IL PREDESTINATO: THE PRINCE OF MONZA

tadej pocagar x "i can do it with a broken heart" by taylor swift

Now every day is dark and grey, I never thought we'd be apart. Why did you have to go away and leave me with a broken heart - A Triolet Of Heartbreak, Ann D. Stevenson

GILLES VILLENUEVE & DIDER PIRONI at the 1981 UNITED STATES GRAND PRIX WEST

An Article about Lella Lombardi - Nobody makes jokes about women drivers around Lella Lombardi

The sleek Lola T-332 racing car crossed the starting line at the river side, Calif, Grand Prix, hurtled ahead of three cars, and swooped back inside with split-second timings.

"You mean that's really a girl?" Muttered three times indianapolis 500 winner A. J. Foyt, looking on in incredulously from the side liners.

For Lella Lombardi, the first woman in 17 years (and the second ever) to compete on high performance Formula One circut - the big leagues of professionals auto racing - the question is all but invetable. What in the world is a nice Italian girl like Lella doing in overalls and a crash helmet, risking her life at speeds close to 200 miles an hour?

"That's what mama keeps asking me," says the tomboyish 31-year-old Lella, "I guess she thinks I should be home with a good husband and a houseful of bambini."

It was obvious from the beginning, to Lella at least, that she was cut from different cloth compared to most girls. Born in the little Piedmontese village of Furgarolo, she was hooked on auto racing before she was out of diapers.

"The first I remember, I am perhaps 4 or 5 years old," she recalls, "I was making little cars from things I found in my mum's sewing box. When I was 8 I decided I shall be a racing driver. I didn't say anything but I made up my mind."

As a teenager Lella raced motorcycles with boys in her village. The boys were scandalized she beat them - their mothers that she was racing at all. Eventually the village priest came to call.

"He explained why I should be like a girl and what a girl must do," she remembers. "So I told him, 'yes father' but all the time I am thinking why am I not allowed to do as I want."

Nothing if not persistent, Lella saw her first race at 18. Five years later she brought a car of her own, secondhand, Formula Monza 500 that she tinkered with and drove in races herself. Last year, nearly after a decade of coming up through the ranks, she was approached by March Racing Ltd, of England which was looking for a driver for its two-man Grand Prix team.

"Formula 2, Formula 3, Formula 5000 - I raced in them all," says Lella, "I win a lot in Italy - six times women's champion. So when March comes to ask me to try out for them, I say to myself, 'Why not?'"

March's decision to hire her was hardly made lightly. A single Grand Prix car costs $100,000 and putting it through a season of racing costs several hundred thousand dollars more.

"Putting a woman into a Grand Prix cockpit means shattering a lot of tradition," acknowledges March team manager, Max Mosley. "Of course, my wild told me, the only reason I was hesitating was because of Lella's sex, no doubt about her skill, in the end, I guess my wife was right."

Now prepping for this Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix, Lella is given little chance of winning a race this season (although she finished a respectable sixth in last week's accident-shorter Spanish Grand Prix) since March is designing its cars. Some drivers perhaps disturbed by Lella's invasion of their male peserve, doubt the chunky, 5"2, Lombardi has the stamina for long-distance racing. But March chief Roy Wardell, was watching her during a gruelling test of the company's racers, disagrees.

"Thrasing a car about it bloody hard work," he says, "most male drivers would have been bitching and complaining but she drove more than 300 miles flat out without a whimper." Her main fault, says Wardell, is a rookie's understandable caution. "Lella is still a bit afraid that if she spins out everyone will say, 'see a woman driver'" he says, "but her confidence is building. Pretty soon she'll be mixing it up with the best of them."

this one’s very long my bad

tadej pogacar and jonas vingegaard // some nights by fun.

Extract from an Autosprint article in which Pietro, Didier's chief mechanic, is interviewed.

"Despite what someone might believe, after Gilles' death Didier Pironi was never the same. Someone might think that the frenchman was now cinically calm and happy, since he had gotten rid of his sworn enemy, and could now win the world championship easily. But no. No, no, no! He didn't talk to me, but I was still his chief mechanic and I could see and understand things better than anyone. After Zolder's disgrace, Didier was never the same. He suffered, he was depressed, and I'm sure of what I am saying, he was deeply saddened with how things had ended with Gilles, in such a terrible and definitive way. Yeah, I think Didier was feeling guilty, because he behaved in a very strange, peculiar, excessive way, as if he wanted to think about something else, as if he wanted to drown his troubles, forget about all the horror that had happened. No one knows that Zandvoort 1982 is a victory without smiles. Didier wins, but does not smile, does not laugh, because something inside him has broken, maybe forever. He had a new mistress, it was like he didn't want to think, he didn’t even seem enthusiastic about the championship victory that was coming. Yes, the Holland GP is a good thing... but only for you. For those who secretly see what's happening in Ferrari, it shows a specific state of mind of Didier: cold, sad, melancholic. So I think these things should be known now, because they will end in a dramatic epilogue at Hockenheim, which is an event that is like a child of Zandvoort. The day of the crash in Germany, Didier arrives at the circuit half an hour late. Something serious, unacceptable. He has a long, scruffy beard, a distant look. He comes in company of two girls with whom no one thinks he had been discussing the weather forecasts with... so, Forghieri understandably is upset with him. It rains, it's not even worth going on track, but the situation is such that Mauro wants Didier to wake up and go back on track, because it seems that his mind is somewhere else. The rest is history."

again

JOCHEN RINDT, 1970

A collection of photographs from the 1982 drivers strike