Tazio Nuvolari
Discussion
I have just replied to a topic in general motorsport and I said that I thought Nuvolari was the greatest driver ever.
So I did a bit of Googling, as you do!
And I found this which I thought you might enjoy. It's a copy & paste from an Autosport article Nigel Roebuck.
I hope Autosport and Nigel don't mind! Anyway here you are, enjoy:
Dear Nigel,
I've been reading up on grand prix history, and specifically Tazio Nuvolari. I was struck recently by Forghieri's apt comment on Gilles Villeneuve's "rage to win." Enzo Ferrari said that Gilles immediately reminded him of "The Great Nuvolari." Could you compare the two? Was Nuvolari as highly regarded by his fellow drivers?
Dave Anderson, New London, Connecticut, USA
Dear Dave,
There are indeed parallels between Tazio Nuvolari and Gilles Villeneuve; in comparing Gilles with the driver he regarded as the greatest ever (along with Stirling Moss), Enzo could have paid him no higher compliment. Both had a freakish degree of natural ability, both were abnormally fearless, and both would fight as hard for seventh place as for victory.
I saw nearly all Villeneuve's Grands Prix, but none of Nuvolari's, of course, for he died in 1953, at the age of 61, when I was but seven years old.
In his Cambridge days, though, my father went with some friends to the Donington Grand Prix in 1938. "Really, all I remember about that day," he told me, "is Nuvolari, who won. He looked absolutely tiny in that huge Auto Union. All the cars were sideways as they came past us each lap, but it was noticeable that he wound off the opposite lock earlier than the others, while his car was still sliding – he knew just how much was enough. I remember, too, how he'd bang the cockpit side with his hand when he was being held up..."
Once, over dinner in Manhattan, I mentioned that to the late Rene Dreyfus, and his face lit into an animated smile. "Yes, yes, it was exactly that! He hated to be baulked, he got... very impatient!"
It is not often that one dines with a man who was Tazio Nuvolari's team mate (both driving Alfa Romeos for Scuderia Ferrari), and later that evening I rushed back to my hotel and scribbled down everything I could remember of our conversation. How had Dreyfus rated the drivers of the thirties? "Well, perhaps Rudolf Caracciola was technically the best, the most complete. But the greatest," Rene lingered over the word, "without any doubt, was Nuvolari."
You get this sometimes in Grand Prix racing, a man so ethereally skilled that his fellows – or most of them – concede that he is simply better than they. Michael Schumacher is in that position today. But rarer by far is the driver with a presence to make the roof of your mouth dry.
Nuvolari had it in spades, so did Fangio, and so did Senna. "You can't create it," Gerhard Berger said of Ayrton. "It's there, or it isn't. In Senna's mind, the only thing that existed was himself – he had to be first, and by this thinking he was able to create a power. That's the only word I can use. But he had this aura, too. When he came into a room, everyone stared."
Comparing drivers of different eras may be a futile exercise, for the demands of the job change as the sport evolves, but one constant remains, and no one ever put it better than Frank Gardner: "In the end, it's all a matter of more accelerator and less brake..."
Dreyfus thought that definition perfect for Nuvolari. First of all, what you had to understand about Tazio, he said, was that he drove in a manner wholly different from any of his contemporaries. "He's credited with inventing the four-wheel drift, but it wasn't a conscious thing – nothing was with him, because he did everything by instinct. He was strong for his size, and had great stamina, but the races were very long, and the cars were big and wilful.
"In the case of Nuvolari, you had the impression of a man on an unbroken horse, but instead of fighting it, he let it run free. With him, there was no accepted 'line' around a circuit; he would turn into a corner early, aim at the apex, put the power down hard, and do the steering with the throttle, using his hands only for small corrections. It was his speed out of corners that was so exceptional. We all tried to copy his technique, but no one can borrow another man's instinct. Only Tazio could drive like Tazio."
All who knew him remember most of all Nuvolari's will to win, his sheer need to pass the car in front, be it for first place or 10th. If the fight had been exhilarating, he was always gracious in defeat, but there is a gulf between a good sport and a good loser. Nuvolari hated to lose, but there is no cliche story here of the boxer looking to escape the Bronx tenement. Born into a land-owning family, Nuvolari raced because he wanted to race.
