Motorsport Memorial -

Ugo Sivocci

Complete name: Ugo Sivocci

Birth date: 29.Aug.1885

Birth Place: Aversa (CE), Italy

Death date: 08.Sep.1923

Death Place: Monza, Italy

Nationality: Italy

Gender: male

Age at death: 38

Event date: 08.Sep.1923

Series: Grand Prix - non-championship

Race: III Gran Premio d'Italia - I Gran Premio d'Europa

Event type: practice

Country: Italy

Venue: Monza

Variant: 10.000-kilometer, full circuit (road + oval) (1922-1928)

Role: driver

Vehicle type: car

Vehicle sub-type: single seater

Vehicle brand/model: Alfa Romeo P1

Vehicle number: 17

Notes:

Ugo Sivocci
1885 - 1923

Author: Agence Rol. Agence Photographique (France). Bibliothèque Nationale de France collection, public domain.

The Alfa Romeo works driver Ugo Sivocci passed away in consequence of an accident which happened on Saturday, 08 September 1923, during practice for the Italian Gran Prix at Monza. He was driving an Alfa Romeo P1.

He was born in Aversa, province of Caserta in southern Italy, in 1885, the first of eight children of Maria Clerice and Giuseppe Sivocci, famous conductor and professor of piano. Ugo and his younger brother Alfredo were well known cyclists in the early years of the 20th Century. Ugo moved to cars and started his racing career in 1906, winning the Criterium Colle del Sestriere in a OTAV (Officine Turkheimer per Autoveicoli e Velocipedi), a cyclecar built in Milan, Italy from 1906 to 1908 by Max Turkheimer.

Sivocci joined Giuseppe De Vecchi, a car manufacturer who founded his company in Milan in the early years of 20th Century, working as chief mechanic, driver and head of the testing department. One of the young mechanics in the car manufacturing plant of the Officine Automobilistiche De Vecchi & C. in via Peschiera, Milan, was Ugo Sivocci's future Alfa Romeo team mate Antonio Ascari. Sivocci promoted his racing debut and one of the works De Vecchi cars was entrusted to Ascari in the Criterium of Regularity at Modena in 1911. He competed for De Vecchi until 1914.

Ugo Sivocci drove one of the two 2.6-litre De Vecchi Tipo-D 16/20 HP works cars entered in the 1913 Targa Florio-Giro di Sicilia, the gruelling race of about 1,080 kilometers (671 miles) all around the coast roads of Sicily. His team mate Alberto Marani, who was the De Vecchi agent in Padua and raced under the nom de course of "Gloria", finished third; he obtained a sixth place overall. At the wheel of a De Vecchi, Sivocci finished second in class in the Parma-Poggio di Berceto hillclimb, and in May 1914 he returned to Sicily to compete in the Targa Florio-Giro di Sicilia - retired due to a broken suspension, while "Gloria" in the other De Vecchi finishing second - and, one week later, in the Coppa Florio, held on the 148.823-kilometer (92.475-mile) Madonie "Grande Circuito", finishing once again in sixth place.

Ugo Sivocci at the wheel of a De Vecchi, before the start of the 1913 Targa Florio - II Giro di Sicilia in which he finished sixth.
Photo courtesy of Giorgio Sivocci. Reproduced under kind permission, all rights reserved.

At the outbreak of War War I, De Vecchi converted his company's business into production of components for military use, as ambulances, trucks and aircraft engines. De Vecchi ceased operations in 1920, when CMN (Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali) took over the company, including the whole staff and, consequently Ugo Sivocci returned to racing with the new brand.

Attending the Bar Vittorio Emanuele, at the time a famous meeting point for Milanese sportsmen, in Via Orefici, Milan, Ugo Sivocci met for the first time Enzo Ferrari, a youngster from Modena with the ambition to become a racing carmaker. Soon Sivocci, who was 13 years elder, became Ferrari's best friend and in 1919 offered him a job as testing driver for CMN. Shortly later, Enzo Ferrari had the opportunity to make his racing debut in the 1919 Parma-Poggio di Berceto hillclimb, finishing fourth in class, at the wheel of a CMN.

Later that same year, Ferrari and Sivocci took part in the 10th edition of the Targa Florio, scheduled to be contested on the tough 108-kilometer Madonie Medio Circuit, on 23 November 1919, driving two CMN cars powered with Isotta Fraschini residual engines. They left Milan to get to the race track in Sicily, using their two CMN racing cars and their adventurous trip through the Italian peninsula was remembered in detail by Enzo Ferrari in his famous book "Le mie gioie terribili". Sivocci finished the race in seventh place and Ferrari was classified ninth and last, despite he ran out of time.

