Alfredo Costanzo (born 3 January 1943, in

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, Italy) is a retired Italian born Australian racing driver. From 1980 to 1983 Costanzo won four

Australian Drivers' Championship The Australian Drivers' Championship was a motor racing championship contested annually from 1957 to 2014 by drivers of cars complying with Australia's premier open-wheeler racing category as determined by the Confederation of Australian Motor ...

s in a row, equalling the record set by

Bib Stillwell Bib Stillwell (born Bermar Sellars Stillwell; 31 July 1927 – 12 June 1999) was a racing driver who was active in Australian motor racing from 1947 to 1965. He won the Australian Drivers' Championship in each of the four years from 1962 to 1965 ...

from 1962 to 1965.

Career

Formula racing

Born in

Soveria Mannelli Soveria Mannelli ( scn, Suverìa Mannielli) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Catanzaro, in the Calabria region of southern Italy. The town is bordered by Bianchi, Carlopoli, Colosimi, Decollatura, Gimigliano, Pedivigliano. Histor ...

, Italy, Costanzo was Australia's foremost domestic open wheeler driver in the late 70s and early 80s, proving equally adapt at winning races in the powerful

Formula 5000 Formula 5000 (or F5000) was an open wheel, single seater auto-racing formula that ran in different series in various regions around the world from 1968 to 1982. It was originally intended as a low-cost series aimed at open-wheel racing cars tha ...

class as much as the nimble

Formula Pacific Formula Pacific was a motor racing category which was used in the Pacific Basin area from 1977 to 1982. It specified a single-seat, open-wheeler chassis powered by a production-based four-cylinder engine of under 1600cc capacity. The formula was bas ...

cars that replaced them. Under the patronage of Porsche Cars Australia distributor Alan Hamilton, Costanzo won four Australian Drivers' Championships, the CAMS Gold Star. His titles straddling the transition from F5000 to

Formula Atlantic Formula Atlantic is a specification of open-wheel racing car developed in the 1970s. It was used in professional racing through the IMSA Atlantic Championship until 2009 and is currently primarily used in amateur racing through Sports Car Club o ...

based Pacific cars. Costanzo commenced his Formula 5000 career racing a Lola T332 which he purchased in partnership with his brother in law and team mechanic, Marino Ciuffetelli. Marino was responsible for preparing Costanzo's race car and they shared three years competing in the Rothmans series from 1977 to 1979. They were able to secure sponsorship from Stock 84 Brandy and competed in all of the scheduled races for the 1979/80 F5000 race series. In 1981 Costanzo made the switch to race under Alan Hamilton in the same Lola T430 as part of the Porsche Racing team. The first of Costanzo's four Gold Stars was won utilising a conventional Lola T430, but the following 1981 title, the last Formula 5000 national level title ever held globally, utilised a

McLaren M26 The McLaren M26 was a Formula One racing car designed by Gordon Coppuck for the McLaren team, to replace the aging McLaren M23 model. The car was designed to be a lighter and lower car than its predecessor, with a smaller frontal area and narrow ...

, modified for the task by

Tiga Race Cars Tiga Race Cars Ltd. was a British auto racing constructor and team. The company was founded in 1974 by two former Formula 1 drivers, Australian Tim Schenken and New Zealander Howden Ganley. The company's name was formed by the first two letters o ...

. Costanzo won the 1982 and 1983 Australian Drivers' Championships driving a Tiga FA81 powered by a 1.6-litre, 4 cyl

Ford BDA Cosworth is a British automotive engineering company founded in London in 1958, specialising in high-performance internal combustion engines, powertrain, and electronics for automobile racing (motorsport) and mainstream automotive industries ...

engine. Driving the FA81, Costanzo also finished second to longtime rival John Bowe in his similarly powered

Ralt RT4 The Ralt RT4 is an open-wheel formula racing car, designed, developed and built by Ralt, for Formula Atlantic (and was also occasionally raced in Formula Two categories), in 1980. It was later converted into a closed-wheel prototype, and used in t ...

