On 16 May 1909 Luigi Villoresi, one of the most famous Italian pilots of the 1930s, was born in Milan. Gigi was a descendant of a well-known family in Milan. His father Gaetano was in fact the son of Eugenio Villoresi, the engineer who designed the Villoresi Canal, and was the grandson of Luigi Villoresi, one of the great botanists and landscape architects of the 19th century. Luigi, who everyone familiarly called Gigi, was the firstborn of five children who all died tragically. He was very close to his younger brother Emilio, also a talented driver, who died on the Monza circuit on 28 June 1939, testing an Alfa Romeo Alfetta.
After the first races on secondary circuits and a Mille Miglia, Gigi became a Maserati driver with whom he took his first win at Brno in Czechoslovakia. He then won the Acerbo Cup and in 1939 the Targa Florio, which he also won again in 1940.
In 1935, in a Maserati 4CM, he came sixth at the I Coupe du Prince Ranier; he was thus noticed by Ernesto Maserati who invited him to join the official team in 1936, with this union that would last until 1949.
After the end of the Second World War, Villoresi started racing again with the Scuderia Milan founded by himself and in 1946 he won the Gran Prix de Nice. In 1947 he started racing with his friend Alberto Ascari at the wheel of the Maserati 4CLT, repeating his success in the Nice Grand Prix and becoming the absolute Italian champion.
In 1948 he won in Comminges, Albi, Naples, the British Grand Prix and Penya Rhin and became the absolute Italian champion for the second time. In 1949, after winning the Grand Prix de Bruxelles and the Grand Prix de Luxemburg, he was called by Enzo Ferrari to drive his cars.
In 1950 he had a serious accident going off the road at the first corner of the Grand Prix of Nations suffering serious injuries but he managed to return to race for the Inter-Europe Cup with a Ferrari 340 America, it was with this car that he also won the Mille Miglia. In 1951 he took part in the Formula 1 championship with the Ferrari 375 F1, arriving three times in third place (Belgium, France and Great Britain) and twice fourth (Germany and Italy). In 1952 he took part with the Ferrari 500 in the last two races of the world championship, finishing third on both occasions. In 1953 he finished second in Belgium and Argentina and third in the Italian Grand Prix.
In 1954 Ascari and Villoresi passed to the team Lancia; Villoresi ran most of his season in Formula 1 with the Maserati 250F finishing fifth in France and only the last race with the Lancia D50 retiring at the Grand Prix of Spain.
In 1955, with the Lancia D50, he retired in Argentina and finished fifth in Monte Carlo. After Ascari's death, Gianni Lancia handed over his cars to Enzo Ferrari and Villoresi then ran his last season in Formula 1 with the Maserati 250F, reaching points in the Belgian Grand Prix with a fifth place. In 1958 he won the prestigious Acropolis Rally in Greece with a Lancia Aurelia GT, together with Ciro Basadonna.
Villoresi also had a misunderstanding with Enzo Ferrari on whom one day he said: "Ferrari is one who doesn't know the word thank you". For some time the two of them didn't talk to each other, then they got closer together. When he stopped racing, Villoresi dedicated himself to the car, in the company he founded on Viale Fulvio Testi, the great road that leads from Milan to Monza. The Department of Public Safety, at a certain point, bought the cars of the Scuderia delle Pantere Storiche di Firenze, which were entrusted to the Stradale with Gigi Villoresi appointed President.
With the dissolution of the Scuderia delle Pantere Storiche, Villoresi found himself in poverty. So it was that don Sergio Mantovani, the chaplain of the racing drivers who climbed to Paradise last year, welcomed him into the House of Joy and the Sun of Modena, built by the priest to help the old poor. Don Sergio worked hard until Villoresi was granted a life annuity thanks to the so-called Bacchelli law, which consisted of a fund to provide for the sustenance of illustrious citizens in a state of particular need. A law that took its name from its first, planned, beneficiary: the Italian writer Riccardo Bacchelli. At the Casa della Gioia e del Sole, Villoresi remained for three and a half years. He died on 24 August 1997, at the age of 89, on the same day Michael Schumacher won the Belgian GP with Ferrari. "I asked and got Gigi Villoresi to rest near his last home - said then Don Sergio Mantovani -. He is buried in the cemetery of Albareto, on the outskirts of Modena. Every time I go to his grave I find him covered with fresh flowers: it is the mechanics of Maserati and Ferrari, even the young ones who have not known him, who never miss them. A testimony to an affection that lasts forever".
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