Giampiero Moretti

IN AN AGE of professional drivers, Giampiero Moretti was known as the ‘last of the gentleman racers’. Born in 1940 into a wealthy Milanese family that owned a large pharmaceutical business, he was a 21-year-old student of political science at the University of Padua when he started competing in local races and hillclimbs in a Lancia Appia Zagato.

The event that changed Moretti’s life occurred early in his racing career when a friend made a special steering wheel for him. At the time the ‘wood-rim’ still reigned