Scuderia De Tomaso

De Tomaso

Surname	Scuderia De Tomaso; Scuderia Isobel De Tomaso
Companies	De Tomaso
Company headquarters	Modena , Italy
Team boss	Alejandro de Tomaso
statistics
First Grand Prix	Italy 1961
Last Grand Prix	Italy 1962
Race driven	2 world championship races and 6 races without world championship status
Constructors' championship
Drivers World Championship
Race wins
Pole positions
Fastest laps
Points

The Scuderia De Tomaso (also: Isobel de Tomaso or Scuderia Isobel de Tomaso ) was the works team of the Italian racing car manufacturer Automobili De Tomaso , which took part in Formula 2 and Formula 1 races from 1961 to 1963 . With BRM , Ferrari and Porsche, De Tomaso was one of the four teams that competed in the so-called 1.5-liter era of Formula 1 with its own chassis and engine. The cars were consistently not competitive. The team limited itself to participating in two world championship races in which it scored no points, and also started in individual races that did not have world championship status. The Scuderia De Tomaso is widely seen as the most unsuccessful team of the 1.5 liter era.

Team history

The Argentinian racing driver and businessman Alejandro de Tomaso founded an automobile workshop in Modena, Italy , in 1959 with the financial support of his wife Isabelle Haskell , in which he had racing cars for various classes and, from 1965, also street sports cars.

Own racing cars

De Tomaso produced four different types of racing cars from 1959 to 1963.

Isis Formula Junior

In 1959, the Isis , intended for Formula Junior , appeared first , which was a copy of a contemporary Cooper T43 with which De Tomaso drove his last races. On this basis, de Tomaso first built the F2 , a one-off for Formula 2. From 1961, five technically identical replicas of this model were made, which were called the De Tomaso F1 . The cars were intended for the 1.5-liter era of Formula 1, in which engines with a maximum displacement of 1,500 cc were permitted from 1961. De Tomaso initially resorted to large-scale series engines from Alfa Romeo , which he had Virgilio Conrero drill and double - ignite . At 140 hp, their power was about 45 hp below that of the BRM engines and 40 hp below that of the Ferrari engines. Conrero's Alfa engines were not only the weakest engines in the field; the Conrero engines are also characterized by a pronounced unreliability. The engine block designed for operation in road vehicles was not up to the demands of racing. The structural overload led to numerous engine defects and failures. The alternatively used, approximately 158 hp four-cylinder engines from OSCA were also not competitive.

After numerous failures, primarily due to engine defects, De Tomaso had the former Ferrari designer Alberto Massimino design the 801 in 1962 , which was equipped with an eight-cylinder engine he had developed. De Tomaso stated the output of the eight-cylinder engine at 170 hp, which was 25 to 30 hp below the values ​​of the Porsche and Ferrari engines, which had become much more powerful than the previous year . Observers doubted the accuracy of De Tomaso's information and suspected that the engine power was actually even lower. After De Tomaso was unable to achieve any racing success with this model either, he discontinued his monoposto program at the end of 1963. Alejandro de Tomaso announced at the end of 1963 the development of another engine that would have twelve cylinders; but this engine never got beyond the project phase. It was not until 1970 , was present as the focus of the company is already on the production of sports cars, De Tomaso returned to F1. A joint project with Frank Williams Racing Cars was intended to provide effective advertising support for the marketing of the Pantera sports car , but came to an early end after Williams' regular driver Piers Courage had a fatal accident in a De Tomaso 505 at the Dutch Grand Prix .

Factory and customer cars

De Tomaso ran his own motorsport team from 1960, which he called Scuderia De Tomaso or - as a tribute to his wife who financed the project - Scuderia Isobel de Tomaso. Four of the vehicles produced from 1959 remained in the factory team and appeared in four years for a total of nine races in Italy. Only two of them were races of the Formula 1 World Championship; the others did not have world championship status and are considered to be sparse side races with only regional significance. The factory team's driver was initially Roberto Bussinello , who worked primarily as a technician and mechanic at De Tomaso; In 1962 he was replaced by the Argentine Nasif Estéfano , who had no monoposto experience.

De Tomaso sold some examples of the F1 series to customer teams. Two of them ( F1-001 and F1-003 ) went to the Scuderia Serenissima , which they only entered for four races in 1961 for Roberto Bussinello, Giorgio Scarlatti and Nino Vaccarella . After that, Serenissima passed the cars on to amateur drivers. Another chassis ( F1-002 ) was taken over by Scuderia Settecolli , which reported three world championship races and seven non-world championship races under Roberto Lippi . Lippi tried in 1963 to compensate for the inferiority of the F1 by installing more powerful engines from Maserati and Ferrari, but could not achieve any success with these combinations either.

fail

The Scuderia De Tomaso is widely regarded as the most unsuccessful team of the 1.5-liter era, an “absolute lemon” that was even worse than Carlo Chiti's ATS project. De Tomaso was not even able to properly copy a Cooper. Observers see the cause for the failure of the team, in addition to the immaturity of its cars, primarily in Alejandro De Tomaso's volatile personality. He had a "very short attention span" and did not allow a project to be developed further.

