Piercarlo Ghinzani (born 16 January 1952 in Riviera d’Adda, Lombardy) is a former racing driver from Italy. He currently manages his own racing team, Team Ghinzani, which was created in 1992 and is currently involved in several Formula Three championships. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Piercarlo Ghinzani contested several Formula 3 Championships, winning the European Championship in 1977 and the Italian Championship in 1979. He also competed in Formula 2 in 1978 before contesting Formula One between 1981 and 1989 for Osella, Toleman, Ligier and Zakspeed. He would also race in four Le Mans 24 Hour events with Martini Racing Lancia and later set up his own team, Team Ghinzani, which was involved in several different categories.
Born on January 16th, 1952, in Riviera d’Adda, Lombardy, Italy, Piercarlo developed a passion for motorsport from a young age as his father owned a machine shop and his early racing was on motorbikes. Switching to four wheels, he contested Formula Ford during 1970 though it was in Formula 3 that he established his reputation, although success was not immediate.
His debut came in 1973’s Italian F3 Championship, taking second place at Varano in late September with Scuderia Fratelli Allegrini’s Brabham BT41. In the following year he was ninth in the opening race at Casale with Scuderia Allegrini’s March 743, then eighteenth at Monza, though after qualifying fourth in practice at Vallelunga the race was cancelled due to the weather conditions. At a further round at Casale he was fifth in qualifying and won his heat though retired during the race. September saw a third place result at Magione and fifteenth at the Coppa Agip at Monza (he contested this one round with the Trivellato Racing Team) though at the final round at Mugello in October he was back with Scuderia Allegrini and finished fourth. He showed promise in 1975 in a Scuderia Angeleri Toyota powered CRS 001 and though he did not qualify for the first race at Casale he went on to take sixth at Varano and twelfth at Mugello. Then came two fifth place results at Magione and at Monza’s Gran Premio della Lotteria in June and finished ninth back at Casale in mid September. Away from single seaters he raced a Scuderia Citta dei Mille Porsche 914 with Giorgio del Curto in the Monza 6 Hours and finished eleventh.
1976 saw a step up when he was second in the Italian Championship with Martino Finotto’s Allegrini X7-sponsored March 763-Toyota, though he contested some races with a Scuderia Angleri 763. He was second at the opening rounds at Mugello and Varano then June saw him take his first victory at Magione, followed by third place at Enna-Pergusa. He was seventh and second at further races at Casale and took a second victory at Monza, then third at Vallelunga. There was a retirement at the final round at Magione (in a Chevron B34) and in the final scores he was second to Riccardo Patrese, with 36 points to Patrese’s 42. There was one sports car outing with his own Porsche 914 in the Mugello 6 Hours alongside Giovanni Carminati though they did not finish.
He began 1977 with AFMP Euroracing; AFMP deriving from Sandro Angeleri, Martino Finotto, March Engineering and Giampaolo Pavanello. His season started with third at the Coupe de Printemps race at Paul Ricard in March, then victory in the two races in the second round at the Goodyear-ADAC-3ookm event at the Nurburgring. His lowest results were fourth at the Monza Lotteria and seventh at Knutstorp though podiums at Paul Ricard, Zandvoort, Misano, Jarama, Vallelunga, Osterrirchring, Enna-Pergusa and Magione (twice), alongside victories at Zolder, Imola and Monza saw him take the title with 58 points over Anders Olofsson’s 46. However his challenge was almost halted by the collapse of AFMP mid-season but Giancarlo Pavanello and Martino Finotto were able to rescue the team which allowed Piercarlo to eventually take the title with his March 733. The year had also seen his F2 debut for the team and in 1978 he went on to complete a full season with them but it would be a disappointing period. Racing a BMW powered March 782, there were a number of retirements and his only results were seventh at Vallelunga, eighth at Mugello and Nogaro, tenth at Hockenheim and a fourth at Enna Pergusa (after starting on pole). In one sports car outing that year, he teamed with Carlo Facetti and Luigi Moreschi in a Jolly Club entered Porsche 935 at the 6 Hour Vallelunga and finished fifth.