He did not start young, however. The First World War postponed his debut, on motorcycles, until 1920, by which time he was already 28. For 10 years he was a winner on both two and four wheels, but after 1930 concentrated solely on cars, and although at different times he drove Bugattis, Maseratis and Auto Unions, his name will be for ever synonymous with Alfa Romeo, with whom the majority of his celebrated successes came.
The 1930 Mille Miglia was one such. Back then a race of more than 16 hours, finishing in darkness, it developed into the anticipated battle between Nuvolari and his greatest rival, Achille Varzi, both men in Alfa 1750s. In the closing stages Varzi began to suspect that the game was lost, for although ahead on the road, he recognised in his mirror the headlight pattern of Nuvolari's car – and Tazio's start time had been 10 minutes later. "It's him," Varzi mouthed to his co-driver, but after a while he started to hope again, for the lights behind were gone. Was Nuvolari out?
He was not. For Tazio, the racer nonpareil, it was vital not only to beat Achille on time, but also to lead him into Brescia, where the race finished. Within 30 miles of the end, Varzi was jolted from thoughts of victory by the blast of a horn. Nuvolari, his own lights switched off, had been sitting there for miles, driving on Varzi's tail lights.
Much later, Varzi would confide that in the bitterness of defeat he had found consolation in the implicit compliment paid by the man even he referred to as 'Maestro.' It takes faith, and more, to rely on another to guide you through the mountains at night.
The early thirties were years of glory for Alfa Romeo, and Nuvolari it was who did most of the winning. First in the 'Monza' Alfa, then in the P3, he had innumerable victories in both Grand Prix and sportscar races. By 1934, though, Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union were into Grand Prix racing, and the pattern of the years leading up to Second World War was set.
Alfa Romeo was nationalised at the end of 1933, whereupon the factory withdrew from racing, but the cars continued to compete under the banner of Scuderia Ferrari, which had already been responsible for Alfa's racing programme for three years. From 1934 on, the Prancing Horse replaced the quadrifoglio of the works cars.
By the beginning of 1935, Nuvolari could see that little possibility existed of beating the German teams, and he would have joined Auto Union that year, had not the move been vetoed by the recently signed Varzi. At a personal level, all remained well between them, but Tazio's rival refused resolutely to be his team mate again. It was not until 1938, following the death of Bernd Rosemeyer and the drugs-inspired retirement of Varzi, that Nuvolari was finally to go to Auto Union.
Every great driver has his day of days, however. By 1935, the ageing P3 had become wholly uncompetitive with the German cars, but at a circuit like the Nurburgring, genius could always count for something. If Nuvolari was lucky in anything in his life, it was that he competed in an era when driving ability could compensate for an inferior car.
"What you have to remember about those times," Dreyfus said, "is that the cars had almost no grip, almost no brakes. Therefore, cornering speeds were set very much more by the driver than by the car. I was also a member of Scuderia Ferrari at that time, and thought I was a pretty good driver, but Tazio would pass me in corners, travelling at a completely different speed – as if he were on a dry track, and for me it was raining!"
Nuvolari won the German Grand Prix in 1935, leaving an expectant Nazi reception committee po-faced and stunned. Pressuring Manfred von Brauchitsch's Mercedes on the last of the 22 laps, he took the lead after the Karussel, and crossed the line to near silence from the stands. Some little delay ensued before a record of the Italian national anthem could be found.
Spasmodic victories with the Alfa Romeo 12C-36, including the first Vanderbilt Cup race, on Long Island, came Tazio's way over the next two seasons, and in 1938 and 1939, now driving Auto Unions, he won several Grands Prix, including Monza and Donington. It was appropriate, too, that he triumphed in the last race of the era, the Yugoslavian Grand Prix, run the very day Britain declared war on Germany.
By the end of hostilities, Nuvolari was into his fifties, but he continued to race. In the fullness of his years, he was not at peace with himself, for both his sons had fallen cruelly victim to tuberculosis while still in their teens, and he sought to cauterise his grief in his beloved cars. Although in failing health himself, his essential genius remained, and twice more he dominated the Mille Miglia, losing victory each time through car problems in the late stages. He won for the last time in a Sicilian hillclimb in 1950, and was thereafter too weak to compete again.
