Riccardo Paletti

Riccardo Paletti

Nation:	Italy
Formula 1 world championship
First start:	1982 San Marino Grand Prix
Last start:	1982 Canadian Grand Prix
Constructors
1982 Osella
statistics
World Cup balance:	no World Cup placement
Starts Victories Poles SR 2 - - -
World Cup points :	-
Podiums :	-
Leadership laps :	-

Riccardo Paletti (born June 15, 1958 in Milan , † June 13, 1982 in Montreal , Canada ) was an Italian racing driver .

Personal

Riccardo Paletti came from a wealthy Milanese entrepreneurial family. His parents were Arietto and Gianna Paletti. Arietto Paletti had been working as a real estate developer in Lombardy since 1950 and, among other things, had a construction company and an import and export company that imported Japanese Pioneer hi-fi equipment to Italy.

In his youth Riccardo Paletti was a karate fighter. At the age of 13 he won a youth karate championship. He was considered a talented skier and was a member of the Italian youth selection as a teenager.

Automobile sport

In 1978, Paletti started racing. The father promoted the motorsport commitment in each class significantly and supported his son's teams financially.

The beginnings

The father invested 50,000 US dollars for the first Formula Ford season (2020: approx. 196,000 US dollars). In his first race, Paletti was in the lead for 18 laps, but ultimately didn't win. He finished second twice this season and finished third in the Italian Formula Ford Championship. In 1979 he started as a private driver in the Italian Formula 3 Championship . His best results were two fifth places. There were no better results in the first half of the 1980 season. In the middle of the season, Paletti switched to the next higher formula .

Formula 2

Paletti's regular involvement in the Formula 2 European Championship began in the summer of 1980. Before that, he had already contested a single Formula 2 race in August 1979 - in the second year of his motorsport career - when he won a private race at the Gran Premio dell'Adriatico in Misano The March 792 used with a BMW engine was driven. In this race he retired after an accident.

Paletti received the first permanent Formula 2 cockpit in the middle of the 1980 season . Through his father's mediation, he took over Johnny Cecotto's car in the British Onyx team , who had switched to Minardi . In two of his four championship races for Onyx, he crossed the finish line, but did not achieve any championship points. His best result was eighth place at the Gran Premio dell'Adriatico in Misano. At the subsequent Gran Premio di Monza , Paletti came third; however, this race had no championship status.

In 1981 , Paletti contested his only full Formula 2 season. He stayed with the Onyx team, run by Mike Earle , and was its only driver that year. The formally independent Onyx team deployed a March 812 which received factory support. Paletti finished the first race of the season at Silverstone in second place behind Mike Thackwell , and in the third race at Thruxton he was third. At that time, Paletti was in third place in the championship, three points behind Thackwell, who was leading at the time. Then there was a break-in. With the exception of the Gran Premio di Roma in Vallelunga , which Paletti finished in sixth, he either crossed the finish line outside of the points in the remaining races of the season or dropped out before the end of the race. At the end of the season, Paletti finished 10th in the drivers' standings with 11 points.

formula 1

Osella

Osella Corse

After just one full year in Formula 2 Paletti joined for the 1982 season in the Formula 1 . Observers considered this step premature in view of the limited experience. Arietto Paletti bought his son a cockpit in the small Piedmontese racing team Osella , which had been in Formula 1 since 1980 and suffered from technical and economic problems from the start. The price for the Osella season was in some sources at 1,000,000 US dollars (2020: approx. 2,644,000 US dollars). Part of the deal was also the construction of a test track behind Osella's factory in Volpiano , which Paletti's construction company carried out; Paletti also brought Pioneer to Osella as a sponsor.

At Osella, Paletti drove alongside the much more experienced Frenchman Jean-Pierre Jarier . In retrospect, his team boss Enzo Osella confirmed in 2012 that Paletti had no experience of handling Formula 1 cars. This changed little in the course of 1982. For economic reasons, Osella gave him little opportunity for test drives. For fear of accidents, Paletti was only allowed to test the outdated FA1B from last year , so that he could not get used to the current Osella FA1C emergency vehicle .

The course of the season

Osella FA1C (1982)

Osella reported Paletti to all races of the 1982 season. In the first three runs he failed in the pre-qualification or the actual qualification.

At the San Marino Grand Prix , Paletti was in 32nd place after training and actually could not have participated in the race again. However, because numerous teams boycotted the race themselves because of sport-political disputes, the field of participants was reduced to 14 drivers. This enabled both Osella drivers to take part in the Imola race. Paletti's training time was only enough for the penultimate starting position. An engine problem before the start of the race prevented it from entering the grid, so that Paletti had to start from the pit lane. He was last in the field. After seven laps the suspension of the Osella broke, whereupon Paletti failed.

