Gastone Brilli-Peri

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Gastone Brilli-Peri 1925
Gastone Brilli-Peri as a racing cyclist

Conte Gastone Brilli-Peri (born March 24, 1893 in Montevarchi , † March 22, 1930 in Tripoli ) was an Italian cyclist , motorcycle and car racer .

Family and bike races

Gastone Brilli-Peri was the offspring of a Florentine noble family and the son of Alessandro Brilli-Peri and the Marchesa Elisa Alli Maccarani . He was born on the family's estate in Montevarchi and grew up in Florence. In 1907, at the age of 14, he began cycling with a group of school friends . He started for the Società Ciclistica Aquila Montevarchi . Even though he was still a teenager, he kept taking part in adult events. Brilli-Peri, who was a bad climber but a very good sprinter, won a race named after the cyclist Charles Van Den Born in Florence in 1908 and thus a sightseeing flight over the city. In 1911 he won the Tuscan championship and also started at the Italian road championship.

Racing career

In 1912 Brilli-Peri bought his first motorcycle , a Della Ferrera . He contested his first race with this single-cylinder machine in 1913. In 1914 he finished second in the Circuito del Po race on a Triumph . He also took part in the Giro Umbro-Toscano and Giro del Trasimeno races; the latter he won. From April 26 to May 3, 1914, Brilli-Peri started the first edition of the Circuito motociclistico d'Italia , which ran over around 2,300 km in five stages. On the first stage he was in the lead at kilometer 316 in Florence and at kilometer 385 in Siena , but then fell behind due to problems with the front wheel.

During the First World War , Brilli-Peri served as a motorcyclist first in the 69th Brigata Ancona Infantry Regiment and then in the press department of the Italian High Command. He also took part in motorcycle races that were held as charity events for the benefit of war survivors. In one such race on the Foro Boario in Padua in 1918, he had a serious fall when a tire burst at full speed; he suffered a broken nose and a broken jaw and lost six teeth. Despite plastic surgery, he retained permanent scars from his facial injuries. This ended his career as a motorcycle racing driver.

Having recovered, Brilli-Peri got into motor racing in 1920 and initially started with racing cars from the Fiat brand . He achieved his first success at the Circuito di Mugello in 1922 when he finished second in the Fiat 802 behind Alfieri Maserati in the Isotta Fraschini . In May 1923 he won the Parma – Poggio di Berceto hill climb in a Fiat S 57-14 . A little later he also won the Circuito di Mugello . In the mighty Steyr VI Klausen , he won ahead of the two Alfa Romeo drivers Giulio Masetti and Antonio Ascari in their RLTF . In 1925 Brilli-Peri became a works driver at Alfa Romeo and teammate of Antonio Ascari and Giuseppe Campari .

At the Belgian Grand Prix in 1925 , he retired due to a suspension damage on the Alfa Romeo P2 . In the 1925 French Grand Prix , the Alfa Romeo race management took him out of the race after Antonio Ascaris' fatal accident. With his victory at the Italian Grand Prix in the same year, Brilli-Peri secured Alfa Romeo the first world championship in automotive history. To commemorate this, the company emblem was surrounded by a laurel wreath until the 1980s. In the following two years he continued to compete as a privateer with Alfa Romeos.

After a year with Bugatti in 1928 , Brilli-Peri won four races in 1929 with successes in Tripoli , Mugello , Cremona and the Grand Prix of Tunisia .

Death in Tripoli

At the site of one of his greatest triumphs, the Gran Premio di Tripoli, Brilli-Peri had a fatal accident in 1930. During training for the Grand Prix , the Talbot-Darracq 700 he was driving came off the track on the bumpy road in a fast left turn at high speed and hit a wall. Gastone Brilli-Peri was thrown from the vehicle and died at the scene of the accident. The funeral took place seven days later in Florence with great public participation.

Afterlife

The Montevarchi football stadium was named after Gastone Brilli-Peri. At the stadium was a bronze bust of Brilli-Peri, unveiled in 1936, by the sculptor Pietro Guerri from Montevarchi. In 2006 it was removed because of its poor condition, restored and transferred to the Il Cassero sculpture museum in Montevarchi. It is planned to put a copy of the bust at the stadium. There is also the Moto Club Brilli Peri in this place .

