| Career Summary | Picture Index |
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| Last updated: 7-January-2007 | |
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Background
Pioneer of Formula Junior |
Every four years, the place of Formula One in the pantheon of international sport gets usurped by the festival of football, the FIFA World Cup. In 2006, Italy walked off with their fourth crown, thanks to a united and cohesive team that was arguably the most consistent all tournament. And the man who marshalled the likes of Cannavaro, Gattuso, Pirlo and Buffon into such an impregnable unit was their coach, the 'Silver Fox', Marcello Lippi.
There has also been a Lippi in Formula One, and it seems fitting that we reflect on the life and times of Roberto Lippi, perhaps more correctly referred to as Count Roberto Lippi, in tribute to the Italian World Cup winning squad of 2006. Although in truth little more than a journeyman driver, Lippi was one of the most respected Italian sports car and open wheeler drivers of the mid-to-late 1950s and the early 1960s, and one of the pioneers of one of the first universal feeder single seater category. Lippi first appeared on the radar in the 1951 Mille Miglia sports car race, where he finished 121st overall but 8th in the VU750 class in a Fiat 500 with M. Panina. That year he also raced in the Coppa d'Oro delle dolomiti, but it was in the Mille Miglia that he proved a mainstay, competing in the event again in 1952, 1953, 1954 and 1956, when he finished 137th overall in a Stanguellini 750 Sport but 4th in the S750 class, behind two other Stanguellini 750s and the class-winning OSCA S750 of Ovidio Capelli. |
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1957-58
Success in Italian 750cc sports car title |
However it was with that boutique Italian marque Stanguellini that Lippi began making a name for himself. It appears as though he took out the Italian 750cc sports car title, and in his Stanguellini 750 he also won the S750 class at the non-championship Giro di Sicilia. Although he did not compete in the Mille Miglia, he had a crack at the Le Mans 24hrs in a works Stanguellini Prototipi but ignition problems after 67 laps forced the car he was sharing with Francesco Siracusa into retirement.
There was more sports car success in 1958, Roberto finishing 4th in an event at the Premio Mobil event at Vallelunga in his Stanguellini, and 3rd behind the OSCAs of Sesto Leonardi and Giancarlo Rigamonti at another race on the same track in June. But a new single seater was just starting to take off in Italy: Formula Junior. Administered by the racing schools all over Italy, Stanguellini was one of the first makes to design, build, and test (with the help of Juan Manuel Fangio, no less) a Formula Junior machine. The concept behind Formula Junior was simple - to provide a cheap single-seater feeder category in which the engine, gearbox and brakes all had to sourced from cars that the FIA had homologated for their International Touring Class. Looking like F1 cars but nowhere near the level of performance, it was an ideal category for any ambitious driver. Stanguellini embraced the category, using parts from their 750 Sport and the engine from the Fiat 1100 for their attractive front-engined chassis. |
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1958-59
Wins first Italian FJunior title for Stanguellini |
Being one of Stanguellini's favoured sons, and with sponsorship with Bardahl, Lippi dominated the first Formula Junior championship in Italy. He took four wins (two at Vallelunga, and one each at Monza and Modena), a brace of other podium finishes and fastest laps, and even the odd reliability problem towards the end of the season could not stop him from easily taking the title, 37 points to second-placed Luigi Nobile's meagre 14.
The Stanguellini was, for the first two years of the formula at least, the car to have in Formula Junior. From the Fiat 1100 engine it could produce an incredible 78bhp at 6,500 rpm, and it had a top speed of 135mph! It even looked like a mini Ferrari Dino 246 or Maserati 250F. Being one of the first to get his hands on the car, it was no wonder that Lippi walked off with the first title. But with a new chassis for 1959, and exponentially increased competition, Roberto would no longer have things his own way. There were also alternative Formula Junior championships starting up, not only in Italy but also in the rest of Europe. Lippi stuck to the Italian championship, which had the unusual points system of only counting the best four results out of the 15 rounds. But before the championship campaign began, he even took his Bardahl Stanguellini to the racing-on-ice event at Cortina d'Amprezzo, where a 4th in his heat and 7th in his semi-final suggested that the competition would be a lot tougher than the previous year. |
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1959-60
Finishes 6th, with season marred by Monza mishaps |
And so it proved. There was a victory in his heat and the final in the opening round at Vallelunga, and a 2nd place at Cesenatico in round 3, but from there his title defence descended into a smattering of top ten finishes, the occasional retirement, and only three 3rd places in heats at Teramo, Salerno, and Vallelunga, and 2nd in the final at that Vallelunga event, which also doubled as a round of the Auto Italiana championship. He wound up only 6th in the Italian title with 26 points.
