Osella Formula One Drivers

Osella is an Italian racing car manufacturer and former Formula One team. They participated in 132 Grands Prix between 1980 and 1990. They achieved two points finishes and scored five world championship points.

Early days

Osella was founded in Volpiano in 1965 by former rally driver Enzo Osella. The team began life by racing Abarth sports cars among local and national races in Italy since 1965. In 1974, Osella took over the factory Abarth sports car program and expanded into single-seater racing. In 1975, the team entered the European Formula Two Championship with Giorgio Francia and Duilio Truffo, achieving some success with its own car, the BMW-powered Osella FA2.

Osella continued in Formula Two the following season, but financial problems meant that the team was not competitive and withdrew from the championship before the end of the season. In the following years, the FA2s were occasionally entered by privateers, one of them being the Swiss touring car driver Charly Kiser. The experience prompted Osella to try to become a manufacturer for other teams. The Osella FA3 Formula Three car, powered with Toyota or Lancia engines, competed in the 1976 German and Italian F3 championships without making any great impression. After this, the team concentrated on running in local sports car events during 1977 and 1978.

Return to Formula Two

Osella returned to the European Formula Two Championship in 1979, with American driver Eddie Cheever racing the well-used FA2, again powered by a BMW engine. The car was good enough to win three races and take Cheever to fourth in the championship. After securing the sponsorship of the Ente Tabacchi Italiani tobacco company via their flagship brand MS, Enzo Osella decided to upgrade his activities to Formula One.

Formula One

Osella's first Formula One car, the FA1, was designed by Giorgio Stirano. Powered by Ford Cosworth DFV, the car was presented in a black and white livery with large Denim branding on the sidepods. After a difficult beginning of the season, Eddie Cheever was able to qualify regularly but finished just one race in the whole season. The car suffered from unreliability problems and was aerodynamically inefficient. Many components were manufactured in-house – a strategy that although financially viable, often resulted in poorly designed material.

For the 1982 season, Osella fielded two cars, one for Jean-Pierre Jarier and one for Riccardo Paletti. The team hired Giorgio Valentini and Tony Southgate to design a new car, with input from Enzo Osella himself. Most of these attempts brought little improvement as high-tech solutions could not be financed. Jarier finished fourth at Imola in 1982 (where only 14 cars started) and scored the first Championship points for the young team in a car that was by now dubbed Osella FA1C. Towards the end of the season tragedy struck, when Riccardo Paletti was killed in a start-line accident at the 1982 Canadian Grand Prix.

In 1983 the team regrouped, and hired Piercarlo Ghinzani and Teo Fabi's younger brother Corrado Fabi, who had just won the Formula Two European championship. Lack of funding and reliability issues prevented the drivers to qualify for many of the events on the calendar, Fabi's 10th place at the Deutch Grand Prix the best result of the season. For 1984 Osella retained Ghinzani and gave the second car to the young Austrian Jo Gartner. Ghinzani was able to score points when he finished fifth at the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix. Gardner finished fifth at Monza but both him and countryman Gerhard Berger, who had finished sixth on ATS, didn't receive any points as their teams at the beginning of the season had only officially entered one car. For the 1985 season, Ghinzani was paired with Huub Rothengatter but none of the two were able to score any points. In 1986, in order to stay afloat, the team started asking their drivers to bring sponsorship. Whilst some of the drivers who started their F1 careers with the team would go on to have respectable careers, such as Alex Caffi and Gabriele Tarquini, others disappeared as quickly as they had come, such as Allen Berg and Franco Forini. None of these drivers were able to push the team forward, and Osella continued with little or no improvement in competitiveness.

Partnership with Alfa Romeo

In the mid-1980s, Osella was the beneficiary of factory Alfa Romeo engines, both in naturally-aspirated (1983–84) and turbo (1984–88) forms. The Alfa engine program helped the team to survive the increasingly professional turbo era but it failed to improve its competitiveness. The Alfa turbo engine, the 890T, was not reliable. Turbos blew up regularly and power output had to be reduced down to the level of the non-turbo cars just to achieve the necessary reliability. Alfa Romeo's chief designer, Carlo Chiti, offered some technical input to the team. Beginning with the 1984 Osella FA1F, which was based on the 1983 works Alfa Romeo 183T, all the following Osella models up to the FA1L in had their origins in the initial Alfa design.

