People

Giampaolo Dallara

A graduate of aeronautical engineering at the Politecnico di Milano, Dallara joined the Ferrari racing department in 1959. He stayed only briefly before moving to Maserati and from there to be chief designer of the new Lamborghini company in 1961. His Miura design established Lamborghini as a rival to Ferrari in 1966. In 1968 Alessandro de Tomaso lured Dallara to his car company to design a Formula 2 racing car. This was raced by Jonathan Williams, Jacky Ickx and by Piers Courage and that autumn a deal was struck between De Tomaso and Courage's team boss Frank Williams for a Grand Prix car in 1970. The De Tomaso 505 had potential but Courage crashed and was killed at the Dutch GP and the project faded away.In 1972 Dallara decided to go it alone and established his own car design company at Varano, working as a consultant engineer to Lancia on the Stratos project and building sports and GT cars. In 1974 Williams asked him to help with the design of the Iso-Marlboro F1 cars, which became the first Williams FW01-03 cars in 1975.Although Dallara went back to sportscar design in 1977 Williams's partner Walter Wolf asked him to build a Formula 3 car. This was raced on occasion in 1978 by Bobby Rahal and was developed in various forms until Guido Pardini won the Italian Championship in 1980. It was the start of an enormously successful period for Dallara with Formula 3 success all over Europe.In 1987 Dallara was asked by Beppe Lucchini of Scuderia Italia to design a Formula 1 car for 1988. This showed promise and the relationship grew until 1992 when Scuderia Italia made the disastrous decision to switch to Lola chassis.Dallara went back to building F3 cars and has dominated all the major European championships ever since.