3 replies to this topic

[Dunc]

What teams are popular in Italy other than Ferrari?

 

Just out of curiosity, I was pondering this the other day.  With Ferrari having had several bad seasons lately, is their a 'second' team that's winning fans in Italy?

[HistoryFan]

In F1: Toro Rosso

 

Formula Racing: Trident, Lazarus, Rapax, Draco, Euronova, MLR71

 

The most successfull: Prema Power

 

AF Corse and ROAL

[drionita]

No one really. TR is RedBull owned. And if you ask about other ones like Prema, 98% of people will answer "?"

Unfortunately in motorsport here in Italy=Ferrari.

There are many reasons, in my humble opinion. The first one is that the core of Ferrari winning history (late 40s to mid 60s) is almost coinciding with the biggest - maybe latest - momentum in Italian economics (that's the "Italia del boom"), so that Ferrari was taken as the symbol of Italian excellence in the world, just like Alfa was in the 20s-30s. The blooming of Italian 1 teams in the 80s  was the result of the fake economics growth that Italy experienced in that decade, almost ten years of crawling bribery in politics and by result in industry, so that it was even easier to find sponsorships (several time was money recycling, black funds and so on). Except Benetton who's ownership had an international breath and Minardi whose passion is not questionable, almost all those teams endured just the time the "capitano di industria" lost interest in its toy. So none of them really entered the tifosi's heart.

That's for the past. Nowaday simply there are no big loads of money in my country's economics. Motorsport is just suffering as any other branch of sport. No Italian football team can afford to buy in stars in their prime like Bale, CR7 - only "once we were stars" on the sunset boulevard (see Cole at ASRoma or Evra at Juventus). Young talents escapes abroad (Verratti and PSG, Immobile at BVD). Young guns in motorsport have no support from enterprises, who often are on the verge of bankrupcy because once they were protected by politics and really ever faced the challenge of global economics, and so now we see more and more historical firms die or sold abroad. Sport economics - like general economics - is not actracting international investments because the byzantinesque system of laws, the bribery. That's quite a waste land, the Fisher King is sitting by the river and no Parsifal to hope for.

In motorsport it's the heritage of stupid choices from late 70s to mid 90s. I'm almost sure that killing inner competition in automotive has brought us to these days. Maybe if politics world not pushed for build up the FIAT as the only Italian manufacturer, now we could still have AlfaRomeo engines in F1 for some italian team, we could still have Lancia challenging other rally big names - moreover each one with junior teams, just like in the Seventies. Look at that wonderful breed of drivers full of Patrese, Capelli, Alboreto, Pirro, De Angelis - they all were helped by Italian automotive manufacturers who were "at war" and wanted to win in the sport to win on the markets. Just look at Germany, with MB-VW-BMW fighting and nursing their young champions with many little teams in feeder series.

 

Matt

Southern Italy

Edited by drionita, 27 July 2014 - 11:02.

[Dunc]

Do any of the teams based in Britain have a following?  Enstone were behind the last GP wins by an Italian driver, though they might have some place in the country's fans' hearts.