The Italian Grands Prix
Every year in late August the Italian Grand Prix comes to Monza, north of Milan, where the royal park contains the historic pistol shaped track in its north end. The racetrack hides among the ancient trees and large fields, on a non-raceday it is well hidden by the greenery and the old park walls. It dates back to 1922, a year after the first Italian Grand Prix was held not too far away on a ten mile triangular road circuit near Brescia. The purpose built circuit followed in the wheel tracks of the Brooklands course in Britain and the Indianapolis speedway of the previous decade. Much like those tracks the purpose of the construction was as much for providing a test track for the car industry as for motor racing. There were two tracks laid on top of each other; a high speed oval shape track with lightly banked curves ran around the eastern side of the park, crossing the other track via a bridge and rejoining at the final corners. Modern drivers still trace the same route, through Curva Grande, a long right hander, into the twin rights at Lesmos, down to the long left Ascari, down the back straight to the 180 degree Parabolica to rejoin the main straight. The oval was rebuilt in 1954 with much larger concrete banking to allow higher speeds. The pit straight is very wide to allow for a double circuit using the road course and banking, where one lap involved passing the main straight twice, on different sides of a divider.
Little changed in the track across the years. A few shortcuts were added through the trees to make shorter layouts. After the war the final 180 degree curve was extended and sharpened into 90 degree rights. This layout lasted a few years before the current gradually-opening Parabolica final corner was laid down. In 1972, chicanes were introduced to the front straight just after the pitlane, and the Ascari sweep. Before that the circuit was nearly flat out by the 1960s, and the racing was fast and frantic. With so few corners the pace was dictated by slipstreaming and power. Packs of cars locked together by the draft they punched in the air constantly dicing for position.
The 1953 Grand Prix finish one of only two occasions when the lead changed hands at the final turn (The other being the 1970 Monaco GP), and one of the only ones that boiled down to a race long shootout between three world champions. In the Ferrari's were Alberto Ascari and Giuseppe Farina, in the Maseratis Juan Manuel Fangio and the odd man out, Fangio's fellow Argentine Onfre Marimon. The foursome diced for the entire race, swapping the lead at least twenty times in an eighty lap race (and that was just what the scorers recorded at the finish line). Marimon eventually had to stop with a mechanical problem, but when he rejoined a few laps down he could run with the leaders. Into the final turns Ascari spun as he was squeezed by his fellow Ferrari of Farina and then the lapped Marimon crunched into the side of Ascari. Farina went wide into the the grass while Fangio came home to win. Ascari walked back with Marimon, the crash preventing the Ferrari from rejoining, so he could not claim third place since everyone else was at least a lap behind.
The new concrete banked track had a new showcase event for 1957. The 'Race of Two Worlds'; billed as a match race between the American Championship cars and the best of Europe. In reality the Grand Prix teams realised how outclassed they would be on the speedway versus the Indianapolis cars and refused the invitation. The name recognised that the spheres of European and American motor racing were two very different worlds. 'Road racing' in America was largely the preserve of wealthy amateurs in sports cars. Championship racing in the Indy, Champ, cars was mostly on oval tracks, most of which were dirt bullrings. Indy drivers were mostly self made, renegade outlaw types who put up with the extreme danger of places like Indianapolis and the near circular Langhorne dirt speedway, because they knew no other way and they needed the winners check. 'Starting money' - that is, money paid by the organiser just for showing up - was anathema. The Europeans were more comfortable with not turning up to a race they thought dangerous. The Americans thought them soft. The Indy 500 had been placed in the World Championship in 1950 in recognition of it's status, but there was little crossover. Ascari had driven a 'Ferrari Special' in the race in 1954 but that was about it.
In 1957 a token European effort appeared to make a race of it - a Maserati, Ferrari, and the three Le Mans Jaguar D Types of Scottish team Ecurie Ecosse. Up against ten Indianapolis cars, even the Le Mans winners slippery sports cars stood no chance - though thanks to the Americans very tall gearing the three Jags led the first lap of the race before being reeled in. Tyre problems in practice led to the Ferrari and Maserati being withdrawn so the race was effectively an Indy exhibition. Jimmy Bryan, the US national champion and 1958 Indy winner won two of the three heats races to be declared the overall winner of "Monzanapolis".
Despite the distinct lack of one of the two worlds in the inaugural running the race returned in 1958, with a healthier European component. The Indy style racing had not been to their taste to but the Indy style purse was an eye watering amount compared to most European races. So Ferrari turned up with three cars. Jaguar had two D Types and a special Lister-Jaguar single seater, gleaming brilliant silver with its unpainted body. The most American-looking European was the 'Eldorado Special' - actually a 4.2 litre V8 Maserati, painted white to reflect its ice cream sponsor. This big car could run with the Americans in the hands of Stirling Moss, but the 3rd heat race nearly the saw the end of Moss when the steering sheered in one of the corners. The Maserati smashed into the outside guardrail, mowed down support posts, but then spun harmlessly down to the bottom of the banking. Moss called the 175 miles per hour incident the scariest moment of his racing career. Jim Rathmann won the all three races, with a blistering combined average speed of 166 mph. With the fastest lap speed at 177 mph when Indianapolis still recorded pole positions at 140, these were some of the fastest motor races ever run for many years. (Only a one-off event of 100 mile Indy car races in 1959 on the high banks of Daytona in Nascar country came close). But despite the records and the increased turnout the race did not make a profit and the Indy cars never came back.
