The father of modern single-seater racing

Giampaolo Dallara has no idea how many racing cars have been made by the company that has borne his name since its inception in 1972. The best guess within Dallara Automobili is that it’s probably around 1000 over the past two decades; certainly, in one year, the magic 100 was breached.

But we shouldn’t really be surprised. Dallara, after all, was the must-have car in the old Formula 3 for two and a half decades, and today it supplies spec chassis for IndyCar, Formula 2, the new-style F3, Japan’s Super Formula and Super Formula Lights, Indy NXT and Euroformula Open. The company, now numbering over 800, even builds the cars for Formula E. Giampaolo Dallara, then, is truly the father of modern single-seater racing.

Or maybe grandfather. Dallara, you see, is creeping up on his 89th birthday, yet every day he still arrives at his factory in Varano de Melegari, down the road from Parma. It’s a long time since, as an aeronautical engineering graduate, he arrived at Ferrari in 1959. Over the following decade, he moved on to Maserati, Lamborghini and then De Tomaso. At the last-named, he became a Formula 1 car designer in his own right, but the first car to carry his name was for a rather more humble category.

“It was the time of Italian hillclimbs and sportscar races,” he reflects of the Dallara SP1000, constructed in the garage of his family home along with two colleagues. “You needed a minimum of two seats symmetrical, and we made the car with three seats; the driver was sitting in the middle. The market was only Italian, and it was not easy because there was strong competition with Abarth. The market was not expanding and I was lucky that I had some activity with the racing department of Lancia to develop the rally version of the Stratos.”

This tie-up with the Turinese manufacturer was absolutely key to Dallara’s ability to carve a niche for itself in Formula 3, the category that would become the foundation of the company. “The cooperation with Lancia was always making us much more strong,” recalls Dallara. “We were working with Lancia on the development of the Beta Monte Carlo, which won the world championship, and then the Lancia LC1 and LC2.”

Dallara is drawn into an amusing anecdote about that 1980 success for the Beta in the World Championship for Makes, but merely to illustrate how competitive that series’ successor, the World Endurance Championship, is today. And within the WEC, of course, Dallara supplies the LMP2 chassis ‘spine’ for the Cadillacs and BMWs (and the soon-to-come McLarens), as well as cooperating on the development of the three-time Le Mans-winning Ferrari 499P.

Dallara's first car the SP1000 was built for the Italian hillclimbs

Photo by: Dallara

“There were two classes: two-litre and over two-litre, and they got the same points, and the winner of the class with most points would get the world championship,” he chortles of 1980. “There were two manufacturers: Porsche over two-litre and Lancia under two-litre.

“Lancia won the championship one year because for the Mugello 6 Hours they did an engine of 2.01 litres [or 1.4-litre turbocharged under the equivalency formula] and won [with Riccardo Patrese and Eddie Cheever], and they also won the two-litre class [Michele Alboreto and Walter Rohrl], and Porsche only got the points for the second place. Now there are 12 different competitors running officially – never so much competition, never so difficult like now.”

Dallara is clearly passionate about sportscar racing, regardless of how instrumental his work in this arena has been to his company’s single-seater success. Alongside his allegiance with Lancia came his entry to F3 in 1978, under the Wolf name in deference to the car’s backer, F1 team boss Walter Wolf. The Wolf WD1 – sometimes referred to as the Wolf-Dallara WD1 – was good enough in the hands of American Formula Atlantic ace Bobby Rahal to grab third place in the European championship round at the Nurburgring.

"I was every time looking at what Colin Chapman was doing because he was by far the best" Giampaolo Dallara 

“First I used to look what other people were doing and I was copying,” admits Dallara. “The best one was Colin Chapman of course; he directed that the engine became a structural part of the chassis.

“At the time all the Formula 3 cars had the chassis with the engines installed on the chassis. We modified a car made by the best manufacturer of Toyota engines: Novamotor. We modified the cover of the head, we modified the sump, and we put the engine directly to the chassis and then the engine for the first time in Formula 3 was a structural part of the chassis – this was the big difference. I don’t believe it was giving an advantage but it was a little lighter. And then everyone copied us for the proper solution! I was every time looking at what Colin Chapman was doing because he was by far the best.”

For 1979 and 1980, one of the Wolfs [Wolves? – ed] was modified by Dallara and campaigned by Guido Pardini in the Italian championship, which he won in the latter year. But now the car was known as an Emiliani: “The point is we had no customers, we were giving the car away. The car was the Walter Wolf car, it was manufactured and homologated by us. The name in the international races was Walter Wolf and, in the Italian, Emiliani.”

