Lorenzo Bandini: the F1 driver 'as good as Jochen Rindt'

It was on May Day 1955 that Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson won the Mille Miglia, and for almost 40 years it had a joyful resonance for ‘Jenks’. “I associated it with such pleasure,” he said, “and now this…” His diary entry for May 1, 1994, read simply, ‘Absolute bloody disaster’. That afternoon Ayrton Senna had been killed at Imola.

It is May Day as I write. A week from now is the 25th anniversary of the death of Gilles Villeneuve, and two days after that, on May 10, 40 years will have passed since Lorenzo Bandini died from injuries suffered in the Monaco Grand Prix. A poignant time.

Bandini’s accident was especially gruesome – his Ferrari was upside down, on fire, and attempts to rescue him were sickeningly inept – and it was a seminal one in racing history. As the race went on, Bandini, dreadfully burned, was manhandled from his car, dropped when the flames flared once more, then put on a stretcher, taken by boat across the harbour, thence to the Princess Grace Clinic, where he died three days later. His heavily pregnant wife, deep in shock, was taken to the same hospital, alas too late to save her first child. The saga was as ghastly as could be imagined, and such was the revulsion at what had befallen this popular man that suddenly Jackie Stewart’s was no longer a lone voice in the quest for safety.

Probably no racing driver ever looked the part more than Bandini, but there was nothing shallow about him. “A lot of people with his sort of good looks behave like peacocks – you know the type,” says Chris Amon, Bandini’s team-mate of 1967. “But Lorenzo wasn’t like that at all. I thought he might be aggressive towards me when I joined Ferrari, but he was utterly charming. One of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”

John Surtees, at Ferrari with Bandini for several seasons, concurs: “I remember Lorenzo with great fondness. He was always very friendly, and as a team-mate completely apolitical. Never had any problems with him at all. A good lad.”

Bandini was always obsessed with cars, and became an apprentice mechanic at 15, working at the garage of one Signor Freddi in Milan. Already he was determined to become a racing driver, but where to start? Fortunately, his employer proved to be a benefactor, lending him cars to use in local hillclimbs.

Following the death of Luigi Musso at Reims in 1958, Italy was without a world-class driver, and in an effort to put that right, Count Johnny Lurani conceived a low-cost single-seater class: Formula Junior. Late in ’58 Bandini bought a Volpini and took part in his first single-seater race, the Sicilian Gold Cup, finishing third in both heats. Through 1959 and ’60 Bandini became a star in Formula Junior and was obviously ready for something quicker.

The new 1.5-litre F1 began in 1961 and Ferrari, with its V6, was confident of a power advantage over the four-cylinder Coventry Climax engine, staple diet of all the English constructors. In addition to the three works cars for Phil Hill, Wolfgang von Trips and Richie Ginther, it was decided to run another car under the banner of Scuderia Sant Ambroeus for a young Italian, and although Bandini seemed the obvious choice, Giancarlo Baghetti got the nod. Fortunately for Lorenzo, Mimmo Dei, the patron of Scuderia Centro Sud, was a believer and offered him a Cooper T53-Maserati. On his F1 debut at Pau he finished a good third behind Jimmy Clark and Jo Bonnier, but the car was hopelessly underpowered and there were few further opportunities to impress.

Baghetti, meantime, won his first three F1 races, including the French Grand Prix at Reims, and his performances were the talk of Italy. Enzo Ferrari, though, had not forgotten Bandini and nominated him to co-drive with Giorgio Scarlatti in the world championship sports car race at Pescara. Lorenzo, who did most of the driving, scored his first major victory, and that led to a contract, which included F1, for 1962. On board also, though, were Phil Hill, Willy Mairesse, Ricardo Rodriguez and Baghetti. That was how the Old Man operated: more drivers than cars, with only Hill assured of a regular drive. It was ruthless and manipulative, and it was how he had always done it.

After a magnificent season in 1961, Ferrari fortunes slumped in ’62. Bandini was given a car for Monaco and drove superbly to finish third, but from that point on the team went into steep decline, the V6 no match for the new V8s from Climax and BRM.