season that he tried his luck in touring cars and met with immediate success, winning five class S2 races in a Peugeot 405, prompting him to focus on touring cars in the 1992 season. He remained at class S2 level and won his first title, the Italian Superturismo Championship, finishing first in 12 races for a commanding lead of 68 points over British driver Gary Ayles.

The Vauxhall Vectra in which Giovanardi won the
2007 British Touring Car Championship

He moved into the main class of the championship with Peugeot in 1993, finishing in the top three overall twice before moving to Nordauto Engineering Alfa Romeo in 1995.

In his début season with Alfa, Giovanardi again finished in third. He continued in the Italian series in 1996 while simultaneously contesting the four-race Campeonato de España de Turismo, which would give him his second touring car title in 1997, when he was also runner-up in the Italian series.

It began a run of six titles in as many seasons for the Nordauto team, comprising consecutive Italian titles in 1998 and 1999, the European Super Touring Cup in 2000, the European Super Touring Championship in 2001 and the European title in 2002.

Giovanardi’s career stalled when Alfa Romeo decided to pull out of touring but he put himself back on track when he joined Vauxhall Racing to compete in the British Touring Car Championship.

Giovanardi finished third in the 2005 World Championship
in this Honda Accord

He finished fifth in the 2006 season in an Astra before finding that the new Vectra suited him very well, winning the 2007 title after a season-long battle with SEAT Sport’s Jason Plato.

Giovanardi successfully defended his title in 2008 and finished third in 2009, but suffered another blow when Vauxhall decided that would be their last season in touring car racing, citing the economic downturn for their withdrawal.

At 44 years old, Giovanardi had one more triumph, winning the European Touring Car Cup for Hartmann Honda Racing, but after moving from one team to another in search of the right car he effectively retired after the 2014 season.

His guest appearance at the Vallelunga round of the Italian championship in September 2017, when he drove a SEAT León for BF Motorsport and finished fourth, was his first competitive drive for three years.

Away from the track, Giovanardi is a keen pilot and has a passion for renovating houses.  He is married with one son, Luca.

The Palazzo Ducale in Sassuolo

Travel tip:

Sassuolo is a town in Emilia-Romagna, some 17km (11 miles) southwest of Modena.  With a population of just over 40,000 Sassuolo is a major centre for the production of ceramics, with more than 300 factories producing 80 per cent of all Italy’s ceramic tiles, making it one of the most important ceramic centres in the world.  At the centre of town, Piazza Garibaldi is a pleasant square and the 17^th-century Palazzo Ducale, designed by Bartolomeo Avanzini, is a handsome building. Sassuolo’s football club made history in 2013 when they were promoted to Serie A for the first time in their 93-year existence.

The Vallelunga racing circuit from the air

Travel tip:

The Vallelunga motor racing circuit – the Autodromo Vallelunga Piero Taruffi – can be found 32km (20 miles) north of Rome, close to the town of Campagnano di Roma. Owned by the Automobile Club d’Italia (ACI), the 4.1km (2.5 miles) track has held the Rome Grand Prix since 1963.  The track is used by the FIA as a test circuit for Formula One teams and has also hosted the Six Hours of Vallelunga endurance event.  In autumn of each year, Vallelunga hosts a vast flea-market specialising mainly in vintage automotive spare parts.

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Tazio Nuvolari – racing driver

Man from Mantua seen as greatest of all time

Tazio Nuvolari is seen by some as
Italy's greatest racing driver

Tazio Nuvolari, the driver many regard as the greatest in the history not only of Italian motor racing but perhaps of motorsport in general, was born on this day in 1892 in Castel d’Ario, a small town in Lombardy, about 15km (9 miles) east of the historic city of Mantua.

Known for his extraordinary daring as well as for his skill behind the wheel, Nuvolari was the dominant driver of the inter-war years, winning no fewer than 72 major races including 24 Grands Prix.  He was nicknamed Il Mantovano Volante - the Flying Mantuan.

From the start of his career in the 1920s, Nuvolari won more than 150 races all told and would have clocked up more had the Second World War not put motor racing in hibernation.  As it happens, Nuvolari’s last big victory came on September 3, 1939, the day the conflict began, in the Belgrade Grand Prix.

His popularity was such that when he died in 1953 from a stroke, aged only 60, his funeral in his adopted home city of Mantua attracted at least 25,000 people and possibly as many as 55,000 – more than the city’s recorded population.

His coffin was placed on a car chassis pushed by legendary drivers Alberto Ascari, Luigi Villoresi and Juan Manuel Fangio, at the head of a mile-long procession.

Today, his name lives on as the name of a motor racing channel on Italian subscription television.

Tazio Nuvolari at the wheel of the Alfa Romeo car in
which he won the 1935 German Grand Prix

Nuvolari was not only a brilliant driver but one who willingly risked his life on the track in order to satisfy his lust for victory.

The performances that have gone down in Italian motor racing folklore include his incredible performance against his rival Achille Varzi in the Mille Miglia endurance event of 1930.

A significant distance behind Varzi as the race entered its night-time phase between Perugia and Bologna, Nuvolari took the strategic decision to switch off his headlights despite reaching speeds of more than 150kph (93mph).

Unable to see Nuvolari in his mirrors, Varzi was fooled into thinking he had the race sewn up and eased back on the throttle only for Nuvolari to appear alongside him with three kilometres remaining, at which point he switched his lights on, gave Varzi a cheery wave and accelerated ahead.

More than once, after serious accidents, he defied doctors’ orders to get behind the wheel again while still heavily bandaged, returning to action within days when he was supposed to rest for at least a month.