In the course of his long career, Nuvolari crashed countless times, broke countless bones. Apparently immune to fear, he was cynically well aware of the perils of racing. "When he was going to the Targa Florio in 1932," said Enzo Ferrari, "I gave him a return ticket. 'Everyone says you're good businessman,' Tazio said to me, 'but you're not. You should have bought a one-way ticket only – when your driver is leaving for a race, you should always consider that perhaps he'll be coming back in a wooden box...'"
Some say that eventually Nuvolari prayed to die in a racing car; whatever else, he said, he did not wish to languish in a bed, yet, weakened by tubercular problems, he suffered a stroke in the summer of 1953, and died at home, in Casteldario, on August 11. "Bury me in my uniform," he said to his wife the evening before, and he went to the grave in the familiar blue trousers and yellow shirt with the 'TN' monogram and tortoise emblem.
"He was the kindest of men," Rene Dreyfus said. "Completely unpretentious, wonderful company. In the Italian Grand Prix in 1935, you know, I handed my car over to him after his own had failed, and he finished second. Afterwards he refused any of the prize money, said it should all go to me. 'It was your car, and you allowed me to race it,' he said. 'That was all I wanted.' No, no, there has never been anyone like Nuvolari."
So I did a bit of Googling, as you do!
And I found this which I thought you might enjoy. It's a copy & paste from an Autosport article Nigel Roebuck.
I hope Autosport and Nigel don't mind! Anyway here you are, enjoy:
Dear Nigel,
I've been reading up on grand prix history, and specifically Tazio Nuvolari. I was struck recently by Forghieri's apt comment on Gilles Villeneuve's "rage to win." Enzo Ferrari said that Gilles immediately reminded him of "The Great Nuvolari." Could you compare the two? Was Nuvolari as highly regarded by his fellow drivers?
Dave Anderson, New London, Connecticut, USA
Dear Dave,
There are indeed parallels between Tazio Nuvolari and Gilles Villeneuve; in comparing Gilles with the driver he regarded as the greatest ever (along with Stirling Moss), Enzo could have paid him no higher compliment. Both had a freakish degree of natural ability, both were abnormally fearless, and both would fight as hard for seventh place as for victory.
I saw nearly all Villeneuve's Grands Prix, but none of Nuvolari's, of course, for he died in 1953, at the age of 61, when I was but seven years old.
In his Cambridge days, though, my father went with some friends to the Donington Grand Prix in 1938. "Really, all I remember about that day," he told me, "is Nuvolari, who won. He looked absolutely tiny in that huge Auto Union. All the cars were sideways as they came past us each lap, but it was noticeable that he wound off the opposite lock earlier than the others, while his car was still sliding – he knew just how much was enough. I remember, too, how he'd bang the cockpit side with his hand when he was being held up..."
Once, over dinner in Manhattan, I mentioned that to the late Rene Dreyfus, and his face lit into an animated smile. "Yes, yes, it was exactly that! He hated to be baulked, he got... very impatient!"
It is not often that one dines with a man who was Tazio Nuvolari's team mate (both driving Alfa Romeos for Scuderia Ferrari), and later that evening I rushed back to my hotel and scribbled down everything I could remember of our conversation. How had Dreyfus rated the drivers of the thirties? "Well, perhaps Rudolf Caracciola was technically the best, the most complete. But the greatest," Rene lingered over the word, "without any doubt, was Nuvolari."
You get this sometimes in Grand Prix racing, a man so ethereally skilled that his fellows – or most of them – concede that he is simply better than they. Michael Schumacher is in that position today. But rarer by far is the driver with a presence to make the roof of your mouth dry.
Nuvolari had it in spades, so did Fangio, and so did Senna. "You can't create it," Gerhard Berger said of Ayrton. "It's there, or it isn't. In Senna's mind, the only thing that existed was himself – he had to be first, and by this thinking he was able to create a power. That's the only word I can use. But he had this aura, too. When he came into a room, everyone stared."
