Antonio Ascari

His contemporaries called him the “Garibaldino,” a term they reserved for the best of their select band. Like Giuseppe Garibaldi, the general who kicked the Austrians and French out of Italy in the mid-19th century, Antonio Ascari, was a courageous and determined fighter. He was the one who always got the corners right, trying lap after lap to take his car to the absolute limit of adhesion. In fact, Arturo Mercanti, the creator of the Monza Autodrome and race director of the 1924 Grand Prix of Italy at the circuit, sent an enraged note to the Alfa Romeo pits during the GP, saying, “If Ascari continues to take the corners in this dangerous way both to himself and the other drivers, I shall be forced to stop him.” But Antonio kept up his knife-edge performance in the factory Alfa Romeo P2, won the race by 16 minutes (!) and set a fastest lap for the 6.214-mile track of 3 minutes 43 seconds.

Ascari was born in 1888 at Bonferraro di Sorga, near Mantua, Italy. A foolish prank got him expelled from school, so the young Antonio went to work in a local blacksmith’s forge. There, he often worked on the racing bicycles of Giuseppe and Arturo Nuvolari—the latter an Italian champion racing cyclist—the father and uncle respectively of Tazio Nuvolari.