page_title: Tazio Nuvolari
section_title: 1930-1932: Alfa Corse
hierarchical_section_title: Tazio Nuvolari / Career / Car racing / 1930-1932: Alfa Corse
caption_attribution_description: English: Tazio Nuvolari at the 1932 French Grand Prix
context_page_description: Tazio Giorgio Nuvolari was an Italian racing driver. He first raced motorcycles and then concentrated on sports cars and single-seaters. A resident of Mantua, he was known as 'Il Mantovano Volante' and nicknamed 'Nivola'. His victories—72 major races, 150 in all—included 24 Grands Prix, five Coppa Cianos, two Mille Miglias, two Targa Florios, two RAC Tourist Trophies, a Le Mans 24-hour race, and a European Championship in Grand Prix racing. Ferdinand Porsche called him "the greatest driver of the past, the present, and the future."
  Nuvolari started racing motorcycles in 1920 at the age of 27, winning the 1925 350cc European Championship. Having raced cars as well as motorcycles from 1925 until 1930, he then concentrated on cars, and won the 1932 European Championship with the Alfa Romeo factory team, Alfa Corse.
  After Alfa Romeo officially withdrew from Grand Prix racing Nuvolari drove for Enzo Ferrari's team, Scuderia Ferrari, who ran the Alfa Romeo cars semi-officially. In 1933 he won Le Mans in an Alfa Romeo as a member of Ferrari's team, and a month later won the Belgian Grand Prix in a works Maserati, having switched teams a week before the race.
context_section_description: 1930
  In 1930, Nuvolari won his first RAC Tourist Trophy (he won again in 1933). Motor racing legend has it that when one of the drivers broke the window of a butcher's shop, Nuvolari drove onto the pavement and tried to grab a ham as he passed. According to Sammy Davis who met him there, Nuvolari enjoyed dark humour and situations when everything went wrong. For example, after he got a ticket for a journey home from the Sicilian Targa Florio he said to Enzo Ferrari, "What a strange businessman you are. What if I am brought back in a coffin?"
  Nuvolari and co-driver Battista Guidotti won the Mille Miglia in a Zagato-bodied Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 GS, becoming the first to complete the race at an average of over 100 km/h (62 mph). At night, leading on elapsed time but still lying behind his teammate Achille Varzi on the road because he had started after him, he tailed Varzi at speeds of up to 150 km/h (93 mph) with his headlights switched off, so that he could not be seen in the other car's rear-view mirrors. He eventually switched them on to overtake "the shocked" Varzi near the finish at Brescia.
  1931
  Towards the end of 1930, Nuvolari decided to stop racing motorcycles and concentrate fully on cars for 1931. Regulations for the season required Grand Prix races to be at least 10 hours long. For the Italian Grand Prix, Nuvolari was to share an Alfa Romeo with Baconin Borzacchini. The car started from ninth place on the grid, and when it retired with mechanical problems after 33 laps Nuvolari teamed up with Giuseppe Campari. The pair took the race win, although Nuvolari could not receive the championship points. Apart from the Belgian Grand Prix, where he came second, the only other European Championship race was the French Grand Prix, where he finished 11th. The same year, he won both the Targa Florio and the Coppa Ciano.
  1932
  For 1932, Grands Prix had to be between five and ten hours long. It was the only season in which Nuvolari regularly drove one of the fastest cars, the Alfa Romeo P3, and he took two wins and a second place from the three European Championship Grands Prix, plus victory in the championship by four points from Borzacchini. He achieved four other race wins that year, including the prestigious Monaco Grand Prix and a second Targa Florio. Of the latter, his mechanic Mabelli said: "Before the start, Nuvolari told me to go down on the floor of the car every time he shouts, which was a signal that he went to a curve too fast and that we need to lower the car´s center of mass. I spent the whole race on the floor. Nuvolari started to shout in the first curve and wouldn't stop until the last one."
  On 28 April the writer Gabriele d'Annunzio gave him a golden tortoise badge. Thereafter Nuvolari wore it as a talisman, and it became famously associated with him.
caption: Nuvolari after winning the 1932 French Grand Prix
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