Lost Luck

There was never any doubt about what Alberto Ascari would be--if he lasted long enough to grow up. All his life. Alberto had lived with the sound, smell and danger of high-speed engines. Before he was five, he learned how to handle the wheel from his racing-driver father. Perched on papa's knee, little Alberto navigated the back roads of Milan, Italy, and the graceful curves of the old race track at Monza. By the time Alberto was seven, the elder Ascari was dead, killed in a crash at Montlhery in the French Grand Prix. But the youngster was already determined to devote his life to racing autos.

Poker Price. He began by racing motorcycles. As a schoolboy, he played poker to raise the price of bike rentals, and he competed wherever he could--from the Milan piazza to the open-road races through northern and central Italy. He cracked up soon and often, but he kept coming back. In 1940, when he was 21, he graduated to autos. Small, stock Fiats were his first mounts; for his first big races in the Mille Miglia and at Palermo, he managed to get hold of a Ferrari. Motor trouble forced him out each time.

A cool, skillful technician, completely devoid of Latin temperament, utterly dependent upon his knowledge of engines and his exquisite reflexes, Alberto ("Ciccio")* Ascari finally hit his stride in the auto-racing heyday after World War II. He traveled everywhere--Spain, England, Argentina--and everywhere other drivers ate his dust. He worked up a fine feud with Argentina's Champion Juan Manuel Fangio. In Brazil one day in 1949, he swung too wide on a turn, hit a roadside rock, turned turtle and wound up with a broken collarbone, three broken ribs and three fewer teeth than he started with.

Last Crash. The accident only meant that Alberto had to sit still for a while. While he did, Enzo Ferrari, who manufactured some of the fastest cars in competition, caught up with him and hired him as a driver. After that, there was no holding Alberto Ascari. Every year, in his Ferraris, he scored more Grand Prix points, and every year he sped closer to death. In The Netherlands Grand Prix in 1949, he lost a wheel while doing 120 m.p.h. Somehow, he survived the wreck. In 1953, at Monza, after winning the Grand Prix championship for the second year in a row, he spun off the track, tangled with two other cars and walked away once more.

His luck was too good to last. At Monte Carlo last week, Ascari catapulted through a bale of hay and landed in the Mediterranean. This time he was badly cut around the head. Only four days later, though, he was back at the wheel, testing a car on the Monza track. He was a national hero; he seemed to feel Italy expected such perseverance. In a borrowed 3,000-liter Ferrari, Ciccio Ascari, 36, spun into a crash for the last time. He was dead before the ambulance reached the hospital.

* A nickname that placed him somewhere in the waistland between "chubby" and "fatso."

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