Racers. Biography of Alberto Ascari

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Alberto Ascari was born in Milan in the year 1918, whose father; Antonio Ascari was a Grand Prix star of the 1920s. Antonio was killed in an accident while in the lead, at the French Grand Prix of 1925. However, son Alberto developed a passion for motorsports just like his father, despite his father’s crash.

Like the other prospective race car drivers of his time, he started his motorsports career as a motorcycle racer. His formal introduction to motor car racing began when he entered the celebrated race, the Mille Miglia, in a Ferrari sports car.

Formula One enticed the talented Ascari, who began racing in Grand Prix races just after the end of WWII.
He joined the Maserati team, which included Luigi Villoresi, who would later become his mentor and close friend. With Formula 1 rules being introduced in the year of 1946 by the FIA, Ascari would prove his talents at the revamped post war Grand Prix structure of the races.

Ascari proved to be an unvanquished champion for the next four years, winning several events around Europe, with his first victory in Sanremo, Italy in the year 1948. He came second that year in the British Grand Prix.

The premier Formula One Championship season began in 1950, with the Ferrari team making its World Championship debut that very year. Ferrari’s maiden race was at Monte Carlo, with Ascari, Villoresi and the French driver Raymond Sommer. Ascari stood second in the race, and in the same year took a 2nd place at Monza as well.
In that year he finished only at the 5th spot in the overall championship standings. In the following season however, he won his first World Championship race at Nürburgring, and then won at Monza as well. That year he came a close second to Championship winner Juan Manuel Fangio.

Having met with great success in Europe, Enzo Ferrari now gave Ascari a car for the Indianapolis 500, in 1952, which was a World Championship contest at the time. Ascari became the only European racer on the Indy circuit; however he failed to complete the full race, this event being the only one he did not win that year.
Back at Europe, he continued to dominate the Grand Prix circuit with his Ferrari Tipo 500.
Ascari won all the six championship races that season; furthermore, he was the fastest lap driver in each race. He was given the maximum amounts of points any driver could earn, in 1952, at a time when drivers earned points for recording fastest laps.

Ascari won three consecutive races to begin off the 1953 season with a bang, followed by nine straight victories, which finally came to an end with a fourth place in France.
A record two more wins later in that season earned him his consecutive World Championship, for the second time.

Ascari met with his death in an unfortunate crash in the 1955 season, at the Monza circuit, prior to the race.
On May 26, as he watched his friend Eugenio Castellotti test a Ferrari 750 Monza car they were about to drive the race in, he thought of trying out a few laps with the car himself. Emerging from a fast and tight curve, the car suddenly skidded, overturned and somersaulted two times. Ascari was thrown off the track, and succumbed to his death from the multiple injuries he sustained from the fall.
The corner where the accident took place later was turned into a chicane and was renamed in his honour, the Variante Ascari.

The legendary Ascari is one of the two only Italian Formula 1 Champions, till date.

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