BRILLI PERI L'AFRICANO

Since the birth of the automobile, racing drivers have symbolized the pursuit of the ultimate limit, the bold feeling of invincibility, the image of fearless warriors in the face of difficulty.

And the years between the two wars, in the impenetrable dust clouds or the muddy quagmires, in the blackish puffs of the exhausts, in the lacerating noise of the engines, in the superhuman efforts to counter the laws of physics with the steering wheel, saw the quintessence of the icon of the racer so dear to the crowds explode.

Even the land of Arezzo had its heroes, more or less famous and successful, some unfortunately forgotten too soon. Among these, Gastone Brilli-Peri.

Son of Count Alessandro Brilli-Peri and Marquise Elisa Alli Maccarani, who lived in Florence, he ran his first race in 1907, when he was only 14 years old, a bicycle race. 

However, his passion for cycling soon passed when, in 1912, he bought his first bike, a Della Ferrera. In 1914, he won the first Giro d'Italia.

After a disastrous fall, he decided to continue racing even harder, switching from motorbikes to cars.

In 1925, after the French Grand Prix, where Antonio Ascari died after crashing his Alfa Romeo P2, the team decided to engage Brilli Peri as Ascari's replacement. 

On 6 September 1925, at the 5th Italian Grand Prix, after 80 laps of the track for 800 km, Brilli Peri sped down the finishing straight and was the first to pass under the chequered flag with a time of 5 hours, 14 minutes and 33 seconds. And thanks to this victory, Alfa Romeo becomes world champion.

In 1929, he won on the African soil, winning the Tripoli Grand Prix. It seemed that his upward trajectory would never end until March 22, 1930, when during practice in Tripoli, he lost control of his powerful car and crashed into a garden wall. Thrown from his seat, the brave Tuscan driver was killed instantly.

This research, which continues the work centred on the history of Arezzo motor racing strongly desired by the Club Auto Moto d'Epoca Saracino, attempts to 'give back the right dignity even to those who are not listed in the Varzi file, to those who remained in the gentlemen category for most of their career or who never left it, but in any case to "snarling" people who never gave up even in the face of insurmountable difficulties'.