Coloni Motorsport Turns 30

Precisely 30 years ago, on 18 January 1982, Coloni Motorsport was born. The story of the Italian team is a really successful one, starting right from that first season that saw the team clinch his first drivers title in the Italian F3 Championship with Enzo Coloni himself at the wheel, and still keeping momentum today with the three wins the team secured in the 2011 GP2 season.

Coloni Motorsport Credit: Coloni Motorsport

Maybe even Mr.Coloni couldn't have imagined such an incredible career for his outfit when he decided to found it, basically to take car on his own of the car he was racing in, but that's exactly what happened, as his team quickly became one of the most successful in Italian motorsport, a squad that was even able to boast stunning performances in Formula 1 and established a benchmark in international motorsport.

After the first Italian F3 title, others followed with Ivan Capelli, Alessandro Santin and Nicola Larini, with the welcome addition of a one-two in the 1985 F3 European Cup, with Alex Caffi on the higher step of the podium. Those are just a few of the drivers that in thirty years drove for the team a really impressive list that includes drivers that then managed to reach Formula One, like Bertrand Gachot and Vitantonio Liuzzi, or Giorgio Pantano and Gianmaria Bruni and many more.

Some drivers even made their F1 debut with Coloni Motorsport itself, in the five seasons that saw the team committed to the biggest motorsport challenge of all, the big Circus. Drivers as Gabriele Tarquini, Larini and Roberto Moreno just to name a few, entered F1 with the Italian team, sometimes surprising the F1 paddock with stunning results. That was the case in Canada in 1988, when Tarquini was eight, or in Monaco in 1989, when both Pierre-Henri Raphanel and Moreno qualified in the middle of the field.

Once the F1 adventure was over, the team kept the winning momentum with the arrival of Paolo Coloni as the team manager: in the early 2000s Coloni Motorsport was the team to beat in F3000, and the first one to be chosen to race with the Red Bull colours, in 2003. In that period the team brought many drivers to success, with Giorgio Pantano, Patrick Friesacher and Ricardo Sperafico all ending runner-up in the championship, just inches shy of the title.

Year by year the team increased his commitments racing in Superleague Formula, Euroseries 3000 and Formula Bmw but the best results came in the team's main commitment, GP2.

The team entered the best F1 feeder series around in its debut year, 2005, and through the years they won with Italian and foreign drivers, from Gianmaria Bruni to Giorgio Pantano, from Adam Carroll to Luiz Razia and Luca Filippi.

Enzo Coloni, in the meantime, was focused in opening new ways for motorsport, organizing new and successful championships: Superformula was the first in 2005, a car that required an F3 budget and was nearly as quick as F3000; then, in 1998, it was the time for the Open Fortuna by Nissan, the championship that made motorsport popular in Spain launching the talents of Fernando Alonso and Marc Gené.

Nowadays Enzo Coloni still is a championship organizer with Auto GP, a Series that again links affordable costs with very high performances, a championship that is growing quickly and that has given Romain Grosjean and Kevin Ceccon a decisive boost towards F1.

Now, with three decades of success behind them, Coloni Motorsport is ready to face the coming season: with Scuderia Coloni in GP2 the team starts the season as one of the favourites with Stefano Coletti and Fabio Onidi, while Auto GP is ready to launch some new talents to the higher steps of the motorsport ladder.

Enzo Coloni: "On a day like this you inevitably end up thinking of what you achieved in 30 years, and frankly I'm really satisfied. Satisfaction is my dominant feeling mainly because I can see a continuity for the company in my family, thanks to my son Paolo and my daughter Fidalma that are managing the team brilliantly. I involved them in the team management early because I wanted them to learn, and I'm proud to see that they did it in the best possible way. Besides this I'm satisfied for all that we did in our long history. We were a racing team, a constructor, a championship organizer, and we were successful in each one of those fields. We also were the only team in our country to always have a special eye for Italian drivers, who were always our priority. We helped them to shine and grow, and that makes me proud as much as our wins.

And it's not over yet, we are confident when looking to 2012 because we have a competitive team and line-up in GP2 and Auto GP keeps growing. We are satisfied but not contented, so we will keep giving our best in motorsport".

Paolo Coloni: "How many emotions today! Even if, to be true, our family has as much as 39 years of activity in motorsport, as my father started racing a lot earlier than even thinking of founding a team. One of the photos attached to this release is a shot of both me and my sister Fidalma standing besides my father's first racecar and I have to say that even today, when we are going on track, I have that kind of emotion and that kind of will to win, the same feeling that made me cry when I was a child and my father came home with the wrong trophy; the only one that counted for me was the bigger one, the winner's award, and today it's more or less the same.

Passing this thirty years surrounded and supported by my family, my father, my sister and my uncle was amazing, and made this whole life experience unique. I think that on an important day as today it's important to say thanks to those people like us, people who thanks to their passion live motorsport as a key part of their lives, people like Mr. Bernie Ecclestone who made us love Formula 1 and motor racing in general. I would also like to say thanks to all the people who worked with us in these 30 years, engineers, mechanics and all the staff that helped us to reach our aims. Thanks a lot to you all".

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