Another of the endless stream of Italian drivers who have fleetingly graced the F1 stage, Emanuele Naspetti, from Ancona, began racing karts at the tender age of 12 in 1980. He continued doing so until 1987, when he made the jump into the cut and thrust of Italian F3 with the prestigious Forti Corse team. Driving a Dallara F387 Alfa Romeo, in a year in which he faced a steep learning curve, he did well just to score two points and come equal 17th in the points standings. 
1988, though, proved just what a fast learner he had been. Continuing with Forti Corse, but upgrading to a Dallara F388 Alfa Romeo, he engaged in a season-long stoush with Mauro Martini, finally overcoming his rival by the barest of margins � 1 point, 48 to 47 � to become Italian F3 champion, in only his second year in the category. Naspetti was now a man to watch.

1989-90: A fifth in only his second race, but 4 accidents and a DNQ follow

And so, as one could have expected, in 1989 Emanuele progressed up to F3000, getting a drive with the Roni Q8 Racing team in a Reynard Cosworth 89D. But once again he faced a period of adjustment. After finishing 5th at Vallelunga in only his second race, he then had an inglorious run of a DNQ and 4 accidents in the next six rounds. By season's end he had only those two points from Vallelunga to his name, enough for equal 17th overall. 
During 1989 he also had a dabble in sports cars, racing in the IMSA San Antonio round, where he teamed up with future nemesis Fabrizio Giovanardi in a DeBlasi Racing Alba AR9 Buick, only to retire with an engine failure. But going into 1990 he had reason to be hopeful, as he had been signed to join Eddie Jordan Racing in F3000, replacing outgoing F3000 champion Jean Alesi and driving a Reynard 90D Mugen. But sadly, it proved to be another disappointing year.

1990-91: Replaces Alesi at Jordan, but gains only a point while Irivne is 3rd overall

The season started terribly when he got caught up in a nasty collision with Allan McNish at Donington, which saw the Scotsman's car disintegrate, although Naspetti walked away unhurt. Thereafter his season was punctuated by another accident at Pau, and two spins at Enna and Hockenheim where he had qualified 7th and 5th respectively. He managed to score a point in Birmingham with a 6th place, but could not qualify at Le Mans. With his trifling singleton he was only equal 20th overall. 
By comparison, team-mate Eddie Irvine was 3rd in the championship. It was no surprise, then, that Naspetti was on his way out, and for 1991 he was reunited with Forti Corse to drive a Reynard 91D Cosworth. It looked like it was going to be yet another miserable season, with Naspetti recording 10th at Vallelunga, 9th at Pau, a DNQ at Jerez and yet another crash, this time at Mugello.

1991-92: A superb year in F3000 sees 4 wins, but no F1 drive at the end of the rainbow

But in an amazing turnaround, in the next four races at Enna, Hockenheim, Brands Hatch and Spa he qualified 1st, 8th, 3rd and 2nd, and took the win in all four, also recording fastest laps in the last two. After that he crashed again at Le Mans but rounded off the season with 6th at Nogaro to claim 3rd overall on 37 points. Such a spectacular run in the middle of another generally mediocre season gave cause for suspicion, and some said Forti had been using illegal fuel, but this was never proven. 
Unable to launch himself into F1 for 1992, Emanuele was forced to remain in F3000 with Forti Corse, although the team upgraded to a new Reynard 92D Cosworth. Showing a little more consistency, he came 6th at Silverstone, won at Pau with the fastest lap, took another fastest lap at Barcelona, finished 2nd and 4th at Enna and Hockenheim, and qualified on pole at the Nurburgring before F1 came calling and Naspetti jumped ship. At year's end he had held onto equal 6th with 19 points though.

1992, March: A sensational debut at daunting Spa in horrible weather

With Paul Belmondo's money having run out after his best result in Hungary, the financially ailing March team gave Naspetti the call-up for the Belgian GP at Spa. Not the easiest track at the best of times, especially when it's your F1 debut in a year-old March CG911 with a powerful Ilmor V10 engine, and when your team's running short of money and you are under instructions to bring back the car in one piece. And particularly daunting when it's wet. 
On the Friday, Naspetti did a very respectable job, qualifying less than 0.8 of a second behind highly rated team-mate Karl Wendlinger, and in 21st spot out of 30 cars. He was faster than the likes of Olivier Grouillard, Gianni Morbidelli, Mauricio Gugelmin and Christian Fittipaldi. Then on the Saturday, when it was particularly monsoonal, even for Spa, for a first effort in an F1 car in the wet, Murray Walker claimed that he drove "heroically".

1992, March: Closest to Wendlinger in Portugal, finishing a career best 11th

In the wet/dry race Naspetti was superb as well, clinging to Wendlinger, finishing 12th just behind the Austrian, and only a lap down. He came back down to earth a bit at Monza, though, when he qualified 24th out of the 28 entries after Andrea Moda's demise, just under a second off Wendlinger and over 4 seconds off Nigel Mansell on pole, before spinning off on lap 17 after a brief touch with his team-mate. 
Portugal was the closest he got to Wendlinger in qualifying. Setting the 23rd fastest time out of 26 (with Fondmetal also having bitten the dust), he was only 0.032 of a second behind his team-mate, even if he was over 5 seconds away from Mansell, who had set another pole in his all-conquering Williams Renault. He finished the race as well in a decent 11th place out of 14 finishers, albeit 3 laps adrift, which turned out to be his best-ever finish in Formula One.