Consequently, he returned to F3 in 1979 with a March 793-Alfa Romeo and drove it to overall victory in the Italian F3 Championship (ahead of Michele Alboreto) and selected rounds of the European F3 series. He took a win at Vallelunga’s opening round, with further victories at Misano, Varano, Enna-Pergusa, Monza and Mugello and added to his tally with podiums at Zandvoort and the Austrian GP support race at Osterreichring, fourth at Magny-Cours and the Monza Lotteria and eighth at Monaco. Alongside his F3 outings he raced a Fiat Ritmo at the Monza 4 Hours 4 Hours (with ‘Gilena’) and in Italian Championship rounds he was fifth, eleventh and second at Mugello, Magione and Vallelunga.
Despite taking the Italian F3 title his goal of racing in F1 would still elude him so he put his single-seater career on hold and switched to sports cars in 1980 with a works Lancia Beta Monte Carlo. He also contested two races with the Fiat Ritmo though retired in the Monza 4 Hours (with Pierluigi Grassetto and Danielle Toffoli) and from the 500km Pergusa with Penezi Walter Dona. The Lancia suffered a number of retirements due to mechanical issues, including his debut at Le Mans (oil pump) with Markku Alen and Gianfranco Brancatelli and electrical problems ending his and Andrea de Cesaris’ Vallelunga 6 Hours. The best results were fifth at the 1000km Monza and two sixth places at the Nurburgring 1000km (all with Eddie Cheever), sixth in the 6 Hour Watkins Glen (with Martino Finotto) and his highest placing was third with a Fruit of the Loom/Team GS-Sport entered car at a DRM round at Hockenheim.
He continued with the Martini Racing squad in 1981 and the year started in February in America at the Daytona 24 Hours, with Michele Alboreto and Beppe Gabbiani. In May, he and M.Alboreto were disqualified from the 6 Hour Mugello race due to a gearbox casing being changed and Andrea de Cesaris were thirteenth in the Monza 1000km but did not finish in the Silverstone 6 Hours. Then, in the middle of May he finally received the call up to race in F1, replacing the injured Miguel Angel Guerra at Osella for the Belgian GP at Zolder. However, it was a harsh introduction as the weekend was overshadowed by two tragic incidences with mechanics, one of them proving fatal. The narrow pit lane at Zolder had long been criticised and during practice, Osella mechanic Giovanni Amadeo slipped from a ledge and into the path of Carlos Reutemann’s Williams in the pit-lane. Reutemann had no time to brake nor room to swerve to avoid him and he suffered a double skull fracture. Although he was rushed to hospital, the sad announcement came after the race weekend had finished that he passed away from his injuries. Giovanni was actually a member of Piercarlo’s crew. There was also anger from the drivers that their request to have the maximum number of cars allowed in qualifying be reduced was refused. At the start of the race many climbed from their cars on the grid in protest, with the aim of delaying the start and mechanics and some team owners joined them on track. By the time the cars were eventually ready on the gird, Ricardo Patrese’s Arrows had stalled and his mechanic Dave Luckett jumped down onto the track to help start the car just as the race was about to start. In a harrowing scene, although some cars avoided him his Arrows team mate Siegfried Stohr ploughed into R.Patrese and D.Luckett. He fortunately survived, albeit with broken legs, but though an ambulance was on the scene within seconds the race continued. No signal was given to stop and it was only after Didier Pironi slowed his Ferrari and stopped that the organisers were forced to stop the race. The race was restarted forty minutes later and Piercarlo brought the FA1B home in thirteenth place, with Reutemann taking a hollow victory after the weekend’s tragic events. He would have a second drive for Osella at the next round but in the two weeks between the races he competed in the 1000km Nurburgring and took his highest finish that season, with fourth place alongside Hans Heyer in a GS Tuning entered Lancia. The following week saw him at the Monaco GP but he failed to qualify for the race at the Principality and there were no further F1 drives that year. In June he was back at Le Mans, with Riccardo Patrese and Hans Heyer, though they retired after 186 laps due to cylinder head problems and he retired from his final race with the Lancia, alongside Beppe Gabbiani at the 6 Hour Watkins Glen.
