FRANCO LINI (1924-1996)

FRANCO LINI

The dapper figure of Franco Lini, always nattily attired in a jacket with a scarf or a tie at his neck, has been a fixture along the pit lanes of Grand Prix racing for over four decades. Given that as a boy he lived in Mantua, home of the great Tazio Nuvolari, Lini thinks it was inevitable that he would somehow become involved in the sport of his hero. "You have to keep in mind with that age, when boys were seven or eight years old, motor racing was something absolutely special, like the space adventures of today. It was not a normal thing, you know.  So you have just a god. In Nuvolari sometimes we saw a big man, with a cigarette. He was a big man to a small boy, but in fact Nuvolari was a small man."

The Lini family moved to Milano where their home was destroyed and all their possessions lost during the war. The hostilities also interrupted Franco's university studies and the machine tool factory where he had planned to work in sales was also levelled by bombs. So he turned to sports journalism, specializing in motor racing. He covered his first Grand Prix at San Remo in 1949.

In emulation of his hero, Nuvolari, Lini also raced motorcycles, a pursuit that ended in disaster in a mountain enduro race in 1950. "I broke three vertebrae, four ribs, I was totally broke!  In fact, the doctor when he saw me, he believed I was to die before the next morning and the next morning when he saw me alive, he believed I was to be paralysed all my life. I am very lucky."

His own life as racer now over, Lini concentrated on writing about those who still did it. He covered all types of racing and by the early 60's he was a regular touring member of the fledgling Grand Prix circus, one of the first journalists to travel to every race. When he arrived at Watins Glen, for the US Grand Prix of 1962, the parochial Americans misunderstood his name and believed he was Irish. "They thought I was Frank O'Lini!"

There was no mistaking his nationality a few years later, for Lini  was then the manager of the consumate Italian Grand Prix team. "One day Ferrari called me and, brutally, just like that, he said: 'How much you earn a year? Listen, I believe you are the most knowing of Grand Prix, you know everything and everybody. I will give you the same money plus fifty percent and you become the team manager of Ferrari.' 'Are you crazy?,' I said to him.  'No, come on, you are joking.'  'No, I am serious,' he said. 'No I am not the man for that.' We fought for two days but finally, at the end of 1966, I became the team manager for Ferrari for two years. I think he was satisfied, especially my rebuilding the image the team, because the image of Ferrari was deteriorating before."

Over the years Franco Lini has seen the image of Formula 1 change dramatically, and in his view it has deteriorated. When the cars are actually racing, few journalists are more keen. When the engines are switched off, Lini is less enthusiastic. "Exciting, yes. Amusing, maybe not. Because to me, and it is not an old man talking, I believe it is a sport man talking now, to me the world of motorsport is going the wrong way, but especially the Formula 1.  First of all the Formula 1 takes over all the other racing activity, which is not normal, is not good for other racing. Second, the Formula 1 in the last ten years has become like the Harlem Globetrotters in basketball: a big circus.

"Yes, a big circus. but no more a sport. Advertising people have money, and they bring in money here. They bring also a very special type of people who are not interested in motorsport, an ethical sport, or in the technical side.  They are just interested in smelling dollars. That is the big problem. I don't like it at all. I don't like the exaggerating. You are exaggerating for advertising in many ways, which is sad. They destroyed the tradition.  For an example, in America, Watkins Glen was a very popular Grand Prix for many, many years. 200,000 people came there because it was a tradition. They cancelled Watkins Glen only for the money. They don't pay enough money so they go to Las Vegas, Dallas, Phoenix - no tradition, no people. That is happening also in Europe. In Spain nobody is around, no fans, but they go there because they have money. This I don't agree with because of the destroyed tradition.

"People don't come to a Grand Prix to see Marlboro. They come to see a fight in the race. I say, when in heaven you will call back a memory, it will be of something exciting in a race, something good, not a sponsor's name. Remember '79, the famous last lap of the French Grand Prix, the fight of Villeneuve and Arnoux? It was fabulous!  Two men fighting. This is not only me talking. I believe deeply everybody wants that. So I don't agree with the way they go, first of all money, first of all business. And when Bernie Ecclestone says to me, well I have to pay my bills, I say you have to pay your bills, yes, but you want to buy a jet or a helicopter!"

Sometimes Franco Lini would rather go fishing or golfing, "when some stupid things happen in Formula 1," but he vows to stay around as long as there is enough actual racing for him to express his views in the newspaper Il Giorno in Italy and several publications in other countries. "Being a journalist would be a fantastic job if you didn't have all the writing! When I am writing I try to give some message, always. I have never been a chronicler. I try to be keen and attentive and look for small details. I watch everything and write, just interpreting sights, interpreting situations.

"It is a tradition that the best writing is in England and Italy.

England, in a way, better than Italy. The English, in style, are more deep, and quieter. In Italy you have some very good writing, but the majority has too much emotion. Up and down, up and down, you know: Ferrari is coming back - Ferrari is shit. We know only the up and the down. We don't know any middle."

Franco Lini, Photo by Graham Gauld.