Arturo Merzario’s 80 years of racing

There are people and riders who are timeless. Time doesn’t seem to scratch them and their verve always remains that of the time in which they won victories and fame. The last of this race of car racers is Arthur Merzario, who turns 80 today, having been born on March 11, 1943, in Civenna, in the province of Como. He won the Targa Florio twice and won three World Championships for Makes when it was still serious business, saved Niki Lauda’s life at the Nürburgring, started 57 Formula 1 Grands Prix and raced as an official Ferrari driver, even in F1. “I started in 1962 and I was the penultimate driver hired by the Grande Vecchio himself and paid by Ferrari to race; the last one was Gilles”, attacks Arturo, always with clear-cut opinions and jockey size.

All life to achieve goals and now comes the 80th birthday.
“It’s the eighth stage of ten… I don’t know if you understood the joke: my goal is one hundred years. In my day, pilots often woke up dead, because the job was really, really dangerous, and not the fault of the pilot, but of the cars falling apart. I already said then that I would die at one hundred years and one day like my grandmother. My dad died at 95, his brother at 98, his sister at 106…the lucky lineage is there. Even if maybe now while I’m talking to you I’m having a heart attack…”.

With all the scares you’ve gotten in the car, difficult.

“I took a lot of those, it’s true. When you ask a racing driver, or a climber, if he’s afraid, everyone answers no, but I say yes, underlined with a fluorescent yellow marker. But not for the accident. True fear is the possibility of being permanently offended. If you die, you die. But if you end up in a wheelchair…”.
But your greatest enemy was fire.

“When you stopped to refuel in the pits, only with the petrol vapors in contact with the heat of the engine did you risk going up in flames. All the pilots at the time were aware that they could die, but they thought it would always happen to others, never to themselves”.

In the flames you saw Ignazio Giunti die, the first pilot you tried to save. It was 1971, you were in Buenos Aires, it was a dramatic moment.

“I would say catastrophic. But it’s not true that Beltoise was to blame. Ignazio was too attached to Mike Parkes, he didn’t even realize that he was going against Matra ”.

You saved Niki Lauda’s life.

“And I still don’t understand how I, a slender boy, managed to pull a sixty-kilo person like a Swedish match out of a box. But Niki’s luck was that in the military, to earn a four-day bonus license, I had attended a first aid course to learn CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I gave him the opportunity to survive those extra 30 seconds until the medical air arrived.”

The secret to going fast by car?

“Only one thing counts: talent. It is like this in all activities and in all sports, from the champion to the accountant. And talent is not blood. There are many sons of great champions who haven’t done anything. But someone succeeded: look at Nico Rosberg, look at Max Verstappen: his father was a dunce, he is Leonardo da Vinci ”.

Between Gilles and Jacques Villeneuve who was the greatest?
“Neither. Gilles had the good fortune that he raced for Ferrari, and the Great Old Man, in order to see the Ferrari name written in the Gazzetta, accepted that he smashed car after car. Then you see, everyone talks about the limit, but you have to know how to go to the limit minus a zichettin to protect your skin. Gilles on the other hand has always abused it, right from the start, from Fuji”.

How many racing cars have you driven in your life?
“It’s easier to say for whom I haven’t driven.”

The most beautiful? To drive, of course.
“I was born with Abarths and he, Karl, believed in me. Everything I asked allowed me, because the stopwatch proved me right. If he wants a square wheel, why not give? said Abarth. In three years of his stay, he had me build a car that was like a bespoke suit made for me. It was impossible for my teammates to stay ahead of me.”

Why did she end up with Ferrari?
“The story would be too long to tell, but it was me who said no to Ferrari, not the other way around. A little longer and the Great Old Man suffers a heart attack. He told me I was the first driver to refuse a contract with Ferrari. I knew there would be no future for me with the engineering staff they had sent from Turin.”

Admit that you became famous for the way you drove, but also for the cowboy hat.
“The first time I went to America I bought two things: that hat and the five-shot Colt revolver of the American sheriffs. I’ve always worn it since then. At one point my friend Aleardo Buzzi, from Philip Morris, who we called the chief of smoke, asked me if they could put the Marlboro brand on the hat, as well as on the overalls. The coat of arms on the hat is no longer there, but I always wear the belt with the Marlboro buckle”.

Even if they don’t pay you anymore?
(bursts out laughing) “And who will tell you?”

You were born in an area of ​​smugglers, on the border with Switzerland: is it true that you learned to drive because you were too?
“No, fortunately I come from a fairly well-to-do family, my father had a 2+2 Ferrari and my first car was a Giulietta Spider. But from smugglers I learned to drive. At the age of 16, with my father’s car, I took to the lake road and when the smugglers or the financial police passed, I enjoyed following them and learned to drive, understand?”.

The constructor’s adventure in Formula 1?
“Forget it. I went on ten years to pay off debts. In hindsight, it was better that I hadn’t paid anyone, so much was it in people’s heads that I missed the deadlines to date, even though I ended up paying the debt three times. That’s what hurt me the most.”

The best memory of 60 years of racing?
“That’s when I convinced Abarth to let me race the Mugello Grand Prix alone, on 21 July 1969. How I crossed the finish line victorious, having beaten everyone, Porsche, Alfa, Ferrari, Tito Stagno, who was in liaison with Ruggero Orlando, while Armstrong put his foot on the moon he said: Our driver Merzario also won the Mugello Grand Prix on an Abarth. Nice is not it?”.