Ten classic moments from Mugello

It's set to host Formula 1 for the first time this weekend, with the so-called Tuscan Grand Prix stepping in during the world championship's hour of need to help make up for the shortfall of races cancelled by the coronavirus pandemic. Coincidentally, it just so happens to be the 1000th grand prix of circuit owner Ferrari too.

But Mugello has packed plenty of superb racing into its 46 year-history, both on two wheels and four. From the first international race victory of a future Indycar legend, a thrilling duel to decide an F1 feeder series title and a long-awaited victory for a perennial MotoGP underdog, here are 10 of its best.

1974 European Formula 2 Championship

The brand-new Mugello circuit's first event had been a Formula 5000 round three weeks previously, but catastrophic rainfall had led to the race's abandonment after 11 laps with David Hobbs in front in his Lola-Chevrolet. Therefore, the first proper international contest to take place at the circuit was a round of the European Formula 2 Championship, beginning an annual fixture that was to last until the series' final season in 1984.

Patrick Depailler, already in Formula 1 with Tyrrell, took victory in the two-part aggregate race to take the championship lead away from March-BMW team-mate Hans Stuck, who was away racing a BMW at the Nurburgring 6 Hours, in which his CSL was captured in one of the most famous motorsport images of all time. Stuck's drive for Mugello went to Brian Henton.

Jacques Laffite claimed pole in a March-BMW run by the Paul Ricard-based BP France team, but Depailler took the lead at the start and the challenge of Laffite - who could have taken over the points lead with a good result - ended with engine failure. Second place in the first heat therefore went to Laffite's team-mate Jean-Pierre Paoli from the Roy Kennedy-run March of Masami Kuwashima.

Future Ligier F1 team manager Paoli was at the time the circuit manager of Paul Ricard, and was in his thirties when he made his competition debut in Formula Renault, mixing it with the youngsters straight away. In heat two at Mugello he led Depailler all the way, helped by remaining unpenalised after jumping the rolling start. Depailler was keeping an eye on the aggregate times, and even allowed Jean-Pierre Jabouille (delayed in the first heat) into a brief second place in the Alpine-based Elf-BMW.

Tom Pryce, who at the time was getting established in F1 with Shadow, was third on aggregate in his Chevron-BMW, while Henton was sixth after needing to pit in the first heat for a replacement nose section. John Watson, another driver already in F1, was on course for a possible podium when engine failure halted his Surtees-Ford.

1975 World Championship of Makes

Mugello's first world championship race took place in 1975, its second year of operation. The circuit would become a mainstay of the world sportscar calendar, usually with an early-season date, until 1982, and in that year and 1985 (when it rejoined the schedule) it hosted full-fat Group C competition. But no race was as entertaining as the 1975 edition.

Sportscar racing was entering a period of doldrums, but a decent entry had been pulled together with the new two-litre turbocharged Alpine-Renault, the now quasi-works Alfa Romeos run by Willi Kauhsen with 'interference' from the factory, and three Porsche 908/3s having their first race in turbocharged form.

In front of a crowd of 30,000, the race featured a nip-and-tuck battle for two thirds of its distance between the Alpine-Renault driven by Jean-Pierre Jabouille and Gerard Larrousse, and the lead Kauhsen Alfa of Arturo Merzario and Jacky Ickx. Sadly for the partisan locals, wrote Autosport's Jeff Hutchinson, "Merzario came into the pits with the brake pads down to the metal and as he stopped one pad welded itself to the disc. By the time the mechanics got the old pad out and new ones in place three and a half minutes had gone by."

With the charging Merzario in fine form, he recovered second from the leading Porsche of Herbert Muller and Gijs van Lennep, and was cheered as he unlapped himself from the leading Alpine, but still finished a lap adrift.

The race belonged to Jabouille and Larrousse, who netted the first world championship victory for the project that would eventually morph into the Renault F1 team.

1983 European Formula 2 Championship

Mugello's European F2 round had always been held mid-season, but in 1983 it was the finale, which meant that it played host to an exciting battle between the Ralt-Hondas of Jonathan Palmer and Mike Thackwell.

Palmer, after all his hard work with the team through 1982, had been the designated number one title contender for Ralt, and had taken the crown in the penultimate round at Zolder. Now that the pressure was off, Thackwell was allowed to race his English team-mate.

Problem was, the Ralt had a lot of downforce, Thackwell had more wing on his car than Palmer did on his, and the Kiwi spent half the race stuck behind the quick-in-a-straight-line AGS-BMW of Philippe Streiff. Eventually Streiff made a mistake, got into a slide, and Thackwell was through.

"This weekend he was allowed to race his team-mate and he was going to," wrote Ian Phillips in Autosport. "The nine-second gap on lap 26 was down to 2s by lap 35 and after that it wasn't worth putting the watch on as the two Ralts were only a couple of lengths apart."

Thackwell's best chance was a dive into the final downhill left-hander, but Palmer shrugged off all his attacks and proved a worthy champion, with Streiff a distant third and Minardi's Alessandro Nannini beating the leading March of Dave Scott to fourth.