How the start of a Grand Prix looked in 1935

His greatest performance, after which he was hailed as a national hero, came in the 1935 German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring, which had been set up by the Nazi propaganda machine as an opportunity to demonstrate the might of both the German drivers and their Mercedes and Auto Union cars.

Nuvolari had tried to join the Auto Union team only to be rebuffed and was obliged to tackle the race in an outdated and underpowered Alfa Romeo for Enzo Ferrari’s team, an arrangement brokered by none other than Italy’s Fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

It looked a hopeless cause.  Nuvolari had a poor start and lost more time through a refuelling delay, yet managed somehow to battle through the field to be second by the start of the final lap, on which he caught and passed the German Manfred von Brauchitsch to claim what some still believe to be the greatest motor racing triumph of all time.

The eight cars immediately in Nuvolari’s wake were all German.  As the Nazi hierarchy fumed, Mussolini seized the chance to score a propaganda success of his own.  As it happened, Nuvolari eventually got his wish to drive for Auto Union and his last three big wins – in the Italian and British Grands Prix of 1938 and the Belgrade event in 1939 – were under their flag.

A garlanded Nuvolari after winning the
French Grand Prix in 1932

Nuvolari’s daring was evident from a young age.  As a boy, he designed a parachute made from various pieces of material he had gathered up around the family home and decided to test it by jumping off the roof of the house.  He suffered serious injuries but survived to tell the tale.

In the First World War, despite his tender years, he persuaded the Italian army to take him on as an ambulance driver only to be deemed too dangerous behind the wheel to be entrusted with wounded personnel.

After the Second World War, Nuvolari did return to racing but his health began to decline in his 50s. He began to develop breathing problems attributed to years of breathing in dangerous fumes and suffered the first of his two strokes in 1952.

Dubbed "the greatest driver of the past, present and future" by Ferdinand Porsche, founder of the company which shares his name, in addition to his Grands Prix successes, Nuvolari also won five Coppa Cianos, two Mille Miglias, two Targa Florios, two RAC Tourist Trophies, a Le Mans 24-hour race, and the European Grand Prix Championship.

The son of a farmer, Arturo Nuvolari, Tazio had grown up with speed.  His father and brother, Giuseppe, both enjoyed success on two wheels. Indeed, Giuseppe was a multiple winner of the Italian national motorcycling championship.

Nuvolari was married to Carolina Perina, with whom he had two sons, Giorgio and Alberto, both of whom sadly died before they had reached the age of 20.

Mantua is surrounded by water on three sides

Travel tip:

Mantua has scarcely altered in size since the 12^th century thanks to the decision taken to surround it on three sides by artificial lakes as a defence system. The lakes are fed by the Mincio river, which descends from Lake Garda, and it is largely as a result of the restrictions on expansion imposed by their presence that the city’s population has remained unchanged at around 48,000 for several centuries.  The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is the 2017 European Capital of Gastronomy, famous for its pumpkin ravioli (Tortelli di zucca alla Mantovana), its pike in tangy parsley and caper sauce (Luccio in salsa) and its pasta with sardines (Bigoli con le sardelle alla Mantovana).

The monument to Tazio Nuvolari in Castel d'Ario

Travel tip:

The life of Tazio Nuvolari is commemorated in several ways around Mantua and Castel d’Ario.  He is buried in the family tomb in the Cimitero Degli Angeli, on the road from Mantua to Cremona, and his home on Via Giulia Romano how houses a museum dedicated to his achievements.  In Castel d'Ario there is a bronze statue of Nuvolari reclining against the bonnet of a Bugatti racing car in an open space behind the town hall as well as a square named after him.

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Enzo Ferrari – car maker

Entrepreneur turned Ferrari into world’s most famous marque

Enzo Ferrari at the 1967 Italian GP in Monza

Enzo Ferrari, the founder of the Scuderia Ferrari motor racing team and later the Ferrari sports car factory, died on this day in 1988 at the age of 90.

Known widely as Il Commendatore, he passed away in Maranello, a town in Emilia-Romagna a few kilometres from Modena, where he had a house, the Villa Rosa, literally opposite Ferrari’s headquarters, where he continued to supervise operations almost to his death. He had reportedly been suffering from kidney disease.

Since the first Ferrari racing car was built in 1947 and the Scuderia Ferrari team’s famous prancing stallion symbol has been carried to victory in 228 Formula One Grand Prix races and brought home 15 drivers’ championships and 16 manufacturers’ championship.

Always an exclusive marque, the number of Ferraris produced for road use since the company began to build cars for sale rather than simply to race is in excess of 150,000.

Born Enzo Anselmo Ferrari in 1898 in Modena, he attended his first motor race in Bologna at the age of 10 and developed a passion for fast cars rivalled only by his love of opera.

He endured tragedy in 1916 when both his brother and his father died in a flu epidemic and was fortunate to survive another epidemic two years later, when he became seriously ill while serving with the army.

A young Enzo Ferrari pictured at the
wheel of a racing car

In 1919, he moved to Milan to work as a test driver, joining Alfa Romeo the following year. It was after winning a race in 1923 that he met the parents of First World War flying ace Francesco Baracca, who suggested the young driver use the emblem that decorated their son's plane for good luck – a prancing horse.

In 1929, he formed the Scuderia Ferrari motor racing team, which was essentially the racing division of Alfa Romeo, although that arrangement came to an end in 1937 – six years after he retired as a driver – when Alfa claimed back control of its racing operation.

