Vittorio Brambilla (11 November 1937 – 26 May 2001) was a Formula One driver from Italy who raced for the March, Surtees and Alfa Romeo teams. Particularly adept at driving in wet conditions. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Born on November 11th 1937, like a number of others Vittorio Brambilla’s racing started with motorbikes. He and brother Ernestino grew up in Monza and they would ride their Moto Guzzi bikes from their father’s dealership to school and work. It was said that on one occasion, as they took the blind turn at extremely high speed into the dealership’s parking lot, the heavy wooden door was still locked and the brothers wrecked their bikes. When Tino switched to four wheeled racing, Vittorio became his mechanic and tended his cars. While Tino was testing at Monza one time, Vittorio was in the pits but when he could not hear any engine sounds he sent a mechanic out with a jerrycan. Tino had indeed ran out of fuel, and after filling from the jerrycan he continued, plus gave the mechanic a ride back to the pitlane. Unfortunately, he soon forgot he was carrying a passenger and pressed on but on arriving back at the pits there was no sign of the poor mechanic. He was found, some time later, in the gravel at Parabolica!
In 1958 Vittorio won the Italian 175 cc Motorbike Championship and continued racing bikes on a casual basis but ten years after his championship victory he began competing in earnest on four wheels. Contesting Italian Formula 3 he raced a Scuderia Picchio Rossa Birel in a Coppa dell’Autodromo event at Monza in September 1968 though retired but made an impact in the national scene the following year. On his route to second in 1969’s championship he was second at Enna-Pergusa, Monza and Vallelunga, third at Monza and highlights came in June with victory at Vallelunga then Monza in September. He raced a Porsche 907 in the Monza 1000km with Manfredini though they did not finish plus in a guest appearance at that year’s Italian 500cc motorcycle GP at Imola he finished twelfth riding a Paton. While testing his Paton he returned to the pits, sensing there was a problem with the bike. Despite only wearing a cotton overall, brother Tino jumped on the bike and went out onto the track-but fell and suffered a broken arm.
1970 saw a move into Formula 2 with a Brabham BT23 and he impressed on his debut at Montjuic Park by dicing with Clay Regazzoni’s Techno until clutch failed. He later switched to North Italian Racing Developments’s Brabham BT30 at Enna-Pergusa while August saw a strong race at Salzburg where he battled with Jochen Rindt, Jacky Ickx, Emerson Fittipaldi and Graham Hill and came home second to J.Ickx’s BMW 270. He was sixth with the team’s BT23 at Tuln, in Austria, and there were two races with a BT30 for Scuderia Ala d’Oro, retiring at Imola and finishing eighth at Hockenheim. His forceful driving style would earn him the nickname ‘the Monza Gorilla’, though it was said he also had an unnerving routine, where he would greet the unsuspecting recipient with an extremely strong handshake and as they winced, he would follow this up with a rabbit punch to the back of their neck. In the following years he alternated between F2 and F3 and he was back with Scuderia Ala d’Oro’s BT30 in 1971 though retired in the three races at Hockenheim, Thruxton and Nurburgring. He did not qualify at Rouen in a March 712M and later in the year raced the March at Vallelunga and was fifth. 1971 also saw him race an Abarth at Vallelunga, while co-driving an Autodelta Alfa Romeo 2000 GTAm with Giancarlo Gagliardo they were seventh in the Jarama 4 Hours. Then came 1972 when he stepped up and took the Italian F3 Championship, with four wins and 42 points. The first half of that season was dominated by Carlo Giorgio though Vittorio was second in the first round at Monza in his Alfa powered Birel 71 then seventh at Monza in April and sixth at Imola. Switching to a Brabham BT38 he had two third places at Monza plus another at Varano though once he changed to an ex-Giuseppe Bianchi BT35 he had victories at Hockenheim, Monza, Vallelunga and two at Misano (in August) plus was second at Varano in September. Away from F3, he entered the Monza 4 Hours with Massimo Larini and they were fifteenth in an Autodelta Alfa Romeo 1300 GTA Junior while in two F2 races with the 712M he retired at Imola and was twelfth at Osterrreichring.
