Drivers

Renzo Zorzi

Born in Ziano di Fiemme, a small town in the mountains near Bolzano, near the Austrian border, Renzo Zorzi worked for Pirelli early in his career and began racing in Formula 3 in 1972 with a Scuderia Mirabella Tecno. He became a regular F3 racer the following year with a Brabham BT38 and then with the little known Quasar and Branca chassis. He returned to Scuderia Mirabella in 1974 as team mate to Giorgio Francia and using a GRD chassis finally began to score some good results.

In 1975 he worked to develop a Lancia Formula 3 engine, built by the Repetto company, and used this to win the Monaco Formula 3, a big surprise at the time. As a result of that success he did a deal to rent a Williams for the Italian Grand Prix and re-appeared for the team again in Brazil in 1976. After that, however, his sponsorship money dried up and Zorzi returned to Formula 3 with the Modus team.

The following year, with backing from Italian financier Francesco Ambrosio, he joined the Shadow F1 team as team mate to Tom Pryce. He finished sixth in his second race for the team in Brazil and had a new DN8 in South Africa but there was disaster when Zorzi pulled off with an electrical fire and a fire marshal running across the track to deal with the incident was hit by Pryce. Both the marshal and Pryce were killed. Zorzi was joined by Alan Jones and it was not long before Zorzi was dropped in favour of another Ambrosio protege Riccardo Patrese.

For a while Zorzi raced in sports car events and even in British F1 but he then dropped out of the sport and went back to earning his living as a Pirelli test driver.