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Background
Giorgio a trail blazer for test drivers |
In recent years, the role of the test driver has become increasingly fashionable, thanks to the likes of Luca Badoer, Alexander Wurz and Marc Gené carving out alternative careers for themselves as testers. Before them, there had been other notable development pilots like Emanuele Pirro for McLaren, Mark Blundell and Damon Hill for Williams, and Nicola Larini for Ferrari. But long before them, someone else had pioneered the concept of the long-serving stalwart test driver.
That man was Giorgio Francia, from San Giorgio di Piano near Bologna. A comparatively late starter in motorsports, he competed in karts from 1964 to 1968, before racing in the Formula Italia series from 1969 to 1972. In 1973, when he was already 25, he moved up to Formula 3, driving a Brabham BT41 with a Ford engine. He scored a 4th place at the prestigious Monaco F3 GP, only 0.7s behind 3rd-placed Damien Magee, and in the John Player championship in Britain, he was 23rd overall in the standings with 10 points. |
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1974-75
Annihilates opponents in German F3 series, heads to F2 |
The following year saw Francia switch to the Polifac Trophy German F3 series, where he entered 8 of the 10 rounds for the Scuderia Mirabella Millemiglia team in their March 743 Toyota. With a whopping six victories though, and 10,700 points, he easily defeated the likes of future F1 drivers Hans Binder, Conny Andersson, Gunnar Nilsson, Alberto Colombo and Harald Ertl. However, the Monaco race was not as kind to Giorgio, the Italian only managing a repeat of the previous year's 4th place result.
There were to be two more F3 races for Giorgio in 1975, rounds 4 and 5 of the German championship in a Maco 375 Toyota, the first of those at the Nurburgring in what was also a round of the European championship. With a 4th place finish he placed equal 17th in the European title, but really his attention that year was on F2, where he drove for the works Osella squad. It was the start of a long-running connection with Enzo Osella's concern, and with Italian manufacturers in general, one which lasts to this day. |
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1975-76
Performs well, despite major accident at Rouen |
The Osella FA2 with its BMW engine was competitive that year, and Francia scored a brace of minor positions, including three 4ths, four 5ths and a 6th. Though he was equal on points with Claude Bourgoignie, he was behind on count-back and wound up 8th in the series, which was very respectable for a debutant. That was especially the case considering that he had suffered a major accident in practice at Rouen that nearly killed several marshals, and which kept him out of that race and the Mugello round following.
However, the package was left trailing come 1976, and 6th in a non-championship race at Misano, and two 7ths at Rouen and Hockenheim (where he scored a point nonetheless because Jochen Mass in 6th was a graded driver ineligible for points) were his best results. He even switched camps at one stage and competed at Pau in a Chevron B35 BMW for the Trivellato Racing Team. By season's end he was down in equal 17th place with only the one point to his name. |
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1977
Single seaters a dead end; takes off in sports cars for Alfa |
Approaching 30, any F1 aspirations he may have had seemed stymied by that 1976 where his poor results had more to do with his car than with his own abilities. So in the middle of 1977 he turned away from full-time open-wheeler racing, embarked on a new direction and began competing in sports cars in the World Championship for Makes. Starting in a works Osella PA5 BMW, he partnered Dieter Quester at Dijon before finishing 2nd at Monza with Silvio Artina and 3rd at Enna where he drove alone.
But by this stage he had begun his association with Alfa Romeo and the Fiat companies generally, and Autodelta, Alfa's racing arm, whisked him away to drive their 33SC12 in four rounds. Francia came 3rd at Estoril and 2nd at Imola driving by himself, and also finished 3rd at the Salzburgring with Spartaco Dini. Autodelta also put him a touring car for the first time in the Spa 24hrs, where Francia, Amerigo Bigliazzi and Carlo Facetti drove their works Alfetta GTC to 2nd in class and 4th outright. |
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1978
Remains with Osella, plenty of success in the ESCC but not much in the WCM |
Francia's sports car load increased in 1978, when he reverted to the Osella fold and drove their works PA6 with a BMW engine in four rounds of the European Sports Car Championship. He won at the Nurburgring and, partnered by 'Gimax', he also took victory at Enna and came 2nd at the Salzburgring, which was all good enough for 2nd overall in Class 2 of that series with 60 points. Giorgio also won his only start in the Interserie championship.