The banking was largely disused after 1961 - it was boycotted in 1960 by some of the British teams who stayed away from the Italian GP when they heard the combined circuit would be used. Danger has always seemed to stalk Monza, partly because of the great speed and partly the longevity of the place. The 1928 Grand Prix attracted thousands of spectators to the parco to see the big names of the roaring twenties - Nuvolari, Campari, Varzi, Borzacchini, Chiron - but twenty two of those spectators never went home after a horrific crash on the main straight. Emilio Materassi, champion of the Targa Florio, and four time winner at the Montenero circuit in Livorno, among other achievements, lost control of his French Talbot after touching wheels with another car. The car, one of six the renowned driver owned in his personal team, smashed into the front of the stand and ended up in the ditch supposed to prevent cars reaching the crowd. The disaster put a temporary stop the Italian Grand Prix all together for a couple of years. when it returned in 1931 death immediately made an entrance when Alfa Romeo driver Luigi Arcangeli was killed in a crash in practice.
To double the entertainment value for the crowd the Monza organisers had decided to back up the Italian GP on the full road and oval circuit with an event called the Monza Grand Prix run purely on the speedway. After the 1933 Italian GP had concluded many of the same contenders rolled out for the Monza GP, among them Giuseppe Campari and Baconin Borzacchini, two of Italy's top drivers. Campari had won the Italian GP overall sharing with Nuvolari in 1931, and was a very popular figure. Past forty, forever cheerful for the cameras, he dabbled in opera singing when he wasn't racing, and his large frame looked more the part for the former than latter. He was aboard the Enzo Ferrari run Alfa Romeo while Borzacchini faced him in the arch rival Maserati. The Monza GP was divided into three heat races, much as the Monzanapolis races would be many years later. In the second heat the Alfa and the Maserati shot off into the distance battling for the lead, but neither came around to finish the first.lap. Word eventually spread that there had been a crash - oil dropped and reported by some drivers in the first heat was popularly blamed for causing a pile up, though historians have cast doubt on whether it was really a bad enough spill to cause a crash. All that was known was that Campari and Borzacchini had flown off the top of the curve, the former was dead and the latter grievously injured and beyond help. Despite all the carnage, the third heat went ahead, and in exactly the same spot the Polish driver Count Stanslas Cyazowski also crashed to his death.
The horrific day when three of Europe's top drivers were killed in one event forever cast an ominous feeling to Monza, a place of ghosts of races past. This was a place were nobody no matter who tehy were could relax. Understandably for the rest of the 1930s the Italian GP was held in various slower configurations of Monza, with chicanes interrupting the fast straights. In 1937 the GP moved for one year to the Livorno road circuit, the one time stomping ground of Emilio Materassi. Though this switch probably had less to do with safety and more to do with the tighter natural road circuit seeming to suit the Italian cars better than Monza, where the overpowered government-subsidised Germans who had swarmed in GP racing with ruthless effect in 1934 would doubtless clean up. It
didn't work, as the Mercedes and Auto Unions filled the top places even here.
Oddly the effect of the Second World War was almost to erase the memories of disasters past, and when racing returned to Monza in the late 1940s it was on a flat out Monza again. In 1961 the race was the penultimate race of the championship. Ferrari's Wolfgang von Trips started from pole position. He would be the first German world champion if he won ahead of teammate Phil Hill. Hill jumped into the lead at the start, ahead of the gaggle of little cars behind. After the large front-engine hot rods of the 1950s, the new generation of 1.5 litre mid engine cars looked puny. Looks were deceptive, these cars were less cumbersome in corners and much sharper under braking, and they still had no concessions to any kind of safety. With the engine now taking the space where the fuel tank had sat in the older cars, the drivers cockpit became the fuel tank. Sat in a lightweight tin bath of petrol, held up by four skinny wheels on spindly suspension rods, the consequences of a mistake at a place as fast as Monza did not bear much thought.
Phil Hill took the title that day for Ferrari, but the thoughtful and undemonstrative Californian's celebration was muted thanks to the circumstances of his win. At the end of lap one Von trips had drifted left into the path of Jim Clark's Lotus on the approach to the Parabolica - tragic irony that the impending disaster would happen on the road circuit rather than the 'dangerous' banking. Whether he did not see the Lotus or was cutting Clark off - though given the dangers of the time the former seems more likely - the results were dreadful. The Ferrari speared off to the left, up the bank supposed to protect the crowd, and into the spectator fence. Fortunately the tumbling car was thrown back onto the track but not after the flying debris had killed fifteen spectators crowding along the fence. The driver died instantly after being thrown out. Clark and Lotus were investigated by the police after the race, and the threat of prosecution hung over them both until the end of the year, seeding a deep distrust of Italy in the minds of team and driver. Sadly for Lotus it wasn't the last time death would stalk their cars at Monza.