His big breakthrough came in 1973 and he became a serious challenger with the Beta Racing March, looking impressive as the season progressed. After starting with sixth in the 712M at Mallory Park he switched to their BMW powered March 732 and went on to take eleventh at Hockenheim, seventh at Thruxton, fifth at Nurburgring, fourth at Hockenheim plus podiums at Nivelles, Enna-Pergusa and Vallelunga. Highlights came with victories at Salzburgring in September and two weeks later he won at Albi and would finish fourth in the standings although his (gross) points tally was the season’s second highest. The year saw a number of races in a BMW 3.0 CSL though there were retirements with Bob Wollek at Monza (after taking pole) and Mantorp Park and at the Nurburgring (with Henri Pescarolo) but he and Jean Pierre Jassaud brought the car home in third place at Salzburg. Away from the BMW although he and De Niederhauser retired a Ligier JS2 from the Giro d’Italia, Vittorio took victory racing alone at the Coppa Citta di Enna with an Abarth Osella PA1, averaging 121 miles per hour (195 km/h) over 180 miles (290 km).
His sponsors, Beta Tools, were so pleased that they helped him secure a place in the March GP line-up for 1974. He missed the season opening races at Argentina and Brazil (as Howden Ganley was at that time with the team) and in his first outing for the team he was tenth in the 741 at Kyalami. In his first year he soon proved to be as quick as team-mate HJ.Stuck although was still prone to accidents and alongside tenth place at Zandvoort, he was ninth in Belgium, eleventh in France, thirteenth in Germany and his best finish came with sixth in Austria. There was frustration in Sweden though as he was on course for points until his engine failed on the last lap, losing a worthy sixth place and dropping to tenth in the results. Away from his GP commitments, the year started in a BMW 3.0 CSL alongside Bob Wollek in the Monza 4 Hours while back in an Abarth (now a PA2), he raced at Paul Ricard and Enna-Pergusa and had a shared drive at Monza (with Jean Louis Lafosse), though he and Derek Bell did not start at Imola due to an accident in practice.
The following year was to be Vittorio’s best when he qualified well and became more consistent. He started with a 741 at Argentina and Brazil though was in their 751 by the third race in South Africa. He took the lead during the Belgian GP and led until encountering brake problems after 54 laps while in Sweden he secured pole position. It was said that a team member held the pitboard across the timing beam shortly before Vittorio arrived, which gained him valuable tenths but whether anecdotal or not he pulled away from the field at the start until tyre trouble intervened, followed by a driveshaft then failing. He was back at the top of the timesheet at Silverstone and was second fastest on Friday while Saturday qualifying saw him starting fifth, behind Tom Pryce, Carlos Pace and the Ferraris of Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni. In the race, a misfire dropped him to fifteenth though he nursed his slick-shod car for 54 laps but now hail was a distinct possibility. March’s Robin Herd told how “By climbing the pit wall fence you could see the black clouds coming. We didn’t have pit-to-car radio then-but I swear, as he came past, we made eye contact, and we both knew now was the time.” He was the first to pit for wets, with 12 laps remaining but but on the following lap C.Pace, J.Scheckter, J.Hunt, M.Donohue, P.Depailler, J.Watson, T.Brise, B.Henton, D.Morgan and W.Fittipaldi aquaplaned off and leader Emerson Fittipaldi completed his 56th lap in the pits for wet tyres. There was much debate as to who had finished where though Vittorio was eventually credited with sixth, with the authorities declaring his 56th lap had been completed after the red flag.