Soon after leaving Alfa Romeo, Enzo Ferrari opened a workshop in Modena but the outbreak of the Second World War stalled its progress, and the first Ferrari racing car – the 125S - was not completed until 1947.

The marque scored its first win in the same year, at the Rome Grand Prix, and went on to notch victories at the Mille Miglia in 1948, the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1949 and the British Grand Prix in 1951.

In 1952 and 1953, Ferrari driver Alberto Ascari won the newly launched Formula One world championship. Around this time, the company also began producing cars for road use, with rich and famous clients soon queuing up for the chance to own one as its reputation grew as the ultimate automotive status symbol.

The Ferrari museum at Maranello has a reconstruction of Enzo's
 office with a waxwork of 'il Commendatore' at his desk

Enzo suffered more personal tragedy in 1956 with the death of his son Dino from muscular dystrophy, during a period in which six of his drivers were killed and one of his cars went out of control in the 1957 Mille Miglia, killing nine spectators. Afterwards he became increasingly reclusive.

Financial issues prompted him to sell 50 per cent of Ferrari to Fiat in 1969 and he formally resigned as president of the company in 1977, although he remained involved with day-to-day running.

The Ferrari name lives on as a public company with its legal headquarters in Amsterdam. Enzo’s second son, Piero, owns 10 per cent of the company.

Ferrari's famous 'prancing horse'
at the Maranello factory

Travel tip:

Maranello, a town of around 17,000 inhabitants 18 km (11 miles) from Modena, has been the location for the Ferrari factory since the early 1940s, when Enzo Ferrari transferred operations from Modena, due to bombing during the Second World War. The public museum Museo Ferrari, which displays sports and racing cars and trophies, is also in Maranello. In another sport, Maranello is also the starting point of the annual Italian Marathon, which finishes in nearby Carpi.

Travel tip:

Modena should be high up the list of any visitor’s must-see places in northern Italy. One of the country’s major centres for food – the home of balsamic vinegar and tortellini among other things – it has a large number of top-quality restaurants among its narrow streets. The ideal base for visiting Ferrari’s headquarters at Maranello, it also has a beautiful Romanesque cathedral and is the birthplace of the great tenor Luciano Pavarotti, whose former home in Stradello Nava, about 8km (5 miles) from the centre of the city is now a museum.

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Luigi Musso - racing driver

Wealthy Roman who found expectations hard to bear

Musso at the wheel of his Ferrari Formula One car

Luigi Musso, who for a period of his life was Italy’s top racing driver, was born on this day in 1924 in Rome.

Musso competed six times for the world drivers’ championship, three times for Maserati and three times for Ferrari. His finished third in the 1957 season, driving for Ferrari.

His solitary Formula One Grand Prix victory came in 1956 in Argentina, although he had to content himself with a half-share of the points after being forced to hand over his car to Juan Fangio, the local hero and Ferrari team leader, after 29 of the 98 laps, when Fangio’s car failed.

Sadly, two years later he was killed in an accident at the French Grand Prix in Reims, which his girlfriend, Fiamma Breschi, blamed on the ferocity of his rivalry with his fellow Ferrari drivers Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins.

Born into a wealthy Roman family – his father was a diplomat – Musso grew up in a luxurious palazzo off the Via Veneto. He acquired his love of cars from his brothers, who were also racing drivers.

Luigi Musso was the wealthy son
of a Roman diplomat

He began to compete in 1950 in a car he bought himself, a 750cc Giannini sports car. He made an inauspicious start, his first race ending when he left the track and collided with a statue of the national hero, Giuseppe Garibaldi.

But he soon began to enjoy success racing sports cars and his talent was noted by Maserati, for whom he dominated the 1953 national 2000cc sports car championship. More success the following year, when he placed highly in the two big endurance road races, the Mille Miglia and the Targa Florio, as well as winning several smaller events, saw him named reserve driver for Maserati’s Formula One team. In that capacity he finished second in the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona.

He moved to Ferrari in 1956, a season which began with his handover to Fangio in Buenos Aires and was interrupted by a major crash in Germany, in which Musso was lucky to escape with only a broken arm.

When he returned for the Italian Grand Prix, the last race on the calendar, he found himself facing a repeat of the first, when his team asked him to surrender his car to Fangio.  This time, risking his Ferrari career, he refused, taking a gamble that almost paid off.  In the lead with four laps remaining, he suffered a puncture and then steering problems and was forced to quit, leaving Stirling Moss, in a Maserati, to win.

The pit lane at the Argentine Grand Prix of 1956, in which
Musso, whose car is No 12, gained his only F1 win

Musso was embarrassed. Yet far from attracting ignominy he endeared himself to the Monza crowd, who appreciated his daring.  Come the 1957 season he was firmly in the spotlight, the Italian press loving the new rivalry between Musso and his fellow Italian, Eugenio Castellotti.

When Castellotti suffered fatal injuries in a crash while testing, Italian motor racing fans looked to Musso more than ever to deliver success.

Yet he found the weight of expectation hard to bear.  He was now the best Italian driver, built up by the press as the heir to Alberto Ascari, the winner of back-to-back Formula One world titles in 1952 and 1953 but who had himself been killed in an accident in 1955.  The pressure on Musso to win races became intense.

There were rumours of debts, the result of a gambling habit that saw him lose large sums in the casinos. His personal life was in turmoil, too, after leaving his wife and two children for Fiamma, a beautiful blonde. And then there was the growing animosity between Musso and his Ferrari teammates, Hawthorn and Collins, two close friends who had a deal to pool their prize money and share it, from which Musso was excluded.