Comparing drivers of different eras may be a futile exercise, for the demands of the job change as the sport evolves, but one constant remains, and no one ever put it better than Frank Gardner: "In the end, it's all a matter of more accelerator and less brake..."
Dreyfus thought that definition perfect for Nuvolari. First of all, what you had to understand about Tazio, he said, was that he drove in a manner wholly different from any of his contemporaries. "He's credited with inventing the four-wheel drift, but it wasn't a conscious thing – nothing was with him, because he did everything by instinct. He was strong for his size, and had great stamina, but the races were very long, and the cars were big and wilful.
"In the case of Nuvolari, you had the impression of a man on an unbroken horse, but instead of fighting it, he let it run free. With him, there was no accepted 'line' around a circuit; he would turn into a corner early, aim at the apex, put the power down hard, and do the steering with the throttle, using his hands only for small corrections. It was his speed out of corners that was so exceptional. We all tried to copy his technique, but no one can borrow another man's instinct. Only Tazio could drive like Tazio."
All who knew him remember most of all Nuvolari's will to win, his sheer need to pass the car in front, be it for first place or 10th. If the fight had been exhilarating, he was always gracious in defeat, but there is a gulf between a good sport and a good loser. Nuvolari hated to lose, but there is no cliche story here of the boxer looking to escape the Bronx tenement. Born into a land-owning family, Nuvolari raced because he wanted to race.
He did not start young, however. The First World War postponed his debut, on motorcycles, until 1920, by which time he was already 28. For 10 years he was a winner on both two and four wheels, but after 1930 concentrated solely on cars, and although at different times he drove Bugattis, Maseratis and Auto Unions, his name will be for ever synonymous with Alfa Romeo, with whom the majority of his celebrated successes came.
The 1930 Mille Miglia was one such. Back then a race of more than 16 hours, finishing in darkness, it developed into the anticipated battle between Nuvolari and his greatest rival, Achille Varzi, both men in Alfa 1750s. In the closing stages Varzi began to suspect that the game was lost, for although ahead on the road, he recognised in his mirror the headlight pattern of Nuvolari's car – and Tazio's start time had been 10 minutes later. "It's him," Varzi mouthed to his co-driver, but after a while he started to hope again, for the lights behind were gone. Was Nuvolari out?
He was not. For Tazio, the racer nonpareil, it was vital not only to beat Achille on time, but also to lead him into Brescia, where the race finished. Within 30 miles of the end, Varzi was jolted from thoughts of victory by the blast of a horn. Nuvolari, his own lights switched off, had been sitting there for miles, driving on Varzi's tail lights.
Much later, Varzi would confide that in the bitterness of defeat he had found consolation in the implicit compliment paid by the man even he referred to as 'Maestro.' It takes faith, and more, to rely on another to guide you through the mountains at night.
The early thirties were years of glory for Alfa Romeo, and Nuvolari it was who did most of the winning. First in the 'Monza' Alfa, then in the P3, he had innumerable victories in both Grand Prix and sportscar races. By 1934, though, Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union were into Grand Prix racing, and the pattern of the years leading up to Second World War was set.
Alfa Romeo was nationalised at the end of 1933, whereupon the factory withdrew from racing, but the cars continued to compete under the banner of Scuderia Ferrari, which had already been responsible for Alfa's racing programme for three years. From 1934 on, the Prancing Horse replaced the quadrifoglio of the works cars.
By the beginning of 1935, Nuvolari could see that little possibility existed of beating the German teams, and he would have joined Auto Union that year, had not the move been vetoed by the recently signed Varzi. At a personal level, all remained well between them, but Tazio's rival refused resolutely to be his team mate again. It was not until 1938, following the death of Bernd Rosemeyer and the drugs-inspired retirement of Varzi, that Nuvolari was finally to go to Auto Union.
Every great driver has his day of days, however. By 1935, the ageing P3 had become wholly uncompetitive with the German cars, but at a circuit like the Nurburgring, genius could always count for something. If Nuvolari was lucky in anything in his life, it was that he competed in an era when driving ability could compensate for an inferior car.