However, his great day would come at the next race, at the Osterreichring, which would see similar weather conditions and the race was delayed by over an hour because of rain. With an estimated 140,000 strong crowd, it was still raining when the field left the grid, warily finding their way, except for the orange March and from eighth place he was third by lap six. The rain came heavier but despite it he had passed Niki Lauda and James Hunt to take the lead and opened up a 27sec gap over the next 11 laps. The race was eventually stopped early on lap 29 but when he saw the flag, Vittorio flung an arm up in celebration, spun and hit the barriers. He completed his slowing down lap with the front of the car destroyed while waving to the crowd and even the Ferrari mechanics were cheering him. Despite some post-race confusion, March had scored its first GP victory with Robin Herd declaring “What a moment..One long perpetual moment. When officials explained there’d only be half-points if the race was stopped at half-distance, we said, ‘Stop it!’ There was no chance of Vittorio backing off. On one lap he came past the pits following the ambulance! Max said that would be the last we’d see of him. Fortunately it wasn’t.” He received 4.5 points instead of 9 for the win. Sadly, any results that weekend would be marred by the deaths of Mark Donohue and a track marshal Manfred Schaller after an accident in the warm-up. He later suffered a more serious accident at Watkins Glen when he crashed during qualifying for the US GP. His car went backwards into a guard rail but he was fortunately unhurt though before his accident he had been running second fastest. Robin Herd described 1975’s March 751 car as a really good car. It was just an F2 with a DFV in the back-but it was small, light, fast in a straight line and well-balanced. We didn’t have the money to make it last the distance at full race pace; it only had F2 brakes, and so I loved the exuberance with which Vittorio attacked the opening laps. He was sensational in qualifying too.” Away from F1 he was back in the BMW 3.0 CSL for the Monza 4 hours (with Urs Zondler) though they did not finish but later in the year he was fourth in a Lancia Marlboro Stratos with Carlo Giovanni Facetti in a Monza 6 Hours. Added to it were two Lola drives in 1000km races with Giorgio Pianta, a T282 at Monza and a T380 at Nurburgring, while he and Arturo Merzario came home second with Wille Kauhsen’s Alfa Romeo T33 at the Nurburgring.
1976 was his last season with March but though the qualifying speed was still there (eleven top ten starts)he suffered several accidents and mechanical retirements. Ronnie Peterson had left Lotus and was now with the team and at the first race at Kyalami Robin Herd said “we all expected Ronnie to go a second faster than Vittorio. But it didn’t happen..That says a lot about Vittorio.” He ended the year strongly and was only slightly slower than Peterson in qualifying third and fourth at Mosport and Watkins Glen; on lap 35 in the US GP he lost the right rear wheel after running fifth for a time. In an inspiring wet weather drive at Fuji he passed James Hunt for the lead, though spun as he did so, but his race ended as he was running fourth due to the engine failing on lap 39. Robin Herd said “I don’t think he was trying harder because he was being measured against Ronnie. It’s just the way he was. He was almost 40-we weren’t going to change him. For instance, he liked a glass or two of wine before a GP. Max didn’t think this the best preparation and tried to stop him. At one race Vittorio hid under Ferrari’s transporter to avoid detection….He was never rated. We could never understand that. I think snobbery was involved; people dismissed him because he was a mechanic from Italy. From my point of view, his understanding of a racing car made him great to work with. He was one of the best test drivers we ever had. True, he knew no fear and sometimes took too many risks in a race but he was a seriously good driver. He had fantastic car control, which his performances in the wet proved.” He scored only one points finish with sixth at Zandvoort but in non championship races was second to James Hunt’s McLaren in the International Trophy and, after qualifying sixteenth, finished fourth in the Race of Champions behind James Hunt, Alan Jones and Jacky Ickx. He was back in the Lancia Stratos with C.Facetti for 6 Hour races though retired at Vallelunga and did not start at Mugello and Zeltweg due to fire damage. Reuniting with Arturo Merzario in the Alfa Romeo T33 although there was a retirement at Salzburg they came home second at Imola.
During this period there had been F2 drives from 1974 through to 1977 and the first year saw him enter one race with Brian Lewis Racing’s March-BMW 732 and he was twelfth at Vallelunga. He drove Project 3 Racing’s March 752 in 1975 though retired from the three races and was not classified at Thruxton but was twelfth at Salzburgring and then took victory later in the year at Vallelunga. There were only two drives the following year, in his 732 at Enna Pergusa and Project Four Racing’s 762 at Vallelunga while his final season saw a single race at Misano in Wille Kauhsen’s Renault powered Elf 2J.
