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FINAL DRIVE
race OF MY LIFe
fabrizio giovanardi
■ Italian Super Touring ■ Vallelunga ■ Alfa Romeo 156 ■ October 10, 1999 ■ Hardest championship victory
i never plan to drive at
100 per cent, because 100 per cent
means you’re too close to making
a mistake. But sometimes, when
you have absolutely nothing to
lose, I feel something changing,
a part of my brain closing. The
other part tries to bring you
to reason, but you just say,
‘Fuck off brain, I’m doing this’.
Vallelunga in 1999 was probably
where I shouted this louder than
anywhere else, and it helped me
to beat Emanuele Naspetti to the
Superturismo title – still the most
difficult championship I’ve won.
I’d come to the previous round
at Monza a long way behind
Naspetti in the points, but gained
a lot of ground when his BMW
team-mate, Fabrizio de Simone,
took him off at the Rettifilo. I
remember approaching the corner
on the next lap and thinking,
‘That’s a strange BMW-shaped car
in the gravel’, and then realising
what had happened.
At Vallelunga I knew I could
become champion if I had a win
and a second place, and after
finishing second in race one
behind my Nordauto Alfa
Romeo team-mate Nicola
94 autosport.com January 17 2013
“After the race, Emanuele was destroyed. He’d had the
superior car, which suited the longer races better, and
had lost the championship for reasons not his fault”
Larini, I knew what I had to do.
I was third in the second race
and behind de Simone, who made
me very angry with his blocking
after an early safety car. I gave
him a push and got past, but
he’d slowed the queue down
so much that I was five seconds
behind Naspetti after only one
IN PROFILE
or two laps of racing.
So I got the hammer down.
A tenth here, two tenths there,
and was about two seconds behind
when for whatever reason he lost
all of that time under braking for
the double right-hander at Cimini
on one lap. I gained all that time
in one go and went inside as he
SynonymouS with ALfA Romeo,
Fabrizio Giovanardi is one of
touring car racing’s most
successful drivers. After winning
races in Italian Formula 3 and
International F3000, he switched
to tin-tops in 1992 with Peugeot.
He went on to take nine major
crowns in Alfa, Vauxhall and
Honda machinery, including the
European, British, Italian and
Spanish titles between 1997 and
2011. He has also won races in
Scandinavian touring cars and
the Superstars series.
Giovanardi took the title after a
hard-fought battle with naspetti
understeered at the entry.
Usually you’re flat for the
second part of the corner, but
he couldn’t touch the throttle
because he was controlling his
car. I gave him a very light touch
mid-corner and we left side-byside,
myself on the grass inside.
Next came a very quick sweep,
and he pushed me right off the
track – so much so that I did the
whole sweep on the chicane that
the bikes use instead! I was really
angry then. I managed to stay
alongside him through the next
turn, Trincea, despite being on
the outside, and then made the
most of being on the inside for
the hairpin to complete the pass.
When I saw him after the race,
Emanuele was destroyed. He’d had
the superior car, which suited the
longer races better because of the
way the rear-wheel drive looked
after the tyres, and had lost the
championship for reasons that
weren’t really his fault.
Winning a championship
is great, but winning one like
that, when everything is going
against you, is really special.
Fabrizio Giovanardi was talking to
Jamie O’Leary