The introduction of the chicanes didn't help entirely with safety, in fact they created their own problems - a fire marshal was killed by a flying wheel after a pile up in one 2000, and most infamously Ronnie Peterson (driving for Lotus) died after breaking both legs in another mass shunt in 1978 into the first chicane. By sad coincidence, just as with Hill in '61 his teammate was an American (Mario Andretti this time) who's championship win coincided with the death of his teammate.
The 1967 Italian GP took place in a watershed year. It was the first year for the soon to be ubiquitous Fird Cosworth DFV engine and the year without aerofoils and sponsors logos. It should have been a year dominated by the double World Champion Jim Clark and the new Lotus 49 and the 400+ horsepower Cosworth, but after winning on debut reliability was a problem for the rest of the year. Even by August Clark's luck wasn't in. He started from pole position and was leading after thirteen laps when he picked up a puncture. On such a fast circuit the Lotus lost an entire lap and fifteen places before it was on it's way again with four fully inflated tyres. Slowly, inexorably, Clark proceeded to catch back up. He caught up the leaders, unlapped himself, and started to pull away. On such a fast circuit the power advantage that the Lotus had helped, but with only five corners of note it was an extraordinary performance by Clark to make up so much time. Momentum was everything at Monza and to make up much time a driver had to be inch perfect every time or the knock-on speed loss lasted for the whole lap. The Lotus's flaky reliability then came to the Scotsman's aid as his teammate Hill dropped out with an engine failure. Clark took back what had become second from John Surtees, and then the lead from Jack Brabham.
Then the jinx struck again - not a mechanical failure this time but a lack of fuel. The chief mechanic had topped up the car on the grid - and drew the ire of Lotus boss Colin Chapman for doing so - but even so Clark still suffered his engine splattering on the last lap. Brabham and Surtees shot back past, duking out the lead into the Parabolica. Surtees, cannily, noted earlier that oil had been dropped on the inside line. Cement dust had been spread but the track was slippery. He left the door wide open for Brabham, hoping he would take the bait - and he did. Slithering past into the lead, Brabham went wide, surrendering the momentum, and failed to get back past Surtees by the finish line. Though he was now driving a Honda the crowd acclaimed Surtees as a former-Ferrari champion, but they reserved their most rapturous reception for Clark limping back home in third. Surtees never again won a race, and Clark was never defeated in Formula One again. He won the final two races of 1967, and the first of 1968, before being killed in the fateful Formula 2 race at Hockenheim in April 1968.
By the time the Grand Prix cars returned in 1968 and 1969 the cars had begun to sprout aerofoils and sponsors colours had appeared - the Lotus was now red and gold with Gold Leaf cigarette branding. Monza was one of the few places where wings were considered optional but still the speeds edged up and up. Jackie Stewart won an amazing blanket finish in 1969, beating out Rindt, Beltoise and McLaren, and simultaneously clinching the world championship. Two years later an even larger gaggle of cars crossed the line. Five drivers finished in a phalanx across the road, and none of them had yet won a race - Cevert, Peterson, Hailwood, Ganley... but it was Peter Gethin in the BRM who claimed the honours - by a fraction of a second. Gethin's only win stood as the fastest race win until 2003 when it was finally topped, by five kph. The chicanes fundamentally changed Monza. With several heavy braking zones and without the slipstream the races became much like any other, only with a heavy emphasis on engine power and reliability. There were still moments of drama but less in the way of close constant dicing as there once had been.
In 1982 Mario Andretti took pole position and 3rd place in a guest appearance for Ferrari after the team had lost Villeneuve in a fatal crash in Belgium and Pironi to serious leg injuries in Germany. The honorary Italian received a rapturous reception from the crowd to rival any victory. Ayrton Senna was twice denied at the end of the eighties. In 1989 his engine blew spinning him to a halt in the middle of the Parabolica. A year earlier he was taken out on the penultimate lap by a lapped car in the first chicane. Weeks after Enzo Ferrari had died the two Ferraris swept past for a one-two finish.
Home wins are always a special moment - and uniquely the country follows a team rather than the drivers. Italians winning in anything other than a Ferrari might as well be foreigners in the eyes of everyone except their mamas. The adoration for the home team overcomes a lot at Monza. Even in 1970 the crowd still poured under the rostrum and celebrated Regazzoni's win for Ferrari when twenty four hours earlier the world champion-elect Rindt had been lain mortally wounded in the Parabolica sand trap. Another dark chapter in the circuit's history the eventual posthumous world champion had been killed when his Lotus failed under braking and slammed into, and partly under, the guardrail at almost the same spot where Von Trips had speared into the crowd nine years before. A year later, again fearful of legal reprisals, Lotus turned up as 'Worldwide Racing' with one of their Indianapolis turbine cars and a different paint scheme. The turbine was theoretically well suited to the fast track with its great power at high RPM, but it turned out to be too sluggish under acceleration to have much effect. Another nine years later Jody Scheckter and Gilles Villeneuve took a comfortable first and second with the Canadian closely following home his more experienced teammate and sacrificing any final hope of winning the championship. There would be many more chances, he reckoned...
