Felice Bonetto (9 June 1903 in Manerbio, near Brescia, Italy – 21 November 1953 in Silao, Mexico) was a courageous racing driver who earned the nickname Il Pirata (The Pirate).
He was a road racing legend, who started racing in the 1930s, and enjoyed a brief Formula One career, including a win in the non-Championship Grande Premio do Jubileu in 1953. During his Formula One career, he raced Italian cars, starting with a privateer Maserati for Scuderia Milano, then the works Alfa Romeo, and finally the works Maserati, achieving two shared podiums finishes in the World Championship. His greatest successes were in sport cars, winner of the 1952 Targa Florio, but his career and life were cut short when he fatally crashed into a lamp post in the 1953 Carrera Panamericana whilst leading. Info from Wiki
Info by Hans Hulsebos
He started racing bikes in 1926 and switched to cars five years later, the Italian competing in national events for the rest of the 1930s. He drove a Cisitalia after the war before joining Enzo Ferrari’s new marque. A retiree from the 1949 Italian GP, he finished second in that year’s Mille Miglia with a Ferrari 166MM.
Bonetto a Maserati 4CLT/50 during 1950 and he was fifth on his world championship debut in the Swiss GP. He led the Mille Miglia with a private Alfa Romeo and was invited to join the all-conquering works team for 1951. He started four GPs that year and shared the third-placed Alfa Romeo 159 in Italy with Giuseppe Farina. Fourth in Britain and fifth in Spain – Bonetto was seventh in the 1951 World Championship.
A move to Lancia for 1952 included victory in the Targa Florio, second in the Giro di Sicilia and third in the Mille Miglia. He was also a works Maserati driver in single-seaters at the time and José Froilán González took over his Maserati A6SSG to finish third in the 1953 Dutch GP.
The season ended with Mexico’s Carrera Panamericana and Bonetto’s Lancia D24 won the first stage. He was still leading when he crashed into a house in Silao and was killed instantly.
Bio ATRwork
Bio by Stephen Latham
A road racing legend, Felice Bonetto’s greatest success came in sports cars but though he only had a brief Formula One career he had two shared podium finishes in the World Championship plus a win in a non-Championship Grande Premio do Jubileu in 1953.
Born in Manerbio, Brescia, Italy in 1903, he started racing motor bikes and was almost 28 when he switched to cars, competing in a Bobbio-Penice race, with a Bugatti. In a side note to this, the third running of this Bobbio-Penice race, in 1931, was won by Enzo Ferrari in an Alfa Romeo. Felice would become known as a fearless, hard charging racer though was often in cars that were not always competitive. In 1933 he was third in the Gran Premio di Monza with an Alfa Romeo 8C though the race would be remembered as the Black Day of Monza as three drivers, Giuseppe Campari, Mario-Umberto Borzacchini and Count Stanisław Czaykowski, crashed fatally within a few hours of each other. He was also second with an Alfa 8C 2300 in that year’s Coppa Principessa di Piemonte race and in the following year he retired from the Tripoli GP though was twelfth (with Negri) in the Mille Miglia.
Although he was well known in Italy in the late thirties he only came to international attention in the forties, with his greatest successes coming after the Second World War. Racing a Fiat 1100 in 1946 he was second at the Circuito di Asti, third at Mantova and the Circuito della Superba and fifth at the Coppa Arturo Mwrcanti (Milan). In 1947 there were victories at Asti and Florence with a Delage plus a third place finish at Pescara in a Maserati. He raced a Cisitalia in F2 in the following year, winning the Nuvolari Cup at Mantua, finishing second and seventh at Mantova and Pescara though he and Mariano retired from the Mille Miglia.
1949 saw him with Scuderia Ferrari and he was second in the Napoli and Monza Grands Prix and third at the Bari Grand Prix. He retired while racing a Stanguellini S1100 at the GP de Madrid though a highlight of the year was a second place finish (with Carpani) in the Mille Miglia with the 166 MM, behind race winning teammate Clemente Biondetti in a similar car.
In 1950, the World Championship was established and he contested two races in his Maserati 4CLT/50m, as Scuderia Milano, making his debut (by now aged almost 47 years old) at the Swiss GP at Bremgarten. He qualified twelfth but after a strong battle with the factory and Enrico Plate teams he finished fifth, behind Prince Bira though ahead of Toulo de Graffenreid. Four weeks later, he raced in the French Grand Prix at Reims-Gueux though was forced to retire due to a broken engine. Away from Formula 1, he won the Grand Premio di Oporto in an Alfa Romeo, the Circuito di Senigallia in an Osca MT4 1100 plus won a Pontedecimo-Giovi hillclimb with an Osca. He retired from the Mille Miglia and Targa Florio events though competed in a National Mar del Plata race with a Cisitalia and in the May raced for the first time in the Carrera Panamericana, finishing eighth with an Alfa Romeo 6C2500.
He was offered a works Alfa Romeo drive in 1951 and with their new 1900TI was the winner of the touring-cars class (fifteenth overall) in the Giro di Sicilia. He entered four World Championship races with them and in his first race took points with a fourth-place finish in the British GP at Silverstone though there was a retirement at the Nurburgring. He took his first podium in the Italian Grand Prix, shared with Nino Farina who, after taking Felice’s car, had a leaking fuel tank and had to come in twice for fuel, though brought it home in third place. There were more points with a fifth place in the season’s final race, the Spanish GP at Pedralbes, and he finished eighth in the championship. In endurance events, although he did not finish in the Carrera Panamericana he and Casnaghi were sixth in the Mille Miglia.
