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Osella is an Italian racing car manufacturer and former Formula One team based in Volpiano near Turin, Italy. They participated in 132 Grands Prix between 1980 and 1990. They achieved two points finishes and scored 5 championship points.

Early days[link]

Osella placed second in the 1977 World Championship for Sports Cars with the Osella PA5 BMW.

Named after its founder Vincenzo "Enzo" Osella, the team began life by racing Abarth sports cars in local and national races in the mid 1960s in Italy. Though relatively successful (Osella eventually took over the factory Abarth sports car program), Osella expanded into single seater racing in 1974 to further develop his business. The team would rise to Formula Two in 1975 achieving some success with its own car (the Osella FA2); François Migault scored one point.

Osella Corse made another attempt in 1976 in the same league with unchanged material but by now the team was not competitive. Additionally, the team suffered from severe financial problems which meant that the works team was withdrawn from Formula Two in the middle of 1976. In the following years the Osella FA2s were occasionally entered by privateers, one of them being the Swiss Charly Kiser.

Customer F3[link]

Enzo Osella tried to make some money by selling a self-penned Formula 3 car (Osella FA3) with little success. Only a few privateers (one of them being Giorgio Francia who later would drive Osella's Formula One car) were optimistic enough to buy that simple untested machine. The cars ran with Toyota or Lancia engines in the 1976 German and Italian F3 championships without making any great impression. After this unsuccessful attempt, the racing activities of Osella Corse nearly came to an end. The team attended some local sports car events but avoided any single seater races from 1976 to 1978.

Osella had to wait until the beginning of 1979 when the former Hesketh and Theodore Racing Grand Prix driver Eddie Cheever was persuaded to race the well-used FA2 once again in a Formula Two championship. Surprisingly, the red car was good enough to win three races. This was enough for Enzo Osella to take the plunge into the cut and thrust world of Formula One.

Formula One[link]

Early years[link]

While the F2-Osella was entered on one occasion in 1980 by the Italian privateer Marco Rocca, Osella Squadra Corse appeared in the world of Grand Prix racing with its first Formula 1 machine, the FA1. The car was designed by Giorgio Stirano. Powered by Ford Cosworth DFV, it was overweight and aerodynamically inefficient. The car was presented in a blue and white livery with large Denim branding on the sidepods. Many components were manufactured in-house which meant that they were cheap to produce but not always state-of-the-art. The driver was again Eddie Cheever who was able to finish just one race in whole season. Frequently, he had to suffer from the massive unreliability of his car. In the following seasons, the basic design was changed several times.

In the early years, most of the work was done by interim designers like Giorgio Valentini or Tony Southgate, but frequently Enzo Osella himself also worked on the cars. Most of these attempts brought no improvement as high tech solutions could not be financed. The cars did not see a wind tunnel until 1988. Jean-Pierre Jarier finished fourth at Imola in 1982 (where only 14 cars started) and scored the first Championship points for the young team in a car that was by now dubbed Osella FA1/C.

Despite this result, neither the financial nor the technical situation improved. Few sponsors were attracted by the tiny Italian equipe. Denim only stayed for the first two seasons, Kelemata was no more reliable, and others like Landis & Gyr vanished as quickly as they had come. Most of the other sponsors were small or mid-size companies from Turin or the region of Piemont.

The Driver merry-go-round[link]

The lack of funding led to frequent driver changes as the team demanded that their drivers bring significant sponsorship to keep the team afloat. Some drivers started a career at Osella, such as Alex Caffi, Nicola Larini and Christian Danner. Others disappeared as quickly as they had come (such as Franco Forini or Allen Berg). Enzo Osella gave the young Austrian Jo Gartner his one and only chance to drive a Formula One car in 1984. Riccardo Paletti also had high hopes but was killed in a startline accident at the 1982 Canadian Grand Prix.

None of these drivers was able to push the team ahead. Finally, Osella Corse continued to live hand-to-mouth each year with little or no improvement in competitiveness.

Alfa Romeo[link]

Alfa-Romeo derived FA1F at the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix, where Ghinzani achieved Osella's second and last points finish.

In the mid 1980s, Osella was the political beneficiary of factory Alfa Romeo engines (both in normally aspirated (1983) and turbo (1984–1988) forms). On one hand, the Alfa engine program helped the team to survive the increasingly professional turbo era. On the other hand the heavy, unreliable and thirsty machines contributed to the team's lack of competitiveness. At least in the beginning, Alfa offered some technical input to the small Turin team; the 1984 Osella (the model FA 1/F) was based on the 1983 works Alfa Romeo 183T, which had been loaned to the team for "design assistance" purposes. All the following Osella models up to the FA 1/I in 1988 had their origins in the initial Alfa design.

