Emanuele Naspetti
Driving for the top-notch Forti team, Naspetti won a titanic struggle with Mauro Martini to clinch the 1988 Italian F3 championship in only his second year of racing cars, having been competing in karting between 1980 and '86.
After drawing a blank in his first season of F3000, Naspetti then came under the wing of Eddie Jordan in 1990 but again disappointed, scoring but a single point. It was a different story in 1991 when the Italian came out of his shell. After switching from a Lola to a Reynard chassis, he strung together a run of four consecutive victories at (Enna, Hockenheim, Brands Hatch and Spa), raising doubts about the legality of his Heini Mader-tended Cosworth engines. In the end, Naspetti’s title chances fizzled out and, still with the Forti team, he stayed in the formula for a fourth year in 1992, winning the opening race at Pau. He then jumped at the chance to join the Formula 1 March team, replacing Paul Belmondo in mid-season. Proving surprisingly quick to adapt to his new surroundings, Naspetti clung on tenaciously to his team-mate Wendlinger for most of his debut race at Spa.
Emanuele spent much of 1993 frustrated at the lack of a Formula 1 drive, but did make a one-off appearance for Jordan in Portugal as a reward for his efforts as a test driver during the year,
Since then he carved out a niche for himself in the Italian Superturismo series with a BMW 320i. Only a controversial stop-and-go penalty in the final round cost him the chance of the title in 1996, but he made amends the following year as he dominated the championship. Emanuele subsequently hankered after a return to single-seaters and visited the States to sound out the possibility of a ride in CART but, nothing materialised, and he continued to race in Italy, where his BMW then had to play second fiddle to Giovanardi's Alfa Romeo.
In 2001 Naspetti switched his racing activities to the Sports and GT championships and raced a Rafanelli-Ferrari and later a Panoz in the American Le Mans Series before returning to touring cars with BMW in 2006.
