Giovanni Salvati

Born in 1941 in Castellammare di Stabia. His father Narciso ran a filling station there with a tyre shop attached — that is where the boy watched the fast cars go by. When he was nineteen, the family moved to Milan, where his father opened a new tyre and parts business.

In 1965, aged twenty-four, he got into a Formula Monza 875 — the class meant as a stepping stone to Formula 3. In 1966 he finished third overall in the Trofeo Cadetti.

Pippo Bianchi called him “a knight of risk”. In 1967 he moved to Formula 850, on a hand-built Zambardieri.

In 1969 he made his Formula 3 debut — with a pole position straight away.

1970 was his year. He won the Italian Formula 3 championship on a Tecno-Ford, with four wins — two of them at Monza, his favourite circuit — and two second places. He also won overseas, at Tarumã in Brazil. For that season he received the “Casco d’oro” of Autosprint as the best Italian driver of the year. At the end of the season he raced Formula 2 for the first time — and won at Monza.

Briefly with Abarth, then with the Ala d’oro team on a March 712M with a Cosworth engine. At the Imola Grand Prix he finished second behind Carlos Pace — ahead of Emerson and Wilson Fittipaldi, François Cevert and Carlos Reutemann.

In September 1971 he joined the Aquilino-Branca team and won the Coppa Agip at Monza. Graham Hill then signed him as first driver of his new Lola-Embassy team for 1972.

In the Brazilian Formula 2 tournament he lost his life in the second heat, attempting a pass under braking — on the very circuit where he had won the year before. The barriers stood too close to the track and there was gravel on the asphalt. He was thirty years old.

The Swede Ronnie Peterson, who had taken a win from him a few weeks earlier, said of him: “A true champion does not calculate, he fights for the win and not for points, like Salvati.”

In his memory the Scuderia Salvati was founded in Milan. It goes back to his father Narciso and his younger brother Adriano; friends and supporters are also named, among them the journalist Vittorio Gargiulo. Adriano Salvati still presides over it today. Its best-known protégé is Michele Alboreto.