Valentino Nicchi

Valentino Nicchi (born October 30, 1956 in Vatican City) is a former Grand Prix motorcycle road racer and Formula One driver. He is well known for being Vatican City's first racing driver aswell as being one of the few people to have raced in both motorcycle and Formula One Grand Prix.

Automobile racing history

After the 1978 Grand Prix motorcycle racing season, Valentino decided to quit motorcycling to pursue an auto racing career. He made his 4-wheel racing debut in the 1979 Formula Two Championship, scoring 5 podiums and finishing his first season in 5th. He was probably best known that year for a huge crash at Hockenheim where he went into a barrel roll. His performances impressed enough that he was offered a test/reserve role at Restov Racing in Formula One for the 1980 season and he immediately signed.

Formula One

On his first F1 test at Silverstone, Valentino performed respectively, finishing the session just under 3 tenths slower than one of the regular drivers.

Nicchi made his debut on March 30, 1980 at the Brazilian Grand Prix, driving car number 37 as a replacement for the banned Beppe Gabbiani. He qualified an impressive 16th on his debut, outqualifying his more experienced teammate Gianfranco Brancatelli, before retiring with brake failure.

Gabbiani was banned again after the Belgian Grand Prix for six races, he was fired from the team and Valentino was promoted to the second race seat with immediate effect.

The next race was the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard. Using his experience of the circuit where he had previously tested, Valentino put in a scorching lap in qualifying to line up 8th on the grid. Once again, however, his race lasted less than a single lap. This time he was involved in an accident with Emerson Fittipaldi which saw both cars retire, for this, Valentino was given a suspended race ban from FISA and a £2,000 pound fine.

At Monaco, Nicchi drove more carefully due to his suspended ban and only qualified in 21st, however he still outqualified his teammate. Unfortunately his race only lasted 7 laps before the Restov suffured an engine failure.

Nicchi struggled at Dijon, managing only 26th in qualifying but still beating his teammate. He once again had a mechanical failure.

Unfortunately Nicchi's record came to an end at the US Grand Prix, where he was outqualified by his teammate for the first time in his career, Brancatelli started 13th while Nicchi embarrassingly started 29th. In the race he worked his way into 18th before retiring on lap 20 with a broken gearbox.

Life GP

On October 1991, Valentino bought a Life L190 to compete in the Life GP Series after watching the series on TV. His team was entered as a non-championship entry for the last round at Japan. Valentino lined up 29th his debut in Suzuka before crashing off at 130R. For the next race, a non-championship round at Brazil, Valentino's reserve driver for the upcoming season Marcus Kun was entered in a 2nd car. The race saw both cars running well in 11th and 13th before Kun retired with suspension problems and was then hit by Frédéric-Maxime Voeckler and Valentino. Valentino recovered to finish the race in 7th.

For '92 Nicchi immediately decided to pour almost all off the team's money into engine reliability. Because of this the car lacked qualifying pace and failed to make the grid for the first 9 races, fortunately the car finally made it for the Swiss SuperPrix as all cars could automatically qualify for the race on the big Le Mans grid.

IndyCar

By now, however Nicchi was bored of the LGPS, lacking motivation after failing to qualify for race after race. He decided to move to the IndyCar series with his own team using a Galmer chassis. He qualified a fine 13th in Nazareth before crashing out on lap 65 in an accident with Michael Andretti. In Laguna Seca he started a brilliant 2nd but dropped to 8th by the end.

Nicchi Motori

Valentino originally founded Nicchi Motori to allow him to compete in the Life GP Series. Since then it's expanded to many other motorsports. Full Article

Comprehensive Results

Motorcycle Grand Prix Results

Position	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Points	15	12	10	8	6	5	4	3	2	1

(Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Year	Class	Team	Machine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	Points	Rank	Wins
1976	250cc	Yamaha	TZ250	FRA -		NAT 2		IOM 2	NED 2	BEL 3	SWE 1	FIN 2	CZE 3	GER 7	ESP -		73	2nd	1
	350cc	Yamaha	TZ350	FRA 4	AUT -	NAT 10	YUG 3	IOM 9	NED -			FIN -	CZE 11	GER 4	ESP -		28	7th	0
	500cc	Yamaha	TZ500	FRA -	AUT WD	NAT -		IOM 4	NED -	BEL -	SWE -	FIN -	CZE -	GER -			8	26th	0
1977	250cc	Yamaha	TZ250	VEN -	GER -	NAT 8	ESP 1	FRA 8	YUG 2	NED 6	BEL 2	SWE 4	FIN -	CZE -	GBR -		58	4th	1
	350cc	Yamaha	TZ350	VEN -	GER 1	NAT 3	ESP 3	FRA 1	YUG 1	NED -		SWE 1	FIN 1	CZE -	GBR -		95	1st	5
1978	350cc	Yamaha	TZ350	VEN 1		AUT 3	FRA -	NAT 3	NED -		SWE 3	FIN 2	GBR -	GER 1	CZE -	YUG -	77	2nd	2
	500cc	Yamaha	TZ500	VEN -	ESP 3	AUT -	FRA -	NAT -	NED 4	BEL 6	SWE 3	FIN 2	GBR 9	GER 5			53	5th	0

Complete European Formula Two Championship results

(Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Year	Entrant	Chassis	Engine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	Pos	Pts
1979	San Remo Racing	March/792	BMW	SIL 6	HOC 6	THR 5	NÜR 3	VAL Ret	MUG Ret	PAU 2	HOC Ret	ZAN 3	PER Ret	MIS 3	DON 2	5th	28

Complete Formula One Results

Year	Entrant	Chassis	Engine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	WDC	Points
1980	Gazprom Restov Racing	Restov RS11	Lada Turbo	AUS	RSA	BRA Ret	BEL	FRA Ret	MON Ret	SUI Ret	USA Ret	CAN	IRE	GBR	GER	EUR	AUT	ITA	JAP	USE	NC	0

Complete Life GP Series Results

Year	Entrant	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	NC	DC	Pts
1991	Nicchi Motori	ESP	AND	FRA	ITA	AUT	CZE	GER	SWE	BEL	SUI	LUX	EUR	GBR	ENG	POR	USE	USW	JPN Ret		BRA 7	48th	0
1992	Nicchi Motori	ARG DNQ	BRA DNQ	ESP DNQ	FRA DNQ	ITA DNQ	AUT DNQ	CZE DNQ	FIN DNQ	GER DNQ	SUI	BEL	NED	SCO	ENG	GBR	USE	USW	JPN	AUS		39th	0

American Open-Wheel racing results

CART

Year	Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	Rank	Points
1992	Nicchi Motori	SRF	PHX	LBH	INDY	DET	POR	MIL	NHA	TOR	MCH	CLE	ROA	VAN	MDO	NAZ Ret	LAG 8	25th	5