Giulio Ramponi

Giuseppe Campari discovered 17-year-old Giulio Ramponi in 1919, when the youngster was working as a trainee for a Milan fuel pump manufacturer. The great driver was looking for a keen young man who he could mould into an effective riding mechanic. And that was the start of Giulio’s brilliant career as a “rider,” racing car technician and, eventually, a car designer.

Campari got Ramponi a job as an apprentice at Alfa Romeo’s Portello factory on the outskirts of Milan. The lad immediately showed promise, so much so that, a few months later, Giuseppe asked Giulio to become his riding mechanic for the first time, in the 1920 Parma-Poggio di Berceto hillclimb. And it was a gamble that paid off, because, within the sight of the finish, the bonnet of the duo’s Alfa Romeo 40-60 hp flew off, so the driver had young Ramponi run after the missing bodywork, bring it back, then lie along the side of the car holding onto the errant bonnet for dear life as they won the classic Italian hillclimb.

Aglow with that success, Giulio was moved into Alfa’s test department before working on the running gear assembly line. Next stop in his rather mercurial career was Luigi Bazzi’s experimental department, and there he was also given racing car driving lessons by Alfa’s chief test driver, Attilio Marinoni. Marinoni later became an Alfa Romeo racer and went on to win, among other things, three 24 Hours of Spa in succession from 1928-1930.

In 1923, the exceptionally talented Vittorio Jano was tempted away from Fiat with the chance of designing a new Alfa Romeo racing car, which was to become the world conquering P2, a project in which Ramponi became involved. He was also chosen to be the riding mechanic in Antonio Ascari’s P2.

The duo’s shakedown race was the mid-April 1924 Targa Florio, which they did in one of the old 3.6-liter Alfa Romeo RL Targas—and they nearly won it. They led the race, far ahead of Christian Werner’s Mercedes Indy-type two-liter, but the Italians’ engine seized a few hundred yards from the finish line. In the heat of the moment, they allowed a hoard of spectators to push their car over the line to record a race distance time of 6 hours 42.3 minutes, which would have given them 3rd place. However, they were disqualified for receiving public help.

The Alfa Romeo P2 was given its first public outing in the 1924 Circuit of Cremona with Ascari and Ramponi aboard, and they won easily. They weren’t so lucky in the car’s first Grand Prix at Lyon, France, because the car stuttered to a halt after 32 of the event’s 35 laps when they were in the lead again. The good news was that a P2 did win its very first Grand Prix—but with Giuseppe Campari driving. It was a different story in the year’s all-important Grand Prix of Italy at Monza though; Ascari won and set the race’s fastest time of 3 minutes 43.6 seconds, with Wagner, Campari and Cesare Pastore taking the next three places to make it a P2 walkover. The crowds went berserk!

The 1925 Grand Prix rules were a bit of a blow to Giulio, as they banned riding mechanics, even though Ramponi remained in charge of Ascari’s P2. Ironically, that change almost certainly saved Giulio’s life, because the lone Antonio Ascari crashed his P2 in the French Grand Prix at Montlhéry and died. The Alfa Romeo P2 went on to win a total of 15 major races between 1924 and 1930.

The following year, Giulio went to work for Jano, who promoted him to chief test driver of his new Alfa Romeo 6C 1500. Jano even allowed Ramponi to compete in the Cuneo-Maddalena hillclimb, in which he came 3rd driving the new car. All of which made Ramponi a natural choice as Giuseppe Campari’s co-driver of a supercharged 1500 Gran Turismo in the 1928 Mille Miglia. They won the Brescia-Rome-Brescia marathon in 19 hours 14 minutes 5 seconds, which was two hours faster than the previous year’s winner! They repeated that performance in 1929 with another Mille Miglia win—in a hard-fought race, but this time they only crossed the finish line just under 10 minutes before 2nd-placed Gianni Morandi-Giovanni Rosa.

Ramponi was behind the wheel again himself to win the 1928 Six Hour race at Brooklands in an Alfa Romeo 1500 Super Sport and a 24-hour race split into two 12-hour heats at the same circuit near Weybridge, Surrey. But he was not so successful in Ireland, where he was involved in an accident during the Irish Grand Prix. He also got a drive with Italy’s first Mille Miglia winner OM of Brescia, but Ramponi was unable to finish the GP of Ireland or the following TT. Giulio re-joined Alfa Romeo to work with Vittorio Jano on the development of the P3, but midway through the project Alfa retired from motor racing.

The Alfa effort fell to Scuderia Ferrari, but Modena was not allowed to continue the P3 development, so the Scuderia had to rely on the older, underpowered Monza, which Giulio gave more power and eventually became Ferrari’s chief engineer.

Ramponi liked England a lot, so with the tentacles of Fascism entwining themselves around just about every facet of Italian life, he decided to move to the UK. Before leaving, Giulio met and helped wealthy American Whitney Straight as he was negotiating to buy a couple of Maserati Gran Turismos to race in Britain, which eased Ramponi’s emigration plans to Britain. After working for the Tim Birkin and the Dorothy Paget teams, Giulio joined Straight’s squad as its chief engineer until Straight closed the team in 1934 after lukewarm success. Straight had won the year’s Grand Prix of South Africa, the Brooklands Mountain Championship, the Mount Ventoux hillclimb, the Brighton Speed Trials and the Junior Coppa Acerbo.

One of Straight’s other mechanics was ex-Bentley technician Billy Rockell, with whom he formed a partnershiph. They based themselves in what would now be an extremely expensive property in Lancaster Mews, a stone’s throw from Hyde Park. There, they transformed one of Whitney’s racing Maseratis into a road-goer for him.

They attracted business, too, because in 1934 a well-off university pal of Straight’s, one Dick Seaman, asked them to tune his ERA for the season. They did such a good job that they gave the tall Englishman a car with which he won the voiturette class of the 1935 Grand Prix of Switzerland at Bremgarten, first time out, and repeated that performance in the Czech GP. Better was to come, however, in 1936 with, believe it or not, a 10-year-old Delage 1500-cc that Ramponi-Rockell transformed into a winner, pushing Seaman to the front rank of European racing drivers. That year, he won the British Empire Trophy and the voiturette class of the Isle of Man event, the Coppa Acerbo, Swiss Grand Prix, the JCC 200 Miles and, famously, won the British Grand Prix at Donington outright with Hans Ruesch driving an Alfa Romeo Tipo C 8C-35. After that, Alfred Neubauer asked him to become a works Mercedes-Benz driver, for which he was given the permission of Nazi furher, Adolf Hitler.

Ramponi found it difficult to live with that decision as he regarded Seaman as a son. After that, the second World War broke out and, although a Fascist and Nazi hater, he was still interned in an alien camp on the Isle of Man until being released in 1944.

Free again, Ramponi revived his old partnership with Billy Rockall and reopened their Lancaster Mews workshop, from which they sold and serviced Alfa Romeos. Giulio also worked for Alfa again and took on the new task of liaising between Portello and major British and American component suppliers like Ferodo, Girling Lockheed and Vandervell.

Ramponi had visited South Africa with Whitney Straight the year the American won the South African Grand Prix in a Maserati 8CM and fell in love with the country. So Giulio and his wife retired there in 1973. He died at his South African home in 1987.