/85 in the 1984 championship, before Alan Hamilton pulled out of open wheel racing following Costanzo's 4th place at the

1984 Australian Grand Prix The 1984 Australian Grand Prix was a race for Formula Mondial racing cars, held at Calder Park Raceway in Victoria, Australia on 18 November 1984. It was contested over a distance of 160.9 km (100 laps x 1.609 km) or an even 100 mil ...

leaving Costanzo without a drive and into semi-retirement. Despite winning numerous races and championships in various classes of open wheel racing, Alfie Costanzo never achieved his goal of winning the

Australian Grand Prix The Australian Grand Prix is an annual motor racing event which is under contract to host Formula One until 2035. One of the oldest surviving motorsport competitions held in Australia, the Grand Prix has moved frequently with 23 different venu ...

. He competed in 11 AGP's between 1969 and 1984, with a best finish of 4th in

1980 Events January * January 4 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaims a grain embargo against the USSR with the support of the European Commission. * January 6 – Global Positioning System time epoch begins at 00:00 UTC. * January 9 – ...

and again in 1984. On both occasions he was the first resident Australian driver to finish behind international

Formula One Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...

drivers. Alf led from the start of the

1983 Australian Grand Prix The 1983 Australian Grand Prix was a race for Australian Formula 1 cars held at Calder Park Raceway on 13 November 1983. It was the forty eighth Australian Grand Prix and the fourth to be held at Calder. The race was also the sixth and final ro ...

, and built up a small lead over eventual winner

Roberto Moreno Roberto Pupo Moreno (born 11 February 1959), usually known as Roberto Moreno and also as Pupo Moreno, is a Brazilian former auto racing, racing driver. He participated in 75 Formula One Grands Prix, achieved 1 podium, and scored a total of 15 c ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, before the diff in his Tiga FA81 failed on lap 25. Moreno later admitted that Costanzo would have been very hard to catch or pass. Although formula cars have evolved and have generally gotten faster over time, Costanzo still holds an outright lap record for a still active Australian race circuit. His time of 50.16 seconds set in the F5000 Lola T430-

Chevrolet Chevrolet ( ), colloquially referred to as Chevy and formally the Chevrolet Motor Division of General Motors Company, is an American automobile division of the American manufacturer General Motors (GM). Louis Chevrolet (1878–1941) and ous ...

for the 2.41 km (1.5 mi)

Symmons Plains Raceway Symmons Plains Raceway is a motor racing circuit in Australia, located about south of Launceston, Tasmania. Since the closure of the Longford circuit in the 1960s it has been Tasmania's premier motor racing facility. The circuit is one of the ...

has stood unchallenged since 23 March 1980.

Touring Cars

While a more than capable touring car driver, finishing fourth in the

1979 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 The 1979 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 was the 20th running of the Bathurst 1000 touring car race. It was held on 30 September 1979, at the Mount Panorama Circuit just outside Bathurst. The race was open to cars eligible to the locally developed CAMS G ...

alongside

Allan Grice Allan Maxwell Grice (born 21 October 1942), known to motor-racing fans as "Gricey", is an Australian former racing driver and politician, most famous for twice winning the prestigious Bathurst 1000 (1986 and 1990), and as a privateer driver of ...

he was generally overlooked for drives by the top teams and was never able to establish himself full-time in the category, and the popular Italian-Australian faded from the racing scene when he left Formula Pacific in at the end of the 1984 after finishing 4th in the

held at Melbourne's

Calder Park Raceway Calder Park Raceway is a motor racing circuit in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The complex includes a dragstrip, a road circuit with several possible configurations, and the "Thunderdome", a high-speed banked oval equipped to race either clo ...

. Costanzo was the leading local driver at the end, finishing behind winner

(

), World Champion

Keke Rosberg Keijo Erik Rosberg (born 6 December 1948), known as "Keke" (), is a Finnish former racing driver and winner of the Formula One World Championship. He was the first Finnish driver to compete regularly in the series, as well as the first Finnish ...

