Antonio Ascari
Antonio Ascari (15 September 1888 – 26 July 1925) was the first great racing driver of the Alfa Romeo works team — the beating heart of the “Four Musketeers” alongside Enzo Ferrari, Giuseppe Campari, and Ugo Sivocci, as journalist Orio Vergani named them. Born near Mantua in Bonferraro di Sorgà, the son of a wheat salesman, he worked as a blacksmith and mechanic before WWI, during which he serviced military aircraft. After the war he returned to Lombardy, established an Alfa Romeo dealership in Milan, and held the Lombardy concession — a role that gave him both a commercial relationship with the company and constant access to the machinery. Alfa Romeo first noticed him at the 1919 Targa Florio; the same year he beat Enzo Ferrari at the Parma–Poggio di Berceto hillclimb — the very debut of Ferrari’s driving career, a fact Ferrari remembered for the rest of his life.
Ascari’s first major victory came at the Cremona Circuit in 1923, driving an Alfa Romeo RL TF. At the 1923 Targa Florio, he was leading when his car broke down within reach of the finish line; he got it restarted but was passed by teammate Ugo Sivocci, who went on to win and painted the Quadrifoglio Verde good-luck charm on his bonnet for the first time. The planned 1923 Italian Grand Prix debut of the Alfa Romeo P1 was cancelled after Sivocci was killed testing the car at Monza. The Alfa Romeo P2 — designed by Vittorio Jano, recruited from Fiat through the combined advocacy of Luigi Bazzi and Ferrari — transformed Ascari into the fastest man on the Grand Prix circuit. In 1924 he won the P2’s very first race at Cremona, then won the Italian Grand Prix at Monza leading from start to finish. In 1925, the AIACR introduced the first World Manufacturers’ Championship. Alfa Romeo went to Spa-Francorchamps for the Belgian Grand Prix; Ascari and Campari were the only finishers from a field devastated by retirements, and Ascari won by 21 minutes and 58 seconds — an immense margin that speaks to the P2’s superiority.
On 26 July 1925, at the French Grand Prix on the Montlhéry autodrome south of Paris, Ascari’s P2 left the road on lap 23 and struck wooden fencing with violent force, nearly severing his leg. He died of his injuries that afternoon, aged 36. Race winners Robert Benoist and Albert Divo drove to the crash site and laid their winners’ garlands at the wreckage. Ascari’s body lay in state at Montlhéry before returning to Milan by train; at every station along the route, crowds gathered and laid flowers on the carriage bearing his coffin. At the Alfa Romeo Portello plant, thousands filed past.
The Ascari lineage carries an eerie symmetry. His son Alberto Ascari won the Formula One World Championship back-to-back in 1952 and 1953 with Ferrari — and died aged 36, on 26 May 1955, while testing a Ferrari sportcar at Monza. Both father and son had won exactly 13 championship Grands Prix. Both died four days after surviving a separate serious accident (Antonio had crashed at Spa days before his death; Alberto had crashed into the harbour at Monaco four days before Monza). The coincidence is one of motorsport history’s most cited curiosities.
Connections
- Alfa Romeo — drove_for, 1920–1925, source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo P2 — drove (Belgian GP 1925 win; Italian GP 1924 win; Cremona 1924), source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo RL — drove (Cremona 1923), source: wikipedia.org
- Enzo Ferrari — teammate “Four Musketeers”; Ferrari lost to Ascari at 1919 Parma hillclimb, source: wikipedia.org
- Giuseppe Campari — teammate “Four Musketeers”; last finisher with Ascari at 1925 Belgian GP, source: wikipedia.org
- Ugo Sivocci — teammate “Four Musketeers”; passed Ascari to win 1923 Targa Florio, source: wikipedia.org
- Vittorio Jano — designed the P2 that Ascari drove to his greatest victories, source: wikipedia.org
- Targa Florio — competed multiple times (1919–1923); narrowly missed winning 1923, source: wikipedia.org
- Alberto Ascari — son; two-time F1 champion 1952–53; died aged 36 in 1955 (eerie parallel), source: wikipedia.org