The link-up with Osella that year also saw him drafted into the BMW Italia team which ran Osella-prepared BMW 320is for six rounds of the WCM proper, in which he shared the car with no fewer than four different co-drivers, namely Eddie Cheever, Umberto Grano, Vittorio Brambilla and Markus Hoettinger. Unfortunately the car was beset by mechanical problems and failures to finish races, with 3rd at Dijon with Cheever being Francia's best result in that championship that year. |
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1978-79
Testing duties at the forefront; partners Lombardi for Vallelunga victory |
But maintaining his ties with Alfa, he also had two more starts in the European Touring Car Championship, driving the Autovama Firenze Alfetta GTV with Bigliazzi at Monza and Mugello. In both races they finished 4th outright, although they were 2nd in Division 3 at Monza and they won the class at Mugello. These would be Giorgio's last touring races for almost four years, but little did he know that he would become a mainstay of European touring car racing in the mid-to-late 1980s.
By 1979 he was entrenched within the Alfa family and was mainly being utilised as a tester, a role he cheerfully accepted even if it limited his racing opportunities. Indeed, his record for that year only contained three sports car races, but they showed he had not lost his competitive touch. He shared a private Osella PA6 BMW with Lella Lombardi at the WCM round at Mugello, coming 4th, before winning the Vallelunga round with Lombardi in a works PA7. The pair also drove in the non-championship Monza 1000kms. |
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1979-80
Trip to Argentina for Temporada F3 becomes a debacle |
At year's end though, Francia was meant to briefly flirt again with single seaters when he was amongst a contingent of Italians invited to race in the Temporada F3 series in Argentina, designed to raise the profile of that category there. However, the series was a debacle, with queries over track approval, cars not being ready which forced some of the visitors, including Piercarlo Ghinzani and Francia, to sit out the first race, and rumours that the Italians had signed a contract preventing them from winning!
Disgusted by the affair, and having only been paid a percentage of what had been promised, Francia returned to Europe without so much as having sat in the F3 car and resumed his testing duties for Alfa in their F1 program, as well as for their Alfetta GTV turbo touring car alongside fellow tester Teodoro Zeccoli. There were to be two more starts for him though in the WCM, retiring a private Osella PA8 BMW shared with Remo Ramanzini at Monza, but winning the Vallelunga event with Roberto Marazzi. |
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1977 Brabham First taste of F1 comes with Bernie's mob thanks to Alfa engines |
With no recent open-wheeler experience, and hardly any racing under his belt having been cast into the test role with the Fiat companies, it thus came as a surprise that Giorgio was set to get a belated Formula 1 opportunity in 1981, by which stage he was 33 and no longer a spring chicken. But in fact this was not going to be his first contact with F1. Not only had he conducted some testing for Autodelta's Alfas in the preceding years, he had actually had his first Grand Prix entry as far back as 1977.
Back then, his F2 results had shown that he was not an incapable single-seater pilot, and his association with Fiat and especially Alfa had just begun. So for the 1977 Italian GP, Bernie Ecclestone's Brabham team, powered by Alfa Romeo flat-12 engines, had fielded a third car for Francia. That season the Brabham BT45Bs had been competitive without being race-winning, so it was a good environment in which to make his F1 debut. Or so it seemed. |
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1977-81
Giorgio a third wheel who has to give up his car to keep Stuck on track |
But Giorgio struggled, and in first qualifying was three seconds slower than anyone else, and 11.59s off James Hunt's eventual pole position. He needed more time in the car, that much was clear. But then regular driver Hans-Joachim Stuck's BT45B failed, and Francia had to hand over his car to the German. With no further participation in the weekend, the local rookie went down in the record books as a DNQ. And for years it looked as though he was not going to get another chance.
Osella had also entered F1 for the first time in 1980 with Cheever as their driver, but they had struggled in their debut season. For their second year, with their updated FA1B chassis coupled to a Cosworth V8, the team intended to hire Francia alongside Beppe Gabbiani. But when the season started at Long Beach, it was Miguel Angel Guerra in the second car. The Argentine failed to qualify for the first three races, but when he did make the grid at Imola, he crashed on the opening lap and injured himself. |
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1981 Osella Gabbiani crashes his car and the ultimate team man makes the sacrifice |
The call went out to Francia again, except this time it was FISA rejecting the entry because of Giorgio's lack of recent racing results. So Ghinzani was brought in for two races before Francia's superlicence was sorted out and he could finally aim to make his first F1 start at the Spanish GP at Jarama. But, in a horrible case of déjà vu, fate conspired against him yet again. Gabbiani crashed his car in practice, and yet again Francia was forced to relinquish his car.
