Carlo Chiti

Carlo Chiti (born December 19, 1924 in Pistoia , † July 7, 1994 in Milan ) was a well-known Italian designer of racing cars and their engines. He has made a name for himself above all in the long and successful cooperation with Alfa Romeo and Autodelta .

Career history

Chiti studied aircraft engineering at the University of Pisa and completed his training with a doctorate. His first engagement was with the Italian conglomerate Montecatini in Milan. He worked here from 1948 to 1952.

Alfa Romeo

Chiti worked for Alfa Romeo from 1952 to 1957 . Here he was mainly employed in the test department ("Reparto Sperimentale"); he worked on vehicles like the Disco Volante and the Giulia Sprint .

Ferrari

In 1957, Chiti switched to Ferrari , where he became head of the design department. His work included the development of road, sports and racing cars, but also of engines.

The following cars were largely developed by Chiti:

• Ferrari Dino 246F1 and 156 from 1959 (front-engined vehicles for Formula 1 and Formula 2)
• Ferrari 246MP and 156 MP from 1960 (rear-engined vehicles for Formula 1 and Formula 2)
• Ferrari 156 ( "Squalo" or "Sharknose"), who Phil Hill , the 1961 Formula One season dominated
• Ferrari Testarossa TR59, TRI60 and TRI61 (sports cars)
• Ferrari Dino 246SP from 1961 (sports prototypes)

With these models, Carlo Chiti played a key role in Ferrari's ascent in Formula 1 . Above all, he was able to convince Enzo Ferrari to switch from the previously prevailing conventional drive concept ( front engine with rear drive ) to mid-engine technology. Due to discrepancies, however, he left the Ferrari company in November 1961 together with Giotto Bizzarrini .

ATS

Together with a few other former colleagues, Chiti and Bizzarrini tried to create a new automobile brand under the name Automobili Turismo e Sport (ATS) that would compete with Ferrari both in the field of street sports cars and in Formula 1.

ATS appeared with a racing car called ATS Tipo 100 designed by Carlo Chiti for individual races of the 1963 World Cup . The car had an eight-cylinder with a displacement of 1.5 liters, also designed by Chiti. To the annoyance of Enzo Ferrari, Chiti had also succeeded in integrating the American Phil Hill, who had become world champion with Ferrari in 1961 , into his new project. However, the racing team failed in the course of the year. The car and engine were extremely unreliable, and the organization of the team was described by observers as chaotic. Phil Hill saw the finish line only once: at the Italian Grand Prix he was 15th; he was 23 laps behind Jim Clark , who won the Lotus .

The road sports car from ATS, which was also planned, was not more successful. The engine and chassis were a development by Carlo Chiti, the sensational body came from Giovanni Michelotti . About twelve vehicles were produced during 1963, most of which still exist today.

At the end of 1963 ATS ran out of money; the company was closed. The Formula 1 material was recycled in a short-lived Formula 1 team called Derrington-Francis ; the factory itself and the production facilities were acquired by the Venetian nobleman Conte Giovanni Volpi di Misurata, who turned it into his legendary company Scuderia Serenissima . Carlo Chiti did not go to Venice; he stayed in Milan and started another company.

Autodelta

At the beginning of 1964, Chiti founded the company Auto Delta, later Autodelta, together with Ludovico Chizzola, an Alfa Romeo dealer . Autodelta soon developed into the racing car division of Alfa Romeo. After the Alfa Romeo TZ 2, the Alfa Romeo GTA concentrated very successfully on touring car racing . A little later, the Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 was added, which achieved numerous victories, especially in endurance races. The twelve-cylinder boxer engine developed by Chiti for the Tipo 33 was also used by Brabham in Formula 1 in 1978 . In 1979 Alfa Romeo entered Formula 1 with a further developed V 12 engine with its own works team, initially led by Autodelta, but the great successes did not materialize. In addition, Alfa Romeo was plagued by severe financial worries in the early 1980s.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Chiti developed a turbo engine based on Formula 1 configuration for Autodelta, which ran from 1982 to 1985 in the Alfa Romeo factory team and was used in numerous revision stages by the Osella customer team from 1984 to 1988 . The engine with the designation Alfa Romeo 890T was described by many observers as a typical Chiti child: unusually configured (eight cylinders with a displacement of only 1.5 liters), heavy, low-performance and high-consumption. The turbo engine could only score a few world championship points in its seven-year service life.

A first clouding of the relationship between Chiti or Autodelta and Alfa Romeo became apparent at the end of 1981. After the third, comparatively unsuccessful Formula 1 season, Alfa Romeo decided to no longer have the Formula 1 works team's operational racing team carried out by Autodelta from 1982 onwards , but by the independent racing team Euroracing . Autodelta's tasks should remain limited to the construction of the racing cars and the engines. De facto, this meant a considerable reduction in Carlo Chiti's powers.

Further difficulties emerged when Alfa Romeo changed the organizational structure at Autodelta in late 1984. After that, Chiti had to give up part of his influence to the former Lancia engineer Gianni Tonti and was thus largely limited to the function of a consultant. Chiti was not happy about this and he repeatedly voiced his dissatisfaction in a few press interviews. These changes led to Chiti and Autodelta separating in October 1984.

Motori Moderni

At the end of 1984 Carlo Chiti founded the company Motori Moderni in Biandrate (Province of Novara ) on the initiative of Giancarlo Minardi and with financial support from Piero Mancini . Motori Moderni quickly developed a V6 turbo engine for Formula 1, which was used at Minardi between 1985 and 1987 and also at AGS for a short time in the 1986 Formula 1 World Championship . The engine was not a success. In three years he didn't score a single world championship point.

In the 1990 Formula 1 World Championship , another engine developed by Carlo Chiti and Motori Moderni finally appeared in Grand Prix racing, although it did not bear the name of the designer, but was reported under the name of the sponsor: The (again) unusual , designed as a twelve-cylinder engine with a 120 degree cylinder angle, was commissioned by Subaru and was used in 1990 by Coloni , an Italian racing team that Subaru had taken over at the end of 1989. The engine was - apart from the hopeless W12 engine from Life Racing  - the weakest and heaviest engine in the field. In eight attempts, Coloni's driver Bertrand Gachot never made the pre-qualification. After that - still in the summer of 1990 - Subaru gave up all further efforts to get involved in Formula 1. The Japanese no longer accepted a new V12 engine with a 90 degree cylinder angle, which Subaru had commissioned from Carlo Chiti in 1989. In a 1991 interview, Chiti confirmed that the engine was fully developed and that a prototype had passed a bench test. But there was no team that was interested in the unit.

At the end of 1990 Chiti retired from professional life.

literature

• Doug Nye: Larger than Life . Biography of Carlo Chiti with special attention to his work at Ferrari and Autodelta, In: Classic & sports car. September 2005. (English)
• Mike Lawrence: Grand Prix Cars 1945-1965 . Motor Racing Publications, 1998, ISBN 1-899870-39-3 . (English)