Grand Prix Insider

21st of May – Today is the fifth aniversary of Alejandro de Tomaso and his name is commonly connected to DeTomaso Automobili SpA and its Pantera sports car, among others. Alessandro, as he has been renamed by his Italian admirers, is still being praised for saving a number of bankrupt engineering companies including the Benelli and Moto Guzzi motorcycle companies as well as the Innocenti and Maserati car firms. The latter he succesfully revived to sell it to FIAT in 1993. But his greatest ambition was to become a successful Formula 1 team owner and he had Frank Williams running a promissing operation with the Gianpaolo Dallara designed De Tomaso 505 – until Piers Corage’s fatal crash at the 1970 Dutch Grand Prix.

21/5/2003, Alejandro De Tomaso dies.

Alejandro de Tomaso belonged to a well known and powerful Argentine family but fled Argentina in his own airplane in 1955 from the persecution from Juan Peron’s regime. He settled in Modena where he met and married American heiress Isabelle Haskell, a Ferrari customer who raced the cars in the United States and together they decided to set up their own car company in Modena. While this was being established he enjoyed some success as a driver. Ninth place in the 1957 Argentine Formula 1 Grand Prix in a Scuderia Centro Sud Ferrari 500/625 wouldremain his greatest success. Two years later he retired from the US Grand Prix at Sebring in a Cooper-OSCA. In an effort to advertise DeTomaso Automobili SpA, Giampaolo Dallara was hired to design an F2 car for 1969. This was run by an ambitious young team owner called Frank Williams and was raced by Jonathan Williams, Jacky Ickx and Piers Courage. Williams and de Tomaso then did a deal to enter F1 in 1970 with Courage, Cosworth engines and a Dallara-designed chassis. Courage finished third in the International Trophy and was running seventh in the Dutch Grand Prix when he crashed and died in Holland. The team continued until the end of the year with drivers Brian Redman and Tim Schenken but then withdrew. De Tomaso went on to concentrate on the road cars business. He died in 2003 and the company was taken over by his son Santiago under the guidance of Alejandro’s wife Isabelle.

Born: 10th of July 1928 in Buenos Aires, Argentina;
Died: 21st of May 2003 in Modena, Italy, aged 74.

21/5/1942, Daniel Ongais is born in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

Danny Ongais was already was 32 years of age when he decided to try his hand at road racing in 1974. He was soon a frontrunner and irose through the ranks of the US-racing scene. At the end of 1977 Interscope bought him a seat with the Penske team for two of the North American races. Although he crashed in the United States GP, he finished seventh in Canada. The following year he raced in USAC and in F1, winning five races in the US series and retiring from the lead in the Indianapolis 500. But he struggled badly in F1, having two disappointing outings in South America with an Ensign and then having two more tries in an Interscope Shadow. He suffered a suspension failure at Indianapolis in 1981 and had a huge crash which left him fighting for his life. A year later he returned to the Speedway. He continued to race at Indianapolis until 1997, when his last outing there ended in a big crash. He popped up again in GrandAm in 2002, racing a Norma-Ford at the age of 60.

21/5/1944, Emilio Rodriguez Zapico is born in Léon, Spain

Despite lacking single-seater experience, Emilio Zapico bought himself a seat with the then-struggling Williams team to land a drive in Team Mapfre’s year old Williams FW04 at the Spanish GP. In his only F1 outing the Spaniard failed by 7/10ths to get the last place of the grid. After that he returned to the touring car scene, apart from a brief foray into European F3 in 1984 at the age of 40! Zapico was sadly killed in a road accident in Huete, Spain, in 1996.

Born: 21st of May 1944 in Léon, Spain;
Died: 6th of August 1996 in Huete, Spain, aged 52.