Massimiliano Papis

Massimiliano Papis

Nation:	Italy
Formula 1 world championship
First start:	1995 British Grand Prix
Last start:	1995 European Grand Prix
Constructors
1995  Arrows
statistics
World Cup balance:	no World Cup placement
Starts Victories Poles SR 7th - - -
World Cup points :	-
Podiums :	-
Leadership laps :	-

Massimiliano "Max" Papis (born October 3, 1969 in Como ) is a former Italian automobile racing driver who was and is at the start in a wide variety of racing series. He drove in Formula 1 and in the Champ Car World Series , and most recently in the ALMS and NASCAR series.

formula 1

Max Papis joined Formula 1 in 1995 when he replaced the regular driver Gianni Morbidelli at Footwork-Arrows for seven races . Papis brought a lot of sponsorship money, which the chronically poorly financed team urgently needed.

Papis, who scored several victories in the Formula 3000 , did not get along well with the unwieldy car and was left behind several times in qualifying against his much maligned team-mate Taki Inoue . In addition, he was unlucky in the races. On his debut at the British Grand Prix in Silverstone , he was spectacularly eliminated from a spin after a suspension breakage caused by a puncture. At the German Grand Prix in Hockenheim, too , he was eliminated from the start after a gearbox damage caused by an accident.

He came closest to a possible World Championship point at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza . The race started badly for him. Pole setter David Coulthard got caught in the gravel trap with his Williams-Renault in the Ascari chicane during the warm-up lap. Papis also spun on the sand thrown in the street, causing three vehicles to collide. The race was canceled and restarted with another lead-in lap. Papis was in sixth place until one lap before the end, but had to let the Sauber driver Jean-Christophe Boullion pass just before the finish and thus lost a world championship point that was believed to be safe. After the European Grand Prix , the sponsorship money was used up and Papis had to clear the cockpit for Morbidelli, who promptly finished third with the Arrows at the end of the season in Australia.

Champ car

From the 1996 season, Papis drove successfully in the Champ Car World Series for a number of years. The door to the series opened mid-season when he replaced Jeff Krosnoff , who had died in Toronto . The successes began in 1999. The move to Bobby Rahal's team brought the first victories and a fifth place overall in the championship. Although he won the first race in 2000, he was barely able to place himself later in the year and a top ten position in the championship remained unmatched. Despite two victories in 2001, Papis had to leave the Rahal team at the end of the year after two unnecessary collisions with his teammate Kenny Bräck .

Papis began to get involved in the sports car scene in 2001. His appearances at the Champ Cars became less frequent. When most of the big teams switched to the competing Indy Racing League series in 2003, he completely turned his back on the champ cars with the words "The series needs me more than I do it". Papis drove in 2002 and 2006 for the team of Eddie Cheever , the 500-mile Indianapolis and celebrated in 2006 at the race in Watkins Glen his debut in the Busch Series of NASCAR .

Corvette Racing

Papis has been driving the Corvette C5-R and C6.R for Corvette Racing since 2004 . Since then, he has contested the Sebring 12 Hours , the Le Mans 24 Hours and the Petit Le Mans every year . His partners were alternately Oliver Gavin , Olivier Beretta , Johnny O'Connell and Ron Fellows . The greatest successes were two class wins in Sebring (2004, 2007) and one in Road Atlanta in 2007.

Mad Max

American racing fans have been calling it "Mad Max" since the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1996. Papis drove a Ferrari 333SP there and before his last stint the car was in second place, but was badly damaged after an accident. The body was more or less held together by tape. Still, Papis delivered a top class performance. First he rounded back (in the lead was a Riley & Scott-Oldsmobile, driven by Wayne Taylor ), then he reduced his deficit to a few seconds with a series of record laps. Taylor dragged his prototype, which was suffering from an overheated engine, slowly around the course. What finally saved Taylor, who was now also driving at the limit, was the Ferrari's enormous gasoline consumption, triggered by the record laps of Papis. When Papis refueled a few laps before the end, the race experienced one of its most amazing events. Papis raced at full speed - 320 km / h was measured - through the pit lane (a speed limit was only introduced a year later) to get fuel. He lost the race just under a minute behind Taylor, but his brilliant performance earned him the nickname Mad Max.

statistics

Statistics in the Formula 1 World Championship

general overview

season	team	chassis	engine	run	Victories	Second	Third	Poles	nice Race laps	Points	WM-Pos.
1995	Footwork Hart	Footwork FA16	Hard 3.0 V8	7th	-	-	-	-	-	-	22nd
total				7th	-	-	-	-	-	-

Single results

season	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	10	11	12	13	14th	15th	16	17th
1995
								DNF	DNF	DNF	DNF	7th	DNF	12

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	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1997	Moretti Racing Inc.	Ferrari 333SP	Giampiero Moretti	Didier Theys	Rank 6
2003	Team Panoz	Panoz LMP-1	Gunnar Jeannette	Olivier Beretta	Rank 5
2004	Corvette Racing	Chevrolet Corvette C5-R	Ron Fellows	Johnny O'Connell	Rank 8
2005	Corvette Racing	Chevrolet Corvette C6.R	Ron Fellows	Johnny O'Connell	Rank 6
2006	Corvette Racing	Chevrolet Corvette C6.R	Ron Fellows	Johnny O'Connell	Rank 12
2007	Corvette Racing	Chevrolet Corvette C6.R	Oliver Gavin	Olivier Beretta	failure	malfunction
2008	Corvette Racing	Chevrolet Corvette C6.R	Oliver Gavin	Olivier Beretta	Rank 15

Sebring results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1996	Momo Corse	Ferrari 333SP	Giampiero Moretti	Didier Theys	Rank 3
2003	JML	Panoz LMP01	Olivier Beretta	Gunnar Jeannette	Rank 5
2004	Corvette Racing	Chevrolet Corvette C5-R	Ron Fellows	Johnny O'Connell	4th place and class win
2005	Corvette Racing	Chevrolet Corvette C6.R	Ron Fellows	Johnny O'Connell	Rank 5
2006	Corvette Racing	Chevrolet Corvette C6.R	Ron Fellows	Johnny O'Connell	Rank 7
2007	Corvette Racing	Chevrolet Corvette C6.R	Olivier Beretta	Oliver Gavin	Rank 7 and class win
2008	Corvette Racing	Chevrolet Corvette C6.R	Olivier Beretta	Oliver Gavin	Rank 10
2015	Action Express Racing	Chevrolet Corvette DP	Eric Curran	Dane Cameron	Rank 5

Web links

Commons : Massimiliano Papis  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Max Papis at Stats F1
• Max Papis at Corvette Racing