However, his season was marred by the tragedy that occurred at the second heat of the Monza round. Dino Montevago had already crashed into a tree at the first Lesmo, seriously injuring himself, before Alfredo Tinazzo and Nino Crivellari were killed in a sickening collision at the Vialone curve. Lippi was caught up in that horrific accident, spinning out of the race, but accounts differ as to whether he spun in taking evasive action, or whether it was his spin that caused Tinazzo and Crivellari to collide. By 1960, Formula Junior was all the rage, and Lippi was reduced to being a small fish in a big pond. He started the year again taking his trusty Stanguellini to the ice event at Cortina d'Amprezzo, before the spent virtually the rest of the year competing for Squadra Trinacria in a rear-engined de Sanctis with a Fiat engine, although he also had one abortive attempt in a car he made himself, a rear-engined Lippi with a DKW engine, and he also raced at the Monaco GP support race in a de Sanctis for Scuderia Madunina. |
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1960
Pops into Cuba; finishes 2nd in Italian FJunior |
Moreover, he raced the majority of the Italian championship and also the Auto Italiana d'Europa series, as well as the Prova Addestrativa series, and even the odd non-championship event, although sometimes races counted towards several championships. Lippi's first outing in the Squadra Trinacria de Sanctis took place at, of all places, the Columbia Military Airfield in Havana in Cuba, but his year then settled down into a seemingly endless succession of race meetings throughout Italy.
Highlights included 2nds in heats at two Vallelunga events, 3rd in the final at one of those, 3rd on aggregate with fastest lap at the other, plus another 2nd in a heat at Messina behind Denny Hulme, 3rd in a heat at Monza, 3rd overall at Caserta, and a heat win in a non-championship event at Calabria. He was also 13th at the Monaco event, but he was also the top-placed Italian driver, as British cars, in particular the Coopers and Lotuses, showed that they had caught up to and overtaken the original Italian pioneers. In the Italian championship, only the five best results were to count from the 10 rounds. On total points he lost out badly to Renato Pirocchi 56 to 28, but on adjusted scores he was much closer, 40 to 25, and 2nd in the championship ahead of the likes of Giancarlo Baghetti and Lorenzo Bandini. In the Auto Italiana d'Europa he was only equal 16th on 12 points, and in the Prova Addestrativa he was equal 15th with 4 points but Lippi had only competed in three of the 11 events. |
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1961
Tries to find new challenges beyond FJunior |
But yet again, tragedy haunted Lippi's season. For the Coppa Junior at Modena, which was the 9th round of the Italian title and the Auto Italiana d'Europa, a dispute with the organisers saw Lippi skip the race, and his place taken by Squadra Trinacria founder Giuseppe Faranda. In the second heat, Faranda crashed into a straw bale and flew into the air, the de Sanctis rolling and throwing Faranda out. The hapless driver lost his life later in hospital.
Come 1961, Lippi got himself a Cooper T56 Fiat but failed to even qualify at a Monza event, and he also returned to sports car racing at the 4hr Testa Rosa at Pescara, the 5th round of the World Sportscar Championship. But after his Settecoli Stanguellini 750 Sport failed to start with gearbox problems, he jumped into the Milano Racing Club Lotus Eleven with an OSCA engine, shared with Ada Pace, but engine problems put the car out after 6 laps of the monster circuit. But by this stage, at the age of 34, with Formula Junior increasingly the domain for up-and-coming youngsters rather than gentlemen amateurs, Roberto looked for new challenges. Forget Formula Junior, this was a time when it was still possible to buy a Formula 1 specification car, take it racing in numerous non-championship races, and even try to make it onto the grid in a fully-fledged World Championship event. And that's exactly what Lippi did. |
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1961 Settecolli First outing at the Modena GP, where only 50 percent qualified |
Alessandro de Tomaso set up his eponymous marque in 1959, and although now famous for building exotic sports cars, on occasions his company also ventured into creating F1 designs. Their first such attempt was in the period from 1961 to 1963, when they built five Tipo chassis for the new 1.5 litre regulations, as well as the awful 801 chassis in 1962. Four of the Tipos were made in 1961, and Scuderia Settecolli purchased chassis 0002.
After an initial outing at Naples, Lippi was signed up to drive the car. It had a 1.5 litre in-line four-cylinder engine built by OSCA, the company started by the Maserati brothers after they left the company bearing their own name. Producing 158bhp at 7,500 rpm, Lippi's first outing in the car was at the Modena GP, just a week before the World Championship Italian GP. With only 14 cars starting and double that on the entry list, Lippi failed to qualify when he was only 23rd fastest in practice. |
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1961
Makes it to the grid despite being 23 seconds off pole |
So it was straight onto the Italian GP at Monza, where the de Tomaso OSCA proved hopelessly outclassed. Lippi was an enormous 22.6 seconds off the pole time set by the Ferrari of Wolfgang von Trips, and only 32nd quickest - except that the organisers allowed 32 cars to start. Lippi had his first, and as it would turn out, his one and only World Championship Grand Prix start. But it was to prove a most unhappy one, as engine problems struck on the opening lap, one in which tragedy struck once again.