In 1996 Michael Schumacher took the first Ferrari Monza win since 1988 after Damon Hill in the Williams whacked a tyre barrier in the first chicane while leading leaving the ungainly Ferrari F310 to take an unlikely first place. It made amends for the previous two years when the Ferraris dropped out of the lead with problems. In 1995 they had been one-two after Schumacher and Hill had tangled lapping another car. Then the small on board TV camera flew off Alesi's Ferrari and broke his teammate Berger's suspension, before Alesi's wheel bearing seized. The year before the heartbroken driver had been forced out of the lead with a broken gearbox.
The 2008 race began under rainclouds with the Toro Rosso of Sebastian Vettel on pole position. When the race began the young German disappeared off into a lead his only relinquished during pitstops. The subsequent success of Vettel and the Red Bull team over the 2010s may dilute the perception of this upset result had as Vettel pulled out into a unchallenged lead. This after all had once been Minardi, the perennial minnows of the paddock, who had persisted around the back of the pack since 1985 before being bought by the Red Bull company and turned into the junior Red Bull team. In point of fact the Toro Rosso won a race before the actual Red Bull team did (though have not been back since) The day also took saw an interesting historical footnote: it was the only time a Ferrari engine won without being installed in a Ferrari.
One for the great moments for Ferrari at Monza did not involve winning. In 1976 the Italian GP was won by Ronnie Peterson in a March, but all eyes in the crowd were on fourth place. Niki Lauda came to the race a mere six weeks after being horrifically burned - externally and internally - in the infamous crash at the Nurburgring. Lauda missed two races while recuperating in hospital. When he showed up in Italy his head was still heavily bandaged. He had shrugged off having any reconstructive surgery preferring to get back in the car as soon as was possible. A test at the private Ferrari Fiorano track was one thing but the full glare of the race was another. In the first practice session Lauda, quietly rigid with repressed fear, had been unable to engage second gear in the Ferrari and had panicked. Unable to drive, he went back to his hotel, seemingly justifying the doubts of the race organisers, who were not in favour of his return despite it being in a Ferrari at Monza. The next day Lauda was in a calmer state of mind and, having readjusted to the feel of the car, qualified fifth. Having proved he could race, he gained a position on the starting place and finished fourth - to the crowd's delight. After an hour and half of racing his fireproof balaclava was stuck to his scalp by dried out blood that had seeped from his burns. Certainly in modern times there would have been no chance of Lauda racing in such a condition - he had yet to have his burned eyelids surgically reconstructed and could not blink, driving most of the race with terribly strained eyes streaming with tears.
An uglier side of Monza had also been seen that day. The 'tifosi' had always been a vociferous crowd, prone to invade the track as soon as the winner crossed the line, and never mind that there was still the rest of the cars circulating. They provided a worrying obstacle even to the winners as they were wont to mob the car and carry the winner shoulder high to the podium. Jackie Stewart famously spent his first minutes as 1969 champion taking refuge in the Gents before slipping out of a window to evade the adulation of the fans. In 1976, they had been whipped up by the dubious decision to disqualify Lauda's main championship rival, James Hunt, from qualifying because the McLaren's fuel was supposedly reading an illegally potent octane level. Hunt, already the object of Italian media resentment for winning at the fateful Nurburgring race and then the two races Lauda had missed, had to start at the back. In a fury at being labelled a cheater, Hunt spun off at one of the chicanes. Walking back, he later recalled being disturbed by the level of vitriol directed his way for driving something quick that wasn't a Ferrari - and by being spat on and threatened. But when confronting some of the hecklers, the tall and intimidating Englishman remembered with amusement how they bade a hasty retreat.
The crowd came under much better control in later years - higher fences went up, and a common sight in the sixties and seventies - advertising hoardings stripped of their facing and turned into makeshift grandstands for those who could climb up- became a thing of the past. The crowd do still flood the track, but only once the race is finished, and all the cars at are safely parked are the gates opened. Teams no longer have to fear having their garages ransacked by enthusiastic souvenir-hunters.
The 1990s offered up a few surprises. Johnny Herbert won a second race in 1995 for Benetton after the demise of Hill, Schumacher and the Ferraris. Heinz-Harald Frentzen's Jordan won in 1999 after Mika Hakkinen spun off in the first chicane while leading. That race would be the last event for the old double first chicane, with the fiddly right-left-right-left complex surrounded by gravel traps being simplified in 2000 into a basic right-left diversion. The thinking being that the simpler arrangement would be better for overtaking, and reinstating the straight as an escape road was a better refuge for
mechanical failures. Though no race has ever made use of a chicane-less run to Curva Grande again the Audi Le Mans team did, testing their low downforce settings in spectacular fashion, bypassing the chicane and flying through like fighter jets on a low pass.
Monza has held the Italian GP every year of the World Championship, with one exception. The Peterson tragedy of 1978 and subsequent outcry against the generally chaotic state of the organisation - the carambolage that had left the Swede stricken with two broken legs had been precipitated by a shambolic start, and his later death from the survivable injuries cast grave doubts about the local medical response - had led to a deal being done with the circuit at Imola, near Bologna. International racing had visited Imola in 1963 for a non-championship race, won, as so much else was at the time, by Clark's Lotus. Since Monza monopolized the Grand Prix and sports car races the Imola track saw little chance of gaining much recognition.
