Clemente Biondetti

Clemente Biondetti (18 October 1898 – 24 February 1955) was an Italian auto racing driver. Born into a working-class family, Biondetti raced motorcycles before turning to automobiles where he had greater success.

Clemente Biondetti participated in one Formula One World Championship event, the 1950 Italian Grand Prix. Driving a self-built Ferrari-Jaguar hybrid car, engine problems forced him out of the race thus he failed to score any championship points.

Biondetti loved racing cars and continued to compete in sports car and endurance events, earning a second-place finish in a Ferrari at the 12 Hours of Pescara in 1952 against much younger drivers. After suffering from cancer for a number of years, he was forced to retire in 1954. He succumbed to cancer on 24 February 1955 in Florence. As a result, he became the first Formula One World Championship driver to die of natural causes. Info from Wiki

The Ferrari-Jaguar Formula One Car You Never Knew Existed
By Aaron Miller

In the earliest days of Formula One, a man named Clemente Biondetti did something that has almost definitely never been done before or since. He built a Formula One car on his own, by combining elements of the top race cars from Jaguar and Ferrari…and by some accounts, from Maserati, too. He brought it to the first F1 Italian Grand Prix in 1950, and managed to qualify for the race, though he was unable to go the distance.

The Biondetti Ferrari Jaguar Special, as it’s called, remains shrouded in mystery and has for decades been the subject of quiet debate by the most dedicated Ferrari and Jaguar lovers. This is its story.

Clemente was one of the best drivers in the world in the 1930s and ’40s. He racked up a pair of wins in the famed Targa Florio and won the legendary Mille Miglia more times than anyone in history. After WWII, he gave Ferrari its first wins in both races.

When Jaguar went racing with its XK 120, Biondetti was the only non-Brit given a factory car. He fell in love with the engine instantly. But when he was running second in the Targa Florio behind Ferrari’s favorite driver, Alberto Ascari, an internal piece of the engine broke and he was finished.

After the race he asked Jaguar to convert the car to compete in the then-new F1 series. It declined. He asked for a new engine so he could build a car. Denied again. But the company let him have the blown motor from the Targa. Considerate of them, right?

This is where the story gets murky. One of the few undisputed facts of what happened next is that Biondetti took the running gear (engine, transmission, etc…) from the Jag, fitted it inside a Ferrari body, and took it to Italy’s Monza circuit for his first and only F1 race.

According to some, he simply mated the Jag bits to a Ferrari 166, while others say it was a Maserati frame, Ferrari body, and Jag running gear. Confused yet?

By far the most credible and logic-based answer is that he built his own chassis to use Ferrari and Jaguar parts. This holds true on the assumption that the car from which the body originally came was actually Ferrari 166 Chassis 02C—which some say was the very first Ferrari ever sold outside of the company.

Just a few months before Biondetti’s special debuted, chassis 02C went under the knife to be converted to a street car, and the body was replaced.

Everything after that, including the authenticity of this car that participated in the Mille Miglia 15 years ago, is a mystery. Still, there’s no denying that in 1950 a man with a home-built, Jaguar-powered Ferrari Formula One car qualified for the very first Formula One race held in Italy.

Amazing.

Aaron Miller is the Rides editor for Supercompressor, and can be found on Twitter. He loves mysterious old cars like this.

Before Formula One

Was 2000 the first year that Jaguar has had anything to do with Formula One? Such is the common conception. And a misconception it is as well. Here we bring you the story of the man who gave the big cat its first taste of Formula One, all 17 laps of it way back in 1950: Clemente Biondetti, who was born in Budduso, Sardinia, in the 19th century. On 18 August, 1898 to be precise. He began racing motorcycles in 1923, but turned to cars by 1927. By 1931 he had shown enough ability behind the wheel, especially in Talbots, to be taken on as a Maserati works driver, and he rewarded the Italian marque with 3rd place in both the Rome and French GPs. Leaving the works team after 1933, for 1934 he joined the Gruppo San Giorgio team, driving a Maserati 8CM and later a Maserati 4C-2500. His best achievement that year was 5th in the Tripoli GP.

Eventually entering a private Siata and a Maserati 6C-34, in 1936 he would suffer from a string of retirements, but he would come 6th in Milan and 2nd in Modena, in a voiturette class race. The voiturette class was limited to 1500cc engines, and was a class below the main Grand Prix formula, which included the fearsome Mercedes Benz and Auto Union cars of the time. 1936 also saw Biondetti come 4th in the Mille Miglia, that famous sports car race which he was to make his own, driving an Alfa Romeo with Cerasa as his co-driver. For 1937 he would firstly drive a Maserati Tipo 34, before switching to an Alfa Romeo Tipo C run by Enzo Ferrari. But this brought him little success – though he finished 2nd in Naples, he failed to finish at Monaco or in Italy.

