The history of motorsport's first ‘Greatest Of All Time’

For any older-generation enthusiast, it’s pretty boring these days to see animated debate about what racing driver is the GOAT. That’s right, the so-called ‘Greatest Of All Time’. It’s particularly irksome when one sees a probably perfectly well-meaning fan, deeply immersed in internet racing history, loftily quoting irrefutable statistical evidence to support whatever case they might have to prove that Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Alain Prost, Niki Lauda is that very man – standing there on that unique point of the all-time pyramid.

In reality, of course such debate as a serious concern is effectively unprovable; modern sport is so different an activity from what it was even one generation ago, never mind more than a century and a quarter’s worth.

But way back when I was a school kid, I remember something I’d written about the British Commonwealth being entered for a national competition. Nobody was more astonished than I when told I’d won the darned thing. Big deal – as the prize I was told I could select any book I wanted (up to 30 shillings in price). Being – even then – nuts about motor racing, I chose a rev’em and race’em driver biography entitled Nuvolari: Legendary Champion of International Auto Racing. It was written by the always enthusiastic Italian Count Johnny Lurani, who had actually known the great Nuvolari well from the mid-1930s forward.

Some lofty educationalist presented the prizes at our end of term school bash. When my name was called to accept my prize, this luminary unsmilingly studied the book cover, shook my hand (limply as I recall), and said: “Well done. There you are…” – and then he added “…for what good it will do you.”

Well, over 60 years later I’m still involved in motorsport, still scribbling about it, and your editor has just asked me to tell something of the tale of Tazio Giorgio Nuvolari, most definitely a candidate for having been ‘The Greatest’ we have seen.

PLUS: Ranking the top 10 pre-war grand prix drivers

Why should that be so? Well, Nuvolari – known popularly to Italian tifosi as ‘Nivola’ or ‘Il Mantovano Volante’ (‘The Flying Mantuan’) was much more than just a racing driver. His always spectacular exploits made him a Grade A celebrity within Italian society, while within the international motorsporting scene his name became revered. He was slight of stature, older than many of his rivals, hyper-competitive (of course), apparently utterly fearless and, like all the greats, he could extract more sheer speed and performance from any given car than almost any contemporary. He wore his heart on his sleeve. If he was unhappy with a car, a rival driver, or his team, then everybody would hear about it. If happy, his euphoria would embrace all associated with a success. Again, everyone would hear about it.

His long racing career through a period in which danger was absolutely pre-eminent had endowed him with a fatalistic acceptance that probable death and disaster lay around the very next corner. Yet as all his contemporaries would do, he simply filed such fears into part of his mind labelled ‘Do Not Reopen’ and got on with either confronting, or ignoring, such fears and hammering on regardless.

Nuvolari made his name as a motorcycle racer before switching to four wheels

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Time and again he would end a race being extracted from underneath, adjacent to, or trapped within his racing car. At various times he broke arms, legs, shoulders, collar bones, ribs and vertebrae. In his almost thoughtlessly exposed car cockpits, usually with only a smaller-than-A4 aero screen to break the direct airstream, he was burned and scalded, blasted by rain and wind, dust and grit, broiled by Mediterranean and desert sun… and indefatigably, with Tour de France cyclist-style unbelievable endurance and stamina, he would just relentlessly race on – and do so at a pace very few rivals could either approach, or dare.

And his laurels grew faster even than his battered and beaten medical history. During his long career as a racing driver his four-wheeler wins included not just 24 grand prix races, but also a slew of toweringly important sportscar classics. He won not just one but two editions of the 1000-mile round-Italy Mille Miglia sportscar race, plus two Targa Florios around the Madonie mountains of northern Sicily, two RAC Tourist Trophies in Ulster, the Le Mans 24 Hours, and he was even a recipient of the Formula 1 drivers’ world championship title of his era, the European Championship.