Brilli-Peri's birthplace Montevarchi was one of the centers of the Italian hat industry in the first half of the 20th century. His characteristic headgear, a beret , was named "Brilliperi" after him, a name that has been used in Italy to this day.

gallery

  • In the Steyr at the Targa Florio 1922

  • At the Targa Florio 1922

  • In the Steyr IV Klausen in Mugello in 1923

  • At the Mille Miglia in 1927

  • On his victory trip in Tunis in 1929

  • Race winner in Tunis 1929

  • In the Talbot-Darracq 700

literature

  • Giuseppe Ferrarese: Gastone Brilli Peri: La storia di un grande campione . Nova Officina Poligrafica Laziale, Rome 1998.
  • Peter Higham: International Motor Racing - A Complete Reference from Formula 1 to Touring Car . Guinness Publishing Ltd., London 1995, ISBN 0-85112-642-1 .
  • Anthony Pritchard, Keith Davey: Italian High-performance Cars , London, Allen & Unwin, 1967.
  • Ivan Rendall: The Power and the Glory: A Century of Motor Racing , Parkwest, NY, BBC Books, 1993.

Web links

Commons : Gastone Brilli-Peri  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Francesco Parigi: voleva solo correre. Storia del contino pilota Gastone Brilli Peri e del suo amico Emilio Materassi. In: cyclemagazine.eu. March 30, 2017, accessed April 29, 2020 (Italian).
  2. ↑ a b Matteo Sportvaldarno: 24 March 1893, 126 anni fa nasceva Gastone Brilli Peri: ecco chi era il mito a cui è intitolato lo stadio di Montevarchi. In: sportvaldarno.com. March 24, 2019, accessed April 29, 2020 (Italian).
  3. ↑ La prima tappa del Circuito motociclistico d'Italia . In: La Stampa . April 27, 1914, p. 5 ( archiviolastampa.it [accessed April 29, 2020]).
  4. ↑ Gastone Brilli Peri. www.motorsportmemorial.org, accessed on April 29, 2020 (English).
  5. ↑ Grand Prix season 1922
  6. ↑ Grand Prix season 1923
  7. ↑ Andrea Cioncolini: L'Alfa Romeo di Gastone Brilli Peri in mostra al museo di Arese dove lavora un giovane montevarchino. In: La Nazione. October 15, 2015, accessed April 29, 2020 (Italian).
  8. ↑ Tripoli Grand Prix 1930
  9. ↑ Lo Stadio - Aquila Montevarchi. In: aquilamontevarchi.it. Retrieved April 29, 2020 (Italian).
  10. ↑ Alfonso Panzetta: Pietro Guerri - Gastone Brilli Peri (1936). In: Il Cassero per la scultura italiana (website). Retrieved May 24, 2020 (Italian, with a picture of the bust).
  11. ^ Brilli Peri: Restaurato il Busto del Campione. In: viaroma100.net. April 29, 2020, accessed April 29, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Raccolta Fondi per il riportare busto di Brilli Peri allo stadio di Montevarchi. L'iniziativa dell'Avvocato Paterniti. In: valdarno24.it. August 3, 2019, accessed on April 29, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Grande Festa del Moto Club Brilli Peri, cinque impegni nazionali nel 2020. In: arezzoweb.it. December 17, 2019, accessed April 29, 2020 (Italian).
  14. ↑ L'industria del has di feltro celebrata a Montevarchi. In: arezzoora.it. April 13, 2017, accessed May 24, 2020 (Italian).
  15. ^ Alfredo Panzini : Dizionario moderno. Supplemento delle parole che non si trovano negli altri dizionari. 7ª edizione. Hoepli, Milano 1935.
  16. ↑ Erika Bertossi: La storia del cappello passa da Bologna, Malaguti: 'Dopo 2 guerre e varie crisi, ancora qui'. In: bolognatoday.it. October 21, 2016, accessed May 24, 2020 (Italian).
personal data
SURNAME Brilli-Peri, Gastone
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brilli-Peri, Gastone Conte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian cyclist, motorcycle and car racer
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Montevarchi
DATE OF DEATH March 22, 1930
Place of death Tripoli