For 1988 – the last year before turbos were banned – the team re-branded the 890T as the "Osella V8". This came about after Alfa's parent company, Fiat, grew tired of the negative publicity the team had given the 890T and, while allowing them to continue using the engine, refused to allow the Alfa Romeo name to be used.

After driver Nicola Larini managed some impressive times in pre-season testing at Monza, the team were quietly confident of a decent showing through 1988, as many teams had switched to naturally-aspirated engines in preparation for 1989. However, the FA1L, with its outdated turbo, was not up to the challenge. Larini often failed to qualify or even pre-qualify, and was also excluded from the San Marino Grand Prix before practice after failing to get through scrutineering due to illegal changes made to the chassis. At the end of the season, Enzo Osella terminated his agreement with Alfa Romeo.

Cosworth power and Fondmetal

The 1989 season saw some improvement. The all-new, Cosworth DFR-powered Osella FA1M performed better in the qualifying sessions (most notably in the Japanese Grand Prix, where Larini qualified 10th). The fine qualifying performance, however, didn't translate into good results in the races. The cars rarely saw the finish line due to several technical failures. The most frustrating race was the Canadian Grand Prix, where Larini had climbed to third during the race but retired when the FA1M's electrics failed due to water ingress. At the end of the season, on the occasion of the Australian Grand Prix, Ghinzani suffered a high-speed collision with the Lotus of Nelson Piquet, leaving him with an injured ankle. Right after, Ghinzani announced his retirement.

In 1990, Enzo Osella sold shares in his team to metalwork magnate Gabriele Rumi, as part of a sponsorship deal with Rumi's Fondmetal company. During , the team entered a single car for French driver Olivier Grouillard. At the end of 1990, Rumi took over the remainder of the team and renamed it Fondmetal. The involvement of Rumi meant the end of Osella's activities in Formula One.

Sportscars

During his Formula One years, Osella had continued building sports cars. In fact this was one of the few projects that regularly brought work and money to Volpiano, especially in hillclimb races, with Mauro Nesti many times winner of European and Italian Championship, and many other drivers, with PA9 and PA9/90 models.

A few of those sports cars even found their way to the Can Am series, although without much success. The most prestigious result was during the 1984 Can Am season with a third place in the championship for the 2-litre class; the car was the Osella PA10 driven by Armando Trentini, and was the only two-seater in the championship; the rest of the 2-litre class field comprised single-seater F2 cars with covered wheels.

In the 1990s, Osella moved to Atella in the south of Italy where he built a new ultra-modern facility to produce some very competitive sports cars. Many of them were sold to privateers, while others were entered in several classes by the Osella works team. The works team was particularly successful in hillclimb races. In 1995 Osella works team driver Pasquale Irlando won all 9 races of the European hillclimb championship using the Osella PA20. He won the title in 1997, 1998 and 1999 consecutively. His successor Fabio Danti died in one of Osella's cars when he was competing in the 2000 Championship. Hillclimb stars like Franz Tschager and Martin Krisam continue to use Osella cars. In 2001 the factory was transferred back near Turin, in Verolengo, and continued activity building sport cars for hill climbing and minor sport race championship.

At the end of 2022, Osella Motorsports LTD merged with Osella Engineering. Under the leadership of Enzo Osella and Giuseppe Angiulli, the company, now known as Osella corse, produced cars such as the PA21 JrB from the E2B class, that can be equipped with motorcycling propellers from 1000 to 1600 cc., with a set-up both for hill climbing and track. This new collaboration, according to Enzo Osella, "breathed life into Osella and also into the spirit that has been driving the team".

Racing record

Complete Formula Two results

( key)

Complete Formula One results

( key) (results in bold indicate pole position)

Not eligible for points.

Notes

References

* ''Official Osella site'' https://www.osella.it/wrp/en/# Accessed 9 April 2020 (in English)
* ''Osella book - Enzo Osella'' (Italian) Hardcover , English version

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Osella