The track was built in 1953, the layout being a bit of a mirror image of Monza, running anticlockwise through only four or five corners of any significance. The siting was different, the road running through small holdings and fields rather than a large suburban park. The pits sat by the east side of a river with the town of Imola across a bridge over the rushing water. When Clark et al decamped there in 1963 they found a circuit that was fast and simple. Like at Monza the start line led into fast open sweep, only to the left rather than right. Then a long run down a slow hairpin, and up the hill and over the crest to the left. Imola has rather more gradient than Monza, adding a note of rollercoaster drama to the lap. In the sixties the cars dropped down to a quick right in the gully and then spent the next minute flat all the way to the far end, turning left twice before burying the throttle again past the pits.
Imola became a backwater again after '63, but was kept up with the times in the seventies. Hay bales lining the corners and the trees became guardrails and fences. A modern pits was built and two sets of 'Variante' chicanes broke up the long flat out sections. With Monza in the doghouse a non-championship F1 event was held in 1979, the Dino Ferrari GP (named after the late son of Mr Ferrari), as a precursor to the 1980 Italian GP, and the circuit itself becoming the Enzo e Dino Ferrari Autodromo. The two races were both enlivened by Gilles Villeneuve's Ferrari. In '79 he bent his nose on the back of Lauda's Brabham-Alfa trying to pass for the lead (Lauda won, the last win to date for the marque in Formula 1). In 1980 Villeneuve's rear tyre blew at the fastest part of the track- approaching the Tosa hairpin after the Tamburello sweep. Another chicane had been added to the track for the race but on the downhill Acque Minerale corner rather than the quickest part. Fortunately for the driver in this occasion the car spun a full 180, scrubbing off speed before crunching hard into the retaining wall. In the days when cars were still made from aluminium sheet to see any driver jump out of such a big hit unhurt was always a relief. Villeneuve's adventure even got the sweep named after him, while the intrepid driver found the whole escapade rather amusing.
The next year the GP went back to Monza and McLaren's John Watson did something similar out of the second Lesmo corner, losing the back over the kerb, and obliterating the car against the barrier on the inside. The 1981 McLaren was a little different to the 1980 Ferrari though, under the body panels it's chassis was fabricated from baked together carbon fibre sheets. Intended as a weight saving material the huge crash also showed the inherent strength of the composite construction. The driver's cockpit, through missing an engine and wheels, survived intact, and thus began a new era where fatalities from big shunts became a rarity rather than a guarantee.
Originally the plan had been for Monza and Imola share the race bi-annually when the former's organisation was back up to scratch. But then the Imola management came up with an idea; ask the motorsports association of the state of San Marino to run a race under their name. Unlike Monaco, where the race is in the country, the San Marino GP would go nowhere near it's namesake - Imola is 50 miles away - but nobody minded too much. In the days before the Bahrain's, Abu Dhabi's and Singapore's of the world wanted a piece of the action and expanded the F1 calendar far beyond the European heartland, a second Italian F1 race, on a fast track suited to the new turbo engines, and a second chance for Ferrari to win at home, was most a welcome addition.
Ferrari did get another home win very soon. The Ferrari V6 Turbo engine had been demoed before the 1980 Imola race by Villeneuve, promising much for the future. The 1981 chassis wasn't much good, wasting the power of the engine. Renault's turbo won at Monza while Pironi fought valiantly in the wet at Imola, he had to give best to Piquet in the Brabham. Pironi's Ferrari did win the next year, but in contentious circumstances. Already the 1982 San Marino GP had been badly affected by a boycott of the British teams, disaffected by an ongoing dispute with the governing body and the manufacturer teams. So the race started a small field of fourteen cars, and boiled down to a fight between Renault and Ferrari. When the Renault's both blew up their engines the two Ferrari's were unchallenged and Villeneuve, leading, expected teammate Pironi would hold station, just as he had done with Jody Scheckter in 1979. He didn't, forcing the Ferrari's to fight. Pironi got the run on the last lap into the Tosa hairpin, and passed a stunned Villeneuve, who was fully expecting Pironi to finally fall in line. Raging, he vowed it was to be 'war' between the red cars for the rest of the year. Two weeks later he was dead, and a few months later Pironi was lying by the road at Hockenheim with smashed legs. A year later, Ferrari's new signing, Patrick Tambay won at Imola with the same number on the nose as Villeneuve had worn.
The fairytale race result summed up the Italian fans attitude perfectly. When the Italian Riccardo Patrese passed the Ferrari six laps from the finish they despaired. Patrese, in a Brabham, may as well of been from Mars. So when the Padua driver then overdid the Acque Minerale chicane and stuffed into the tyre wall moments later they roared their approval as the French driven Ferrari got back in the lead. They would have been astonished, had they known, that it would be another sixteen years before a Ferrari again won at Imola. That win, plus another five in the next seven years would all be credited to Michael Schumacher. By then it was much different Imola that greeted drivers compared to 1983.