Over the last 40 years Dallara has grown to dominate the international scene in single-seaters

Photo by: Formula Motorsport Ltd

The first bespoke Dallara F3 car – and therefore Dallara single-seater – was the 381 of 1981. In September of that year, at Monza, future touring car legend Roberto Ravaglia scored the marque’s first Italian championship race victory. Through the first half of the decade, Dallara gradually increased its share of the grid in Italy until Franco Forini became its first champion in 1985. Crucially, by the time Nicola Larini followed that up with the 1986 title, the company had got its first break outside its homeland.

The key was Dallara’s adoption of carbon fibre composites for the tub for 1985, the first year of the flat-bottom regulations. “When the carbon fibre chassis arrived we were able to… the car was not as light as we can do now, but it was really stiff,” alludes Dallara. “There were some aerodynamics – we were testing just in five or six positions but we were learning.”

Over the border in France, a young Formula Renault graduate of Sicilian origin had his eye on an alternative, and in 1986 the Dallara F386 became a race-winning car in the hands of Jean Alesi. When, for 1987, Alesi was given the plum seat with the Martini-affiliated ORECA team, his first race was a disaster. So the family team’s year-old Dallara was dusted down and he went on to claim the title. Similarly, in Germany the Schubel team plumped for Dallara and Bernd Schneider stormed to the crown.

But there was still something itching Dallara: no one in Britain, apart from Tech-Speed early in 1989, would take a punt on his cars. Ralt and Reynard were the predominant local constructors, and it was not until 1993 that the barricades finally fell. The F393, with monoshock front suspension, had been coveted by ex-Bowman Racing men Trevor Carlin and Anthony ‘Boyo’ Hieatt, but they could not raise the finance to set up a team.

So it was the small Richard Arnold Developments squad that took the gamble. Startled by the form of RAD’s Warren Hughes, Edenbridge Racing soon followed suit, then Paul Stewart Racing, West Surrey Racing, Fortec… Dallara basically wiped out the opposition worldwide in F3.

“Before you had to buy the car, but in England for one year we gave the car free of charge to the English teams,” remembers Dallara. “It was for sure not the best one, but we showed the car could be competitive and it could win. Many important English teams were using the cars – they thought, ‘If we go to Dallara we could be more competitive’. At this moment we start our expansion. The centre of gravity was England.”

Dallara's work on Ferrari 333 led towards its move into IndyCar

Photo by: ISC Images and Archives via Getty Images

Something else very important was happening in the 1990s. Dallara’s work on the Ferrari 333 SP endurance racer took the company into the IMSA SportsCar Championship. One of the Ferrari customers was Team Scandia, whose boss Andy Evans was also running a team in the breakaway Indy Racing League. This had started with a motley selection of old Lolas and Reynards, but Evans engineered a meeting between Dallara and IRL founder Tony George.

“He told the organisers of the Indy Racing League, ‘We know someone in Italy who can make a car for us’,” says Dallara of Evans. “So he went and met the people of Indianapolis, and they said, ‘Are you ready to sell us 20 cars?’ ‘Yes!’ And this was the start. But the beginning was not easy at all in the States because we were not the best – the main competitor was G-Force, it was faster everywhere. It was a six-year battle, and then the majority of the field were using Dallaras and we became the main manufacturer in IndyCar.

“At the time we were not making money because we had to make a new car every year, and so did our competitors, but we could spread it across other programmes [mainly F3]. The others, if they had to only rely on the IndyCar they could not survive probably.”

Two of Dallara’s most-used words are ‘learning’ and ‘mistakes’. And this goes right back to his days starting out at Ferrari

That was despite Indy 500 success with Cheever in 1998, and a first Dallara IRL crown the same year with Kenny Brack. But when the big teams eloped from CART/Champ Car to the IRL in the early 2000s, Team Penske and Andretti Green Racing did so with Dallara, with Chip Ganassi Racing the only G-Force/Panoz loyalist until the series effectively became single-make in 2006. Dallara credits his late daughter for increasing the company’s market share: “Katerina was really smart in the commercial department and she was very good at strengthening our position, but the first six or seven years were not easy at all. Very, very hard. We were not making a profit because we were having to invest in wind tunnel testing time, testing them on the track, trying to make the car stiffer and better and improve the quality, and the others were doing the same.”

During this period, the first spec series Dallara contract was awarded. The World Series by Nissan started in 2002 and gradually built traction to be superior in many eyes to the long-running, Lola-based Formula 3000. Nissan’s sister company Renault took over the World Series for 2005 and it continued to flourish while, side by side with this, Dallara had been named as constructor for F3000’s replacement: GP2. World Series is now long gone, but Dallara is the go-to company for single-seater series.