In Belgium , Paletti failed again due to the pre-qualification, while his team-mate Jarier qualified his identical Osella FA1C for 18th place on the grid. Two weeks later in Monaco neither of the two Osella drivers qualified.

At the US East Grand Prix on the Detroit street circuit , Paletti was able to qualify for the first time in a regular field. He finished 23rd on the grid and was one grid behind Jarier, whose lap time was a second better. However, Paletti did not take part in the race. During the warm-up practice on Sunday morning, he went off the track and damaged his FA1C so badly that it could not be repaired in time for the start of the race. The team then tried to prepare the only replacement car for Paletti. In the further course of the warm-up training, however, the fire extinguisher in Jarier's car was triggered by a mistake, so that this vehicle was not ready for the race either. The team then gave the replacement car to Jarier, while Paletti did not start.

Paletti was increasingly dissatisfied with the way the Osella team worked. Feeling disadvantaged, he suspected that his father's sponsorship money was primarily used to keep Jarier's car competitive. During the overseas races in North America, he therefore tried to find a different cockpit. There are reports that his former Formula 2 team Onyx was ready to organize Paletti's Formula 1 outing for the 1983 season . According to other reports, he definitely wanted to leave Osella after the Canadian Grand Prix.

Fatal accident in Montreal

At the Canadian Grand Prix on the Île-Notre-Dame Circuit in Montreal, Paletti was able to qualify for the penultimate row on one of the fastest racing courses in the world championship at the time. Paletti made his first regular start in a Formula 1 race here. Didier Pironi , who was on pole position , stopped at the start. The field could drive around the obstacle; Raul Boesel , starting right in front of Paletti, just hurled past the Ferrari with his March 821 . Paletti, on the other hand, drove into the rear of the Ferrari at around 200 km / h. Pironi got away without injury. With the racing doctor Sid Watkins and a few marshals, he immediately began to liberate Paletti. Although the front panel of the vehicle could be removed, the trapped victim could not be reached. The Osella's steering column had dug into Paletti's chest. Paletti was passed out. Fire broke out during the rescue effort; but it could be deleted. Nevertheless, the liberation took more than half an hour. Shortly after being admitted to the clinic, Paletti died of his chest and internal injuries.

The race was initially interrupted and started again later. Osella decided not to take part in the race. The team only used one vehicle for the rest of the season.

Aftermath

To this day, Paletti is the only Formula 1 driver who died in a Canadian Grand Prix and - until the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix in Imola, where Roland Ratzenberger was in qualifying on Saturday and during the Ayrton race on Sunday Senna had a fatal accident - for a long time the last to die on a racing weekend in Formula 1. His accident intensified the discussion about safety in Formula 1, which had already intensified after the death of Gilles Villeneuve in the same year. Both Villeneuve and Paletti sat in racing cars with an aluminum sheet composite monocoque . John Barnard had for the type MP4 / 1 from McLaren , however, already a monocoque made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic introduced; The Lotus of 1982 was also designed in this way. This construction method established itself to further improve passive safety and became the technical standard.

The Autodromo Riccardo Paletti race track near Varano de 'Melegari was named after the driver.

statistics

Statistics in the Formula 1 World Championship

These statistics include all the driver's participations in the Formula 1 World Championship .

general overview

season	team	chassis	engine	run	Victories	Second	Third	Poles	nice Race laps	Points	WM-Pos.
1982	Osella Squadra Corse	Osella FA1C	Ford Cosworth DFV V8	2	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
total				2	-	-	-	-	-	-

Single results

season	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	10	11	12	13	14th	15th	16
1982
	DNQ	DNPQ	DNQ	DNF	DNPQ	DNPQ	DNS	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

literature

• Gianni Tomazzoni: Enzo Osella , Schena, 2011, ISBN 9788882299217
• Eberhard Reuß, Ferdi Kräling: Formula 2. The story from 1964 to 1984, Delius Klasing, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-7688-3865-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Arietto Paletti's biography on the website www.ariettopaletti.it (accessed on June 11, 2017).
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Biography of Riccardo Paletti on the website www.forix.com (accessed on June 11, 2017).
3. ↑ Gianni Tomazzoni: Enzo Osella, Schena, 2011, ISBN 9788882299217 , pp 204th
4. ↑ Overview of the Formula 2 races of the 1981 season and the ratings on the website www.formula2.net (accessed on June 12, 2017).
5. ↑ Gianni Tomazzoni: Enzo Osella , Schena, 2011, ISBN 9788882299217 , p. 137 ff. (With ill.)
6. ↑ Adriano Cimarosti: The century of racing , motor book publisher Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-613-01848-9 , S. 323rd
7. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 1982 San Marino GP 
8. ^ Sid Watkins, Life At The Limit , Pan Macmillan, 2013, ISBN 9781447241010 , p. 100.