Musso's girlfriend, Fiamma Breschi

It all came to a head in the French Grand Prix at Reims in July. Musso was second on the grid behind Hawthorn, having matched his best-ever performance in practice. The race was the most lucrative on the calendar and Musso was determined to win.

Hawthorn made a flying start and began to pull away from the field.  Musso felt he had no option but to chase hard.  He took more and more risks until, on the 10^th lap, he took one too many.  Attempting to take a corner at 150mph, he was unable to keep the car on the track and one of the wheels clipped the edge of a ditch, sending it somersaulting into the air.

Musso was thrown from the car but suffered severe head injuries.  He was taken to hospital but died later that evening.

Breschi later recalled that after spending several hours at the hospital, doctors told her she should return to her hotel to rest. In the car park of the hotel she says she saw Hawthorn and Collins laughing and joking, playing football with a tin can, and hated them from that point onwards.

The Excelsior Hotel is a landmark on the Via Veneto

Travel tip:

The Via Vittorio Veneto, colloquially known as Via Veneto, is one of the most elegant and expensive streets in Rome. The street is named after the Battle of Vittorio Veneto (1918), a decisive Italian victory of the First World War. Federico Fellini's 1960 film La Dolce Vita was mostly centered on the Via Veneto area. Its bars and restaurants attracted Hollywood stars such as Audrey Hepburn, Anita Ekberg, Anna Magnani, Gary Cooper and Orson Welles as well as writers Tennessee Williams and Jean Cocteau and the designer Coco Chanel.

Monza Cathedral with its marble facade 

Travel tip:

Although widely known for its Formula One track, Monza has other attractions that tend to be overlooked. There is an elegant and stylish historical centre, in which the cathedral, which originated in the sixth century and was rebuilt in the 14^th, featuring a marble façade in Romanesque style with some Gothic adornments, and a bell tower added in 1606, stands out.  Another feature is the vast Parco di Monza, at 688 hectares one of the largest enclosed parks in Italy, which contains the Royal Villa, built between 1771 and 1780 for Archduke Ferdinand of Austria.

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Alberto Ascari - racing driver

F1 champion killed amid eerie echoes of father's death

Alberto Ascari (centre), pictured a few weeks before his fatal
crash with his friends Luigi Villoresi (left), Eugenio
 Castellotti (right) and the famous engineer Vittorio Jano.

Racing driver Alberto Ascari, who was twice Formula One champion, died on this day in 1955 in an accident at the Monza racing circuit in Lombardy, just north of Milan.

A hugely popular driver, his death shocked Italy and motor racing fans in particular. 

What many found particularly chilling was a series of uncanny parallels with the death of his father, Antonio Ascari, who was also a racing driver, 30 years previously.

Alberto had gone to Monza to watch his friend, Eugenio Castellotti, test a Ferrari 750 Monza sports car, which they were to co-drive the car in the 1000 km Monza race.

Contracted to Lancia at the time, although he had been given dispensation to drive for Ferrari in the race, Ascari was not supposed to test drive the car, yet he could not resist trying a few laps, even though he was dressed in a jacket and tie, in part to ensure he had not lost his nerve after a serious accident a few days earlier.

Ascari on the cover of a magazine in
Argentina, where he was very popular

When he emerged from a fast curve on the third lap, however, the car inexplicably skidded, turned on its nose and somersaulted twice. Ascari was wearing Castellotti’s white helmet but he suffered multiple injuries nonetheless when he was thrown out of the car and survived for only a few minutes, pronounced dead at the scene.

There were several eerie similarities between the deaths of Alberto and his father.

Alberto Ascari died on May 26, 1955, at the age of 36, the same age as his father, Antonio, who was killed in the French Grand Prix, on July 26, 1925. Alberto was only four days older than his father had been.

That both should die on the 26^th of the month at the same age was a strange coincidence, yet it did not end there.

Even more weirdly, both were killed four days after surviving serious accidents, Antonio having crashed while practising ahead of the Grand Prix in which he died, Alberto having lost control of his car during the Monaco Grand Prix and gone into the harbour.

Both suffered fatal crashes at the exit of fast left-hand corners, both had won 13 championship Grand Prix events and both left behind a wife and two children.

Alberto’s accident occurred on the Curva del Vialone, one of the Monza track's most challenging high-speed corners. The corner was renamed in his honour but has subsequently been replaced with a chicane, now called Variante Ascari.

He was laid to rest next to the grave of his father in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan. His death was considered to be a factor in the withdrawal of Lancia from motor racing in 1955, just three days after his funeral, although it was also a fact that the company was in financial trouble.

Ascari, in his Lancia, chases the legendary Argentina Juan
Manuel Fangio, in a Mercedes, in a 1954 race

Born in Milan, Alberto was only seven when he lost his father yet was not put off his desire to become a racing driver.

He was one of the best drivers around when Formula One launched in 1950, with a string of victories in Grand Prix events over 1948 and 1949. His success continued in 1950, although his nine race wins did not include any in the inaugural Formula One series, won by another Italian, Giuseppe Farina.

The 1951 season brought seven more victories and this time two of them counted as he finished second to the legendary Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio.

He went one better and won the drivers’ championship in 1952, winning the final six rounds after Fangio dropped out midway through the season, and defended his title successfully in 1953.

After his death, a street in Rome was named in his honour, while both the Autodromo Nazionale Monza and Autodromo Oscar Alfredo Gálvez in Buenos Aires, which staged the Argentine Grand Prix between 1953 and 1998, have chicanes named after him.