The Alfa engine was not reliable. Chargers blew off regularly and power output had to be reduced down to the level of the non-turbo cars just to achieve the necessary reliability. Osella more than once tried to replace the Alfa engines with more up-to-date Motori Moderni-Turbos (which Minardi did not support) or with Cosworth engines. In the end, both solutions were too expensive so Osella had to stay with his out-dated but cheap Alfa engines. In 1988, At the end of that season, Enzo Osella was more than happy to finally get rid of them.

Cosworth Power and Fondmetal[link]

The 1989 season saw much improvement. The all new, Cosworth DFR-powered Osella FA 1/M was a big step ahead, and ultra-sticky qualifying tyres from Pirelli brought some success, at least in the qualifying sessions. In the Japanese Grand Prix where Nicola Larini qualified 10th. The fine qualifying performance brought no results in the races; the Osella cars almost never saw the finish line due to several technical failures. The most tragic race was the Canadian Grand Prix in which Larini was third before the engine blew up.

In 1990, after 10 years in Formula One and still without any meaningful sponsorship, Enzo Osella sold shares in his team to metalwork magnate Gabriele Rumi as part of a sponsorship deal with the Fondmetal company. At the end of 1990, Rumi took over the remainder of the team and renamed it Fondmetal (Fomet).

Complete Formula One results[link]

(key) (results in bold indicate pole position)

* Not eligible for points.

Return to sportscars[link]

BMW powered Osella PA20

The involvement of Gabriele Rumi meant the end of Enzo Osella's activities in Formula One. Instead he concentrated on the thing he knew best: sports car racing. During his Formula One years, he never gave up building sports cars; in fact this was one of the few projects that regularly brought money to Volpiano. A few of those sports cars even found their way to the Can Am series, although without much success. The most prestigious result was during the 1984 Can Am season with a third place in the championship for the 2-litre class; the car was the Osella PA10 driven by Armando Trentini, and was the only two-seater in the championship; the rest of the 2-litre class field comprised single-seater F2 cars with covered wheels. In the 1990s, Osella moved to Atella in the south of Italy where he build a new ultra-modern facility to produce some very competitive sports cars. Many of them were sold to privateers, while others were entered in several classes by the Osella works team. The works team was particularly successful in hillclimb races. In 1995 for instance works team driver Pasquale Irlando won all 9 races of the European hillclimb championship using the Osella PA18. He won the title in 1997, 1998 and 1999 consecutively. His successor Fabio Danti died in one of Osella's cars when he was competing in the 2000 Championship. Hillclimb stars like Franz Tschager and Martin Krisam continue to use Osella cars.

Note[link]

1. ^ originally in Volpiano, Italy

References[link]

• Official Osella site http://www.osella.it Accessed 12 March 2006 (In Italian)
• Official Formula One site: Archives 1980 - 1990 http://www.formula1.com/results/season/1980/ Accessed 12 March 2006

Luigi Musso

Born	(1924-07-28)28 July 1924
Died	6 July 1958(1958-07-06) (aged 33)
Formula One World Championship career
Nationality	Italian
Active years	1953–1958
Teams	Ferrari, Maserati
Races	25 (24 starts)
Championships	0
Wins	1
Podiums	7
Career points	44
Pole positions	0
Fastest laps	1
First race	1953 Italian Grand Prix
First win	1956 Argentine Grand Prix
Last win	1956 Argentine Grand Prix
Last race	1958 French Grand Prix

Luigi Musso (28 July 1924, Rome – 6 July 1958, Reims-Gueux) was an Italian racing driver.

Racing career[link]

Musso began his racing career driving sports cars before debuting on the Formula One circuit on 17 January 1954, driving a Maserati. In 1954 he won the Coppa Acerbo, a non-championship Formula One race. At Zandvoort, in the 1955 Dutch Grand Prix, Musso placed third in a Maserati.^[1] At the end of the 1955 Formula 1 season he switched to Ferrari. He shared victory in the 1956 Argentine Grand Prix with Juan Manuel Fangio, however his season was cut short after a crash in a sports car race at Nürburgring.

Musso triumphed in a Ferrari 3500 in the City of Buenos Aires sports car race on 20 January 1957. He was the third driver of the car. Stirling Moss finished second in a light powered Maserati 3000. Moss made a last-ditch effort for his team at the end but came up short. A second Ferrari 3500, driven by Eugenio Castellotti, came in third. The Ferrari team gained eight points toward the 1957 World Championship in the event.^[2] The same year he won the Grand Prix de la Marne. Although the Marne was also not part of the Drivers' Championship, Musso nevertheless finished third in the overall standings for the season.

