Giancarlo Baghetti, the forgotten record holder

In the 60s, the fashion was for non-championship races in Formula 1, and Baghetti impressed by winning his first two starts. This logically opened the doors to the World Championship for him in 1961, lined up at the French Grand Prix in Reims in 1961 by the Italian Automobile Sport Federation, at the wheel of a FerrariQualifying twelfth, the Italian was destined for a race in which he could perhaps score a few points, but in the final laps, he found himself in the top 3, facing the Porsche of Dan Gurney and Jo Bonnier. The latter was forced to retire with three laps to go, leaving Baghetti and Gurney to fight, it was finally the Ferrari that crossed the finish line first, after overtaking the Porsche a hundred meters before the checkered flag! While he had already won the two non-championship races in which he had participated, Baghetti immediately became one of the new stars of the paddock.

A status that would allow him to be hired by Scuderia Ferrari in 1962, but he would not manage to replicate the genius of his French victory. Worse, Baghetti would never again stand on a Grand Prix podium, and he would end his career in 1968. The Italian did not stay far from the circuits, since he retrained as a journalist and photographer, specializing in motor racing and fashion. Enough to keep a foot in an environment for which he had always felt an unfailing passion. Baghetti died of cancer in 1995.

Today, he remains the only driver to have won his first three F1 Grands Prix in his first three attempts. He can also be named as the only driver to have won on his first start in the World Championship, if we exclude two drivers who achieved the same feat in particular circumstances. Indeed, Giuseppe Farina and Johnnie Parsons both won on their first Grand Prix, but given that the Italian won the first Grand Prix in the history of the World Championship in 1950, everyone was competing there for the first time… For Parsons, it was the Indianapolis 500 Miles that same year, a race that counted towards the F1 World Championship, but which was not contested with single-seaters of the category, and which had been introduced to give the season a global character. Winner of the 1961 French Grand Prix, Giancarlo Baghetti is therefore the only one to whom the definition can be fully applied, the championship having been taking place for eleven years at that time.

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