“It’s different,” considers Dallara of the spec car industry as opposed to competition between constructors. “First you have to pay attention to playing every role with everybody. Every information regarding the aerodynamics of the car should be spread and distributed in the same way at the same time to all the competitors. And you have to pay strong attention also to the quality of the service. Then you have to develop the car in a different way. The organiser is your customer and you have to deliver enough cars. The price has to be good, the service has to be good, but also they want spectacular races and they ask you to make aerodynamics that help the passing, so you also have the number of passes evaluated per year, and you have to work so the car can follow the other closely in the corners so he can come out of the corner close to you and pass. We are learning, we are improving, now we know how to do it. In the beginning it took a lot of time to work out how to do something like this.”

World Series was Dallara's first spec series - with a certain Robert Kubica taking it to victory in 2005

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz / LAT Images via Getty Images

Two of Dallara’s most-used words are ‘learning’ and ‘mistakes’. And this goes right back to his days starting out at Ferrari (remember, this is when Tony Brooks, Phil Hill and Dan Gurney were among its top drivers!). “I tell you something,” he chuckles. “The first time I went in Ferrari, at the end of the visit I met Mr Ferrari – Enzo Ferrari – not in his office but in a meeting room, and in there were victory trophies, photos, and there were disposed all the broken parts, suspension arms, pistons, connecting rods. It was not clear but I believe it was him telling that you can do a mistake but only once.

“Strange enough, just recently there was a celebration in Modena: the Motor Valley Fest. I had a discussion with Piero Ferrari and I was telling him about meeting his father, and he told me, ‘Also me! The first time I went in the Ferrari company I did not go in the office of my father, I went in the meeting room just so he could show me the mistakes!’ What he decided to do was for the manager to take the group of people, see everything that happens, just to take note and see how long it takes to recover all the other cars and not do similar mistakes in the future.

“There are still an unbelievable amount of mistakes. It’s not so much mechanical parts now because they are very mature, but in electronics there is a lot to learn. We learn more from our mistakes – this is one of the strength points of our company.”

Similarly, there were ‘mistakes’ and ‘learning’ after the racing world re-emerged from lockdown in 2020. “We had a big problem with the spares,” reckons Dallara, “because we were used to in June deciding all the spare parts on what had been happening in the previous 12 months. After the racing started we realised that the competition, the aggressivity of the drivers was by far much, much higher, and so was the use of spare parts firstly because of the number of cars, and also the increased number of incidents.

“We had trouble because we had to work all night – we were not in a position to deliver all the parts that were needed. For the first time we had some people at the track going to a team saying, ‘Please, give me back your wing because I need one’. It was a transition year that was something completely different to what was going before – everywhere, it’s unbelievable. A series that was due to last four years [most series have a period of roughly this length for a generation of car], a team was buying three or four cars the first year and then maybe one new car every year. But now four new cars every year, plenty of spares. Every team is much more demanding. It’s another world. We are doing a lot of research, and we are lucky that we are learning also a lot from our mistakes.”

That continues. Dallara says he is “very proud to work with them” about his company’s production of chassis for the Haas F1 team, laughs that “we were not the best but we were not the last and it was a good lesson to learn” about when Dallara was an F1 constructor in its own right for Scuderia Italia in 1988-91.

Andrea de Cesaris on the way to third place in the Dallara 189 at the 1989 Canadian GP

Photo by: Sutton Images via Getty Images

Dallara is now not only the main factory, but also Dallara Compositi, 20km down the road, plus Indianapolis-based Dallara USA (which, apart from its IndyCar, Indy NXT and IMSA work, even produces all NASCAR’s Next Gen chassis). And of course there’s the company’s flagship road-car project: the Dallara Stradale. It’s not racing, but the principles can transfer.
“Racing is 75% of our activity, but also we develop carbon fibre chassis for road cars,” smiles Dallara. “We made as much as possible a supercar without doors. People say, ‘Why?’ But I’m nearly 89 and I can enter in the car! Maybe we need to make it easier for the old people like I am now… Also we need to understand how to homologate the car, pass the testing.

“Aerodynamics, carbon fibre, and now we try to understand about artificial intelligence. We don’t want to be known as the company that looks to the past; we try to look to the future. We know we have to invest a lot for the competition for tomorrow!” The single-seater industry worldwide can be relieved about that.

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Dallara supplies Cadillac with WEC chassis 'spine' and also helped Ferrari develop the 499P

Photo by: FIAWEC - DPPI