Monza's Duomo, the striking Basilica of San
 Giovanni Battista

Travel tip:

Apart from the motor racing circuit, Monza is notable for its 13th century Basilica of San Giovanni Battista, often known as Monza Cathedral, which contains the famous Corona Ferrea or Iron Crown, bearing precious stones.  According to tradition, the crown was found on Jesus's Cross.  Note also the Villa Reale, built in the neoclassical style by Piermarini at the end of the 18th Century, which has a sumptuous interior and a court theatre.

Travel tip:

The Cimitero Monumentale is one of the two largest cemeteries in Milan, the other one being the Cimitero Maggiore. Designed by the architect Carlo Maciachini (1818–1899), it was planned to consolidate a number of small cemeteries that used to be scattered around the city into a single location.  It can be found in the northern part of the city, adjacent to Chinatown and Porta Volta.  As well as Ascari and his father, it is the resting place of the tenor Franco Corelli, the conductor Arturo Toscanini, the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti – who founded the futurist movement - the novelist and writer Alessandro Manzoni, and the founder of AC Milan football club, the Englishman Herbert Kilpin.

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Nicola Romeo - car maker

Engineer used profits from military trucks to launch famous marque

Nicola Romeo bought the car manufacturer
Alfa of Milan in 1915

Nicola Romeo, the entrepreneur and engineer who founded Alfa Romeo cars, was born on this day in 1876 in Sant’Antimo, a town in Campania just outside Naples.

The company, which became one of the most famous names in the Italian car industry, was launched after Romeo purchased the Milan automobile manufacturer ALFA - Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili.

After making substantial profits from building military trucks in the company’s Portello plant during the First World War, in peacetime Romeo switched his attention to making cars. The first Alfa Romeo came off the production line in 1921.

The cars made a major impact in motor racing, mainly thanks to the astuteness of Romeo in hiring the the up-and-coming Enzo Ferrari to run his racing team, and the Fiat engineer Vittorio Jano to build his cars.  Away from the track, the Alfa Romeo name sat on the front rank of the luxury car market.

Romeo’s parents, originally from an area known as Lucania that is now part of the Basilicata region, were not wealthy but Nicola was able to attend what was then Naples Polytechnic – now the Federico II University – to study engineering.

Enzo Ferrari at the wheel of an Alfa
during his driving days in 1920

He left Italy to work abroad at first, obtaining a second degree – in electrical engineering – in Liège, Belgium. In 1911 he returned to Italy and set up his first company, manufacturing machines and equipment for the mining industry.

With success in that market, Romeo was keen to expand. He acquired a majority stake in Alfa in 1915, taking full ownership three years later.

As Italy entered the First World War, Italy had a desperate need for military hardware and Romeo converted and enlarged his new factory specifically to meet this demand. Munitions, aircraft engines and other components, compressors, and generators based on the company's existing car engines were produced.

It made a great deal of money for Romeo, who in the post-war years invested his profits in buying locomotive and railway carriage plants in Saronno – north-west of Milan – Rome and Naples.

He did not consider car production at first but the Portello factory had come with 105 cars awaiting completion and in 1919 he decided that, subject to certain modifications, he was happy to finish the building of these vehicles. In 1920, he rebranded the company Alfa Romeo.  The first car to carry the new badge was the 1921 Torpedo 20-30 HP.

Romeo wanted his company to rival Fiat and was particularly astute in recognising talented individuals who would take the brand forward and establish Alfa Romeo's long-term credibility.

Antonio Ascari won the first Grand Prix world title
driving the Vittorio Jano-designed Alfa Romeo P2

He retained Alfa’s chief engineer, the talented Giuseppe Merosi, and encouraged a youthful Enzo Ferrari to join the company, soon putting him in charge of his new works racing team and its star drivers Antonio Ascari, Giuseppe Campari and Ugo Sivocci.

When Merosi left to take up a position in France, Romeo pulled off a major coup, sending Ferrari to cajole the Fiat engineer Vittorio Jano to jump ship. The Jano-designed engines propelled Alfa Romeo to the pinnacle of success in motor racing, his P2 car winning the four-race series for the first Grand Prix world championship in 1925.

Jano's first production car, the 6C 1500, was launched in 1927, but Romeo’s personal role in Alfa Romeo ended in 1928.

Some bad investments following the collapse of its major investor, the Banca Italiana di Sconto, had left the company close to going bust.  Under boardroom pressure to quit, Romeo at first accepted a figurehead role as president but then decided to sever his links altogether.

Married to Angelina Valadin, a Portuguese opera singer and pianist, he was the father of seven children. He died in 1938 at his home in Magreglio, a village overlooking Lake Como, at the age of 62.

An Alfa Romeo 20-30 at the Alfa Romeo museum at
Arese, about 15km north-west of Milan

Luckily for the company, it was kept in business initially by the Italian government after Mussolini decided to promote Alfa Romeo as an Italian national emblem and used it to build bespoke cars for the wealthy, the sleek 2900B being a prime example.

After the Second World War, Alfa Romeo continued its success on the racing circuit, too, with Giuseppe Farina and the Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio winning the first two Formula One world titles, in 1950 and 1951, driving the famous Alfetta 158/159.

The marque’s iconic status was further strengthened in the 1960s when both the Italian state police and the quasi-military Carabinieri stocked their fleets with Alfa Romeo cars.