Up to that point, as he had been at Monza four years before, he had been the slowest in the 30-car field, and once more he DNQed. Though the time he had spent away from open-wheelers and in testing had not dampened his skills as a sports car racer, Francia's single-seater abilities had perhaps been diminished. Osella snaffled up Jean-Pierre Jarier for the rest of the season. All that trouble to get Giorgio into the FA1B had come to naught. In a flash he was out again for good, his abortive F1 career over. |
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1981-85
Remains chassis and engine testing for Alfa's F1 program |
In sports car racing, however, Osella still had faith in Francia, and it was well-founded. In the rest of 1981, he had competed in five rounds of the World Championship for Drivers and Makes in an Osella PA9 BMW with Lombardi, winning the S2.0 class on all those occasions, and in fact taking victory in the Mugello round outright as well. The pair also came 2nd outright at Monza and Enna, and by season's end they were equal 5th in the standings with 101 points, an excellent feat considering their limited number of races.
From there his sports car activities decreased as the touring car phase of his career took off, but ultimately throughout the 1980s his primary role continued to be as a loyal, selfless test driver for Alfa Romeo and Lancia at Alfa's Balocco test track. His efforts lay mainly with the Alfa F1 program, which included both chassis and engine until the end of 1985, after which the program was limited to engine work, and also with the development of Alfa's touring cars as the Group A era arrived. |
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1982-83
Teams up with pasta king Barilla at Mirabella in WEC |
But in sports cars he was still more than capable. In 1982, he was brought in alongside Jean Rondeau and Henri Pescarolo to drive Rondeau's M382 Ford in the first round of the World Endurance Championship at Monza, and they walked off with a fine victory, thank you very much. Francia then also competed in four other rounds in a Scuderia Mirabella Osella PA9 BMW, twice with Diulio Truffo and twice with Luigi Moreschi, and with two 4ths and a 6th Giorgio wound up 8th in the championship with 49 points.
Francia also competed in the 9hrs of Kyalami with Bob Wollek in a Joest Racing Porsche 936 that year, claiming 3rd, but in the WEC he stuck with Scuderia Mirabella into 1983. The team having switched to a Lancia LC2, he drove with Ghinzani and Paolo Barilla at the Nurburgring, and came 6th with Barilla at Spa. Francia and Barilla also teamed up for three other races that counted for the European Endurance Championship only, although they retired in all three. |
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1984-91
Walks away with Italian Prototype title teamed with Osella |
There was only one start for Francia in the WEC in 1984 at Monza, where he retired with engine failure in the John Fitzpatrick Racing Porsche 956 that he shared with Renzo Zorzi. He also drove at the Daytona 3hrs, an IMSA round, in an Alba Momo Ford with Gianpiero Moretti. The following year he shared a similar car with Moretti again at Riverside, which was to be his last sports car outing until 1988, when he drove a Tom Milner Racing Ford Probe GTP to 17th in the IMSA race at Watkins Glen.
It was then another gap until 1990, when Giorgio raced an Alba AR20 Buick in the World Sportscar Championship round at Montreal, before sharing the same car to 16th place with François Migault at Mexico City. This was followed by a semi-return to regular sports car competition in 1991, when he competed in the Italian Prototype Championship in an Osella PA16 Alfa Romeo and walked away with the title. But these sporadic sports car outings were an indication of how much of a touring car specialist he had become. |
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1982-84
Team switching amongst the Alfa concerns after super season in ETCC |
In 1982 he teamed up with Luigi Racing, well known for running Alfas, and his first outing in their Alfetta GTV/6 was in the Spa 24hrs with Georges Cremer and Marco Micangeli. There they came 2nd in Division 2, before Francia and Micangeli retired at Silverstone and finished 5th outright and 1st in class at Zolder. Then followed a full season in the Luigi Alfetta in 1983, mainly with Micangeli as team-mate, but also with Cremer and also Mario Ketterer.