1938 was perhaps one of his best years. Not only did he win the Mille Miglia with Stefani in an Alfa Romeo 2900B, beating 140 other starters over the 1,013 miles, but he also drove in Grands Prix as a works driver for Alfa Corse to great effect in both an Alfa Romeo Tipo 312 and Tipo 316. In the Tripoli GP, he held on to a trio of the mighty Mercedes cars before his engine expired. The year also saw Biondetti come second at the Coppa Ciano voiturette race, and 3rd in the Coppa Ciano race proper. Continuing his fine form into 1939, he would be exceedingly competitive in a number of voiturette races. He was 3rd at the Coppa Ciano, 2nd in Switzerland, 2nd in the Grand Prix du Centenaire in Luxembourg, and he won at the Coppa Acerbo at Pescara in an Alfa Romeo 158, beating the likes of Luigi Villoresi and Giuseppe Farina.

With the outbreak of war, his opportunities were more limited in 1940, but he came 2nd in Tripoli and was 4th in the Mille Miglia with Stefani. When he resumed racing after the war, he was already 49 years old, but as good as ever, driving Ferrari sports cars, and competing in several non-championship GPs. He won the Mille Miglia in 1947 in stunning fashion, overcoming the loss of two gears and a fuel-feed problem in his Alfa Romeo 2900B shared with Emilio Romano to down the legendary Tazio Nuvolari in the pouring rain that marred the event. What’s more, he would defend the crown successfully in 1948 and 1949. In 1948, he drove a Ferrari 166S with Giuseppe Navone, while in 1949 he was in a Ferrari 166MM with Ettore Salani. In these two years he also won the Targa Florio (Tour of Sicily).

Formula One

The 1950 racing year, though, is perhaps the most important ever, for it saw the birth of the World Championship, to consist of several of the more important races in the European season. For most of that year, Biondetti had been driving for the works Jaguar team, coming 8th in the Mille Miglia in an XK120 with co-driver Bronzoni. He then drove a new C-type at Le Mans with Leslie Johnson. Biondetti was so impressed with the car that he tried to get one to enter for the Italian races or the European season, including the World Championship Italian GP at Monza. Unable to do that, instead he went for something a little different, building his own hybrid car, sticking the 3.4 litre Jaguar 6 sports engine in his Ferrari 166S! But this car would not prove overly successful.

Nonetheless, he entered the car at the 1950 World Championship Italian GP at Monza, thereby giving Jaguar their one and only taste of F1 before 2000. But, like the 2000 Jag effort, it would prove a severe disappointment. He only qualified the car 25th out of 27 starters with a time of 2:30.6, but more to the point, this time was some 32 seconds slower than Juan Manuel Fangio on pole. What’s more, Farina, the man who would win the 1950 title, and the man whom Biondetti managed to beat before the war, was 30.4 seconds faster now!

Biondetti could only take comfort from the fact that he was faster than Gianfranco Comotti and Paul Pietsch, but he would find little solace in the race either. He would retire on lap 17 of 80 with a Jaguar engine failure, but such was the attrition rate that he was already the tenth retirement! While Fangio would also set the fastest lap, he would also retire, as well as Ferrari ace Alberto Ascari. Farina would win the race, while Ascari jumped into Dorino Serafini’s car to finish 2nd, in front of Luigi Fagioli, Louis Rosier, Philippe Etancelin and Emmanuel de Graffenried.

After Formula One

Undeterred, Biondetti raced the same car in the 1951 Mille Miglia, but was forced to withdraw. But he kept thinking about the Jaguar C-type, and when Jaguar refused to give him one to enter privately, he decided to make one himself, building a tubular chassis and a sports body, and painting the car red. Though Jaguar did provide him with an engine and a C-type grill, they would give him precious little support, and come 1952 he gave the car to Pezzoli and Cozzulani to enter in the Mille Miglia.

Biondetti himself went back to prancing horses instead of persevering with cross-breeds. In a Ferrari shared with Stagnoli, he would come 3rd in the 1952 Monaco sports car GP, as well as 2nd in the Acerbo Cup, a 12hr race at Pescara in Italy. While in 1953 he raced Lancias, he returned to Ferrari for his last year in 1954, during which he came 4th in his beloved Mille Miglia.

But by this stage he had already been suffering from cancer for some time, and he decided that, approaching 60, his racing time had come and gone, so he retired. In good time, as well – by 1955 he had passed away, sadly succumbing to cancer in Florence on 24 February, at the age of 56.

CAREER SUMMARY

Copyright © 2001 Formula One Rejects. All rights reserved.