1986 International Formula 3000 Championship

When F3000 replaced F2 for 1985, Mugello had fallen off the calendar due to date congestion, but it was back for 1986 - although unless a saviour could be found this was tipped to be the last major event at the venue, with expectations that a reservoir would be built on the site.

While F2 cars had been ground-effect in the category's final years, F3000 machinery ran to flat-bottom regulations and this exacerbated a tendency Mugello had always exhibited: it had a very low-grip surface, the cars slid around wildly and the usually hot summer weather meant it was a tyre killer.

That set up a thrilling race in 1986. Pierluigi Martini had bolted clear of the field in his Luciano Pavesi Racing Ralt, but by half-distance he was struggling and, as the race entered its final third, he was leading a tight pack at the front comprising Philippe Alliot, John Nielsen, Olivier Grouillard, Ivan Capelli and Michel Ferte.

The tyres on Nielsen's works Ralt-Honda looked in the best shape, but electrical failure scuppered his bid, and that freed up Grouillard - having his first race of the season in a Markus Hotz-run Lola - to challenge Alliot's ORECA March. It ended in predictable fashion for the two aggressive Frenchmen.

"Grouillard attempted to nip inside Alliot under braking at the top of the hill on what is an impossible line on any occasion," wrote Autosport's Ian Phillips. "As Alliot turned sharply into the corner, the cars made contact. Alliot spun and got stuck in the sand trap, Grouillard spun and by the time he had restarted Capelli and Ferte were past him."

With three laps to go, Ferte, who had dropped to 10th at the beginning when he was boxed in by the slow-starting Satoru Nakajima, got past Capelli's Genoa Racing March and carved into the lead of Martini, which had been extended by the Grouillard/Alliot tangle. Ferte lapped two seconds quicker than the Italian and caught him on the line, and with one more lap the result would likely have been very different.

1995 International Touring Cars

When the FIA linked up with the DTM to sanction the new International Touring Car series from 1995, the first round of the new series was held at Mugello. In 1995 the ITC ran as a six-round side-contest alongside the traditional series, before for 1996 the DTM name was phased out completely, the ITC went global, costs exploded and the series imploded.

But everything was rosy in Tuscany in May 1995, especially as the young proteges of Mercedes and Alfa Romeo were scoring breakthrough results. "Scot Dario Franchitti endorsed the new spirit of internationalism with a remarkable maiden victory for Mercedes in race two - his sixth Class 1 start ever - ahead of Italian Formula 3 champion Giancarlo Fisichella's Alfa Romeo," reflected Autosport's Laurence Foster. "And just to rub it in that youth was having its day, British F3 champion Jan Magnussen forgot his troubled start to Class 1 with his first podium."

Franchitti's win in race two represented a remarkable comeback after qualifying 16th due to a ride-height error. While Mercedes' old-guard talisman Bernd Schneider won relatively comfortably from Alfa hero Nicola Larini and Magnussen, Franchitti charged his way to fourth behind his fellow Mercedes junior.

That result set the grid for race two, where Franchitti immediately jumped to second. Schneider led again but began suffering increasing amounts of oversteer and, with Fisichella closing up on the leading Mercedes pair, he couldn't delay Franchitti any longer and let the youngster through. Fisichella also got past Schneider and ate into Franchitti's advantage, but fell just a second short at the finish.

1997 FIA GT Championship

With the demise of the ITC, Mugello hosted a round of the FIA GT Championship in 1997. But unlike in the ITC, Mercedes couldn't win on the flowing sweeps of Tuscany, thanks to a dramatic incident in a thrilling race.

Bernd Schneider was leading in the Mercedes CLK-GTR he shared with Alexander Wurz when he came up to lap the Scuderia Italia Porsche 911 GT1 of Pierluigi Martini, who in turn was catching the GT2 Porsche of German amateur Bernhard Muller. Martini overtook Muller into the Scarperia right-hander, hit the brakes for the turn, was rammed by Muller, who then flew out of control across the corner and T-boned Schneider.

"Although it can only be described as a freak accident, it was the kind of incident many of the top GT1 class drivers had been predicting all weekend," wrote Gary Watkins in Autosport.

The upshot was that Steve Soper was now leading in the Schnitzer McLaren-BMW F1 GTR he shared with JJ Lehto, but the Anglo-Finnish pairing had a fight on their hands against Mercedes' Alessandro Nannini, who did the lion's share of the driving in the car he shared with Marcel Tiemann. Mercedes kept Nannini in the car and only changed two tyres at the final pitstop in a bid to get ahead of the McLaren. It worked, but Lehto used his tyre advantage to pass the Italian and take victory, putting himself and Soper back into the championship lead.

2006 MotoGP Italian Grand Prix

This was a race that even lured Michael Schumacher into town.

Dominant force Valentino Rossi had endured his worst start to a MotoGP season since his debut in the premier class, with a win in Qatar the only highlight as crashes and mechanical issues with his Yamaha M1 derailed his title defence.