Highlights of the 1983 season included four successive Division 2 class victories at Donington, Enna, Mugello and Brno, which included an excellent 5th outright at Enna. That put Francia and Micangeli equal 13th in the European Touring Car Championship with 100 points. Tied more to Alfa Romeo than to any particular Alfa team though, Francia's 1984 ETCC campaign proved disrupted, as he interchanged between the Biesse Racing Team and the famous Jolly Club Milano team. |
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1984-85
Dedicated development of Alfa 75 turbo leaves little time on track |
With Lombardi as his team-mate most of the time, joined also by Abele Tanghetti at the Spa 24hrs, Giorgio still scored four Division 2 wins at Brno, the Salzburgring, Spa and Silverstone, and also came 2nd in class on three other occasions. Although 10th place was his best outright result, equal 8th in the points standings with 137 points confirmed that, when it came to class competition and the Alfettas he had so extensively tested, there were few better exponents in touring car racing than Francia.
However, his 1985 season turned out to be even more disjointed. Back in the Luigi-run Alfetta, but sharing it alternately with Cremer, Bernard de Dryver, and Guy Pirenne, Francia only made 8 starts, and only took two class victories at the Spa 24hrs and at Nogaro. He wound up 18th only, and only 5th out of the Division 2 drivers, with 112 points. The rest of the time he had been spending helping to develop Alfa Romeo's new Group A touring car challenger, the Alfa 75 turbo. |
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1986-87
Alfa Romeo gears itself up for World Touring Car Champ onslaught |
The 75 turned out to be a difficult beast to perfect, and it would be several years before Francia's hard work bore fruit. As a result, in the 1986 ETCC, he only made four starts, three in the Jolly Club 75 turbo alongside Rinaldo Drovandi, and one in the version run by Brixia Corse as team-mate with Claudio Langes. These outings only brought disappointment and a host of retirements, apart from a 22nd place finish at the Nurburgring, but there was much to build up to for 1987.
1987 would be, until 2005, the one and only attempt at a World Touring Car Championship. In the face of concerted assaults by Ford and BMW, Alfa Romeo also threw in their works 75s, run by various works teams, and enlisted a driving line-up that featured the likes of Jacques Laffite, Alessandro Nannini, Nicola Larini, Paolo Barilla and Jean-Louis Schlesser, and, of course, our man Francia. With driver swapping prominent between, and even during races, at various times Francia drove with all of Barilla, Schlesser, Nannini and Larini. |
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1987
The 75s get pulled off stage, but Giorgio still makes the trip to Bathurst |
However, the 75s were being well beaten for outright honours, and totally outgunned by the BMW M3s even for class honours. However, there had been some light at the end of the tunnel, with Francia and Larini coming 3rd at Silverstone, and Francia and Drovandi finishing 4th at Imola in a one-off return to the ETCC in the Brixia Corse car. But with the next WTCC races due to be the Australasian rounds at Bathurst, Calder and Wellington, Alfa spectacularly counted their losses and pulled the 75s out of the championship.
But Alfa Corse had also fielded one other car throughout the year, in Division 1 for the smallest cars. This had been a really quite painfully slow Alfa Romeo 33, and this car was still going to make the trip down under. With Francia free now that the 75s had been withdrawn, he and Daniele Toffoli were entrusted to score class points with the car. At Bathurst, with a best practice time of 2m 44.10s, they were 48th on the grid, whereas pole had been 2m 16.97s, and the best time in class was almost 9 seconds faster. |
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1987-88
WTCC left on the scrap heap; joins Larini and Cecotto at Spa 24hrs |
Francia animatedly described his frustration like this: "Everything is going past while I am sitting there going bappa-bappa-bappa". Eventually the torture ended after 55 laps, after the car firstly dropped onto three cylinders and then flooded the engine with oil. But there was better news at the subsequent Calder round, when the Alfa 33 was joined by only one other Division 1 competitor. When that car dropped out, Francia and Toffoli had a clear run to 16th outright and the class victory.
The Wellington race saw the pair finish 20th and 3rd in class, but even the 33 didn't go to the final race in Japan. The inaugural WTCC had descended into a bickering farce, and the Alfas had simply not been ready enough. It was scrapped after one year, and although the ETCC staggered on, the leading works teams now concentrated instead on national championships. As a result, Francia made only one ETCC start in 1988, in the Spa 24hrs in a CiBiEmme Alfa 75 V6 with Larini and Johnny Cecotto. |
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1988-89
So close yet so far in ITCC, taking 2nd overall, and then 4 wins with no title |
Instead, the Italian Touring Car Championship was established, and the works Alfa teams threw their 75s into action. The likes of Francia, Gianfranco Brancatelli, Riccardo Patrese, Nannini, Larini, Mauro Baldi and Enrico Bertaggia were all involved, even though Patrese, Nannini and Larini were also racing in F1 for Williams, Benetton and Osella respectively. The wins were evenly divided; Francia was the only man to win two races, at Varano and Enna, but Brancatelli took the title with Giorgio in 2nd place.