There were no F1 outings during 1982 and he raced a Lancia C1 alongside Fabi, Patrese and Heyer though it was a frustrating season. In the eight events contested, there was one retirement due to an accident at Fuji though the other six were from mechanical issues. However although his only finish came at the Mugello 1000km, he and Michele Alboreto won the race and came in ahead of the Corrado Fabi/Alessandro Nannini Martini Lancia LC1.
He tested a Tyrrell 011 at Paul Ricard in early 1983 but despite being quicker than Stefan Johansson, Chico Serra and Danny Sullivan, Sullivan was chosen. His fortunes would later change due to Osella’s deal with a pharmaceutical company as “In ’83 Osella took a nice sponsor in Kelemata and they called me and tell me: “If you want to come do all the season we can start working together.” I gave a good impression as a test driver and showed I was reliable and could understand the car. This was my chance to be in F1. I have to have F1 in my life.” However, it was a tough, frustrating year and he failed to qualify for the six opening races. His first start came at Detroit, though he did not finish while the following races saw retirements due to mechanical issues at five rounds and his only finish was eleventh in Austria. He continued in sports cars again with Martini Racing, alongside Corrado Fabi, Paolo Barilla, Giorgio Francia and Hans Heyer, but the season was blighted by the new LC2’s fragility. There were retirements at Le Mans, Monza, Silverstone, Nurburgring, Mugello and Kyalami and his only finish was an eleventh place at Spa.
The team entered a single car for the first few races in 1984 though Jo Gartner joined the team from San Marino onwards. At the second race at South Africa, Piercarlo was lucky to survive a massive accident during the race morning warm up session when he crashed on a high speed section of the Kyalami track. The car was carrying a full fuel load and a huge fire started which completely consumed the car but though he escaped with only minor burns to his hands it was enough for him to be withdrawn from the race. A month in hospital followed but just four rounds later he finished seventh out of the eight finishers in Monaco (Stefan Bellof was ninth though was disqualified) after the conditions became so bad that the red flag was shown on lap 32. He suffered a number of retirements though finished ninth at Brands Hatch and seventh at Monza but he took a career best fifth place at Dallas. Dallas was a race of high attrition, crumbling tarmac and oppressive heat and only eight of the twenty six cars completed the race. Nigel Mansell suffered gearbox failure near the finish and began pushing his Lotus towards the line but collapsed with heat exhaustion just as Piercarlo’s Osella raced by to take fifth.
Remaining with Osella for 1985, he raced their FA1F for the first three races, taking twelfth and ninth in Brazil and Portugal though was not classified in San Marino. The team introduced their FA1G but there was only a fifteenth place result at France from the five races with it and in the latter half of the year he was drafted into the Toleman team to partner Teo Fabi. Despite the competitiveness of the car (with Fabi putting his car on pole in Germany), Piercarlo suffered reliability problems and retired from every race he entered, mainly due to engine failures.
1986 saw a return to Osella but, driving an outdated and uncompetitive car, it proved to be a painful season full of retirements and there was only one finish, taking eleventh place in Austria. In sports cars he contested three races with Joest Racing plus drove Taverna Luigi Techno Racing’s Alba AR3 at the 1000km Spa though retired the AR3 after seven laps due to suspension problems. He entered the 1000km Nurburgring with Joest’s Porsche 956 alongside Kris Nissen and John Winters though it was a chaotic event. Low cloud and rain fell on the circuit throughout the beginning of the race, causing a multitude of accidents and spins. At one point, due to the amount of debris littering the track, the event was stopped for two hours but three Porsche teams chose to withdraw from the event, believing the track to be unsafe in the continuing wet conditions, and this included Piercarlo’s car. However, in his two other Joest drives, in October and November, his perseverance was rewarded when he took victory at the 1000km Fuji (with Paolo Barilla) and in the Kyalami 500km when racing solo.
