Giancarlo Martini has died at the age of 65. He was one of the nearly men in Formula 1 and a close friend of Giancarlo Minardi. Martini grew up near to Faenza and began racing in the Formula Italia series in 1972 in a Fiat-Abarth single-seater prepared by Giancarlo Minardi’s Scuderia Passatore, a new team started by the scion of a celebrated Fiat dealership. They finished runners-up in 1972 and won the title in 1973 and while Martini went on to Formula 2 with Trivellato Racing, Minardi stayed in Formula Italia for another year before embarking on an F2 project in 1975 with two March-BMW 752s for Martini and Lamberto Leoni.
This led to support being found from Angelo Gallignani, the boss of Gruppo Everest, a rubber company that manufactured floor mats and other rubber items for Fiat. Gallignani had five factories and 1,200 employees, while also being the head of the ACI Ravenna, Minardi’s local automobile club. As a result the team became Scuderia Everest in 1976 and Minardi struck a deal with Enzo Ferrari to act as a junior team and was loaned a new 312T for Martini in the non-championship F1 races of 1976 – with a longer term deal to run Ferrari engines in Formula 2 from 1977 onwards. The two F1 races would be Minardi’s first F1 experience but things began badly when Martini crashed on the warm-up lap for the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch. He finished in the midfield at the International Trophy at Silverstone but then the focus went back to Formula 2. The team scored several podiums and Martini ended the year seventh in the European Formula 2 Championship. The team also entered cars for Gianfranco Brancatelli in the European Formula 3 Championship. As planned in 1977 Minardi ran Ralt-Ferraris for Leoni and Brancatelli and a Martini-Renault for Martini. It was a bad season, however, and after that Martini faded from racing, while Minardi went from strength to strength, starting his own Minardi team in 1980, in league with Florence businessman Piero Mancini and former Ferrari designer Giacomo Caliri. The first Minardi F2 cars followed and for the next five years the team was competitive in F2.
In 1985 Minardi entered F1 with Pierluigi Martini, Giancarlo’s nephew as its driver.
joeblogsf1 
I seem to remember that Prost and others drove a few Martini chassis in the lesser formulae?
Thanks Joe
This was nothing to do with Giancarlo Martini. That was Tico Martini. He was French and ran a business out of Magny-Cours. The company was ultimately sold to Guy Ligier and Martinis are still being built, see http://www.ligier-martini.com
Wow, thanks for that!
Cheers
Julian
Joe, don’t answer if you’d prefer to keep your methods private, but how do source and store this information that is available at a moments notice?
is it a personal archive of your own writings, a vast motorsport library at home, a computer database, photograhic memory, wikipedia?
this is the reason I read this blog.
John
I have pretty archives…
Can you show us a snaphot of your wall of archives (or whatever it is)?
It is an Apple Mac. I have it all in there.
Unless you spill something on the keyboard… like last year. JF
Behind the computer actually… the machine imbibed coffee through its ventilation ducts.
“Pretty Archives”
And I thought this might be a coded reference to the Penelopes!
Martin
I am always astounded by these historical stories of yours Joe. On average,how long does it take you to research and formulate an article such as this?
Not long.
I salute you sr Martini. I raise my glass.
RIP – My thoughts are with his family and GCM
Rest In Peace monsieur Giancarlo Martini.
for those of you interested in watching a branding exercise of this ( Martini & Rossi ) global phenomenon circa 1977, please watch the film ” Bobby Deerfield a love story” starring Al Pacino and produced by Sidney Pollack. thanks to monsieur Bernard Ecclestone and his Brabham F1 team it tells the story of the potential dream of becoming a champion means for any aspiring racer before it became the circus of speed in 1979.
A cold day at Brands for the Race of Champions and he lost it going up to Druids straight out of the pits and right in front of us. Most unfortunate and mighty embarassing for the poor guy I suspect. But still, not many people got to drive a 312T. With respects.
What’s up, the whole thing is going perfectly here and ofcourse every one is sharing information, that’s genuinely good, keep up writing.