Giovanni Lavaggi

**Giovanni Lavaggi**
Nation:	Italy
Formula 1 world championship
First start:	German Grand Prix 1995
Last start:	1996 Portuguese Grand Prix
Constructors
	1995 Pacific Grand Prix Ltd. 1996 Minardi team
statistics
World Cup balance:	no World Cup placement
World Cup points :	-
Podiums :	-
Leadership laps :	-

Giovanni Lavaggi (born February 18, 1958 in Augusta , Sicily ) is an Italian racing car driver , team owner and racing car designer.

Beginnings and Formula 1

Giovanni Lavaggi showed himself to be closely connected to sport from a young age. Early on he drove rallies , competed in ski races and flew with hang-gliders . In 1989 he started professional motorsport. As a works driver at Kremer Racing , he entered sports car racing with a Porsche 962 . The Sicilian made it to Formula 1 in 1995 via Formula 3000 and Champ Cars . Lavaggi bought a cockpit in the Pacific Formula 1 team and contested four world championship races for the underfunded racing team. In 1996 he moved to Minardi and became a teammate of Pedro Lamy from the German Grand Prix . After another three races, Lavaggi's Formula 1 career came to an end without a world championship point.

Return to Kremer

He returned to sports cars, where he again received a cockpit at Kremer Racing in 1995. Already at the 24-hour race in Daytona he celebrated the greatest success of his career together with Jürgen Lässig , Christophe Bouchut and Marco Werner . After his final retirement from Formula 1, he contested one race each in the German and Italian GT championships in 1996. After failing to qualify for the Le Mans 24-hour race in 1997, he didn't drive a sports car race at all that year.

Team owner of GLV Brums

That should change in the second half of the following year, Lavaggi now drove a Ferrari F333 SP in the remaining four races of the FIA Sportscar Challenge for his newly founded racing team GLV Brums , whereby he finished three of the four races in the top five despite changing driver pairing. In 1999 Lavaggi continued to drive for his own team, with Gastón Mazzacane now having a permanent team-mate at his side. This consistency should pay off, so that the driver duo won the race in Magny-Cours and finished another championship run on the podium. Since Mazzacane received a contract with Minardi's Formula 1 team in 2000, Lavaggi had to look for a new teammate.

Ultimately, he decided on Nicolas Filiberti , with whom he achieved three more podium finishes. Lavaggi and his team also tried to get a nomination in the Le Mans 24-hour race. The organizer ACO refused, but Lavaggi was given the opportunity to tackle the race in a Porsche 996 GT3 R. He, Jesús Diez de Villarroel and Tomás Saldaña , with whom he drove at Kremer Races in the early 1990s, dropped out prematurely after an accident. For the 2001 season, Lavaggi got another driver from Kremer Racing on his side. Christian Vann , who has already been driving various GT vehicles for several years, had contested a number of outings in the FIA Sportscar Challenge for Kremer last year. In addition, Lavaggi had his Ferrari F333 SP converted, the Ferrari engine previously used was exchanged for a Judd GV4. Initially, the driver duo won the race at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza , but the vehicle proved to be error-prone in the remaining runs and failed with clutch, transmission and electronics problems. In the following year he and his team took a complete break and returned in 2003 for the last season of the Sportscar Challenge. The team missed the first race of the series and only entered the Lausitzring with a Ferrari F333 SP powered by a Judd engine. Team owner Lavaggi now shared the cockpit with Xavier Pompidou , with whom he finished the race penultimate in sixth place. When the field in Monza was only slightly larger, Lavaggi ended his involvement in the series prematurely, but at the end of the season strengthened the British team Taurus Racing in the revived 1000 km race of Spa-Francorchamps . He, Justin Keen and Larry Oberto narrowly missed the podium.

Le Mans Series

After retiring from the FIA Sportscar Challenge, Lavaggi had to reorient himself and in 2004 drove a Ferrari 360 Modena GT in the Le Mans Endurance Series . While he and Steeve Hiesse finished fifth in the GT class in the 1000 km race at the Nürburgring , the driver duo dropped out in the remaining three races. In 2005 Lavaggi paused again to present its self-designed Lavaggi LS1 for the 2006 season . To do this, he reactivated his racing team under the name Lavaggi Sport , but contrary to his original statements, he was only able to use the Le Mans prototype in Jarama at the end of the year. Xavier Pompidou was again registered at his side, but the team missed the entire training session because the Ford engine that had been tuned by PME had to be replaced. The race was hardly better, after 27 laps Lavaggi had to park his vehicle with an engine failure. The 2007 season was also marked by problems with the engine, in the three races that Lavaggi competed alongside changing drivers, the car failed with engine failure. The team therefore switched to a turbo-charged unit from AER for the following year. This improved the situation, but the car still lacked reliability, defects in the starter and problems with the fuel pressure prevented Lavaggi and Wolfgang Kaufmann from arriving in Monza and Spa-Francorchamps. At the Nürburgring, despite various problems with the cooling, the LS1 made its first finish, but fell out of the ranking due to its large deficit. Lavaggi decided not to race on the Silverstone Circuit in favor of the non-championship 6-hour race in Vallelunga. There, Kaufmann qualified the LMP1 car in pole position against less powerful vehicles in the LMP2, Group CN and GT classes. Further technical problems threw Kaufmann and Lavaggi back, but in the end they were able to finish the race in tenth place overall. In 2009 Lavaggi only took part in two races in the Le Mans Series, but his own design had to be adapted to the revised Le Mans prototype regulation. At the 1000 km race in Spa-Francorchamps, he and Wolfgang Kaufmann started out of the pits late after technical problems over the entire weekend. Although the team ended the championship run, it fell out of the classification due to the large gap to the leader. At the 1000 km race at the Nürburgring, Lavaggi pitted the car with clutch problems after 21 laps. After investigating the damage, the race was abandoned. The team did not contest the remaining championship races in Spain, Portugal and England, but Lavaggi and Wolfgang Kaufmann were again registered for the 6-hour race in Vallelunga. After the organizer Gruppo Peroni started the Silver Cup with touring cars , which was held as a separate race in previous years, together with the more powerful prototypes and sports cars, Lavaggi withdrew the entry. Wolfgang Kaufmann on the situation:

»The difference in speed between an LMP1 vehicle and the much slower touring cars represents an enormous safety risk. We have therefore withdrawn the mention of Scuderia Lavaggi. Vallelunga is a very fast racetrack with partially invisible passages. I was really happy to contest the race with Giovanni and Vallelunga, after all, we were on pole position here in 2008 and won the class. This year we wanted the overall victory, and the Scuderia Lavaggi team had worked extremely hard for that. "

statistics

Le Mans results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1989	Germany Porsche Kremer Racing	Porsche 962 CK6	Japan Kunimitsu Takahashi	Italy Bruno Giacomelli	failure	Fire
1990	United Kingdom Team Davey	Porsche 962C	United Kingdom Tim Lee-Davey	Morocco Max Cohen-Olivar	Rank 19
1992	Germany Porsche Kremer Racing	Porsche 962 CK6	Germany Manuel Reuter	Denmark John Nielsen	Rank 7
1993	Germany Porsche Kremer Racing	Porsche 962 CK6	Germany Jürgen Lässig	South Africa Wayne Taylor	Rank 12
2000	Spain Repsol Racing Engineering	Porsche 996 GT3 R.	Spain Tomás Saldaña	Spain Jesús Diez de Villarroel	failure	accident