For 1987 he signed with Ligier though the team’s initial start suffered due to problems with their engine supplies. They intended running turbocharged 4 cylinder Alfa Romeo engines but this was ended by team mate Rene Arnoux’s scathing comments regarding their quality and performance and Alfa’s parent company Fiat cancelled the engine project. Speaking of this time he said “I was working all winter in Balocco at Alfa Romeo’s circuit. They were starting in F1 with the turbocharged engine. We went to Imola for free practice and I remember Arnoux was in the car when the engine stopped.’Arnoux got out of the car and was speaking really loudly. “This engine doesn’t go, it’s got no power, it’s a s**t engine!”’ And with Italian journalists watching on, it spread across the media and the bosses caught wind. With that Alfa canned the engine programme.” The team were forced to adapt their cars to fit Megatron engines and the team missed the opening race in Brazil while the rear suspension was re-designed to fit the new engine. He managed to finish more races than in the previous year, but was unfortunately disqualified at Silverstone following incidents that occurred when his car ran out of fuel during qualifying. The mechanics went out to the car and worked on it at the side of the track, and then push-started him, against regulations. But when the session finished he was so agitated that he ignored the chequered flag and did another lap and following a stewards’ meeting he was excluded from the rest of the event. In the races he finished he came home eighth in Austria and Italy, twelfth at Monaco and Hungary, thirteenth in Japan and his best result was seventh in Belgium. His only one sports car outing that year came with a Joest Porsche 962 in the 1000km Monza though he and Klaus Ludwig retired due to overheating.
After the ill-fated year with Ligier he moved to Zakspeed alongside rookie Bernd Schneider but it was another frustrating year which saw both drivers struggle. The heavy turbo powered 881s were often slower than the atmospheric cars and Piercarlo’s only three finishes were fifteenth in Mexico and fourteenth in Canada and Germany. Of his time there he described how “That was a peculiarity. They were really good with the touring cars but couldn’t understand single-seaters because they didn’t do aerodynamics. In touring cars it was the engine that was important but in F1 it was the aerodynamics that you needed to understand. They didn’t have space for aerodynamics on the car and so the car was not competitive.”
He returned to Osella for 1989, teamed with Nicola Larini, but his final season in F1 must have caused him much anguish as failed to pre-qualify in thirteen out of sixteen races. Of the three races he qualified for, he retired in Hungary due to electrics, then gearbox issues in Spain and an accident in Australia. He had announced his decision to retire before in Australia but after qualifying twenty first his race ended when he was hit from behind by Nelson Piquet. While braking for the hairpin at the end of the Brabham Straight on lap 19, his Lotus hit the Osella (with Piquet thankfully unhurt after his helmet was hit by one of the Osella’s rear wheels) and he stated that he simply not seen him until he hit him due to the amount of spray. He eventually decided to move on from F1, as “For the troubles in pre-qualifying it was a motivation for me to stop racing. It was just so difficult. The big problem was the money because you arrive and you had to start the race because the sponsor would not pay if the car was not on the circuit. This was a really big responsibility for the driver because otherwise the team couldn’t afford to pay the mechanics or the expenses. It was a really bad situation when I didn’t get beyond pre-qualifying. It was a really bad moment. For that reason I made the decision to stop racing.”
After retiring he formed Team Ghinzani, which would race in Italian, German and Formula 3 Euro Series plus Italian Formula 3000/Euro Formula 3000. The team went on to manage the A1 Team Italy in collaboration with Arco Motorsport, in the A1 Grand Prix series, and was active in the Italian Porsche Carrera Cup. Alongside this Piercarlo also established a car dealership in Bergamo. “Of his racing, he stated “I’m disappointed that I never had the opportunity to show what I was truly capable of. My results in F1 were dictated by vast differences in performance due to the financial gulf between the big and small teams. Without a half-decent chassis, engine, and tyres, you were sometimes just a spectator.” In 2015 he auctioned off his racing cars collection, which included two Formula 1 Osellas and a Toleman. He created his collection after he stopped racing but said “I’m selling them because I don’t really know what to do with them-I certainly don’t have time to run them. Life changes and I am getting old!