This time, it was the infamous fatal collision between von Trips and Jim Clark that cost the German his life. Both von Trips and Clark were flung from their cars. The rest of the field somehow managed to miss the wrecks and the drivers lying on the ground. Clark eventually got up, dazed and confused, wandered over to von Trip's body, realised that he could do nothing to help, and as if in a trance went over to the remains of the German's Ferrari. He waited until the limping Lippi passed before leaving the scene. |
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1961-62
Two top-6 results in non-champ races gives Roberto hope |
Undaunted, Scuderia Settecolli and Lippi went ahead to yet another non-championship race, this time the Coppa Italia at Vallelunga. In a field of only 10 evenly-matched cars, Lippi qualified 6th, before finishing 4th in the first heat and 5th in the second, a lap down on each occasion, which was good enough to earn him 5th place on aggregate. It was a very encouraging result, certainly enough to keep the team and the driver plugging on into sporadic events in 1962, although there was little doubt that the car was hardly competitive.
In 1962, Scuderia Settecolli and Lippi entered two lead-up events before the Italian GP. One was at Posillipo, but he was only 12th quickest when just the top 10 were allowed to start. The other was the Gran Premio del Mediterraneo at Enna Pergusa, where Roberto was 11th fastest out of the 13 starts, despite being 11.6s off Bandini's pole time. In a race of survival, he somehow managed to come home in 6th place despite being six laps adrift of the quinella Ferraris of Bandini and Baghetti. |
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1962-63
Maserati engine performs in Rome with 4th, 5th, 4th |
The deficiencies of the package again became all too apparent once it was pitted against the world class World Championship field at Monza. Although this time Lippi was only 18.2 seconds slower than Clark's pole time, he was only 28th quickest out of the 30 entrants, with only 21 starters making the grid. Tony Settember was 21st in his Emeryson Climax, but even he was 9.5 seconds faster than the Settecolli de Tomaso. Interestingly though, Jo Siffert in a Lotus BRM was also amongst the non-qualifiers.
With a distinct lack of horsepower being one of the key problems, the team tried to solve that for 1963, firstly by fitting the car with a Maserati engine. It worked well at the Rome GP, when despite only starting 13th Lippi managed to finish 4th in the first heat, 5th in the second, and 4th overall in a decent-enough field. Later, the team went one step further, and tried combining the chassis with a Ferrari V6 engine. But at Enna, where Lippi had finished 6th the year before, he was 13.5 seconds off the pace in qualifying. |
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1963
The F1 adventure ends with 1 start, thanks to lacklustre de Tomaso |
Along with Gaetano Starrabba, Lippi failed to make the grid, but with only three weeks until the Italian GP, the team persisted with the Ferrari V6. Once again it was a hopeless task trying to extract any kind of pace from the car. Roberto was slowest out of the 26 entrants, and never came close to making the grid. In fact, he was 26.6 seconds slower than John Surtees in the pole-sitting Ferrari, 17 seconds away from making the grid, and even over 10 seconds adrift of his nearest rival!
In short, although it was possible back in those days for a non-professional driver to get behind the wheel of Formula 1 machinery and put on a creditable showing from time to time, especially at non-championship events, the de Tomaso that Lippi was saddled with simply was not a competitive proposition. In the three years that the five de Tomaso Tipo chassis were in competition, hardly anyone who drove them were able to achieve too much of note. |
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1962-63
Back to FJunior, where Lippi mixes it with the best up-and-comers |
Perhaps the fact that the de Tomaso was so hopelessly off the pace meant that as early as 1962 Lippi had made a return to Formula Junior. He competed in six rounds of the Italian championship that year, in three different cars: a self-entered Dagrada with a Lancia engine, a de Sanctis Fiat, and a Cooper. Results were hard to come by, especially when he was using now-outdated machinery, with only 8th and 6th in two heats at Vallelunga in the Dagrada being anything to show.
But in 1963, his Formula Junior campaign was run by Scuderia Settecolli, and in a Cooper T59 with a Ford engine Lippi found himself able to take on Italy's finest young drivers and still get respectable results. Competing in 10 of the 12 rounds, there were five 4th places in heats and finals, two 3rds in heats at Vallelunga, 3rd in the final at one of the Vallelunga rounds, 2nd on aggregate at another Vallelunga round, and several other top ten results. |
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1964-91
Turns his attention to driver training for local police and the disabled |
Again with only the best 5 results counting, he scored 60 points in total but only 56 counted, which placed him 5th in the championship against younger, and arguably hungrier opposition. But at the age of 37, and with racing possibly having been more a hobby than a career, it was time for Lippi to hang up the helmet. In 1964, he took up driver training, which initially included training local police in their driving skills, using Ferrari 250 GTs at the Modena track where he had raced so often.
Since 1982, Roberto has been a racing school instructor with the CSAI (the Automobile Club of Italy), and since 1991 his focus has been on training disabled drivers. At one stage he worked with the late ex-F1 driver Clay Regazzoni as part of a scheme which aimed to help disabled drivers get a full racing licence upon completion of a course. Lippi has also been a driving force behind attempts to organise disabled drivers' events in Palermo in Sicily. |
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