Death[link]

In 1958, he picked up two second place finishes in his first three races but was killed in an accident during the 1958 French Grand Prix at Reims, France. Musso's Ferrari hurtled off the course on the 10th lap of the 50 lap race.^[3] Running wide at the tricky Muizone Curve while chasing the leader, Mike Hawthorn, Musso's Ferrari struck a ditch and somersaulted.^[4] His fellow Ferrari driver and rival Mike Hawthorn won the race. Musso was airlifted to hospital with critical head injuries; he died later that day.

Rivalry with Hawthorn and Collins[link]

Many years after Musso's death, Fiamma Breschi, Musso's girlfriend at the time of his death, revealed the nature of Musso's rivalry with fellow team Ferrari divers Mike Hawthorn and Collins in a television documentary, The Secret Life of Enzo Ferrari. Breschi recalled that the antagonism between the Musso and the two English drivers, Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins, encouraged all three to take more risks:

"The Englishmen (Hawthorn and Collins) had an agreement," she says. "Whichever of them won, they would share the winnings equally. It was the two of them against Luigi, who was not part of the agreement. Strength comes in numbers, and they were united against him. This antagonism was actually favourable rather than damaging to Ferrari. The faster the drivers went, the more likely it was that a Ferrari would win." Breschi related that Musso was in debt at the time of his death, and the money for winning the French Grand Prix (traditionally the largest monetary prize of the season), was all-important to him. Running wide-open on a flat-out curve, his car somersaulted into a field, mortally wounding the racer. Breschi and Ferrari team were informed later by the team manager that Musso had died in hospital. By the end of that year Collins and Hawthorn were also dead, and Breschi could not suppress a feeling of release. "I had hated them both," she said, "first because I was aware of certain facts that were not right, and also because when I came out of the hospital and went back to the hotel, I found them in the square outside the hotel, laughing and playing a game of football with an empty beer-can. So when they died, too, it was liberating for me. Otherwise I would have had unpleasant feelings towards them for ever. This way I could find a sense of peace."^[5]

Racing achievements[link]

During his F1 career, Luigi Musso won one World Championship Grand Prix, achieved 7 podiums, and scored a total of 44 championship points.

Complete Formula One World Championship results[link]

(key) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

† Indicates shared drive with Sergio Mantovani.

‡ Indicates shared drive with Sergio Mantovani and Harry Schell.

* Indicates shared drive with Juan Manuel Fangio.

References[link]

1. ^ Fangio Captures Dutch Grand Prix, Long Beach Independent, June 20, 1955, Page 15.
2. ^ Ferraris Nip Maserati, Lima, Ohio News, January 21, 1957, Page 19.
3. ^ Luigi Musso Is Killed In Race Crash, Fresno Bee Republican, July 7, 1958, Page19
4. ^ Hawthorn in Race Victory, Los Angeles Times, July 7, 1958, Page C4
5. ^ Williams, Richard, Richard Williams Talks to Fiamma Breschi, the Woman Behind Enzo Ferrari, The Guardian, 22 January 2004

Ignazio Giunti

Born	(1941-08-30)30 August 1941
Died	10 January 1971(1971-01-10) (aged 29)
Formula One World Championship career
Nationality	Italian
Active years	1970
Teams	Ferrari
Races	4
Championships	0
Wins	0
Podiums	0
Career points	3
Pole positions	0
Fastest laps	0
First race	1970 Belgian Grand Prix
Last race	1970 Italian Grand Prix

Ignazio Giunti (30 August 1941 - 10 January 1971) was an Italian racing driver who made his name in saloon and Sports Car Racing in the late 1960s.

Giunti was born in Rome. In 1968, driving for Alfa Romeo, he was 2nd in the Targa Florio and 4th in the Le Mans 24 Hours race co-driving with Nanni Galli.

In 1970, Giunti was signed by Ferrari primarily for their sports-car team and won the Sebring 12hrs and the Targa Florio as well as achieving several other high placings. His success earned him a Formula One chance and he did splendidly to finish 4th on his debut in the Belgian GP at Spa and raced three more times that year.

Ferrari were also trialling the Swiss driver Clay Regazzoni and he put in some excellent drives to restrict Giunti's chances though he was re-signed by Ferrari for 1971.

Tragedy struck in his first drive in 1971 whilst racing in the 1000 km Buenos Aires race, when his Ferrari 312PB prototype ploughed into the back of the Matra 660 of Jean-Pierre Beltoise, who was pushing the car along the track after it had run out of fuel. The impact and the subsequent fire gave the popular Italian no chance of survival.

Complete Formula One results[link]

(key)

Sources[link]

• Formula One World Championship results are derived from "The Official Formula 1 website". http://www.formula1.com/results/season/1970/. Retrieved 2007-06-23.