His time with March now over, he signed for Surtees for 1977, with early team mate Hans Binder in a Durex-sponsored car while Vittorio’s sponsorship saw him run with a Beta livery. Besides his drives with the team’s TS19 he raced a variety of other machinery and in one-off races with a Jolly Club Porsche 934 at Silverstone he and Gianpiero Moretti were seventh and he co-drove Alpina’s BMW 3.0 CSL with Dieter Quester at an ETCC round at Monza. He was back in Autodelta’s T33 for a number of races and took second at Estoril, plus victories at Monza, Vallelunga, Salzburgring and Imola plus was teamed with John Watson at Dijon. John Surtees described him as “the kind of driver who could provide the occasional strong result, which is exactly what my team needed then” and he scored all the six points achieved by the team that year. The first race came at Argentina and he was classified seventh (running out of fuel shortly before the finish) and South Africa saw a further seventh while there was an eight place at Monaco. His strongest results came with fourth and fifth at Zolder and Hockenheim, though there were further top ten finishes with eighth at Silverstone, then sixth and eighth in the season ending rounds at Mosport and Fuji. He continued with Surtees into 1978 though had a single drive in a BMW 320 with Giorgio Francia, taking twelfth place at the Nurburgring 1000km. He was Surtees’ sole driver in F1 and there would only be three top ten results with their TS20, at Spain, Great Britain and a point with sixth in the wet Austrian GP. Although still racing for Surtees, he tested Alfa Romeo’s long awaited GP car at Le Castellet and briefly shared it with Niki Lauda, whom had been released by Brabham-Alfa Romeo to take part in the test. At Zandvoort, he slid off track into the gravel though the assistance from the marshals would result in his being disqualified but in the following race at Monza he was involved in the multiple early crash. In trying to avoid the melee, he hit another car, and then C.Reutemann, D.Pironi, C.Regazzoni, P.Depailler, D.Daly, H.Stuck and B.Lunger were also involved and he was hit by a wheel. The injured Ronnie Peterson (who would sadly later die) and Vittorio were taken to hospital, with him suffering severe head injuries and left in a coma. This would be his last race for the team but his recovery was slow and it was a long and painful year. Recalling his time with the team, a Surtees mechanic told of one of his Monaco races; “During the race, Vittorio was gaining on his forerunner, but suddenly he’d lose a lot of time. This happened several times. After the race we questioned him, thinking that maybe there was a problem with the car. He replied he had worn a new balaclava which, during the race, would slowly fall down, obscuring his vision. The delay was due to him slowing down as he opened his visor and pushed it back up with his fingers. Then it would happen again in a few laps.” His Alfa connection though had encroached on his F1 commitments with them, with John Surtees stating “Vittorio’s original sportscar deal with Autodelta was for testing. But it escalated. That took up a lot of his time -and also affected his driving of our F1 car.” However Vittorio’s time with them would pay off as his results with the Italian marque’s T33 in 1977’s World Championship saw him take that year’s title with Alfa Romeo.
The Monza crash kept him out of the cockpit for almost a year before Alfa Romeo brought him back to drive in the last three GPs of 1979, taking twelfth at Monza though he retired in Canada and dnq at Watkins Glen. Shortly after racing in America he was in an Alfa Romeo GTV with Mauro Pregliasco and Vittorio Reisoli and was twelfth at the Giro d’ Italia. He returned to an Alfa cockpit in the following year (replacing Patrick Depailler who had sadly been killed at Hockenheim), though in his two final races he collided with Geoff Lees’s Ensign at Zandvoort and spun off at Imola. His year had started with races in an Osella PA8 with Lella Lombardi at Mugello, Monza, Silverstone, Nurburgring, Vallelunga and Dijon but his only finish was fifth place when racing solo at an Interseries race at the Nurburgring.
He retired soon after and went on to own a Formula 1 memorabilia shop and had his own garage in Monza (which would have on display the damaged March nose from his Austrian GP victory). Occasionally he drove the medical car during the Italian GP and Sid Watkins remembered him asking, “Professor, how close to you want me to stay with the cars at the start?”. Sid replied: “Vittorio, I don’t mind close, but I don’t want you in the lead at the end of the first lap.” His wife recalled him as “a tireless worker. When he wasn’t on track he was working in the garage. A humble person, simple, always willing to give a helping hand to friends stranded with a car, bike or for other reasons. He had started his new machine shop in via Lecco in Monza and was happy: every day he used to go there from here on his bike. Always. In the wintertime, even in the snow. The car? Only on Saturday mornings going to the shops. He was watching Formula 1, commenting on everything.”