"What you have to remember about those times," Dreyfus said, "is that the cars had almost no grip, almost no brakes. Therefore, cornering speeds were set very much more by the driver than by the car. I was also a member of Scuderia Ferrari at that time, and thought I was a pretty good driver, but Tazio would pass me in corners, travelling at a completely different speed – as if he were on a dry track, and for me it was raining!"
Nuvolari won the German Grand Prix in 1935, leaving an expectant Nazi reception committee po-faced and stunned. Pressuring Manfred von Brauchitsch's Mercedes on the last of the 22 laps, he took the lead after the Karussel, and crossed the line to near silence from the stands. Some little delay ensued before a record of the Italian national anthem could be found.
Spasmodic victories with the Alfa Romeo 12C-36, including the first Vanderbilt Cup race, on Long Island, came Tazio's way over the next two seasons, and in 1938 and 1939, now driving Auto Unions, he won several Grands Prix, including Monza and Donington. It was appropriate, too, that he triumphed in the last race of the era, the Yugoslavian Grand Prix, run the very day Britain declared war on Germany.
By the end of hostilities, Nuvolari was into his fifties, but he continued to race. In the fullness of his years, he was not at peace with himself, for both his sons had fallen cruelly victim to tuberculosis while still in their teens, and he sought to cauterise his grief in his beloved cars. Although in failing health himself, his essential genius remained, and twice more he dominated the Mille Miglia, losing victory each time through car problems in the late stages. He won for the last time in a Sicilian hillclimb in 1950, and was thereafter too weak to compete again.
In the course of his long career, Nuvolari crashed countless times, broke countless bones. Apparently immune to fear, he was cynically well aware of the perils of racing. "When he was going to the Targa Florio in 1932," said Enzo Ferrari, "I gave him a return ticket. 'Everyone says you're good businessman,' Tazio said to me, 'but you're not. You should have bought a one-way ticket only – when your driver is leaving for a race, you should always consider that perhaps he'll be coming back in a wooden box...'"
Some say that eventually Nuvolari prayed to die in a racing car; whatever else, he said, he did not wish to languish in a bed, yet, weakened by tubercular problems, he suffered a stroke in the summer of 1953, and died at home, in Casteldario, on August 11. "Bury me in my uniform," he said to his wife the evening before, and he went to the grave in the familiar blue trousers and yellow shirt with the 'TN' monogram and tortoise emblem.
"He was the kindest of men," Rene Dreyfus said. "Completely unpretentious, wonderful company. In the Italian Grand Prix in 1935, you know, I handed my car over to him after his own had failed, and he finished second. Afterwards he refused any of the prize money, said it should all go to me. 'It was your car, and you allowed me to race it,' he said. 'That was all I wanted.' No, no, there has never been anyone like Nuvolari."
As someone born more than 25 years after Nuvolari died, he is still my hero. His performances in the Mille Miglia in 47 and 48 (when he was already in poor health) demonstrated that he was the greatest driver of all time.
The only driver who compares as far as I am concerned is Stirling Moss. Having driven the Mille Miglia course over the course of a week, earlier in the year, I am even more full of admiration for the achievements of both.
The only driver who compares as far as I am concerned is Stirling Moss. Having driven the Mille Miglia course over the course of a week, earlier in the year, I am even more full of admiration for the achievements of both.
A very enjoyable read! Thanks for that post.
When I did some work experience at Autocar a few years back they sent me down to the car/motorsport photo archive LAT. I can't remember what I was looking for but I found a print of Nuvolari at Donington with the Auto Union fully airborne over a crest. In black and white it summed up a different age in motorsport for me.
There was also one of him striding down the pitlane somewhere (don't think it was Donington) in trousers a bit too short, scarf and a jaunty angle to his stride with a big grin on his face and I thought: 'There is a man who loves what he does.'
When I did some work experience at Autocar a few years back they sent me down to the car/motorsport photo archive LAT. I can't remember what I was looking for but I found a print of Nuvolari at Donington with the Auto Union fully airborne over a crest. In black and white it summed up a different age in motorsport for me.
There was also one of him striding down the pitlane somewhere (don't think it was Donington) in trousers a bit too short, scarf and a jaunty angle to his stride with a big grin on his face and I thought: 'There is a man who loves what he does.'
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