The Heroes of
Circuit Racing
Renato Molinari
The Italian
Maestro
Renato Molinari is everything you
would imagine an Italian race driver to
be. Fast, daring, competitive and
determined, which sometimes led to his
behaviour being described as unsportsmanlike. I think we’ve heard the
same charge thrown at Ayrton Senna
and Michael Schumacher at various
times in their careers.
who he stayed with until 1977. In 1976
he had taken the OE and ON
Championships in Auronza during the
same weekend of racing.
When Renato was born, on the 27th
February 1946, his father Angelo, a
carpenter who learnt all his skills from
his grandfather, was already running his
boat building business. Angelo was
creating both recreational and racing
powerboats, producing and racing one
of the first catamarans. So Renato grew
up in an environment steeped in
powerboat racing, which was enhanced
by the fact that the family lived very
close to Lake Como.
This change gave us the mouth
watering opportunity to see the two
most skilful circuit racers, Renato
Molinari and Bill Seebold, go head to
head with opposing factory equipment.
Renato started racing at the age of
eighteen. In 1964 he was hired by the
Texas based Glastron company as test
driver. He gained much from his stay in
the United States, which was
interrupted by a trivial incident that had
nothing to do with racing. He returned
home as official driver for Mercury,
It was January1977 when OMC started
Europe-wide distribution and to top this
event off, they had managed to get
Molinari to change to Evinrude engines.
In 1978 in a cat of his own design he set
a speed record in the long distance race
from Pavia to Venice of 117.693mph
after 2 hours and 14 minutes of racing.
In 1980 he further stamped his authority
by winning the Duke of York Trophy in
Bristol for the 2nd time, the Rouen 24
hour race for the 2nd year in succession
and the World ON and OZ
championships.
Something he will always be
remembered for is the ‘Molinari
Monster’. In 1979 Mercury Racing
came to Bristol with the new big 3.4
litre V6, the T-4 and OMC could not