In addition, with even the ETCC dying, Bernie Ecclestone dreamt of a new Procar series, like the one involving BMW M1s in the early 1980s, but this time involving Alfa 164s. Once again, Francia was the man doing a lot of the testing and development, although the series never got off the ground. Come 1989, in the Italian championship the Alfas were being threatened now by the works BMWs. Despite taking four wins, Francia was unable to deny Cecotto from winning the title for the German marque. |
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1990-92
History repeats itself, with Francia second overall twice further |
1990 saw Roberto Ravaglia win the title for BMW again, with only one win for Giorgio at Varano, but a renewed effort the following year saw four more victories for Francia's Alfa 75, which finished all but two races on the podium, although Ravaglia prevailed in the championship again, with Francia 2nd, 299 points to 248, with daylight back to Emanuele Pirro in 3rd place. But by now the Alfa 75 had grown long in the tooth, and Francia had been helping to develop a new Super Touring weapon: the 155 GTA.
And a potent machine it was. Capable of producing 400bhp, the four works 155s won 17 of the 20 races in the 1992 Italian championship. Driving the car prepared by the Jolly Club team, Giorgio won three races, took three fastest laps, and finished in the top 5 in every race. In total he scored 278 points, but had to drop his worst two results, which reduced his tally to 260. Meanwhile, Larini had taken more wins, and claimed the title with 284 points. |
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1993-94
Consistency the key for Giorgio, taking 17 top-10s and 5 podiums |
For 1993, Alfa Romeo embarked on a new challenge: turning the 155 into the monster V6 TI version to compete in the DTM. Again Francia did much of the testing work, and Alfa Corse team boss Giorgio Pianta rewarded him for his years of faithful service with a drive in one of the DTM race cars. Alfa ran four works cars, two prepared by Alfa Corse for Larini and Nannini, and two run by the German Schubel team for Francia and Christian Danner, although Giorgio's car was something of a running test lab.
Still, Francia's extraordinary consistency came to the fore again, with no fewer than 17 top-ten finishes and 5 podiums, including 2nd at Wunstorf and two 2nds in the final round at Hockenheim. At the age of 45, to come 7th in the ultra-competitive series (which Larini won) with 127 points was a great effort. The pairings stayed together for 1994, but with only two podiums at Zolder, and only 13 top-tens, and with his car even handed over to other Alfa drivers on occasions, Francia slipped to 13th with 70 points. |
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1995-2001
2 wins in Spanish Super Touring before taking a back seat from racing |
Alfa Romeo's withdrawal from the DTM led to Francia's last season of full-time racing, in the Spanish Super Touring championship in 1995, where he proved that he still had what it took by claiming two more wins and 5th in the championship with 149 points. But from there Giorgio took a back seat from racing, concentrating on testing other Fiat conglomerate products. That included much of the development work on the Maserati Ghibli for the gentlemen racers' Ghibli Cup.
By the end of 2000, Francia had been working on the Alfa 147 Super Production machine, which was set to contest the 2001 Nurburgring 24hr classic with a dream-team driving line-up of Larini, Francia and Stefano Modena. Tragically, a fatal accident suffered by team boss Christian Peruzzi forced the withdrawal of the car, but the car returned for the subsequent 24hrs of Sicily, where Francia and Larini were joined by Fabrizio Giovanardi and Felipe Massa. The combination took 2nd outright and 1st in class. |
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2003-04
Fabio: the most beautiful man in an Alfa, takes a title his father once won |
That was, however, merely a one-off comeback to competitive action. Francia continued to happily slug away at Alfa's Balocco test track and at their Chivasso proving ground. He did the initial testing on Alfa's 156 GTA challenger for the re-formed European Touring Car Championship, as well as for the Ferrari 575 GTC sports car during the European summer of 2003. Nowadays, he also shares his experience with others as a racing driver instructor for Alfa Romeo.
But the Francia name hasn't disappeared from the circuits altogether. Giorgio's son Fabio dabbled in the ETCC himself in 2003 in, you guessed it, an Alfa Romeo, and he has also contested the Italian Prototype Championship, taking the 2004 title in, you guessed it again, an Osella. But as for Giorgio, for his remarkable service and selfless loyalty to the Fiat companies and to Alfa Romeo in particular, and for his not insignificant racing achievements, he deserves more than just a little recognition. |
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