In 1952, he continued combining Grands Prix and road racing plus drove for different Italian manufacturers. He had left Alfa Romeo at the end of the year to take up Lancia’s offer to race sports cars and raced their Aurelia at Porto (12th), the Coppa della Toscana (8th), Vila Real (4th) and the GP Bern (6th). In endurance events he retired from the Mille Miglia and the Carrera Panamericana (fortunately escaping uninjured after a huge crash during the first stage of the race) though June saw him at Le Mans, sharing a car with Enrico Anselmi and they finished eighth overall and second in S2.0 class. A high point was a second place finish in the Giro di Sicilia (with Volpini) close behind Paolo Marzotto’s winning 2-litre Ferrari but he took perhaps his greatest victory when he won the Targa Florio, leading a Lancia 1-2-3 finish. Alongside the Lancia he raced for Officine Maserati and was fourth with Nello Pagani at a Formula Libre GP Rio de Janeiro though retired at Interlagos plus there there was a race at Chieti with a Volpini Gilera. In Grands Prix, there were two starts with a Maserati A6GCM in the F1 Championship and several non-championship races. Unfortunately, he was disqualified at the German Grand Prix due to receiving a push start after a spin though after qualifying thirteenth for the Italian GP he went on to finish fifth.
Despite now being almost 50 years old, he was more active than ever in 1953, undertaking almost a full season of Grands Prix with the Maserati works team and racing sports cars again for Lancia. The season started with a retirement in the Giro di Sicilia in a Lancia Aurelia and third in the Mille Miglia with the D20. Although he and Gino Valenzano did not finish at Le Mans, he was second in the Gran Premio di Monza (behind Villoresi’s Ferrari) and ninth in the Coppa d’Oro delle Dolomiti. He and Froilan Gonzalez contested the Grande Premio do Jubileu at Monsanto Circuit, Lisbon but Gonzalez crashed in practice and though not seriously hurt, he had to return to Italy and was also unable to race again for a few weeks. Felice’s main opposition came from Stirling Moss in a Jaguar though after taking the lead at half-distance he kept it to the checkered flag. Racing Maserati’s A6GCM in the World Championship, despite retirements in Argentina, France and Italy he was fourth in Germany and sixth at Silverstone. There was a shared fourth place with Fangio in the Swiss race at Bremgarten; after having gearbox problems on lap eight he eventually pitted and took over Felice’s car then charged hard to make up the ground he had lost and finished fourth.
There was a second World Championship podium at the Dutch GP at Zandvoort, where, after Froilán Gonzalez retired with suspension trouble, he took over Felice’s car and went on to finish in a shared third place with him. Returning to the Targa Florio, as the previous year’s winner, he decided to take a reconnaissance lap an hour before the start of the race but the same idea occurred to Agostino Bignami, with his Fiat Stanguellini. Unfortunately, they took it in opposite directions and were involved in a head on crash though both drivers were luckily uninjured.
Then in the November he travelled to Mexico for the Carrera Panamericana, the last round of 1953’s World Sportscar Championship. The notoriously difficult road event took place over a 3000km circuit, beginning on a Thursday near the Guatemalan border and would end in Ciudad Juarez on the following Monday. 172 teams started the race and Lancia had entered five cars, for Felice, Juan Manuel Fangio, Piero Taruffi, Giovanni Bracco and Eugenio Castellotti plus had a crew of 30 mechanics and engineers and team manager Gianni Lancia followed the race in a private airplane. The race was divided into eight legs and Felice won the first 530kms stretch from Tuxtla Gutiérrez to Oaxaca, ahead of teammates Taruffi, Fangio and Castellotti. Taruffi won the next two stages and on the third day the two continued to battle with each other until Taruffi went off the road in the town of Silao, damaging his steering. Tragically, Felice also crashed in Silao, hitting his head on the balcony of a house and was killed instantly. Before the race, he and other drivers had marked dangerous corners on the route with blue signs though his accident happened at one of those points. There was speculation he was momentarily distracted and lost concentration worrying about Taruffi’s crash but we will never know. After the accident, Gianni Lancia wanted to withdraw but his drivers decided to keep on racing in honour of their team mate and they took the first three places. There could be no joy though as 1953’s event turned out to be the deadliest Carrera Panamericana; besides Felice, the race also claimed the lives of fellow Italian drivers, Antonio Stagnoli and Giuseppe Scotuzzi, plus six spectators who were hit by a car.
Felice was buried in the Cimitero Monumentale di Milano. His son Roberto became involved in journalism and later became deputy editor of Quattroroute. His nephew Rodolfo became a leading figure in Italian architecture and industrial design while Rodolfo’s son, Marco would become chairman of Bonetto Design. In 2012, the Felice Bonetto Park was founded in Silao in his memory, with local dignitaries plus 100 cars and drivers taking part in this event. The park has an exact replica of the Lancia he drove in 1953, only a few metres from where he lost his life on that fateful November day.
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