Nuvolari was born in November 1892 to a middle-class land-owning family in the village of Castel d’Ario near Mantua in eastern Lombardy, on the flat Po valley plain. The area was ideal for the developing sport of cycle racing. Father Arturo became an established racing cyclist and Tazio’s elder brother Giuseppe followed, to become multiple Italian champion. Tazio idolised his brother, and tried cycling too, but craved more speed, always more speed. The answer – inevitably – was a motorcycle.

The Mille Miglia win made Nuvolari a national hero on both two wheels and four. Later that same year, 1930, he won the RAC Tourist Trophy race at Ards in Ulster for Alfa Romeo

He acquired a competition licence in the midst of the First World War, in 1915. He was no spring chicken, already 23, but had to wait for peacetime before his first race, at Cremona in 1920. He became a prominent racing motorcyclist riding for the Bianchi team, and in 1925 took the 350cc European Championship title by winning the European Grand Prix. Between 1925 and 1928, Nuvolari won the two-wheeled Grand Prix des Nations no fewer than four consecutive times, and the nationally important Circuito del Lario race five times, 1925 to 1929.

He had always been interested in trying his hand seriously at four-wheeled racing, and from 1924 had appeared quite frequently in a 1500cc Chiribiri. The car was no ball of fire but he made it competitive in his class. One rival, driving for Alfa Romeo, was Enzo Ferrari, six years the Mantuan’s junior…

Nuvolari had made sufficient impression with his combined two and four-wheeled results to be invited to test an Alfa Romeo GP car, as a potential team addition after the great Antonio Ascari had been killed when leading the 1925 French GP at Montlhery. A drive in the Italian GP at Monza was on offer, but Nuvolari’s test ended in a massive accident after the car’s gearbox seized. He was seriously battered with multiple lacerations and muscle and ligament damage. Just six days later, bandaged into a riding position with a cushion taped to his midriff, lifted onto his motorcycle, he won the GP des Nations at Monza. Who needs Alfa Romeo?

Nuvolari forged a successful partnership with Alfa Romeo in the early 1930s

That ride alone began to confer upon ‘Nivola’ the almost mythic status he would enjoy into the 1930s. He drove a Bugatti in the 1928 Mille Miglia, an OM in 1929, then was teamed with Alfa Romeo test driver Gianbattista Guidotti in a works Alfa 6C-1750 in the 1930 race. During his motorcycling career a leading rival had been fellow Italian Achille Varzi. Where Nuvolari was renowned for his fiery, expressive, noisy nature, Varzi was almost his total opposite. Of slightly higher social class, introverted, very seldom known to smile (possibly from a facial nerve damage), Varzi was portrayed by the Italian press as a kind of unexpressive Kimi Raikkonen… with knobs on. In that 1930 Mille Miglia, Nuvolari and Varzi were team-mates, both driving works Alfa 1750s. From the staggered start, Nuvolari got away after Varzi but was leading on corrected time on the 1000-mile route when he sighted his team-mate’s tail lights ahead. Guidotti once told me how Nuvolari switched off his headlights, to steal up – stealth-style – on Varzi’s tail, unseen. On the fast roads approaching the finish at Brescia he finally flicked his lights back on and ducked out of the slipstream to assert his victory in public view. Varzi was unamused, and in coming years the pair would fight some tremendous battles both on circuit and off it, vying for Italian public support.

The Mille Miglia win made Nuvolari a national hero on both two wheels and four. Later that same year, 1930, he won the RAC Tourist Trophy race at Ards in Ulster for Alfa Romeo. It was an internationally important, high-profile success. ‘Nivola’ was an international star.

His name and that of the Alfa Romeo works team became inseparable. He won two more important Italian races in 1931 – the Targa Florio and Coppa Ciano – and in 1932 he made the most of the trend-setting new centrally disposed single-seat Alfa Romeo Tipo B Monoposto, winning the Italian and French GPs, the Coppa Ciano at Livorno and the Coppa Acerbo at Pescara (and had already won the Monaco GP in an Alfa Monza). Already 39, here was a true champion racing driver in his pomp.