When Sivocci left CMN and moved to Alfa Romeo, he took his close young friend Ferrari with him. Ugo Sivocci persuaded Ferrari to leave his work in Turin, in an establishment that transformed light lorries into chassis, to join Alfa Romeo at the Portello plant.

Ugo Sivocci spent the rest of his racing career with Alfa Romeo. With team mates Antonio Ascari and Giuseppe Campari, Sivocci became a racing hero in Italy in the early twenties. The three Alfa Corse drivers were nicknamed "The Three Musketeers" by the Italian press. Sivocci took a fourth place in the 1921 Targa Florio, and another fourth place in the Gran Premio d'Autunno at Monza in 1922. Then he amazingly won the Targa Florio in 1923, from his team mate Ascari, who had led the race but suffered electrical problems during the last stages. Ferdinando Minoia in a Steyr, finished third.

Ugo Sivocci with riding mechanic Angelo Guatta won the race in 7h18min driving at an average speed of 59.177 km/h (36.8 mi/h). Despite the superstition associated with the number 13, Sivocci won the Targa Florio sporting that race number on his radiator grille. Ascari drove the fastest lap time of 1h41min10.8 at an average speed of 63.986 km/h (39.8 mi/h), taking second place, three minutes behind. Two other 3-litre Alfa Romeo models took part in the 1923 Targa Florio, one was driven by Enzo Ferrari who withdrew, the other by Giulio Masetti, who came in fourth.

During the season Sivocci worked as test driver in the development of the Alfa Romeo P1 Grand Prix car, designed by engineer Giuseppe Merosi. During trials for the 1923 Italian Grand Prix at Monza he went off the road at the Vialone bend (eventually named "Curva Ascari") overturned and was killed. His riding mechanic Angelo Guatta suffered severe head injuries.

The following day Alfa Romeo withdrew all the entrants from the race as a mark of respect, Ascari and Campari didn't participate in the event. Sivocci's car had the race number #17.

Ugo Sivocci was survived by his wife Marcella (née Cabrini) and their children, Riccardo and Renato. In the following decades, Ugo's son Riccardo Sivocci became a talented racing mechanic, working for many of the greatest drivers of the era, including Giuseppe Farina, Jean Behra, Juan Manuel Fangio and Lorenzo Bandini to name just a few.

In his victorious 1923 Targa Florio race, Sivocci’s car appeared for the first time bearing the symbol of the green Quadrifoglio (cloverleaf) on a white background in a rhombus shape, with 4 vertices, the same number of the works drivers of Alfa Corse. After Sivocci's fatal accident at Monza, one of the four vertex was removed to commemorate the death of one of the four drivers and the symbol that was later adopted by all the racing Alfa Romeos has a triangular background.

Sources:

Book "I Campioni della Targa Florio" by Salvatore Requirez, Flaccovio Editore, Palermo 2003.
Book "Le mie gioie terribili. Storia della mia vita" by Enzo Ferrari, Cappelli Ed. Bologna 1962, Mondadori Libri, Milano 2016, ISBN 978-88-04-68133-5,
Book "Le Briglie del successo" by Enzo Ferrari, Poligrafici il Borgo, Bologna 1970.
Book "Settant'anni di gare automobilistiche in Italia" by Emanuele Alberto Carli, Automobile Club d'Italia-L'Editrice dell'Automobile, Italy, 1967 [incorrect place of birth].
Book "The International Motor Racing Guide", by Peter Higham, David Bull Publishing, Phoenix, United States, ISBN 1-893618-20-X.
Book "Il Mitico Giro di Sicilia" by Pino Fondi, Giorgio Nada Editore Vimodrone Milano, Italy 1996, ISBN 88-7911-165-5.
Book "Albo della Gloria: Al Piloti Caduti in Tutto il Mondo al Loro Posto di Combattimento", by Emanuele Carli, Modena, Italy, 1972, page 12 [incorrect place of birth: Milano].
Magazine La Manovella, article "UGO SIVOCCI, l'amico di Enzo Ferrari" by Donatella Biffignandi, retrieved by website https://www.motoristorici.it/ .
Newspaper Journal de Genève (Genève, Switzerland), issue of Sunday, 09 September 1923, article "Automobilisme: accident mortel", page 5, retrieved by website http://www.letempsarchives.ch .
Website Ugo Sivocci, page https://sivocci.net/home.html .
Website AUTOSPORT → Forums → The Nostalgia Forum, thread "Speed's Ultimate Price: The Toll", page 1, posting by "Alessandro Silva", message http://forums.atlasf1.com/showthread.php?postid=166113#post166113 .
Website The GEL Motorsport Information Page by Darren Galpin, page http://www.dlg.speedfreaks.org/archive/gen/1923.html .
E-mail by Giorgio Sivocci, dated 15 April 2021.
E-mail by Giorgio Sivocci, dated 18 April 2021.