Carlo Chiti
Carlo Chiti (19 December 1924 – 7 July 1994) was an Italian aeronautical engineer and racing car designer who spent most of his working life in the orbit of Alfa Romeo — first as a young engineer at the Portello plant, then as the architect of the Ferrari cars that dominated Formula One in 1961, and finally as the founder and long-running technical director of Autodelta, the independent racing house that became Alfa Romeo’s competition arm and won the company two sports car world championships in the 1970s. Born in Pistoia, he graduated with a degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Pisa in 1953 and joined Alfa Romeo’s Reparto Esperienze Speciali (Special Experiments Department) under Orazio Satta Puliga, working alongside Rudolf Hruska and Giuseppe Busso. His first major project was the Alfa Romeo 3000 CM sports car. Instantly recognisable in the paddock — Motor Sport Magazine described him as “bespectacled, portly and soberly overdressed: raincoat (often even come shine) and a penchant for Borsalino hats, business suit, cardigan/pullover/tanktop, collar and tie” — he was a figure of strong personality and occasionally difficult temperament.
When Alfa Romeo closed its competition department in the mid-1950s, Chiti moved to Ferrari through his friendship with Giotto Bizzarrini. At Ferrari he contributed to the 1958 championship-winning Ferrari 246 F1 alongside Vittorio Jano — the car that gave Mike Hawthorn his world title — and in 1961 he designed the Ferrari 156 “Sharknose”: a rear-engined Formula One car with a distinctive twin-nostril nose, housing a 120° V6 engine. The 156 won the constructors’ championship comprehensively, and Phil Hill took the drivers’ title. In October 1961, Enzo Ferrari dismissed Chiti along with a cohort of senior engineers including Bizzarrini and team manager Romolo Tavoni — tensions with Laura Ferrari (Enzo’s wife, who exerted strong influence at Maranello) had been building, and Ferrari, as The Classic Car Trust put it, “never one to miss an opportunity, seized the moment to get rid of certain individuals who had become too independent, and fired everyone.” The dismissed group joined the breakaway ATS Formula One team — which employed drivers Phil Hill and Giancarlo Baghetti and was comprehensively unsuccessful.
In 1963, Chiti and entrepreneur Ludovico Chizzola — an Alfa Romeo dealer from Udine — co-founded Autodelta, initially operating from a shed beside Chizzola’s dealership in Udine. From late 1964 a formal agreement with Alfa Romeo gave Autodelta an expanded mandate: prototype creation, GTA homologation, and direct competition management, with the operation relocated to Settimo Milanese near the Portello factory. Between 1966 and 1972, through the Giulia GTA programme, Autodelta and Alfa Romeo won nine European Championships — four drivers’ and five constructors’. The centrepiece of Chiti’s Autodelta work was the Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 sports prototype programme, which evolved over ten years from a 2.0-litre V8 through V12 and flat-12 configurations. His horizontally-opposed 3.0-litre 12-cylinder engine — the TT12 — powered the 1975 World Championship for Makes, and in its evolved SC12 form swept all eight rounds of the 1977 World Championship for Sports Cars. Chiti also supplied Alfa Romeo flat-12 engines to the Brabham Formula One team from 1976; Niki Lauda won two Grands Prix with Chiti’s engine in 1978 — the controversial fan car Swedish GP and the Italian GP — coming within five points of the constructors’ title. He then led Alfa Romeo’s works Formula One return through 1979–1984 before founding Motori Moderni and building turbocharged F1 engines for Minardi. He died in Milan on 7 July 1994.
Connections
- Autodelta — co-founded, 1963; Technical Director, 1963–1984, source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo — worked_for (Reparto Esperienze Speciali) 1953–1957; Autodelta partner 1964–1984; F1 engine head 1979–1984, source: tcct.com
- Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 — designed and directed racing programme, 1963–1977, source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo Formula One Return 1976-1985 — designed the 115-12 flat-12 F1 engine (Brabham supply 1976–79) and directed the works constructor programme 1979–1984, source: wikipedia.org
- Vittorio Jano — co-worked_with on Ferrari 246 F1 at Ferrari, 1958, source: wikipedia.org
- Giuseppe Busso — colleague at Alfa Romeo Reparto Esperienze Speciali, 1953–1957, source: wikipedia.org
- Enzo Ferrari — employed_by Ferrari 1957–1961; dismissed in Palace Revolution October 1961, source: tcct.com
Carlo Chiti [relates] Alfa Romeo Formula One Return 1976-1985