And his racing antics could be truly spectacular. Guidotti told me how he in extremis and under pressure to regain time, short-cut a corner on the Livorno circuit not just by diving through a filling station forecourt, but by diving through between a wall and the back of the fuel pumps. “We measure the gap after – four centimetres more space, no more!”

In driving terms, ‘Nivola’ loudly proclaimed his distaste for brakes, declaring “they just make you go slower”. Of course he used them, but more to unbalance his car than retard it, throwing it into a drift which he then balanced on throttle against steering. The narrow-tread iron-hard Pirelli and Englebert tyres on which he ran could survive such treatment. He is one claimant for having invented ‘the drift’.

And then there was the Scuderia Ferrari. Former Alfa Romeo driver-turned-marque concessionaire Enzo Ferrari had created his private team as a cooperative gentleman’s club to race effectively as a private entrant. Ferrari talked ‘Nivola’ into driving a Scuderia entry in events ignored by the increasingly cash-strapped factory. The champion was delighted to secure those extra earning opportunities and, into 1933 with the factory’s works racing operation virtually defunct, he signed near full-time for Ferrari.

Nuvolari's driving style also broke new ground

Photo by: Motorsport Images

But Alfa Romeo kept its state-of-the-art Tipo B GP cars from Ferrari, ‘Nivola’ and his team-mates having to do the best they could with two-seat-width Monza cars fitted with uprated engines, which broke the drivetrain… repeatedly. The Mantuan was enraged, and struck a highly publicised alternative deal to drive Maseratis. Mr Ferrari was equally outraged at such duplicity, but the move was a fait accompli. The Maserati became an unwanted, Alfa-embarrassing, entry as the little man won the major Belgian and minor Nice GPs plus the important Coppa Ciano for the Bolognese marque. But what a year Nuvolari was enjoying – he won his second Mille Miglia and the Le Mans 24 Hours, both for Alfa Romeo, and then his second RAC TT at Ards, this time for MG.

Into 1934 he drove a Bugatti at Monaco, hit a tree in his Maserati at rain-swept Alessandria and broke a leg. Four weeks later he was racing again, at Berlin’s AVUS track, with his Maserati modified for right-foot clutch operation. Cramping badly, he finished fifth. It was a bad year as his leg was slow to heal.

For 1935, Varzi had been signed up by the German Auto Union team. Nuvolari was keen to join him there. Varzi said “No way”. Friends then brokered a rapprochement between ‘Nivola’ and Ferrari. Driving the latest version of the Tipo B and the latest Alfa Romeo 8C-35s the little man bounced back, winning at Pau, Bergamo, Biella, Turin, the Coppa Ciano (yet again), Nice and Modena. What’s more, in the obsolescent Tipo B, he outfumbled the might of Germany’s Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrows to steal victory in the German GP at the Nurburgring Nordschleife. Nazi officialdom was unamused, Mussolini’s Fascisti overjoyed…

As the Scuderia Ferrari operation was absorbed in-house by Alfa Romeo for 1938 Nuvolari gave them one last chance, in the Pau GP. But during practice his car’s fuel tank split, exploded into flames and he was dragged from the cockpit, painfully burned. It was the last straw

For Alfa Romeo with 8C-35 and 12C-36 GP cars he then scored five more prestigious victories through 1936, including the American Vanderbilt Cup on Long Island. The Cup itself was so big that little, battle-scarred, near-44-year-old ‘Nivola’ was photographed sitting comfortably in it. However, through 1937 winning became difficult against the full-fledged might of the money-rich German teams with their state backing. In an Alfa 12C-36 he won the Milan GP, but lack of success really rankled.