The fast nature of Imola always favoured cars with good power, and with fuel allowances designed to prevent too much power, a patient driver. After zig zagging out of the final chicane section the cars would be held at full throttle for the next twenty or so seconds as the drivers held the inside line through the Tamburello sweep and switched right into Villeneuve before mashing the brakes into the Tosa. The McLaren TaG Porsche of Prost won in 1984 and 1986, and lost the 1985 race in bizarre circumstances. Senna's Lotus and Johansson's Ferrari both led before running dry. Prost, with both a patient right foot and a snazzy engine management computer, ran out of fuel on the final lap, but 'won' the race, before being disqualified for having an underweight car. Elio de Angelis in the other Lotus was awarded the win of a race he never led.
Mansell's Williams Honda won in 1987 but the team, and the paddock, had a fright in practice when the other Williams of Piquet punctured a rear tyre turning into Tamburello. Piquet spun backwards and slammed incredibly hard into the concrete wall. Concussed, the doctors forbade him from racing the next day. Consistency helped him win that years championship over his more daredevil teammate but Piquet never was the same force again as he had once been, suffering from the after effects of the crash until he retired. Nobody seemingly gave the very high speed section with only a small runoff space much thought until cars started failing off the road there. Two years later it finally seemed like the worst had happened when Gerhard Berger's Ferrari broke and barely turned the corner, simply driving straight into the wall, spinning wildly through the grass, and then bursting into flames. In an age where the dread of cars bursting into flames seemed to have passed it was a shocking sight, though the better fireproof drivers clothing and the speedy marshals avoided a terminal outcome. In retrospect these incidents probably helped set the thought in the sport and among fans that cars were so tough that drivers were becoming untouchable. If they can survive that...
After the crash Gerhard Berger inquired as to whether the wall Tamburello could be moved back and some runoff area added. No, came back the answer, there is a river behind the wall. Maybe adding yet another chicane to Imola seemed too much, though there was another diversion built down at Villeneuve, but the F1 cars bypassed it. In 1991 there was yet another heavy crash at Tamburello, as Alberto' s Footwork crashed hard, but again without injury. The corner was frequently referred to as the 'most worrying' corner in F1 - what Mansell had called it in an interview. Imola continued to provide slim pickings for Ferrari. Senna powered away three times for McLaren Honda, Patrese finally got a home win in 1990 in a Williams, and Mansell and Prost also won in Williams.
Ayrton Senna was the favourite to win in 1994, he qualified the Williams on pole, and led away from Michael Schumacher. Already a heavy shadow had been cast over the circuit, when the Simtek car of rookie Roland Ratzenberger went straight on at Villeneuve during the qualifying session and crashed hard into the wall without slowing. Unlike the corner's namesake when he crashed there the Simtek did not spin out and lose speed. The driver was extricated and taken to the medical centre and then quickly helicoptered to hospital, but soon the announcement came through that he was dead from severe head and neck injuries.
Even in light of the fatality - the first of an F1 driver for eight years and the first at a race meeting for twelve - things carried on somewhat as usual, albeit with few smiles from the drivers. The race went ahead, with some cursory mentions of the rookie who has perished the day before. So when Senna ran straight on in the Tamburello, hit the wall, and slewed to a halt the television helicopter kept a close watch on the scene as if this was just another incident. Even as the yellow helmeted driver failed to move from his cockpit, as the medics crowded around the inert figure laid on the ground, the broadcast kept going, just as it had the day before, as if not perceiving what was happening before it. The same thing had happened the day before as the doctors vainly gave Ratzenberger CPR beside his car. All the years of relative safety had not prepared the sport and the media who covered it for this.
The Imola circuit and the San Marino GP would be forever tarnished by the memory of the double tragedy. By the medical helicopter again flew away, this time from a position on the track itself there could be no doubt what had happened. Why it had happened was another matter. The media was quick to point a large portion of the blame at the 'Killer' circuit with the history of near misses. Italian magistrates examined both crashes - the Simtek team were exonerated of wrongdoing as the damage to the wing had seemingly been done by the driver misjudging one of the chicanes. Senna's Williams, by contrast, they concluded had crashed because it's steering column had failed, and the team's technical directors were to blame.
Eventually a trial commenced with the Williams team principals, and some Imola officials charged with manslaughter. After three years all defendants were acquitted, most because there was no direct connection with events that were clearly beyond their control. Frank Williams was acknowledged as the commercial chairman of his team with little input on technical matters. As for Patrick Head and Adrian Newey, the technical director and chief designer,t he court ruled that the steering column had probably failed, but that there was insufficient proof of criminal negligence. After another ten years the Italian Supreme Court cleared Newey completely, but ruled that Head was ultimately responsible for the column failure, though he was not charged as the statute of limitations on manslaughter charges had long since expired.