The Church of Madonna del Ghisallo at Magreglio

Travel tip:

Magreglio, where Romeo was living at the time of his death, is a village perched on a hill overlooking the south-eastern fork of Lake Como, is famous for its association with cycling, thanks to the nearby Ghisallo hill, which has been long established on the route of the Giro di Lombardia cycle race and has often featured in the Giro d’Italia. The Madonna del Ghisallo was adopted in 1949 as the patron saint of cycling and the church of the same name now contains a small museum dedicated to competitive cycling and an eternal flame burns for cyclists who have died in competition.

Travel tip:

Almost 70 years after his death and on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of his birth, Naples dedicated a street to the memory of Nicola Romeo, called Via Nicola Romeo, which can be found in the Lauro district of the city, above Mergellina and not far from the Stadio San Paolo, home of Napoli football club.

More reading:

Engineering genius Jano brought success to Alfa, Lancia and Ferrari

How farmer's son Ilario Bandini created beautiful racing cars

Luigi Fagioli - Grand Prix champion renowned for fiery temperament

Also on this day:

1945: The death of Benito Mussolini

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Ilario Bandini - racing car maker

Farmer's son who created beautiful and successful cars

Ilario Bandini, the car maker, pictured in 1988

Ilario Bandini, a businessman and racing driver who went on to construct some of Italy’s most beautiful racing cars, was born on this day in 1911 in Villa Rovere in Emilia-Romagna.

His cars won races in Europe and America and his designs earned the respect of the great Italian performance car maker Enzo Ferrari.

Bandini was from a farming family but was fascinated with cars and motorcycles and began to work part-time as a mechanic while he was still at school, eventually becoming an apprentice in a workshop in nearby Forlì.

At the age of 25 he took the bold decision to move to Eritrea, then an Italian colony, in northern Africa, where he repaired trucks and in time set up a transport business, which was very successful.

The venture made him enough money to open a garage in Forlì. when he returned to Italy in 1939, running a repair workshop alongside a car rental and chauffeured limousine business.

Bandini at the wheel of his first car, the Bandini 1100

At around the same time, he began to compete in motorcycle races, soon graduating from two wheels to four. In 1940, he took part in the Mille Miglia, the 1,000-mile road race from Brescia, near Lake Garda, to Rome and back, driving a Fiat Balilla.

Bandini built his first car almost by accident.  In his possession during the Second World War was a Fiat 1100, which he cut apart and hid to avoid it being requisitioned by the German army.  He began to reassemble it after the war but made adaptations as he did so and equipped the chassis with an entirely different body, made in aluminium by the Turin coach builder Rocco Motto.

He felt entitled to call the car the Bandini 1100, which thus became the first car – “La Prima” – to carry the Bandini name. The small, two-seat car was notable for its elegant, curved lines.  Driving it himself, he finished second in the Predappio to Rocca delle Camminate, a road race held just outside Forlì.

The Bandini badge Ilario placed on the car featured a bantam rooster crowing, the symbol of the town of Forlì.

The 1100 Siluro, which brought Bandini his first race victory

More cars followed. His 1100 Siluro, so-called because of its torpedo-like bodywork, gave him his first win in the Giro dell’Umbria, encouraging him to produce purpose-built racing cars to compete in races such as the Mille Miglia in Italy and the SCCA series in America. They were soon a force to be reckoned in Europe and the United States.

The model that established his reputation was the Bandini 750 Sport Siluro, a tiny sports car that he produced between 1950 and 1956. The car used a modified inline four cylinder Crosley engine, produced by Powel Crosley Jnr, an industrialist from Cincinnati, Ohio, who owned the Cincinnati Reds baseball team.

The 750 Siluro was versatile enough to contest all kinds of events, from hill climbs to road races, airbase circuits and endurance events.

In America, the Siluro won the SCCA class championships in 1955 and 1957 and claimed many other victories in different categories on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Bandini badge, featuring the
crowing bantam, symbol of Forlì

Known to his friends as Lili and sometimes referred to as the “great Drake of Forlì”, Bandini never moved into mass production cars.  There were 17 different models but all of his vehicles were one-offs, in effect, which is why only 73 Bandinis were ever built.  His final car, the Berlinetta 1000 Turbo 16V, was finished shortly before his death in 1992 at the age of 80.

Extraordinarily, Ilario was still getting behind the wheel to compete himself even into his 70s. He drove his 1300 16Vi in the Predappio hill climb in 1985, at the age of 73.

Members of Bandini’s extended family have preserved the memory of his achievements in a museum established in his last workshop in Forlì., which has many documents relating to his career and 10 Bandini cars, considered to be representative of the development of the marque. There are thought to be 46 surviving Bandinis, owned mainly by Japanese and American enthusiasts.

Travel tip:

Villa Rovere was a hamlet at the time of Ilario Bandini’s birth. Situated some 13km (8 miles) west of Forlì, it is now part of the city’s metropolitan area, almost a satellite community.  Forlì itself is a wealthy city with thriving clothing and footwear industries and a number of notable buildings, including the Basilica of San Mercuriale in the central Piazza Saffi, the Pinacoteca Comunale art gallery and the Rocca di Rivaldino, once the fortress stronghold of the redoubtable Caterina Sforza.  Local restaurants are notable for Romagnolo cuisine.

Hotels in Forlì from Hotels.com

The Bandini Collection is housed in a museum in Rovere

Travel tip:

Ilario Bandini’s achievements were recognised in 2002 – 10 years after his death – when in a special ceremony in Forlì, a square just in front of the city’s railway station was renamed Piazzale Ilario Bandini in his honour.  The museum – the Collezione dell’Automobile Brandini – can be found in Via del Braldo in Rovere, although note that viewings are by appointment. 