Racing activities of the works team

Formula 2

The Scuderia De Tomaso contested a Formula 2 race in 1960. In October of that year she registered the De Tomaso F2 with an Alfa Romeo engine for the first time in early October 1960 for the Modena Grand Prix , the fourth from last race of the Formula 2 season. The driver was Roberto Bussinello. He damaged the car so badly in a training accident that it could no longer be repaired for the race. The car did not see any further Formula 2 outings.

formula 1

1961

Under the name Scuderia Isobel De Tomaso, the works team first appeared on May 14, 1961 at a Formula 1 race. The 19th Gran Premio di Napoli was a non-world championship racing event on the Posillipo circuit , in which a total of 13 vehicles took part. The team reported here again the F2 built in the previous year, which was now equipped with a 1.5 liter four-cylinder engine from OSCA. As in the previous year, the driver was Roberto Bussinello. He qualified for eleventh place on the grid and crossed the finish line four laps behind in fifth.

In September 1961 the works team joined Bussinello at the Gran Premio di Modena . De Tomaso used the F1-004 with Alfa engine for Bussinello and the older F2 Osca engine for Gastone Zanarotti . Bussinello qualified for 13th place on the grid, but retired from the race due to an engine failure; Zanarotti, however, already missed the qualification.

After the customer team Serenissima had already brought a De Tomaso car to the start at the French Grand Prix for the first time in a World Championship race, the factory team made its debut in the World Championship one week after the race in Modena at the Italian Grand Prix . As in Modena, Bussinello drove the F1-004 with an Alfa engine. Starting the race from 24th place, he retired on the second lap after an engine defect.

The last outing of the works team in 1961 was the Coppa Italia , a very short-term organized race in Vallelunga , in which apart from De Tomaso only private teams and a total of only 10 drivers took part. Bussinello started for Scuderia De Tomaso in the F1-004 with an Alfa engine. In the first run he was fifth behind Lippi in the F1-002 of the Scuderia Settecolli, in the second run Bussinello was fourth. Overall, he was rated fourth.

1962

The sporting results of the races of 1961 had clearly shown the lack of competitiveness of the previous cars, which were still based on a Formula Junior design. De Tomaso spent much of the following year developing the new De Tomaso 801 with its own engine. While the private Scuderia Settecolli used the well-known F1-002 with an Osca engine and Roberto Lippi as a driver in a few small Italian races without success, the Scuderia De Tomaso was idle until late summer 1962. The works team had registered for the Monaco Grand Prix ; but it did not start there. Only at the Naples Grand Prix in May 1962 did the works team appear with Gastone Zanarotti and the now almost two-year-old F2 with an Osca engine. Zanarotti missed qualification; his best lap time in practice was almost 11 seconds over the time of pole sitter Lorenzo Bandini and 12 seconds over Willy Mairesse's fastest race lap .

De Tomaso's new 801 made its debut at the Italian Grand Prix in 1962. The driver was the Argentine stock car driver Nasif Estéfano, who had previously only driven one Formula 1 race in a private Maserati 250F . The car did not work properly during training. Estéfano was rated with a lap time of over six minutes, while Jim Clark in the factory Lotus only needed 1:40 minutes to lap the track. De Tomaso did not make another attempt to bring the 801 to the start in a Formula 1 world championship race.

1963

In the 1963 season , the Scuderia De Tomaso did not take part in any world championship run. De Tomaso reported the 801 in the Grand Prix of Monaco , Great Britain and France ; the team did not appear in any of these races.

The only race of the works team this year was the Grand Prix of Rome , a world championship-free race in Vallelunga, for which a total of 19 drivers, mainly private teams, were registered. The Scuderia De Tomaso competed with the 801 for Nasif Estéfano and the built-up F1-005 driven by Franco Bernabei , which , unlike the older models of the F1 series, was equipped with a four-cylinder engine from Ford that had been tuned by Holbay . In practice, the F1-005 with a Ford engine was faster than De Tomaso's new 801, which had a self-developed eight-cylinder engine. Bernabei finished the first of the two rounds of the race after 37 of 40 laps. In the second run he did not start due to a technical defect. Estéfano qualified the 801 for ninth place on the grid. He only covered one lap in the race; At the beginning of the second lap it was canceled due to a clutch defect.

In addition to the two works drivers, four other drivers with De Tomaso customer vehicles competed in Vallelunga; in no other race were so many cars of the brand entered. The best result was achieved by Roberto Lippi in the F1-002 of the Scuderia Settecolli, which had replaced the OSCA engine with a Maserati four-cylinder. He was fourth overall.