The crash has fascinated and lingered in the memory, long after Imola has gone from the calendar and the track altered significantly to become almost unrecognisable in parts. The old constant sweep or Tamburello became gravel beds for a large chicane cutting into what and once been the trees lining the inside, the straight to Villeneuve was realigned to turn the unused chicane there into a new dogleg before the Tosa. To compensate for yet more chicanes the one at Acque Minerale was removed and the corner moved back to add more runoff. The double chicane before the pits became a single one, before a whole new pits were built after the GP had gone. Monza, too, had the safety treatment after 1994, with the long double rights at Lesmos sharpened to make more run off. All of the sanitisation, the squaring off of sweeping corners, the flattening of kerbs, and the paving over of gravel traps and grass, inevitably adds to the mystique of the era that died with Senna, and still the questions and debate continue.
What makes the tragic event so compelling is that the competing arguments both make sense and have supporting evidence stacked behind them. The steering column in the car was cut and re-welded at the driver's request. It was clearly snapped clean through after the crash with areas of fatiguing. The on board camera showed that buttons on the wheel were consistently lower down from where they had been as the final turn began, and modelling also shows that had the column broken at the snap point it could have dropped down in such a way. The car plowed straight on for no obvious mechanical reason other than a steering failure. Conversely the team's legal defence argued that the car's engine telemetry unit showed that steering inputs were still being recorded - impossible, they argued, if the column had terminally failed. The TV cameras also showed large plumes of sparks coming from under the car as it hit the bumps on the track. The race had been neutralised under the safety car for a start line crash. Tyre temperatures and pressures were very low, possibly enough to lose all the airflow under the car and sent it skating off. Senna specifically cautioned teammate Damon Hill to take a wider path through that section to avoid the bumps.
The Williams car was very aerodynamically unstable at this early stage in the year, prone to twitch between under and over steer, nervous feeling and easy to spin. At the limit on such a fast corner the car was like a ball on a string - one fault, or one severe bump and it would be irretrievably off. Imola never escaped those moments - the most scrutinised, replayed and debated seconds of any motor race. Now it is much like any other circuit with mostly tight second and third gear corners awkwardly adapted to the expectations of the modern world. As at Monza, the thought that drivers once held on through such fast sweeps facing down nothing but some grass and a concrete wall seems unthinkable, just as the sight of the great concrete banking once seemed extraordinary to that generation. The local authorities have made some effort to preserve the concrete, to prevent it from crumbling away for ever. There was no practical need to do so - the obsolete banking serves no purpose - but the pull of the mystique and history of racing in Italy compelled some kind of action to retain the structure, a modern day gladiators arena looming over the F1 field just as the Colloseum does over the Roman traffic. A bronze of Ayrton Senna sits on a plinth in the park opposite where he died, and every so often a historic racing day will be held and the Imola track will resonate again to the sound of screaming V12 Ferrari F1 engines, though the note no longer is held flat for thirty seconds, echoing back to the pits.
The history books record one other championship race in Italy besides the ones at Monza and Imola. The 1957 Pescara Grand Prix. Held in the wake of cancellations of other races that year, the race event itself dated to the 1920s, when it began life in the age of dirt tracks and big, rugged cars, as the Coppa Acerbo. It had seen a golden age in the 1930s as the Germans came to play on the seventeen mile course overlooking the Adriatic sea midway down Italy's eastern flank. The course was roughly square in shape, with two sides formed into six miles of straight blasts where the fastest cars of the late thirties could touch two hundred miles per hour. The other half was a series of twisty hillside roads running between towns with evocative names - Cappelle, Spoltore, Villa Raspa, Pornace, Montani. Revived after the war the Pescara Grand Prix (Tito Acerbo of the previous name was a long deceased Great War hero, but his brother was a fascist supporter in the next war, so out went the Acerbo name) stood with many other non-championship races looking from the outside in, waiting for a chance to join the party. The chance came in 1957, but the timing could not have been worse as spectators were killed in a crash at the Mille Miglia road race when a Ferrari ran into a ditch, ending the Mille Miglia forever, and leaving Ferrari in a huff about the amount of opprobrium that had come his way. Everyone up to and including the Vatican had come out and condemned the man who's cars killed the young men driving and the children watching. With Fangio and Maserati already secure with another title, Ferrari decided to lie low and not bother with Pescara.
So the Pescara organisers, at last able to boast of a championships round, faced the prospect of a no-show by one of the big three teams and a prominent three car gap in the entry. Ferrari's only Italian driver, Luigi Musso, went cap in hand to the old Ingenere and pleaded for a car at least to be sent for him to appear in front of the home crowd. Ferrari eventually relented, though his driver had to wait until the first practice day before he could be sure that the car and mechanics were coming. The two clear favourites for the race were Fangio, aged 46 and now a five-time World Champion, in the Maserati, and his one-time Mercedes Benz team apprentice Stirling Moss, now driving the British Vanwall. By later standards the race organisation was loose and laid back in a way scarcely conceivable.
The race circuit was marked out with some straw bales and road closures - much like a cycle race or a rally. The practice sessions would be early in the morning and late in the afternoon to avoid the midday temperatures. In the meantime there wasn't much for the drivers to do but lounge around a swimming pool or parade around the local shops. In between the practice the roads would be open to the local traffic - in the 1950s still consisting of many oxen carts and goat herders up on the hillsides. A few grandstands had been erected around the pit area on the main street in Pescara town - the Viale Bovio, but most of the 200,000 or so spectators were sat around the roadside, crowding around railings, sitting on walls, taking a picnic out to the fields. In spirit this would one day be familiar as how the crowds would watch rallying, but this was Formula One racing, racing on the closed roads just like in the earliest days of the motor car.
