On 18th October 1933, Ludovico Scarfiotti was born in Turin. He owes his place in the annals mainly for being the last Italian to win his home race at the wheel of a Ferrari, which he did in 1966. He took part in nine other Formula 1 races, five of them with the Scuderia, between 1963 and 1968, but he never made it back to the podium. His record was much stronger in sports car racing and other covered wheel races, where among many wins the stand out successes came in the 1963 Le Mans 24 Hours, the 1965 Nurburging 1000 Kilometres and the 1962 and ’65 European Hillclimb Championship.
During the 1967 season, he decided to leave the Scuderia. He did a few Formula 1 races with Eagle and Cooper and drove for Porsche in hillclimbs. It was in one of these events, at Rossfeld, Germany, that he met his death on 8th June 1968.
“Once he got into Formula 1, he didn’t want to leave it, even if his driving style lacked the necessary refinement,” wrote Enzo Ferrari in ‘Piloti, che gente…’ “Some spoke of divorce when Ludovico asked to look for another car for the following year’s Italian Grand Prix. I have a letter from Gianni Agnelli, who followed the racing activity of Ludovico, his cousin. He told me: ‘it’s ok, even Ludovico agrees to stop Formula 1. However, his need to feel complete at the wheel of a racing car got the better of him. He left Ferrari and looked elsewhere, in England and Germany, but he was not satisfied. I knew it: we had already sown the seeds for a return, of another season with the red sports cars which he had not forgotten. But the ambush in Rossfeld, the rock face that proved fatal, when he fell out of the white unbalanced Porsche, would put an end to it. He was generous, correct and above all obedient even if his flashes of pride could not find in the tranquility of so many famous endurance races, the happiness that his sentimental life had meanly measured out in a seesaw of affection.”
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