(

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

), and Italian driver

Andrea de Cesaris Andrea de Cesaris (31 May 19595 October 2014) was an Italian racing driver. He started 208 Formula One Grands Prix but never won. As a result, he holds the record for the most races started without a race victory. A string of accidents early in ...

, though he did make a couple of shirt-lived comebacks. At the insistence of his long-time open wheel rival turned touring car racer John Bowe, who to this day rates him as the best Australian driver he raced against, Costanzo was drafted into the

Volvo Dealer Team The Volvo Dealer Team was an Australian motor racing team that competed in Australian touring car racing in 1986 winning the Australian Touring Car Championship. The team was managed by John Sheppard and had its base at the Calder Park Racewa ...

in 1986 for the Castrol 500 at

Sandown Sandown is a seaside resort and civil parishes in England, civil parish on the south-east coast of the Isle of Wight, United Kingdom with the resort of Shanklin to the south and the settlement of Lake, Isle of Wight, Lake in between. Together ...

and the James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst. Driving a

Volvo 240T The Volvo 200 Series (or 240 and 260 Series) is a range of mid-size cars produced by Swedish company Volvo Cars from 1974 until 1993, with more than 2.8 million total units sold worldwide. Like the Volvo 140 Series (1966 to 1974), from which it ...

, he failed to finish in both events. Again at Bowe's insistence, Alfie was the drafted into the

Dick Johnson Racing Dick Johnson Racing (formerly DJR Team Penske), is Australia's oldest motor racing team competing in the Supercars Championship. The team currently fields the #11 and #17 Ford Mustang GTs for Anton de Pasquale and Will Davison respective ...

Team for Sandown and Bathurst in 1988 to drive a

Ford Sierra RS500 The Ford Sierra RS Cosworth is a high-performance version of the Ford Sierra that was built by Ford Europe from 1986 to 1992. It was the result of a Ford Motorsport project with the purpose of producing an outright winner for Group A racing in ...

. He finished 6th at the Sandown 500 with another former open wheel racer John Smith. The car he was to drive at the

1988 Tooheys 1000 The 1988 Tooheys 1000 was a 1000 km endurance motor race for Group A Touring Cars.Dick Johnson's car expired on lap 22 and Bowe's car on lap 28. Both then moved to drive the Smith/Costanzo car. Smith had driven the opening stint which left Aflie a spectator on the day. The late 1990s saw a brief comeback as the lead driver for Marino Ciuffetelli's factory supported

Maserati Maserati S.p.A. () is an Italian luxury vehicle manufacturer. Established on 1 December 1914, in Bologna, Italy, the company's headquarters are now in Modena, and its emblem is a trident. The company has been owned by Stellantis since 2021. Ma ...

team of production specification

Maserati Ghibli Maserati Ghibli is the name of three different cars produced by Italian automobile manufacturer Maserati: the AM115, a V8 grand tourer from 1967 to 1973; the AM336, a V6 twin-turbocharged coupé from 1992 to 1998; and the M157, an executive s ...

s in the

Australian GT Production Car Championship The Australian GT Production Car Championship was a CAMS sanctioned national motor racing title, organised by Procar Australia Pty Ltd, for drivers of Group 3E Series Production Cars. PROCAR had first promoted a national series for production bas ...

. The comeback proved to be short-lived however as the cars were uncompetitive against the Porsche, Ferrari and Mazda teams. Costanzo finished 10th in the championship in

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

, and 8th in

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...

Sports Cars

In December 1984 Costanzo accepted an offer from that year's Australian Sports Car Champion Bap Romano to co-drive the

Romano WE84 The Romano WE84 is an Australia, Australian designed and built, mid-engined closed top racing car built to Confederation of Australian Motorsport, CAMS Group A Sports Cars, Group A Sports Car specifications. The car began its life as the Kaditcha ...

