The Tough Guy, Part 2 of 2

Known more for his mercurial temper than his victories over the likes of Carraciola and Nuvolari, prewar Italian driving star Luigi Fagioli still ranks as one of the great unsung heroes of racing’s Golden Era.

In this the final instalment, Robert Newman chronicles the final years of his career including a unique Grand Prix record that is likely never to be broken.

The hot-blooded Luigi Fagioli was a qualified accountant whose family was in the pasta business. An unlikely launch pad for a Grand Prix winner, yet after a brief dalliance with motorcycles, he shoved his foot in the motorsport door at the somewhat advanced age of 27. Fagioli began competing in modest local events in 1925, driving his own 1,100-cc Salmson, which was the state-of-the-art small displacement racing car of the day. He later bought an eight-cylinder 1,500-cc Maserati, with which he won provincial races like the Coppa Principe di Piemonte and, further up the ladder, the Coppa Ciano. The Tough Guy’s first break came when he was offered a works Maserati 26 M, with which he won the 1931 Grand Prix of Monza and beat the likes of Tazio Nuvolari, Achille Varzi and Louis Chiron in the process. Fagioli and his works Maserati spent much of the following year coming 2nd and 3rd to the Flying Mantuan’s factory-entered Alfa Romeos and that did not go unnoticed. In 1933, he took over from a disgruntled Nuvolari at Scuderia Ferrari, and the Tough Guy proved his worth by winning the year’s Coppa Acerbo, the Grands Prix of Comminges and Italy in the Scuderia’s Alfa Romeos. As he did so, he inflicted another defeat on Nuvolari and won his first Italian Championship. Fagioli had arrived, big time.

Alfred Neubauer and Mercedes-Benz were short of good German drivers for 1934: the fearsome team boss’s friend and future triple European Champion, Rudolf Caracciola, had been cut down by a crippling accident while practicing for the previous year’s Monaco GP and had lost his wife after a tragic skiing accident. Manfred von Brauchitsch and Ernst Henne were insufficiently experienced to lead the team. Driving talent was thin on the ground in Germany at the time, so Stuttgart looked further afield for their top racer. Neubauer spoke no Italian, but still engaged the Abruzzi Robber, as they called Fagioli—and that was the start of an explosive coexistence, which often erupted into slanging matches neither could understand. Fagioli, who spoke no German, considered himself Mercedes’ number one, but he could not get out from under the politics of motor racing for the Third Reich. He would only be allowed to win if a German driver was unable to do so. And that made the Tough Guy even tougher. Merit was merit, and it was certainly not to be smothered by drivers of a lesser God.