Eugenio Castellotti

Eugenio Castellotti

Nation:	Italy
Automobile world championship
First start:	1955 Grand Prix of Argentina
Last start:	1957 Grand Prix of Argentina
Constructors
1955  Lancia  · 1955–1957  Ferrari
statistics
World Cup balance:	World Cup third ( 1955 )
Starts Victories Poles SR 14th - 1 -
World Cup points :	19.5
Podiums :	3
Leadership laps :	20 over 146 km

Eugenio Castellotti (born October 10, 1930 in Lodi , † March 14, 1957 in Modena ) was an Italian racing driver .

Career

Successful amateur in sports cars

As a wealthy landowner to Castellotti in 1950 bought a Ferrari - sports cars to with great enthusiasm in national sports car racing to participate in the following two years.

In 1952, this also began to pay off for him in victories: he was the first to see the checkered flag at the Gold Cup of Sicily , the “Circuito di Senigallia” and the sports car Grand Prix of Portugal . Second place at the Monaco Grand Prix , which this year was only advertised for sports cars, also attracted international attention.

Admission to Lancia

But in the most prestigious race in that class, the Mille Miglia , he managed a second place, which put him on the lists of the works teams. Therefore, he signed the Lancia sports car team, for which he started in 1953 at the Carrera Panamericana in South America . On this debut, he managed a third place behind the dominant Juan Manuel Fangio and the veteran Piero Taruffi . In that year, however, he won both the Messina 10-hour race and the Italian hill climb championship for Lancia .

Thanks to these good results, Lancia also considered him for the ambitious Formula 1 project for the 1954 Formula 1 season .

However, all of the cars were completed very late, so that Eugenio Castellotti did not start his first start on a monoposto until the beginning of the spring of 1955. At the dress rehearsal, the Grand Prix de Pau , which is not part of the world championship , he finished second, ahead of his teammates Luigi Villoresi and Alberto Ascari , who had suffered mechanical problems. At the Monaco Grand Prix he also scored a second place. A few days later, Ascari was killed during test drives with a private Ferrari sports car, so that his completely shocked friend and supporter Villoresi withdrew from both motorsport and the Lancia project.

Castellotti, who was both talented and inexperienced in single-seater cars, unexpectedly took on the role of star driver, which he fulfilled with good results and the urge for the team management to continue to contest races - despite terrifying financial resources. With the achievement of further points, he still reached third place in the final ranking.

At the end of the year, Lancia “stamped” the project as expected. The legendary D50 was transferred to Enzo Ferrari , who was happy to accept this inheritance in the absence of his own convincing designs.

Castellotti in a Ferrari 290MM at the 1956 Mille Miglia

"Takeover" by Ferrari

Castellotti had thus almost automatically become a member of the Ferrari team. But as in many other years, the Scuderia had been so inflated by a large number of registered drivers that Castellotti preferred to concentrate on sports car races . He has now won the famous 1956 Mille Miglia and the Sebring 12-hour race in Florida with great success .

He marked the "highlight" of the 1956 Formula 1 season with a second place behind his teammate Peter Collins at the French Grand Prix in Reims , but at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza with a retirement due to a puncture after a reckless duel retired with Luigi Musso , who also drove a Ferrari. Still, he ranked sixth in the final accounts of that year.

Private life and death

At the beginning of 1957, Castellotti was more in the focus of the Italian tabloids than in the national racing gazettes: his love affair with the Italian film and television star Delia Scala was a "hit" for magazines and the public.

During a vacation in Florence , Enzo Ferrari called him back to the company headquarters in Modena so that he could do something about the new unofficial lap record of the home track that Jean Behra had set with a vehicle of the national competition, the latest Maserati 250F .

The wreck of Castellotti's car after the fatal accident.

On his third lap at the Aerautodromo di Modena , Castellotti lost control of his Ferrari 801 in the S-curve at the end of the start-finish straight . The car overturned and hit a small concrete platform, with Castellotti being thrown out of the vehicle and immediately killed. It was assumed that the cause of the accident was a driving error while downshifting.

With him, Italy lost another versatile and talented driver of the younger generation, which was particularly noticeable at the beginning of the 1960s, when only a few drivers from the great racing nation were able to advance to the absolute top.

statistics

Statistics in the automobile world championship

general overview

season	team	chassis	engine	run	Victories	Second	Third	Poles	nice Race laps	Points	WM-Pos.
1955	Scuderia Lancia	Lancia D50	Lancia 2.5 V8	3	-	1	-	-	-	12	3.
	Scuderia Ferrari	Ferrari 625F1	Ferrari 2.5 L4	2	-	-	-	1	-
		Ferrari 555 Super Qualo		1	-	-	1	-	-
1956	Scuderia Ferrari	Ferrari D50	Ferrari 2.5 V8	7th	-	1	-	-	-	7.5	6th
1957	Scuderia Ferrari	Ferrari 801	Ferrari 2.5 V8	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	NC
total				14th	-	2	1	1	-	19.5

Single results

season	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th
1955
	DNF	2		DNF	5	6th	3
1956
	DNF	4th		DNF	2	10	DNF	8th
1957
	DNF

Legend
colour	abbreviation	meaning
gold	-	victory
silver	-	2nd place
bronze	-	3rd place
green	-	Placement in the points
blue	-	Classified outside the point ranks
violet	DNF	Race not finished (did not finish)
	NC	not classified
red	DNQ	did not qualify
	DNPQ	failed in pre-qualification (did not pre-qualify)
black	DSQ	disqualified
White	DNS	not at the start (did not start)
	WD	withdrawn
Light Blue	PO	only participated in the training (practiced only)
	TD	Friday test driver
without	DNP	did not participate in the training (did not practice)
	INJ	injured or sick
	EX	excluded
	DNA	did not arrive
	C.	Race canceled
		no participation in the World Cup
other	P / bold	Pole position
	SR / italic	Fastest race lap
	*	not at the finish, but counted due to the distance covered
	()	Streak results
	underlined	Leader in the overall standings

Le Mans results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1955	Scuderia Ferrari	Ferrari 121LM	Paolo Marzotto	failure	Engine failure

Sebring results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1954	Scuderia Lancia	Lancia D24	Juan Manuel Fangio	failure	differential
1956	Scuderia Ferrari	Ferrari 860 Monza	Juan Manuel Fangio	Overall victory

Individual results in the sports car world championship

season	team	race car	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th
1953	Eugenio Castellotti Lancia	Ferrari 340 Mexico Lancia D20 Lancia D23	SEB	MIM	LEM	SPA	ONLY	RTT	CAP
				DNF			DNF		3
1954	Lancia	Lancia D24	BUA	SEB	MIM	LEM	RTT	CAP
				DNF	DNF		3
1955	Scuderia Ferrari	Ferrari 121LM Ferrari 857S	BUA	SEB	MIM	LEM	RTT	TAR
					DNF	DNF	6th	3
1956	Scuderia Ferrari	Ferrari 410 Sport Ferrari 860 Monza Ferrari 290MM	BUA	SEB	MIM	ONLY	KRI
			DNF	1	1	2	DNF
1957	Scuderia Temple Buell	Ferrari 290MM	BUA	SEB	MIM	ONLY	LEM	KRI	CAR
			1

See also

• List of fatally injured Formula 1 drivers

literature

• Gino Rancati: Ferrari: A Memory . Motorbooks International, 1989 (English).

Web links

Commons : Eugenio Castellotti  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Eugenio Castellotti. www.motorsportmemorial.org, accessed on January 13, 2020 (English).