He railed against poor Alfa Romeo capability, but more so against what he perceived as poor preparation. As the Scuderia Ferrari operation was absorbed in-house by Alfa Romeo for 1938 he gave them one last chance, in the Pau GP. But during practice his car’s fuel tank split, exploded into flames and he was dragged from the cockpit, painfully burned. It was the last straw. After recovering quickly, he accepted Auto Union’s invitation to join them as replacement for their lost leader, Bernd Rosemeyer – killed in a class speed record attempt that January.

‘Nivola’ adapted rapidly to the Germans’ latest so-called D-Type rear-engined V12 GP car, and he won both his home Italian GP at Monza, and the Donington GP in England. Through 1939 the rival Mercedes-Benz W154s dominated, but the diminutive, battered yet rugged Italian won the final race of peacetime, the Belgrade GP on 3 September 1939.

Top 10: Ranking the greatest pre-war grand prix cars

Nuvolari's switch to Auto Union came about to remain in competitive machinery as Alfa Romeo faltered

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Come the return of peace, ‘Nivola’ was in his 54th year. But ‘Il Mantovano Volante’ remained revered. He was prominent in Piero Dusio’s Cisitalia race circus, and won the Albi GP for Maserati. But his breathing was laboured, his lungs damaged, not least by years of inhaling corrosive fuel and combustion fumes. He took to driving with a face mask over nose and mouth. He was seen to dab away blood. What little extra weight he carried fell from him. You might have heard of the respect and reverence in which his team-mates and rivals would hold Juan Manuel Fangio late in his career. There are many photos of ‘Nivola’ similarly honoured, seated on a trackside wall or pit counter, attentive young drivers gathered around, hanging on his every word. Of course, they all longed just to beat him, to knock off the old champion. And while on track he would do his darndest to make it difficult for them, off track he had mellowed into offering often sage (and free) advice.

Above all, Nuvolari was firmly rooted, with a very happy marriage – to Carolina Perina – which produced two sons, of whom he was immensely proud. The older, Giorgio, had been born in 1918, even before Papa began racing seriously, while the younger, Alberto, had followed in 1928. But stark tragedy intervened, Giorgio dying in 1937, at 19, from the heart condition myocarditis, while Alberto died in 1946, aged 18, from nephritic kidney failure. Tazio and Carolina Nuvolari survived as an inseparable unit, but this justifiably proud sportsman hungered for one last great hurrah in racing – or perhaps a warrior’s death on track… like so many he had seen.

Always one for a prestigious public gesture, Enzo Ferrari offered him a drive in one last Mille Miglia, in 1948. ‘Nivola’ was given what seems to have been private owner Prince Igor’s cycle-fendered Ferrari 166 Spider Corsa – unknown to the owner, who thought his agent had merely sent the car to the Maranello factory ‘for service’. Well, ‘Nivola’ literally drove the fenders – and the bonnet – off the car in the 1000 miles, passengered by fearless race mechanic Sergio Scapinelli. He led on corrected time from the Brescia start and had built his lead in the disintegrating Ferrari to 27 minutes by the time the car finally failed at Reggio-Emilia, with only 70 miles to run.

‘Nivola’ was exhausted, and took many days to recover from this superb, final, defining, legend-confirming, drive. On 10 April 1950 he reappeared on the startline for the Monte Pellegrino hillclimb at Palermo, Sicily, driving a Cisitalia-Abarth sportscar. He won his class – of course – and set fifth fastest time overall. That May saw his gaunt figure in England, a special guest at Silverstone.

Old friends began visiting him more frequently at his Mantuan home. None could be certain it would not be the last time. His obstructive lung disease worsened. In 1952 a stroke left him partially paralysed. On 11 August 1953 a second ended the champion’s extraordinary life. He had been quite simply the standard-setting racing driver of a long, long era. Above the door of his family tomb the famous inscription reads: ‘Correrai Ancor Più Veloce Per Le Vie Del Cielo’ – ‘You will race even faster along the roads of heaven’.

For all aspiring racing drivers here was an example. For Nuvolari, definitively, was not merely A Racer – he was, undeniably, The Man.