More readiing:

Vittorio Jano - a great among motor racing engine designers

How little Battista Farina became giant of the automobile industry

Why Gianni Agnelli was more powerful than politicians

Also on this day:

1480: The birth of notorious beauty Lucrezia Borgia

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Flavio Briatore - entrepreneur

From clothing to luxury resorts via Formula One

Flavio Briatore has interests in a string of resorts
and restaurants serving wealthy clientele

The colourful and controversial entrepreneur Flavio Briatore was born on this day in 1950 in Verzuolo, a large village in the Italian Alps near Saluzzo in Piedmont.

Briatore is best known for his association with the Benetton clothing brand and, through their sponsorship, Formula One motor racing, but his business interests have extended well beyond the High Street and the race track.

His empire includes his exclusive Sardinian beach club Billionaire, Twiga beach clubs in Tuscany and Apulia, the Lion under the Sun spa resort in Kenya, the upmarket Sumosan, Twiga and Cipriani restaurants, and the Billionaire Couture menswear line.

Briatore was also for three years co-owner with former F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone and steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal of the English football club Queen’s Park Rangers.  He is also the man to whom the contestants must answer in the Italian version of the hit British TV series The Apprentice.

With a fortune estimated at £120m (€140m; $150m), Briatore lives the lifestyle of the super-rich clients he entertains at his clubs and restaurants, owns a £68.2m (€80m; $85m) yacht and has enjoyed the company of a string of beautiful and famous women.

These include supermodels Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum, with whom he had a child, and the Italian TV presenter Adriana Volpe. In 2008 he married Elisabetta Gregoraci, once the Italian face of Wonderbra, who is 30 years his junior.  They have a son, Falco.

Briatore's wife, the former model Elisabetta Gregoraci

Both of Briatore’s parents were teachers but he was no academic, scraping through high school with the lowest grades. He found employment first as a ski instructor and then a restaurant manager before selling insurance.

It was while he was working at the Borsa – the Milan stock exchange – that in 1974 he met Luciano Benetton, founder of the Italian global clothing company.

Appointed director of group operations in the United States, where Benetton was undergoing significant expansion, Briatore’s job was to set up franchises across the country. He took a cut from each franchise agreement and, with 800 stores opened in the US in the 1980s, became an extremely wealthy man.

In 1989, Luciano Benetton began to sponsor F1 and, wanting someone to take charge of merchandising, turned again to Briatore.

From commercial director, Briatore was promoted to managing director and turned Benetton into a competitive F1 team, which he ran from 1990 to 1997. When the Benetton team was sold to Renault in 2000, Renault hired Briatore as team manager. In all, Briatore oversaw seven world titles in the constructors' and drivers' categories and was hailed as the man who ‘discovered’ the seven-times drivers’ champion, Michael Schumacher.

While there have been some spectacular successes in Briatore’s career, there have also been some catastrophes.

Flavio Briatore in his days as boss
of the Renault F1 team

One of his earliest jobs was as an assistant to businessman Attilio Dutto, owner of the Paramatti Vernici paint company in Cuneo that had previously been owned by Michele Sindona, the shady Sicily-born banker who laundered heroin proceeds for the Gambino family and was poisoned in prison.  Dutto was killed in 1979 in a suspected Mafia car bomb attack.

In 1980 Briatore was convicted on various counts of fraud and given two prison sentences amounting to four and a half years. These were reduced on appeal to two years and two months, although Briatore actually escaped jail by fleeing to the US Virgin Islands and benefitting from an amnesty on his return, which in Italian law amounts to the cancelling of the criminal convictions that led to the sentence.

His yacht at one time was seized during an investigation into alleged tax fraud and, in 2007, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer, for which he was treated successfully.

In 2009, Briatore was banned from motor racing after driver Nelson Piquet Jr alleged he had been instructed to crash deliberately in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix in a move designed to help his Renault teammate, Fernando Alonso, another Briatore protégé, to win the race.

Motor racing’s governing body, the FIA, handed Briatore and his chief engineer, Pat Symonds, an indefinite ban. However, in 2010, Briatore’s ban was overturned by a French court and he was awarded €15,000 compensation, although his lawyers had asked for €1m.

He has remained involved with F1 as personal manager for Alonso, a close friend who drove the wedding car when he and Gregoraci were married at the Santo Spirito in Sassia church in Rome.

Travel tip:

Saluzzo, the nearest town to Briatore’s birthplace in Verzuolo, is known for its picturesque setting, built on a hill overlooking a fertile plain with a mountain backdrop, and close to the source of the River Po. Its well preserved historic centre features many antique shops and the main sights include Saluzzo cathedral, built at the end of the 15th century in Lombard-Gothic style.

Check Saluzzo hotels with Hotels.com

The expansive Piazza Galimberti in Cuneo

Travel tip:

The beautiful city of Cuneo, which developed at the confluence of the Stura and Gesso rivers, is set out in a grid system with a large, elegant central square, Piazza Galimberti, one of the largest squares in Italy, after Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples. Surrounded by neo-classical buildings, it has a large statue of Giuseppe Barbaroux, the author of the Albertine Statute that formed the constitution of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont in 1848. The square is named after Duccio Galimberti, one of the heroes of the Italian resistance in the Second World War.