Fangio set the fastest time in practice sessions, lapping the dusty roads and flat out straights in 9 minutes 44 seconds. Moss jumped between three of the four Vanwalls available to him, searching for the one with the best performance. Though a precision tool, and a British one at that, Moss would always recall that the Vanwall was never quite as fun as a "Maser" to drive on such a circuit. The race would begin at 9am, and was scheduled for eighteen laps over approximately three hours. It would all be over by lunchtime, but the post race socialising and dinner would keep the competitors in the town that evening.
When the local dignitaries and worthies had arrived at the grandstand by the finish line, and the course closed off to traffic, the clerk of the course strolled out with the Italian flag. And they were off. Musso took the lead in the solo Ferrari, pushing hard to defend Italian pride. One great Italian racing driver - Ascari, and one future star - Castellotti, were dead. "Now I am alone" Musso told his girlfriend when the young Castellotti crashed and died at Modena testing a Ferrari. Musso would join them soon enough - overturning into a French field while pushing hard as he usually did, coincidentally in the final race that Fangio would ever drive. Musso held the lead for one lap until Moss and the big green Vanwall overhauled him. The sprint was soon over, and the attrition began. The second Vanwall of Tony Brooks broke a piston after the first lap, Behra's Maserati retired with an oil leak, and Bonnier's Maserati dropped out a while later. One of the two funny little Coopers broke a wheel on a kerb, and on lap nine Musso was done, also with an oil leak. The Ferrari's demise put paid to Fangio too, as the Argentine spun on the oil, curtailing any hope he had of beating Moss on pace.
The number 26 Vanwall motored on, it's driver making it all look easy, though it was anything but. For three hours of intense concentration Moss pushed on in the difficult but quick car, boiling hot as the mercury raised inexorably upwards towards 40 degrees. Moss drove down the main street of town, past the tribunes (tiny compared to the great concrete edifices of Monza) and into the 90 degree first turn, closest to the sea. From there it was a series of straights and sharp lefts and rights between the buildings, and the railway station. At the north end of the town Moss would take a right at the junction and turn onto the road that led through the hills. The first mile was still somewhat built up, then the rural seeped in; vineyards, fields, trees, grassy banks and hedgerows. Many of the kerbs were painted in a chequered flag motif, and there were haybales marking off the course at junctions and in towns, but apart from that it was purely the open road. Not too open, though. Rarely was the surface wider than two, narrow, lanes. At least in the country there was a small room for error: in the town the steps and walls were right there awaiting the slightest error.
All the while Moss kept pushing on, matching Fangio's pole position time. His progress looked serene, amplified by the lack of the usual rasping exhaust note from the quiet Vanwall. He was working much harder than appeared in the high shrouded cockpit of the curious submarine-like green car, a car that was not a natural on the rolling curves and cambers of an open road course. Only a few weeks before the fourteen miles of the German Nurburgring had seen the Vanwalls wallowing around on their suspension, unable to handle the punishment at all, and making their drivers stomach's churn. Halfway around the track Moss flew by the tiny Piazza and the church in Spoltore. The road led down into a sharp hairpin, before immediately doubling back. Today the relief sculpture of a 1920s racer standing on the roadside is the only overt commemoration of the race course. Given how much the countryside has been built up with new villas, cottages, petrol stations, warehouses the ubiquitous American-style box stores, and the constant stream of suburban Puntos and Pandas streaming by, it is hardly surprising the memories of the Grand Prix have faded almost entirely away.
After Cappelle, the course gradually opened out into wider and faster curves before the first of the three mile straights began. Hunkered down in the slippery Vanwall, though it only had 290 horsepower from its 4 cylinder engine, Moss could exceed 170 mph. He would be a green blur as he flashed past the point where Guy Moll, the 24 year old French golden boy of the 1930s was thrown into a wall when his Alfa Romeo swerved off the road in the 1934 Coppa Acerbo race. A puncture, or a component failure was a deep fear at the best of times in those days, but racing down the road in an Italian seaside town was especially not a place for contemplation. Just under three hours after setting out behind Musso's lairy Ferrari, Moss took the flag, immediately jamming on the brakes to stop by the pits. A seventeen mile victory lap was not on the cards. Three minutes later Fangio arrived, and the American Harry Schell took third in another Maserati. Apart from a quick pitstop for oil (and a large swig of water), Moss had been untroubled for his victory, and the first for a British car in a foreign championship GP.
Sunday 18th of August 1957 carried on as normal for the locals. The racing cars began the journey back to their teams, the journalists wrote up their stories, and the drivers and mechanics packed up, never to return for such an event again. There no more Pescara Grands Prix for championship points, nor would such a long and raw circuit ever be used again. There would also be no more Italian world champions in the drivers seat. For all the countless victories for Ferrari, nobody would emulate Ascari and win the big prize for drivers. But there would still be Formula 1 in Italy, and presumably there always will.
