Emanuele
Pirro

Emanuele Pirro was born in Rome on 12 January 1962. He spent seven years in karting, became Italian champion in 1976 and 1979, and finished runner-up in both the European and World championships. He moved to car racing in 1980 and won the Formula Fiat Abarth title. He went on to win races in Formula 3, Formula 3000 and Formula Nippon.

In 1988 he became a McLaren test driver and helped develop the new Honda engine for the MP4/4, a role he kept for the next three seasons. He made his Formula One debut at the 1989 French Grand Prix with Benetton, standing in for Johnny Herbert. That year he started ten races and finished 23rd in the world championship. In 1990 and 1991 he drove a Dallara for BMS Scuderia Italia. In 1990 he started 14 races. In 1991 he made 13 starts from 16 entries and finished 18th in the championship, his best championship position in Formula One. In total he started 37 Grands Prix without reaching the podium.

Alongside his single-seater career, he was a BMW works driver in touring cars until 1993 and won in the ETCC, the WTCC, Italian Superturismo and the DTM. In the BMW M3 E30 run by Schnitzer, he won the 1989 Nürburgring 24 Hours and the Macau Guia Race in 1991 and 1992. After joining Audi, he was Italian Superturismo champion in 1994 and 1995 and won the Super Tourenwagen Cup in 1996.

In sportscars he raced for Audi. In 1999 he began a record run of nine consecutive podium finishes at the Le Mans 24 Hours. In 2000 he won the first of three consecutive victories there, sharing the car with Tom Kristensen and Frank Biela. In 2006, sharing the car with Biela and Marco Werner, he became the first driver to win Le Mans in a diesel car, and he repeated the win in 2007. He won the race five times in all. He was also American Le Mans Series champion in 2001 and 2005, and won the 12 Hours of Sebring twice and Petit Le Mans three times. In 2008 he announced the end of his career with Audi sportscars. Later he took part in further races, including the 2011 Gold Coast 500 in the Australian V8 Supercars Championship, and in 2010 he won the Formula 3 class at the Monaco Historic Grand Prix.

Source: Wikipedia, “Emanuele Pirro”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.