Nino Vaccarella 1933-2021

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dinizintheoven
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Nino Vaccarella 1933-2021

Post by dinizintheoven »

Another Reject from days long before most, if not all of us were alive has been swept away by the Grim Reaper... albeit at the grand old age of 88, unlike far too many of his contemporaries.

Nino Vaccarella competed in five World Championship races from 1961-63, in five different chassis with five different engines - which sounds like it might be somewhere unique in F1 history, and might be worthy of a profile just on that basis. He qualified for four of those races and finished three, with a best place of 9th.

Statistically, this makes him more successful than all these drivers combined: Anthony Davidson, Giorgio Pantano, Gianmaria Bruni, Robert Doornbos, Sakon Yamamoto, Lucas di Grassi, Karun Chandhok, Jérôme d'Ambrosio, Giedo van der Garde, Charles Pic, Max Chilton, Will Stevens, Roberto Merhi and Rio Haryanto. That's 14 drivers, all of whom have started a double-digit number of races within the last 20 years, for a combined total of 273, all of whom have never recorded a top ten finish. If we add in Nikita Mazepin, who is still active in F1, no matter how many people wish he wasn't, and who we can assume will never break into the top ten (because Mick Schumacher probably will at some stage), the total goes up to 287 starts, and if we then add Sergey Sirotkin, who did get a top ten finish, just the once, we get to 308 starts and Nino Vaccarella's record is still better than all of them. But also, none of those 16 drivers ever failed to qualify for a race, and at the risk of repeating myself, no matter how many people will be willing Nikita Mazepin to do exactly that, it's unlikely that he ever will, even if Haas' 2022 car is a mutt of HRT proportions.

For those who can read Italian...
James Allen, on his favourite F1 engine of all time:
"...the Life W12, I can't describe the noise to you, but imagine filling your dustbin with nuts and bolts, and then throwing it down the stairs, it was something akin to that!"
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Butterfox
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Re: Nino Vaccarella 1933-2021

Post by Butterfox »

Rest in peace
I don't know what i want and i want it now!
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