As he had grown up around oil and carburettors, he enjoyed the company of his mechanics in the pits and said that to be happy he needed to be among cars and engines. The family garage would find Vittorio as a genial host and a Surtees team member stated “Everybody liked him. He lived in a block of flats-and he had a dyno in its basement. There was Tino, fiddling with the distributor, while this engine was running flat-chat. The building was shaking. Yet everybody who lived there loved it.”
Vittorio sadly passed away on 26th of May 2001 of a heart attack while mowing his lawn and was buried in the Cimitero di Monza. Jo Ramirez said of him, “Vittorio was a bit mad, in a good way, really funny, always ready to play jokes and to participate in some shindig. He didn’t only like cars, but engineering and mechanics in general.” Giancarlo Minardi also knew him very well, telling how “in the ‘70s we used to ride together on tracks. We were often close with our motor homes and our tents, as back then you drove along circuits like that. Those were the days of races, of sports events cheerfully: a “salame” sandwich, a glass of wine with dirty hands, because in the meantime we were replacing engines and gear ratios. A piece of that which was automotive history, real sports history. Vittorio was a practical joker, he was “Brambillone” (big Brambilla), there are no other words to define him.”
Brambilla started his career with a March team on the decline. The constructor that became most famous for its customer cars was formed in 1969 by Max Mosley, Robin Herd, Alan Rees and Graham Coaker. The name is an acronym drawn from Mosley, Alan Rees, Coaker and Herd. But the founders weren’t able to stick together for long, since they were at war over the purpose of the company. While Mosley and Rees wanted to build an F1 car for Jochen Rindt to race in 1970, Coaker was the team’s driving force in building production cars. It forced Coaker to leave soon after the company’s establishment.
Dramatically, Coaker was killed in 1971, racing a March F2 car he had accepted as part of his leaving settlement. Thus, in March’s first years the emphasis was on the works team. But when Rindt signed for Lotus, the works team had to go for its second option, snatching Siffert and Amon away to drive its first design, the 701. The first customer version was shipped to Ken Tyrrell, using it as a stop gap before his own 001 was ready for Jackie Stewart to use. JYS turned the car into a race winner in only its second race in Spain – but then he would win in a garbage truck. The works team and the rest of the March privateers struggled though, having to wait for success until the following season, when Herd designed March’s most successful chassis, the 711. With an aggressive Ronnie Peterson behind the wheel it finished runner-up in the championship, albeit without winning a race.
The peculiar 1972 car was a complete failure. The 721X was meant to be a low polar moment car around an Alfa gearbox but its drivers Lauda and Peterson couldn’t get it to work. Only when the team saw the uprated F2 car for Mike Beuttler, called the 721G – for Guinness Book of Records, since the car was designed and built within a mere nine days – outclassed the 721X, even with a mediocre gentleman driver behind the wheel, it ditched the X in favour of the G version themselves.
Up until 1976 March would stick to the idea of uprating its current F2 design to F1 standards. These were the days March’s involvement as a customer car supplier in the lower formulae really began to boom, the attention for the F1 works team slowly faltering. In the end this led to the departure of Alan Rees, who went on to form Arrows with Jackie Oliver.
Brambilla, who had joined the team in 1974, did bring the works effort its first success, being victorious in the rain-shortened 1975 Austrian GP, but only after spinning off on the straight and crossing the line with a severely bent nose. 1976 saw an upturn of fortunes when Ronnie Peterson left Lotus after just one race and was lured back to March, replacing Lella Lombardi in the No.10 car. A feisty drive at Monza won the works outfit their second victory but at the end of the season Peterson left for Tyrrell. Brambilla himself had scored just one point and was off to Surtees, taking his Beta sponsorship along. The tool company later emerged as Minardi’s main sponsor for two seasons.
The March team dabbled around with a six-wheeler derivative of the 761 (with four wheels at the rear) before fading away in the 1977 season, with the untalented Ribeiro and Ian Scheckter as its driving force. Herd, and the March name, were tempted back into F1 in 1981 by the RAM team, but the Marches fielded in the two subsequent years had little to do with the extremely successful production factory, rolling out Indycars, CanAm cars and sportscars to its overseas customers.
Gallery F1 Other F Atlantic
