Alberto Ascari

Alberto Ascari: Ferrari's First Double Champion

A measure of the towering stature of Alberto Ascari, the first-ever double World Champion, is his record while driving for Ferrari. By mid-1953 Ascari had won nine Grands Prix in a row, a staggering achievement that has not even been approached since. He also broke all records by setting the fastest lap in seven successive races. Neither of these feats will easily be surpassed.

Astonishingly, for a nation that has given so much to motor racing, Alberto Ascari remains the last Italian to have won the drivers' crown.

Quintessentially Italian in his style and habits, Milan-born Ascari was the son of an outstanding race driver, Antonio Ascari. Both had a fatal accident at the age of 36, the son living only three days longer than his father. Antonio's reputation?and his own lack of a father?were burdens Alberto would bear all his life.

Karl Ludvigsen reveals to a new generation the supernatural skill and calm, bourgeois character of a racing genius in this first dedicated biography of Ascari. He evocatively depicts the tense pre-war period in which Ascari first raced, his hesitant return to the tracks after the war, the guidance he received from 'Gigi' Villoresi, his role in the overthrow of Alfa Romeo by Ferrari, and the total dominance of his championship years 1952 and 1953.

Ludvigsen discloses the reason for Ascari's sudden break with Ferrari at the end of 1953, a divorce that shocked all of Italy and the racing world. We experience his frustration in 1954 as he waits for his new Lancia and then his struggle to make the radical racer competitive. And we are in the cockpit with him in 1955 as he grapples with the Ferrari sports car during his deadly last ride.

An enthralling text is accompanied by mono and colour images?many published here for the first time?from the world's finest photographers including Rodolfo Mailander, Guy Griffiths, Bernard Cahier, Günther Molter, Franco Zagari, Geoff Goddard and Corrado Millanta.