Cosworth Cosworth is a British automotive engineering company founded in London in 1958, specialising in high-performance internal combustion engines, powertrain, and electronics for automobile racing (motorsport) and mainstream automotive industrie ...

in the

1984 Sandown 1000 The 1984 Sandown 1000 was an endurance motor race staged at the Sandown Raceway in Victoria, Australia on 2 December 1984.Official Programme, Sandown 1000, page 43 It was the eleventh and final round of the 1984 FIA World Endurance Championship ...

as part of the 1984 World Endurance Championship, the first

FIA FIA is the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (English: International Automobile Federation), the world's governing body for all forms of motor sport where four or more wheels are used. Fia or FIA may also refer to: People * Fia Backst ...

World Championship event held in Australia. Despite never having driven the car previously (a prior commitment with Porsche Cars Australia saw him miss testing the car at Calder prior to the event), Alfie showcased his skill by qualifying the 3.9L V8 powered Romano in 13th (fastest in the special AC or Australian Cars class), almost two seconds faster than car owner Romano, and only 0.4 seconds slower than the

Group C Group C was a category of sports car racing introduced by the FIA in 1982 and continuing until 1993, with ''Group A'' for touring cars and ''Group B'' for GTs. It was designed to replace both Group 5 special production cars (closed top touri ...

2 pole winning time. After brake and gearbox troubles in the race the pair finished 109 laps, 100 laps behind the winning

Porsche 956 The Porsche 956 was a Group C sports-prototype racing car designed by Norbert Singer and built by Porsche in 1982 for the FIA World Sportscar Championship. It was later upgraded to the 956B in 1984. In 1983, driven by Stefan Bellof, this car est ...

, although, despite still running at the end, the car had not completed enough laps to be classified as a finisher. Costanzo was famously beaten by amateur driver Greg Dodd while racing Porsche coupes in Tasmania. Costanzo had three attempts at beating Dodd's lap time, but proved unsuccessful each time. Costanzo was gracious in defeat, querying Dodd on his reasons for not having been a professional driver, as his talent was “a rarity”. Prior to Sandown, Romano wanted Costanzo as his co-driver for the race, but both Wayne Eckersley and team manager Bruce Ayers tried to persuade him to go with either the 1984 Australian Drivers' Champion John Bowe or 1983 Sports Car champion Peter Hopwood for the event, reasoning that both would be easier on the car than Costanzo who although fast, had a reputation for being hard on equipment. Unfortunately their fears were to prove correct as over the course of the race meeting Costanzo broke no less than 4 gearboxes, 2 of them in the race itself. JPS Team BMW team manager Frank Gardner told Romano after the race that while standing at the back straight entry to Sandown's new infield section, he noted that Costanzo had been changing from 5th gear straight down to 2nd gear for the hairpin, missing 4th and 3rd gears completely. This was causing the rear tyres to lock up, the Cosworth engine to over-rev and had seen the gearbox twice stripped of 2nd gear. Gardner, a championship winning driver in his own right during the 1960s and 1970s including having raced a number of WEC races in Europe at tracks such as Le Mans,

Spa-Francorchamps The Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps (), frequently referred to as ''Spa'', is a motor-racing circuit located in Stavelot, Belgium. It is the current venue of the Formula One Belgian Grand Prix, hosting its first Grand Prix in 1925, and has he ...

and the

Nürburgring The is a 150,000 person capacity motorsports complex located in the town of Nürburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It features a Formula One, Grand Prix race track built in 1984, and a long "North loop" track, built in the 1920s, around t ...

, commented that it was an endurance race and that Alfie had 'butchered' the car by not respecting the equipment.Romano Racing
/ref>

Career results

Complete World Sportscar Championship results

(

key Key or The Key may refer to: Common meanings * Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm * Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock * Key (map ...

) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Complete Bathurst 1000 results

* 1988 - Car #18 finished 2nd but Costanzo never got to drive.