More reading:

Elio de Angelis - last of the 'gentleman racers'

How Michele Alboreto almost ended Italy's long wait for a new champion

Ferruccio Lamborghini - the tractor maker who took on Ferrari

Also on this day:

1948: The birth of World Cup winning football coach Marcello Lippi

(Picture credits: Main Briatore pic by Minerva97; Elisabetta Gregoraci by franco.ruspa; Briatore in Renault days by Bert van Dijk; Piazza Galimberti by Gian Francesco Fanti; all via Wikemedia Commons)

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Elio de Angelis - racing driver

The 'last gentleman racer' of Formula One

Elio de Angelis drove for Lotus for six seasons

The Formula One motor racing driver Elio de Angelis was born on this day in 1958 in Rome.

His record of winning two Grands Prix from 108 career starts in F1 may not look impressive but he was regarded as a talented driver among his peers, holding down a place with Lotus for six consecutive seasons alongside of such talents as Nigel Mansell and Ayrton Senna, both future world champions.

He had his best seasons in 1984 and 1985, which encompassed seven of his nine career podium finishes and in which he finished third and fifth respectively in the drivers' championship standings.

Tragically, he was killed in testing the following year, having left Lotus for Brabham in frustration after perceiving that Senna was being given more favourable treatment.

De Angelis was seen by many in motor racing as "the last of the gentlemen racers."

De Angelis hailed from a wealthy
background in Rome

In contrast to his teammate Mansell, who came from a working class background in the West Midlands of England, De Angelis was born into wealth.

His family was long established in the upper echelons of Roman society.  His father, Giulio, ran a successful construction company and raced powerboats, winning many championships in the 1960s and 1970s. Elio was the oldest of his four children.

This glittering pedigree had its disadvantages.  Elio was known to be on the target list for Red Brigades kidnappers and when he returned to Rome to visit his parents he was whisked from the airport in a bulletproof limousine and could not step out even for a pizza without two bodyguards for company.

On the other hand, he was free to indulge himself in whatever entertainment took his fancy.  He skied and played tennis and showed a talent for both, as he did for the piano, which he learned to concert standard.  Perhaps through his father's genes, he also loved speed.

He started karting when he was 14, finishing second in the World Championship in 1975 and winning the European title in 1976.

By the age of 19 he was driving in Formula Three, winning his first race on only his third start at the Mugello circuit near Florence. He then went on to win the Italian Formula Three Championship in 1977.

In 1978 he raced in Formula Two as well as Formula Three, in which his victory in the prestigious Monaco F3 race. That led to a chance to test for the Shadow F1 team.

Ultimately, his father paid for him to race for Shadow, which was not good for Elio's reputation at the start.  Yet his talent shone through and won his respect.

De Angelis in action for Lotus in 1985

It also led him to being hired by Colin Chapman to drive for Lotus in 1980 and when, in only his second race, the 21-year-old Elio failed narrowly to become the youngest winner of a Formula One race when he finished second to René Arnoux in Brazil it was clear he was a star in the making.

Off the track he was both envied and admired.  He had style in abundance and any resentment of his privileged background was soon overcome by his easy charm.  He was friendly and respectful towards the other drivers but could also join in the jokes.  And such was his natural talent that he could turn up at the last minute for a qualifying session, sometimes so disorganised he might have to borrow a helmet from another driver, yet still set the fastest lap time.

His first victory came in the Austrian Grand Prix in 1982 and he finished ahead of Mansell in the drivers' standings all but the 1983 season, when his car was plagued by mechanical problems.

The 1985 season brought a second Grand Prix victory for De Angelis at San Marino after Alain Prost took the chequered flag first but was subsequently disqualified for an underweight car.  However, the arrival of Senna in place of Mansell, who had gone to Williams, marked a change in fortunes for the Italian.

Senna finished fourth to his fifth in the drivers' championship, despite De Angelis maintaining the consistency he and his car had shown in 1984, and when Lotus appeared to be concentrating their resources and expertise on the Brazilian driver De Angelis began to look elsewhere.

His move to Brabham seemed full of promise, giving him the chance to drive the BT55, a new low-frame chassis car designed to create less drag.  After only four races, however, during testing at the Paul Ricard circuit in France, De Angelis's BT55 lost its rear wing at high speed, catapulted over a barrier and caught fire.

The driver's physical injuries were minor but he was unable to escape from the car unaided. He died just over a day later from the affects of smoke inhalation. The lack of qualified track marshalls on hand, combined with a delay in the arrival of a helicopter to take him to hospital, were said to have contributed to his death.

Monza's Duomo, with its white and green facade

Travel tip:

Formula One motor racing in Italy is about Monza, which has hosted the Italian Grand Prix every year since 1950. The city itself - situated about 15km (9 miles) north of Milan - is underappreciated. It has several notable architectural attractions, including the Gothic Duomo, with its white-and-green banded facade, which contain the Corona Ferrea (Iron Crown), which according to legend features one of the nails from the Crucifixion. The crown is on show in the chapel dedicated to the Lombard queen Theodolinda.  The adjoining Museo e Tesoro del Duomo contains one of the greatest collections of religious art in Europe.

TripAdvisor's lowdown on the best hotels in Monza

The view across Rome from Monte Mario

Travel tip:

There are many ways of enjoying Rome, but to appreciate the city in its full perspective, the Monte Mario natural park offers breathtaking views. Situated to the west of the city, it is the highest point of Rome and it is possible to pick out almost every notable dome and bell tower. The most popular panoramic terrace, called Zodiaco, is near the astronomical observatory.

Hotels in Rome by Booking.com

More reading:

How Michele Alboreto almost ended Italy's long F1 drought

Vittorio Grigolo - the singer who chose opera over F1

Luigi Fagioli - still F1's oldest winning driver

Also on this day:

1898: The birth of fashion designer Guccio Gucci

1941: The birth of racing driver Lella Lombardi


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