From Italian Formula Three and Superturismo titles to European and British touring car crowns, a career built mostly with Alfa Romeo and Vauxhall.
Fabrizio Giovanardi is an Italian racing driver born in Sassuolo in 1966 and known as Piedone. His haul of ten touring car crowns includes European and British honours, and spent most of his career with Alfa Romeo and Vauxhall. He also had a spell as a Ferrari test driver in 2001.
Giovanardi's career ran from Italian Formula Three in the late 1980s through European and British touring cars, with championship success along the way. His years with Alfa Romeo and Vauxhall defined much of that record.
Where did Giovanardi's racing career start?
In 1986 Giovanardi took the Italian and World Formula C karting crowns in 125cc machines. In 1987 he moved up to Italian Formula Three in a PreMa Racing Reynard 873 powered by Alfa Romeo, ending the year thirteenth.
That first season included a podium. In 1988 two wins, at Vallelunga and Enna-Pergusa, lifted him to third overall. Only one point separated him from runner-up Mauro Martini, while champion Emanuele Naspetti finished two points clear. He returned to the series in 1990 for a single round.
Ten touring car titles, a Ferrari test seat and a BTCC championship decided by three points.
What happened in Formula 3000?
In 1989 he moved to International Formula 3000 with First Racing and won at Vallelunga, but he was classified tenth, having missed the cut at Silverstone, Brands Hatch and Le Mans. Tenth again came in 1990, with a best result of second at Pau, before a final season in 1991 that ended in a three-way tie for eleventh.
Pau, where he finished second in 1990, was his best result in the category.
How did Giovanardi win his first touring car title?
He dabbled in Superturismo in 1991 with a Peugeot 405 and took five Class S2 victories. In 1992 he ran a full campaign, won the S2 class with eight race wins and claimed his first touring car title. The result set up a move into the main class of the championship.
He switched to the main class with Peugeot in 1993 and finished second overall that year, then third in 1994. He won five races before leaving Peugeot for Nordauto Engineering Alfa Romeo in 1995.
What did Giovanardi achieve with Alfa Romeo in the 1990s?
From 1995 he raced for Nordauto Engineering Alfa Romeo and finished third in his debut season, tied with his team-mate Antonio Tamburini. He also won the Italian Superturismo title in 1998 and again in 1999, and the European Euro STC title in 2000 and 2001.
The same year he made a single appearance in the German DTM championship at the Norisring, racing an Alfa 155 entered by the factory Alfa Corse outfit.
His 1997 season was a mixed one. He swept all four CET races before that series was dropped for want of cars. In Superturismo he took five victories and finished second to Naspetti. The next year he dominated the Italian championship in the Alfa 156 with nine victories and eighteen podiums from twenty races.
In 1999 he again beat his BMW rival Naspetti, in a close last race at Vallelunga. He led by fourteen points after ten rounds. The Superturismo then became the Euro STC in 2000, and he won that title too.
The 1998 title had been built around the new Alfa Romeo 156, which he drove to nine victories and eighteen podiums in twenty races. That form carried into 1999 and the title fight with Naspetti.
When did Giovanardi test for Ferrari?
On 1 February 2001 Giovanardi began testing for Ferrari, standing in for Luca Badoer, who had been badly hurt in a crash weeks before. He stayed in the official test role until September that year, when Badoer had recovered and resumed testing.
The role was a step outside touring cars, but it did not change his main programme. The Euro STC title that followed in 2001 came from consistency rather than headline wins, with three wins and ten podiums across the season.
How did Giovanardi fare in the European and World Touring Car Championships?
In 2002, with the European championship back under Super 2000 rules, he took yet another touring car title in an Alfa, his fifth in a row. He moved to a BMW in 2003 and finished ninth, then returned to Alfa in 2004 and finished sixth.
The 2003 BMW was a rear-wheel-drive car that suited him less well, and he managed only three podiums. Back in an Alfa in 2004, now part of a four-car team run by Autodelta, he took a single victory at Valencia. Team-mate Gabriele Tarquini finished ahead of him in the standings, the first time he had been beaten by a team-mate.
In 2005 the European series was rebranded as the World Touring Car Championship, the first championship of that name since 1987. He won four races and was the top-placed Alfa driver, finishing behind the BMW pair of Andy Priaulx and Dirk Muller.
