Alberto Colombo

Alberto Colombo (born 23 February 1946 in Varedo, Lombardy – dead 7 January 2024) is a former racing driver from Italy.

He unsuccessfully entered three Formula One Grands Prix in 1978 with ATS (two failures to qualify) and Merzario (one failure to pre-qualify). He won the 1974 Italian Formula Three Championship and also enjoyed some success in Formula Two. Info from Wiki

Before Formula One

A few years ago at the Bathurst 1000 touring car race here in Australia, a rookie driver crashed during practice at the corner known as the ‘Dipper’, and afterwards fielded questions from journalists all wanting to know what happened. His answer was simple and candid: “I got to the Dipper, and ran out of talent!” Of course, no one can really specify where ability starts and finishes, but motor racing is full of stories of people with aspirations who found that their gifts fell short of their goals. Some reach the limits of their capabilities in junior categories and can’t seem to progress any further. To take an example, Mario Haberfeld was a star in F3, but wallowed for several seasons in F3000, watching his once-promising career gradually fall by the wayside, before leaving for Champ cars this year. The story of Italian driver Alberto Colombo has a similar ring, with no less than six seasons in European F2 dotted by three nondescript entries in Formula One.

From the town of Varedo, Colombo’s career started late, but got off on the right foot when he won the 1974 Italian F3 championship, driving both a GRD 374 Ford and a March 743 Toyota for the Scuderia del Lario team. At the age of 28 already, if he was to rise up the motor racing ladder and even make it to Formula One, he needed to make the move into F2 as soon as possible, which he did in 1975, driving March 742 and 752 BMWs for both the Trivellato Racing Team and the Cucine Elba Racing Team. He did a respectable job in his debut season, but he did not particularly distinguish himself. After a 7th on debut at Estoril, he recorded a mixture of retirements and lower-top 10 results. His best was 5th in the first heat of a non-championship race at Misano, and he scored a championship point for 6th place at Nogaro in the penultimate round of the year, though he then finished off with a DNQ at Vallelunga. Equal 26th in the title with only 1 point, there was no alternative but a second season in F2 in 1976.

Joining the Delta Squadra Corse outfit, he remained in a familiar March 752 BMW. Once again he proved to be a reliable performer, often finishing in the bottom half of the top 10, and taking 5th overall in the non-championship Misano round. Unable though to convert solid efforts into points, the best he could manage was 6th in a heat at Hockenheim, 7th outright at Vallelunga, and 6th outright at Estoril. Scoring only 1 point once again, he was equal 17th in the title chase. By 1977 and into his 30s, he must have started to wonder if he was ever going to get beyond F2, but he set about improving his results in that category by switching to the AFMP Euroracing team to drive a March 772 BMW. Taking his performance to a new level, he scored points in 8 of the 13 rounds (but none in the last four). He started the year with 5th at Silverstone and 4th at Thruxton before claiming 5th at Vallelunga, and he was lying 4th at Pau when the race was stopped.

That result at Pau was notable because at the time the event was halted, Didier Pironi in 2nd, Riccardo Patrese in 3rd, Colombo, and Ricardo Zunino in 6th had all crashed! But with new confidence after Pau, Colombo recorded his maiden podium with 3rd at Mugello, before two more 6ths at Rouen and Nogaro. Though his season rather tailed off after that, he had scored 18 points, equal with Ingo Hoffmann, but he lost out to the Brazilian on count-back and had to settle for a much-improved 8th in the F2 championship. By now, in all honesty much of a career beyond F2 looked out of the question, and for 1978 he was on the move again, this time to Sanremo Racing to pilot a March 782 BMW. Once more he scored points for 4ths at Rouen and Nogaro, and 5ths at Hockenheim and Mugello, and with 11 points (the same as Alex Ribeiro and Manfred Winkelhock) he was 10th overall on count-back. He also had a dabble in the European Touring Car Championship, sharing a Volkswagen Scirocco to 9th with Girolamo Capra in Austria.

Formula One

But, not long into the 1978 season, he was given the opportunity to make his Grand Prix debut at the age of 32, when he was brought in to replace Jean-Pierre Jarier in Gunther Schmid’s ATS team at the Belgian GP at Zolder after the mercurial French driver quit the team. With a 30-strong field and only 24 grid slots, and having never sat in the HS1 chassis previously, Alberto and his wild Italian afro were always going to struggle to make it through to race day. In the event, as expected Colombo failed to qualify, but he did not disgrace himself. Having survived pre-qualifying which already knocked out Hector Rebaque’s private Lotus and Arturo Merzario’s woeful self-branded machine, he was slowest of the remaining 28 drivers, but only 5.11s off the pole time set by Mario Andretti, and only 1.02s away from 24th-placed Brett Lunger. And he was only 0.14s behind the Theodore driven by Keke Rosberg, who in four years’ time would be World Champion.

Then for the Spanish GP at Jarama, after Rosberg failed to record a time and missed the pre-qualifying cut, Colombo was again the slowest of the remaining 28, this time 5.20s slower than Andretti’s Lotus on pole. He was joined in non-qualification by Merzario, Lunger and Emilio de Villota, but this time Alberto was only 0.72s away from the time set by Hans-Joachim Stuck in the Shadow in 24th place. Considering the limited time that he had had in the car, this had once again been a commendable effort. But in truth Colombo was no more than a decent F2 journeyman and not really F1 material, and after Jarama ATS replaced him with Rosberg, who was definitely a brighter prospect. All was not lost though, for later in the year as a one-off Merzario ran a second A1 chassis for Colombo at Monza for the Italian GP, but whereas Arturo by some miracle managed to get his car onto 22nd on the grid, Colombo was slowest in pre-qualifying and joined Harald Ertl, Rosberg and Rolf Stommelen in failing to pre-qualify.

After Formula One

Three F1 entries, two DNQs and one DNPQ later, it was as if Colombo had never driven in the highest league at all. So for 1979, it was back to the familiar surrounds of Formula 2, and the cockpit of the Sanremo Racing March 782. After his consistent points-scoring in the previous two seasons, he found the going harder with an outdated car. With a 6th at Silverstone, 4th at Zandvoort and 3rd at Thruxton, he fell to equal 13th in the championship, joining Miguel Angel Guerra on 8 points. One final season in the Sanremo 782 in 1980 saw him running 3rd at Hockenheim when the race was stopped because of Markus Höttinger’s fatal accident. He then took 6ths at Vallelunga and Pau, before a switch to a Toleman TG280 saw him end the year with a flourish, with 6th at Misano, 2nd in the non-championship race at Monza, and 5th at Hockenheim to place 10th overall with 9 points on the board. He then retired from racing to run the Sanremo team throughout the 1980s as team owner and manager.

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