Alberto Ascari

Name: Alberto Ascari

Nationality: Italy

Date of birth: July 13, 1918 - Milan, Italy

Date of death: May 26, 1955 - Monza, Italy

Not until Damon Hill came on the scene did a second-generation Grand Prix racing driver manage to emulate a parents feats quite as ably as did Alberto Ascari, whose father Antonio had been a star for the Alfa Romeo team until his death in the French GP at Montlhery in 1925.

The younger Ascari did not have the look of a racing driver, his slightly rotund build earning him the nickname "Ciccio" or "Chubby". Nor did he exhibit the traditional Latin trait of emotional excitability. Instead, he was as cool a thinker as Prost, with the same extra edge of speed that makes a champion, and the calm unflappability that made any race he led a foregone conclusion. He was never happier than when he was out in front, breaking the opposition and leaving them to struggle. He was the only man truly capable of taking a fight to the legendary Fangio and coming out on top. If he had a failing, it was his intense obsession with superstition, to which he was a complete slave.

Ascari was only seven when his father died, but he had the same motor racing bug. He began by racing Bianchi motorcycles, but it was in the Mille Miglia in 1940, driving the first Ferrari T815 sportscar with his cousin, that he really impressed after leading for a time. After the interruption of the war years, Ascari found himself under the wing of benevolent teammate Luigi Villoresi and began impressing again, this time in a Maserati 4CLT. Victory in the 1948 San Remo GP rendered him a hot property, and in drives for Alfa Romeo, his father's old team, he took third place in the French GP. He began 1949 with another victory, for Maserati in Argentina, but switched with Villoresi for Ferrari, where his legend really began as he won three GPs.

Alfa Romeo was initially dominant with its supercharged 1.5 liter cars when the World Championship began in 1950, but in 1952 and 1953 when the formula had changed, Ascari and his Ferrari F500 were in a class of their own. In 1952 he won every Grand Prix, and it was not until the middle of 1953 that he lost a race. He performed the unrepeated feat of winning nine straight Grands Prix.

It was said that where Fangio would just miss a straw bale by the same margin every lap, Ascari would consistently clip it, living right on the edge. In 1955 he crashed his Lancia into the harbor during the Monaco GP. He escaped virtually unharmed but a week later, unable to resist the lure of testing a Ferrari sportscar at Monza during a brief visit, he crashed on the corner now named in his honor. The death of Italy's greatest postwar driver - and so far its only champion - has never fully been explained.

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