Lancia D50

Lancia's first and only Formula 1

Spurred on by the success of sports cars, like the D24 Spider, Gianni Lancia determined that the time had come to make a move into the emerging top division: Formula 1. The ambitious project was handed over to Vittorio Jano.

In the 1950s, the Turin-based car manufacturer Lancia changed its approach to racing. While founder Vincenzo had built fast cars for gentlemen drivers, his motorsports enthusiast son Gianni, who took the helm of the company after the sudden and untimely death of his father, decided to set up the Squadra Lancia to take part in competitions as an official team. The class victory and second place overall of the Aurelia B20 GT at the 1000 Miglia in 1951 was a promising start and the beginning of the official team.

The first Sport cars were built to supply the fledgling Lancia Squadra Corse. They were initially derived from the Aurelia and gradually evolved into racing cars proper. Models included the Lancia D20 Coupé Sport, with body designed by Pinin Farina, the D23, and finally the elegant and successful Lancia D24 Sport Spider.

Although Formula 1 was not as prominent then as it is today, in just a few years it had built a reputation as a category at the pinnacle of motorsport, the highest expression of speed on four wheels in the world. The challenge whetted the ambitions of Gianni Lancia, who in 1953 handed the task of creating the Lancia Formula 1 single-seater over to Vittorio Jano, who had made a name of himself at Fiat, but especially at Alfa Romeo, designing racing engines. At Lancia, Jano had already contributed to the design of the Aurelia. So, the Formula 1 project called Lancia D50 was launched under his leadership.

Vittorio Jano's team created an all-original single-seater, built around the 260-hp, 2,488-cc, 90°-V8 engine designed by Ettore Zaccone Mina. The displacement complied with the F1 regulations of the time but the greater fractioning compared to the V6s of the other sports cars offered higher engine speeds and more specific power as a result. The architecture was very sophisticated, with two overhead camshafts for each cylinder row, twin ignition and fuel feed with four twin-body carburettors. It had forced dry-sump lubrication and an oil cooler.

But rather than the engine, it is the overall technical features that made the Lancia D50 unique. The single-seater was equipped with two highly original petrol tanks placed outside the body, in two streamlined external containers situated between the front and rear wheels. The unusual profile was tested in the wind tunnel of the Torino Polytechnic to confirm the aerodynamic effectiveness of the solution.

The architecture of the D50 was not entirely conventional. The engine, located behind the front wheel axle, had a load-bearing function to strengthen the chassis and was mounted at a 12° angle to the longitudinal axis allowing the drive shaft to pass to the side instead of under the driver's seat. The aerodynamics benefited from the lowered driving position. The clutch, five-speed gearbox and differential were behind the driver. The car had independent suspension with a transverse leaf spring on the front axle and a De Dion rear drive axle.

After winning two Formula 1 championships, in 1952 and 1953, Alberto Ascari accepted Gianni Lancia's challenge to race for his team with the new Lancia D50. The car is extremely fast but not always lucky. Despite the ups and downs, he managed to make his mark and win a world championship after landing in Maranello.

Gianni Lancia convinced many-time Formula 1 champion Alberto Ascari to join the D50 project. The Italian driver came with Luigi "Gigi" Villoresi, a teammate from the days in Maserati during the mid-1940s and is lifelong friend. The development of the single-seater was complicated. The car made its debut on 24 October 1954 in Barcelona, at the Spanish Grand Prix, the last round of the championship. Ascari put his Lancia D50 ahead of everyone in the qualifiers, demonstrating the qualities of the new single-seater. Villoresi started in fifth place. Ascari assertively took the lead but was forced to withdraw for mechanical problems on the tenth of eighty laps. The same fate befell Villoresi, who had also stopped in the first few laps.

The following year, Lancia packed on the miles to improve the reliability of the D50 and advance the constantly evolving project. To do so, the team decides to take part in as many competitions as possible. Three cars were lined up at the Valentino Grand Prix in Turin, which was a non-championship event. Ascari started in pole position and, after an early fight, dominated the race ahead of the Maserati driven by Mieres from Argentina, while Villoresi finished on the lowest step of the podium ahead of young Eugenio Castellotti in the third Lancia D50. On 8 May, Ascari dominated another non-championship race, the Naples Grand Prix, and once again a Maserati, this time driven by Italian Luigi Musso, preceded the other Lancia driven by his ride-or-die Villoresi.

The 1955 championship opened with the Argentine Grand Prix, dominated by home favourite Juan Manuel Fangio in a Mercedes, but at the second race in Monaco, on the streets of Monte Carlo, the Argentinian lined up on the grid in first position, flanked by Alberto Ascari in a Lancia D50 with the same time of 1'41".1. Eugenio Castellotti was fourth behind the other Mercedes driven by Stirling Moss. Two more Lancia D50s were on the starting line: Villoresi was in seventh place and Monaco's Chiron was further back.

The regulations are different those days and the race ended after no fewer than 100 laps of the city circuit. Ascari did not get off to a good start and Stirling Moss' Mercedes was in the lead for most of the race setting a hellish pace and lapping almost all the rivals. His pace was so fast that his own single-seater got into trouble, letting him down when there were only twenty laps left to the chequered flag. The way was cleared for Ascari, who ran into a spectacular accident near the harbour. Abnormal behaviour of the brakes forced him to choose to crash into the sea to avoid a packed grandstand or a violent collision against a low wall. Ascari emerges from the water unscathed but the race is lost. Castellotti managed to take the second step of the podium after more than three gruelling hours of racing, while Villoresi preceded Chiron in fifth and sixth place, respectively.

Bad luck did not abandon Ascari, who just four days later, lost his life at Monza while testing the Ferrari Sport that Castellotti and Villoresi would race shortly afterwards. The death of the top driver came as a bad shock for Gianni Lancia for whom Ascari had also lost a personal friend and plunged him into desperation leading him to abandon racing and sell his shares in the company.

All the Formula 1 material – six complete cars, two chassis and many mechanical parts – were handed over to Ferrari, which would go onto to use them with some adaptations, further evolving the single-seater. Not only cars and components: Vittorio Jano himself also left Turin and took the road to Maranello. That was how the unequalled Ferrari-Lancia D50, on which Juan Manuel Fangio would become World Champion for the fourth time in 1956, came to be.

A perfectly preserved example of a Lancia D50 is displayed at the Stellantis Heritage Hub in Turin in the "Records and races" section, which celebrates victorious cars on the world's major circuits.