In the Alfa factory line-up that year he sat with Tarquini, James Thompson and Augusto Farfus, and Andre Couto joined them for the Macau round. He was the top-placed Alfa driver that year.
His last outing in the series so far was in 2006. He stood in for Pierre-Yves Corthals at Curitiba in Brazil, then teamed up with Corthals at JAS Motorsport in Macau, where he took fourth in the opening race.
How did Giovanardi win the British Touring Car Championship?
Giovanardi joined Triple Eight's BTCC team for 2006 after Alfa Romeo pulled out of the WTCC. He drove a Vauxhall Astra, and his first win came at Knockhill, which was Vauxhall's 100th win in the championship. He finished his first BTCC campaign fifth in the standings.
Gavin Smith joined the squad later, so the team ran three Vauxhalls. Giovanardi had tested a Vauxhall Astra Sport Hatch for Triple Eight at Pembrey in late 2005, and his first season alongside Tom Chilton was a learning year.
The first season was a learning exercise for driver and team. A first win slipped away at Donington Park, where a final-corner clash with Colin Turkington ended his chance. A second win followed at Brands Hatch, and he edged out James Thompson by one point at Silverstone, the season finale.
In 2007 he and team-mate Tom Chilton drove the team's new Vauxhall Vectra. Giovanardi won ten races to Chilton's none. He was locked in a season-long battle with SEAT Sport's Jason Plato, who led 265-256 into the final round. At Thruxton, Giovanardi finished second to win his first BTCC title by three points.
What were Giovanardi's later BTCC seasons like?
He sealed a second title in 2008 at Brands Hatch with two rounds to spare, clinching it with a non-scoring fourteenth place after Plato finished fifth. Chilton had left for Team Dynamics, and the team ran three cars that season with Matt Neal and Tom Onslow-Cole alongside him.
The 2008 season had quieter spells too. Before the title round he had a streak of 39 straight finishes in the points, starting from round 19 of 2007. His single point at Brands Hatch came for the fastest lap in the last race. Plato ended the year in third place.
In 2009 he partnered Andrew Jordan and Matt Neal at VX Racing, in the final season of Vauxhall's works effort. Turkington took the title on 262 points, with Giovanardi on 258 and Plato on 254. Giovanardi finished fourth in the decisive race and third in the standings.
Vauxhall pointed to the economy as the reason for leaving at season's end. Giovanardi was in the title fight until the final lap of the last race.
In 2010 he returned to the series in the number 888 Vectra for Triple Eight, partnering Phil Glew. He won the first two races at Thruxton. The squad had wanted him for the full year, but when sponsor Uniq withdrew, James Nash took over before Rockingham.
Phil Glew, the 2009 Clio Cup UK champion, made his BTCC debut at that meeting.
His last BTCC season came in 2014 with Airwaves Racing in a Ford Focus ST Mk.III. He finished 13th overall that year, with a single podium at Thruxton.
Did Giovanardi race outside touring cars?
Yes. In 2010 he drove a Porsche Panamera S for N.Technology in the Italian-based Superstars Series, winning on the car's debut at Mugello. Three straight victories at Paul Ricard and Vallelunga followed, and he ended sixth in the Italian standings.
He also made guest appearances in V8 Supercar endurance races. In 2008 he shared a Triple Eight car with Marc Hynes in the L&H 500 at Phillip Island, finishing 17th, and at Bathurst they finished 15th. He returned to Britek Motorsport at the Gold Coast 600 in 2010.
In 2017 he returned to touring cars as a guest at Vallelunga in the Italian Touring Car Championship. He qualified sixth, dropped to tenth after a poor start and fought back to fourth in the race. In 2018 he returned to regular touring car racing in the World Touring Car Cup with an Alfa Romeo Giulietta.
What is Giovanardi's legacy?
His racing took him through Italy, across Europe, to Britain and to Australia, and he was back in the WTCR by 2018. That range of series, from open-wheel cars to Superturismo, the WTCC and the BTCC, is a large part of why his record is so broad.
Giovanardi's legacy rests on his ten touring car titles, which span Italian, European and British championships. He is regarded as one of the most successful touring car drivers in the world.
His career shows consistency across more than two decades, from Superturismo titles in the late 1990s to European and British touring car crowns in the 2000s.