Heading into his home round following consecutive DNFs, Rossi was playing catch-up against a gaggle of rivals who sensed a massive opportunity to break his stranglehold on the series. Rossi was down in 10th place in the riders' standings before the Italian GP and 43 points behind the late Nicky Hayden, who led the championship despite not having won a race.

Lining up on the outside of the front row behind the Ducatis of polesitter Sete Gibernau and Loris Capirossi, Rossi led the early laps before being reeled in by the chasing pack, and he dropped to fifth place after running wide at San Donato. But that appeared to trigger the reigning world champion into action as he picked off his rivals to return to the front and claim victory by over half a second from Capirossi.

Rossi, on inferior machinery that season, was the only Yamaha rider to finish inside the top 10, with team-mate Colin Edwards a lowly 12th place and 30s back at the chequered flag. But it mattered little to the Rossi-mad following at Mugello, who saw their home-grown hero clinch his fifth consecutive premier class Italian GP win in a run that would eventually stretch to seven in a row.

The victory ignited his championship charge in an enthralling season, but Rossi would ultimately miss out on the 2006 crown to Hayden after crashing in the final round at Valencia.

2008 Formula 3 Euro Series

The European F3 Championship had been a regular at Mugello in the early 1980s, and its spiritual successor - the F3 Euro Series - paid visits in 2007 and 2008, after a bizarre off-piste British F3 appearance in 2006.

The 2008 running in support of the DTM was the second round, and German youngster Nico Hulkenberg used it to make up for a miserable opening event at Hockenheim by taking his first victory of the season.

Hulkenberg's ART Grand Prix team-mate Jules Bianchi was embroiled in an early battle for second with Manor Motorsport promise Kodai Tsukakoshi, before the Japanese prevailed.

"With no traffic in front of him, Tsukakoshi quickly carved into Hulkenberg's advantage and on lap 11 attempted to pass him for the lead around the outside of the first corner," wrote Edd Straw for Autosport. "The Manor driver lost the rear of his Dallara-Mercedes mid-corner, clipping the sidepod of Hulkenberg, and lost almost a second to the leader."

Hulkenberg was left free to cement a victory that set up his successful title challenge, while Tsukakoshi was second and Bianchi a distant third.

2014 Formula Renault ALPS

It wasn't thrilling racing - single-seater contests generally aren't at Mugello - but this appearance for the second-level Formula Renault 2.0 series was significant for the level of talent on offer.

In his third season in the category, Nyck de Vries clinched the title thanks to a double win in Tuscany with the Koiranen GP team, and he would go on to also win the main FR2.0 contest of 2014, the Eurocup.

And, as Autosport's well-travelled European correspondent Jurgen Stiftschraube detailed, there were plenty of big names of the future trailing the diminutive Dutchman. "Fortec-run rookie Charles Leclerc continued his recent strong form, holding off Bruno Bonifacio for second," he wrote of the opening race. "Behind them, series latecomer Pietro Fittipaldi was able to keep George Russell at bay for fourth." Leclerc would also finish second in race two.

Also nestling in the 34-strong field were the late and much-missed Anthoine Hubert, who took a sixth, plus current F2 contender Jack Aitken and Porsche works driver Dennis Olsen.

2019 MotoGP Italian GP

This was a race where the champagne and tears flowed in equal measure, as Danilo Petrucci, so often in a supporting role, grabbed the spotlight.

As the perennial underdog, Petrucci's promotion to the factory Ducati squad in place of three-time MotoGP world champion Jorge Lorenzo was the feelgood storyline of the 2019 season. While he had accepted the role of understudy to team-mate Andrea Dovizioso over the opening rounds, he headed to his and Ducati's home round off the back of a confidence-boosting podium at Le Mans, and came into the race a genuine contender for victory.

But, in a tightly-fought event, with a top five of Petrucci, Dovizioso, Honda's Marc Marquez, Suzuki's Alex Rins and Pramac Ducati's Jack Miller keeping the leading pack closely contested, it allowed Petrucci to grow into the race without taking major risks.

Trading overtakes for the lead with Dovizioso allowed Marquez to force his way to the front, ahd he benefited from a double tow down the long main straight at the start of the final lap but, with the trio going side by side into San Donato, Petrucci hugged the inside line to squeeze his rivals out.

The move appeared to surprise Dovizioso, who perhaps expected his new team-mate to concede ground first, and Marquez forced around the outside into second place.

That set up arguably the lap of Petrucci's career as he combined pace and positioning to see off any late attacks and, in a sprint to the line, the Italian won by just 0.043 seconds from Marquez to take his maiden MotoGP victory.

An Italian winning on a Ducati at Mugello had always been the perfect result for the local fans - perhaps only bettered by a certain Valentino Rossi taking to the top spot of the podium - but this was a win celebrated throughout the paddock regardless of nationality or allegiance.

The enormity of the achievement sunk in when he reached parc ferme and wild celebrations turned into floods of tears as the burly figure of Petrucci was reduced to a blubbering mess in the arms of his Ducati team.