He started in rallies with an Alfa Romeo Giulia ti, then took to the track with a Stanguellini Formula Junior. Then came the Formula 875 Monza: racing took place on Thursday evenings on the Junior circuit, the short version of the Monza track.

He bought his first car in the class together with his friend Angelo Lavesi from the Scuderia Salvati: an Ambivero, its chassis made from plumber’s tubing. Lavesi was mechanic, timekeeper and right-hand man in one.

SCAM — Squadra Corse Auto Melegnano

The circle of friends became a team: SCAM, Squadra Corse Auto Melegnano. Among its members were Giuseppe Confalonieri, Antonio Bonini, Giuseppe Cremonesi, Giancarlo Santarelli, the Raineri brothers and Carlo and Orazio Riponi.

24 September 1971

On a LAB, Bosio put his name on the Formula Monza roll of honour on 24 September 1971. In that year’s final standings he came third with 27 points; in 1972 he appears sixth with twelve points, by then on a Santandrea.

Later he raced in Formula 850 and joined the Scuderia Concordia of Milan. His Formula Monza went to Aldo Cavallini, who raced it until 1978.

What came next

He stopped altogether: “Since I gave up racing I haven’t set foot on a circuit, not even as a spectator.” He did not leave the motor world, though. He became a driver for large firms and a volunteer with the Croce Bianca in Melegnano — one of the first “piloti del cuore”, driving organs to transplant operations. He drove for the first Protezione Civile units into disaster areas.

And he led motorhome convoys — north for preference, with the inevitable run to the North Cape, and beyond the Iron Curtain, long before those borders fell. Journeys that were dreams first of all; he helped make them real.

He long remembered his “teacher” Lorenzo Bandini. And arriving in a pack at the first chicane, when nobody would give way — and Michele Alboreto, Lella Lombardi and Giovanni Salvati.

Franco Bosio died in 2026, aged 83. Luciano Passoni, who had interviewed him years before, wrote the tribute: a man from a generation of drivers “where passion came before technique”, and who in the end “gave in only to the inexorable passing of time”.