Results

Formula 2

season	team	driver	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	10	11	12	13	14th	15th	16	17th	18th	19th	20th	21st	22nd	23	24	25th	26th
1960
	Automobili De Tomaso	R. Bussinello																							DNQ

Formula 1 world championship

season	team	chassis	driver	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	10	Points	rank
1961														-	-
	Scuderia De Tomaso	F1-004 Alfa Romeo	R. Bussinello							DNF
1962														-	-
	Scuderia De Tomaso	De Tomaso 801	N. Estéfano		DNA					DNQ
1963														-	-
		De Tomaso 801	N. Estéfano	DNA			DNA	DNA

Formula 1 races without world championship status

season	team	chassis	driver	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	10	11	12	13	14th	15th	16	17th	18th	19th	20th	21st	22nd	23	24	25th	26th	27
1961
	Isobel De Tomaso	De Tomaso F2 -Osca	R. Businello											5
			G. Zanarotti																			DNQ
		F1-004 Alfa Romeo	R. Businello																			DNF					4th
1962
	Scuderia De Tomaso	De Tomaso F2 -Osca	G. Zanarotti									DNQ
1963
	Scuderia De Tomaso	F1-005 Ford	F. Bernabei								DNF

literature

• Adriano Cimarosti: The Century of Racing . Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-613-01848-9 :
• David Hodges: Racing Cars from A to Z after 1945 . 1st edition Stuttgart (Motorbuch Verlag) 1994, ISBN 3-613-01477-7 :
• David Hodges: AZ of Grand Prix Cars 1906-2000 , 1st edition London 2001, ISBN 1-86126-339-2 (English)
• Mike Lawrence: Grand Prix Cars 1945-65 . Motor Racing Publications (London) 1998. ISBN 1-899870-39-3 :
• Pierre Ménard: La Grande Encyclopédie de la Formule 1 . 2nd edition, St. Sulpice, 2000, ISBN 2-940125-45-7 (French).

Web links

• Results of Formula 1 races without world championship status

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lawrence: Grand Prix Cars 1945-65, p. 111: "De Tomaso must qualify as the absolute lemon of the 1 ½ liter Formula 1, beating even the dreadful ATS for that unenviable distinction."
2. ^ David Hodges: AZ of Grand Prix Cars 1906-2001 , 2001 (Crowood Press), ISBN 1-86126-339-2 , p. 75.
3. ^ ^{A b} Mark Whitelock: 1½-liter Grand Prix Racing: Low Power, High Tech , Veloce Publishing Ltd, 2006, ISBN 978-1-84584-016-7 , p. 288.
4. ↑ Adriano Cimarosti: The century of racing , motor book publisher Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-613-01848-9 , S. 196th
5. ^ Mark Whitelock: 1½-liter Grand Prix Racing: Low Power, High Tech , Veloce Publishing Ltd, 2006, ISBN 978-1-84584-016-7 , p. 327.
6. ↑ Adriano Cimarosti: The century of racing , motor book publisher Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-613-01848-9 , S. 182, 184th
7. ↑ Mike Lawrence: Grand Prix Cars 1945-1965 , Motor Racing Publications 1998, ISBN 1-899870-39-3 , p. 110.
8. ^ Hodges: AZ of Grand Prix Cars, p. 75.
9. ^ David Hodges: Racing Cars from A to Z after 1945 . 1st edition Stuttgart (Motorbuch Verlag) 1994, ISBN 3-613-01477-7 , p. 78.
10. ↑ Mike Lawrence: Grand Prix Cars 1945-65 , p. 111.
11. ^ Adam Cooper: Piers Courage. Last of the gentleman racers. Haines Publishing, Sparkford 2010, ISBN 978-1-84425-863-5 , p. 252.
12. ↑ Statistics of the Modena Grand Prix 1960 on the website www.formula2.net (accessed on January 30, 2017).
13. ↑ Statistics of the Grand Prix of Naples 1961 on the website www.formula2.net (accessed on February 3, 2017).
14. ↑ Statistics of the Modena Grand Prix 1961 on the website www.formula2.net (accessed on February 3, 2017).
15. ↑ The Scuderia Serenissima had launched the F1-001 with OSCA engine for Giorgio Scarlatti. Scarlatti was the last to qualify in France and retired after 15 laps due to an engine failure.
16. ↑ Statistics from Coppa Italia 1961 on the website www.formula2.net (accessed on February 3, 2017).
17. ↑ Statistics of the Grand Prix of Naples 1962 on the website http://www.formula2.net/F162_10.htm (accessed on February 3, 2017).
18. ↑ Statistics of the Italian Grand Prix 1962 on the website www.motorsport-total.com (accessed on February 3, 2017).
19. ↑ Statistics of the 1963 Rome Grand Prix on the website www.formula2.net (accessed on February 3, 2017).