Carlo Pintacuda was one of the Florentine greats, a motor racing elite from the Tuscan city that also included Gastone Brilli-Peri, Emilio Materassi, Clemente Biondetti and Giulio Masetti. Pintacuda not only won the fabled Mille Miglia twice in Scuderia Ferrari Alfa Romeos, he was also the man who convinced Enzo Ferrari to do a little surgery on the P3 Grand Prix car and turn it into a street legal road racer—then he won the race in it!
Born in Florence in 1900, Pintacuda’s youth was packed with cars. At 13 he drove his father’s 30-hp Darracq, then a Nazzaro that had just won the Giro di Sicilia, a 6-cylinder Aquila Italiana, a Lancia Kappa and an Isotta Fraschini. He made his racing debut at Livorno in a Lancia Lambda Sport in 1925 but enthusiasm got the better of him and he crashed. In 1926, Carlo bought himself a 6-cylinder, 3-liter Alfa Romeo RLSS and won a Perugia sports car race immediately —and that was the start of a whole string of victories in small-time events like the Circuito di Firenze, Coppa Pistorese, Coppa Vermicino, the list is long.