For a man of over 100 GP entries (and failing to qualify for a monster 31 of them) driving over half your F1 career for perennial tail-enders Osella is quite an accomplishment in itself. But then Piercarlo Ghinzani is famed for the one-liner “Better to be at the back of Formula 1 than not to be in Formula 1 at all”. QED.
For Osella, the man must have been a God-sent, since Piercarlo wasn’t overly talented but probably the only half-decent driver to never complain and keep Osella in business for a large part of the 13 seasons in which the Osella Squadra Corse competed in F1. As with Tecno, Martini, Minardi, Coloni or Toleman, Osella came up through the ranks of F3 and F2 to try its luck in the world’s top category. As with the aforementioned examples, success was scarce to non-existent. But where the likes of Tecno, Martini and Coloni gave up after a short struggle, Osella is only outdone in tenacity by Minardi. Then again, this is only when taking their years of participation into account. Putting up Osella against Minardi by its points tally or its qualification record would suggest the former team consisted entirely of madmen rather than enthusiasts.
So, in the end, when Osella was taken over by Gabriele Rumi of wheel manufacturer Fondmetal – later becoming involved with Minardi before passing away in 2000 – no-one shed a tear. With Grouillard and Tarquini on board, the restructured team momentarily looked better than in all its previous years but it proved to be a false dawn.
In 1998 and 1999, as a shadow of its former shadowy self, Osella made a short comeback in the second-division SR2 class of the ISRS, later redubbed SportsRacing World Cup (now FIA Sportscar Championship), supplying cars to the privateer outfit of Luigi Taverna. In a way, that marginal presence in motorsport felt good to Joe Pundit, for with his little BMW-engined sports racer Enzo Osella returned to his roots as a two-bit sportscar constructor – just as it was also satisfying to see that Arturo Merzario was among the drivers to take on Osella in the ISRS. Of late, Ghinzani held a similarly modest view, running his own team of BMW-powered Dallaras in the poorly supported Italian F3 championship before transferring his attention to the Euro F3000 Championship.
But why should we single out Ghinzani’s 1986 British GP adventure? Well, we should say because of his questionable involvement in the startline fracas that ended Jacques Laffite’s F1 career. Up to Brands, F1’s elder statesman of the mid-eighties had seen somewhat of a revival, taking podiums here and there, and showing the zest with which he once arrived on the GP scene, back in 1976. In fact, after several seasons of misfortune and ill-guided chassis designs (remember the disastrous design novelty of the 1983 JS21 with its peculiar sidepod configuration) prodigal son Laffite had turned Guy Ligier’s team into a contender once more, the French outfit enjoying its most successful season since… well, since Laffite left the team.
Fortunately for Ligier, Laffite renewing his acquaintance with Frank Williams didn’t turn out such a good idea, the Frenchman totally lost near the end of the 1983 season and the 1984 season spoiled by recurrent Honda engine failure. In 1986, after a promising first season with Renault power, Laffite and Ligier were again a force to be reckoned with, the pretty and effective JS27 also giving René Arnoux’s career a new lease of life.
At Brands, however, it all turned sour after a poor qualifying effort by Jacques, who could not do better than 19th. It proved to be a dangerous place on the grid, for just after the lights had turned to green chaos ensued on the Brabham straight. Suddenly cars were bouncing to and from the barriers, as Laffite had made a poor getaway and made contact with Ghinzani, also collecting Berg and Danner in the process. As the leaders went round on their opening lap, the back end of the grid was left behind in bits and pieces. The red flag was out.
Laffite’s shattered legs were easily diagnosed and when the field came up for the restart, Jacques knew his GP career was over. But at least he had managed to beat Graham Hill’s record number of GP participations just the race before, Jacques’ 176 GP starts remaining an unbeatable figure before Patrese, Piquet and De Cesaris flew past.
