Imola: a tight speed demon with a storied history 

The site of this weekend’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Italy has a story reaching back to the 1950s, but the Imola track wasn’t realised as a Formula One round until 1980.

Making a return to the calendar in 2020 after it was formally recognised as the San Marino Grand Prix from 1981 to 2006, the track (the Autodromo Enzo & Dino Ferrari) nestles beautifully onto the natural terrain in the foothills of the Apennine Mountains.

The first signs of construction began on March 22 1950, when four motorcycle enthusiasts – Alfredo Campagnoli, Graziano Golinelli, Ugo Montevecchi, Gualtiero Vighi – one of which was an employee of the Imola works department, got the town to pay for its construction.

Permission for planning began under the guidelines that it would be used for testing by local car and motorcycle manufacturers, including the likes of Ferrari, Maserati, Osca and Stanguellini. The first machine to actively test on it was the Ferrari 340 Sport on October 19, 1952.

The natural terrain track of Imola has long held a delicate dance with the F1 calendar

It was then officially opened in 1952, but outside of testing, it remained only as a track for smaller events such as a motorcycle race called the Gp Coni, as well as a regular Sportscar meeting then known as the Shell GP of Imola, largely contested by Ferrari and Maserati.

It wouldn’t be until April of 1963 that a Formula One-affiliated field visited Imola for a round of the Non-Championship season, whilst it wouldn’t house a grandstand on the pit straight until 1965.

That first Non-Championship outing was called the Shell Gold Cup, taken out by the great Jim Clark (that season’s F1 champion) racing in a Lotus-Climax 25 machine.

Clark won the first non-championship race at Imola in a Lotus by 1min and 25sec from Jo Siffert

In terms of that very first 1963 race – and much to the disappointment of the organisers – the celebration of its first major event was soured by a Ferrari no-show when it reneged on a promise to be there. For the next five years, the circuit fell into international silence.

Then in 1968, patronage through Enzo Ferrari was more or less guaranteed when the track’s owners renamed the circuit after Ferrari’s son Dino, who had passed away earlier that year.

Enzo would eventually reveal his fond feelings for the track. He had this to say about it when he formally baptised it for the first ever Formula One Grand Prix in 1980:

“I assessed from the first moment that that hilly environment could one day become a small Nurburgring due to the natural difficulties that the construction of the road belt would summarise, thus offering a truly selective path for men and cars,” Enzo stated. 

“The promoters of Imola felt comforted by my opinion. In May 1950 they began to build… A small Nurburgring – I repeated to myself that day as I looked around me – a small Nurburgring, with equal technical resources, spectacular and an ideal path length. This belief of mine has been realised through the decades that have passed since then.”

With the track renamed in honour of the Ferrari family, international events eventually returned to Imola by 1968, hosting some F2 races won by the likes of John Surtees and Clay Regazzoni, whilst Sportscar racing also made its return.

Before its first ever official Grand Grand Prix in 1980 and its consecration into F1 folklore, 1979 saw Niki Lauda take out the Non-Championship Dino Ferrari Grand Prix in a Brabham, and in turn, a Brabham-Ford driven by Nelson Piquet took out the inaugural Grand Prix in 1980 by +28.93 seconds over Aussie champion elect Alan Jones.

Niki Lauda won the Dino Ferrari GP in 1979 in a Brabham BT48. Image: Getty

From 1981 to 2006 it became known as the San Marino Grand Prix, named as such to distinguish it from the GP in Monza which sat out the 1980 season. Organisers asked the Automobile Club of San Marino to apply for their own Grand Prix so it could remain on the calendar, and thus it became named after the nearby principality.

One of the track’s distinctions was the lack of run-off space, making it a real purist “essence of racing” type of affair. It was tight and dangerous, and as a result, it would also become the scene of historic tragedy when Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger lost their lives in the same weekend of 1994.

Other major incidents included Piquet and Gerhard Berger’s lucky escapes in 1987 and 1989, whilst the first-ever GP in 1980 also saw Gilles Villeneuve endure an extremely heavy impact.

As a result, corners such as Tamburello and Villeneuve (named after Gilles Villeneuve) had chicanes installed as a safety measure.

Schumacher leads from pole in the 2003 San Marino Grand Prix, one of his seven wins at Imola. Image: Ferrari

In 2006, Micheal Schumacher became the last winner of the San Marino Grand Prix, taking his seventh win there, a record that perhaps seems unlikely to be broken, whilst both Ferrari and Williams each hold eight wins a piece.

Imola left the calendar in 2006, owing to its outdated facilities, which spurned the tracks modernisation process in 2007 when it was given a 50,000-square-meter paddock, with its FIA Grand 1 license then given in 2011.

Talk about its return became hopeful again in 2016 when then Monza’s contract was expiring, but it wouldn’t be until the Covid Pandemic in 2020 that it returned as a one-off race, before it also replaced the postponed Chinese GP the following year. It then received a contract that is due to expire after this weekend’s race, whilst the 2023 Grand Prix saw it cancelled to due heavy flooding in the region.

Nelson Piquet was the first Grand Prix winner at Imola.

Its immediate F1 future remains uncertain after 2025, with the bulging 24-race calendar perhaps not having room for two Grand Prix events in Italy, as indicated by Formula 1 boss Stefano Domenicali. It is also a difficult track to pass on in the modern era due the size of the current F1 machinery, and has fallen out of favour for some race fans as a spectacle.

Is it Ciao forever for Imola?

LIST OF FORMULA ONE WINNERS AT IMOLA

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