The right definition to remember this is ace of the wheel. Although he had shown excellent skills as a footballer when he was very young: he played in the youth teams of Lazio reaching the Primavera, but then he never had the satisfaction of making his debut in the Serie A championship.
Giancarlo Naddeo left on tiptoe at the age of 82. The Roman champion collected less than his talent deserved. His career as a driver has broken down into two very distinct and different phases: the first in single-seaters and the second in touring and GT cars.
Naddeo was competitive and successful in every category in which he ventured. He had the skills to become a Formula 1 champion, but Giancarlo had the courage to turn his back on none other than Colin Chapman.
The brilliant English manager would have wanted him for six GPs at Lotus, after an amazing second place with a Tecno-Novamotor in the 1971 F3 Monaco GP, where he finished behind Dave Walker and in front of a certain Patrick Depailler.
Legend has it that the refusal was due to the promise made to his mother, suffering from heart disease, that he would never get on a car after the bad accident at the AVUS in which he had fractured his leg and had a severe head injury afterwards. repeated rollovers. The crash had held him back for a long time, shattering a brilliant rise that had led him to be second in Formula Ford in 1969 and to win the F.850 in 1970.
What was supposed to be the definitive launch season, closed with the Italian Formula 3 title, and enhanced by the place of honor at the Monaco GP in F3, actually becomes that of surrender.
Away from racing he had started working as a Renault salesman, but the passion was too strong to be sedated. And when Antonio Ghini launched the Renault 5 Cup in 1977, Naddeo set up a squadron of eight cars, deciding to get back behind the wheel, aware that the risks would be more limited than in a single-seater, with all due respect to his mother who had been convinced .
In the covered wheels Giancarlo soon became a king capable of imposing himself on any type of car, collecting successes and titles in sequence. The mirrored silver helmet became the symbol of a driver who deserved a lot of respect and aroused fear. There was a kind of awe for that ace who could make it to Formula 1.
Naddeo only started to win: he was an esthete of clean driving, very respectful of mechanics thanks to an in-depth knowledge of the technique that had made him a fine tester. Seeing him run on the track was not spectacular, indeed to the less experienced eyes it could even seem slow, always too composed.
At the wheel he made the most difficult things easy and the drivers who chased what seemed “slow” often ended up off the track in copying his trajectories, because they could not hold the Roman dance. He made little use of the brakes and knew how to manage the tires making them last longer, but his way of enhancing the smoothness of any car made him very fast.
With the Peugeot 205 GTI he won the CIVT Group N Trophy twice and with the Alfa 33 Group A in 1991 he became the Italian touring champion overall, winning the nine races in which he participated. Getting over it has never been easy, but while it was rude it was never unfair.
The Roman driver deserves a place in the history of Italian racing: there will be many opponents from different generations who, upon learning of the sad news, will have bowed their heads as a sign of respect for the ace behind the wheel. Today, like yesterday …
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