1992, March: 10 seconds off pole at Suzuka, but things are better in Adelaide 

With Wendlinger leaving the March team to join Sauber early, F1 returnee Jan Lammers was brought back to partner Naspetti in what would turn out to be March's last two Grands Prix. The Italian made a meal of the tricky Suzuka circuit in Japan, though, qualifying last, some 3.228 seconds off Lammers, and 3.05 seconds behind Gugelmin's Jordan directly ahead of him. More to the point he was 9.943 seconds behind Mansell, or in other words, at 110.2% of pole time. 
He redeemed himself somewhat in the race, coming home 2 laps down in 13th, beating Morbidelli and Michele Alboreto in the process. For the final race in Australia, Naspetti qualified 23rd, only 4.4 seconds behind Mansell, and beating not only Lammers and Ukyo Katayama, but also J.J.Lehto who was using a Ferrari engine in his Dallara. A bad crash coming out of the first chicane in Saturday qualifying didn't help his cause, but eventually March's last race ended with a gearbox failure for Naspetti after 55 laps.

1993, Jordan: First choice to replace Boutsen, but he strangely turns the offer down 

Even if March had continued on into 1993, Naspetti would still have been left in the wilderness, as March looked like signing Jean-Marc Gounon to partner Lammers. In the end, his old boss Eddie Jordan rescued him from said wilderness by asking him to help out as test driver, and after Thierry Boutsen retired from F1 following the Belgian GP, he was asked to take over for the rest of the season, although he would have to pay some US$50,000 for the privilege. 
Amazingly, even though his sponsors wanted him to do it and were willing to pay for it, Emanuele turned down the offer. Instead, Marco Apicella got the drive at Monza as a one-off, which turned out to be a short-lived affair as he was eliminated in a first corner collision. Naspetti's countryman then returned to Japan to race in F3000, where he had been competing throughout the year, and suddenly the seat opened up again. This time Emanuele took it, and duly paid the $50,000.

1993, Jordan: Eddie J's eyes already on Eddie I. as Naspetti lasts just eight laps

In addition, he also asked Jordan to secure special passes for his father and girlfriend to watch him at Estoril, something which the team had to go to some lengths in order to achieve. What Naspetti didn't know, though, was that in the background Jordan was already secretly looking for someone more talented to take over the car for Japan and Australia, and his eyes were firmly set on Eddie Irvine. In effect, Emanuele had paid all that money for a one-off drive. 
In qualifying, Emanuele did no better than Apicella had done at Monza, taking 23rd spot out of 26. Having said that, he did slash almost 0.8 of a second off his best time of the weekend during qualifying. All the same, he was over a second behind team-mate Rubens Barrichello who was 15th, and over 5 seconds behind Damon Hill on pole. An engine fire then sidelined him after only 8 laps. Jordan subsequently did as he wanted, replacing Naspetti with Irvine at Suzuka, and Emanuele's F1 career was over.

1993-94: Not a happy Japanese F3000 sojourn leads Emanuele to touring cars

Prior to getting that brief reprieve with Jordan, Naspetti had actually spent some time in Japan in their F3000 championship, driving a works Dome F103i Mugen in the first four rounds of the 1993 series. He was desperately unsuccessful, qualifying no higher than 15th, and recording a 17th, a 16th and two retirements. When the start of 1994 came around, it was probably enough to convince him that open-wheelers were not the way to go, and he opted for a seachange by jumping into touring cars. 
In the ensuing seven years, he remade himself as one of the best touring car drivers in Europe, and a BMW stalwart. From 1994 to 1999 he raced in Italian Super Touring, and considering that he had barely any tin-top experience behind him, coming 9th overall with 59 points in the 1994 series in his BMW 318i was no small achievement. With Castrol sponsorship he improved to 6th with 135 points in 1995, finishing in the top 6 no less than 13 times, with a best of 2nd at a race at Mugello.

1994-97: Blows the ISTC opposition away with 10 wins, 18 podiums in 20 races

He also made a short foray into the French Supertourisme championship in 1995, taking a pair of second places at Paul Ricard, but otherwise he has confined himself to racing in Italy. In 1996, an upgrade to a BMW 320i saw him in contention for the title, helped by 6 wins at Imola, Varano and four at Enna, plus nine other top-six finishes. But a controversial stop-go penalty in the last round relegated him to 3rd overall with 242 points, only 8 behind champion Rinaldo Capello, and 2 behind Johnny Cecotto. 
Emanuele made up for it in 1997 though, with the word 'dominant' being an understatement in describing his results in his 320i as he roared to the title. In the first 14 races he either came 1st or 2nd, recording 8 wins. In the remaining 6 events he took 2 more wins, plus a 2nd, a 3rd and a 5th, scoring 325 points in a near-perfect season blotted only by an accident at Varano. 1997 also saw him place 3rd in the prestigious Spa 24hr race, where he shared a BMW 318i with Peter Kox and Christian Menzel.

1998-99: Beaten to the title twice by Fabrizio; something da Matta with CART test

Admittedly his results in 1997 were partly due to a lack of competition from the Alfa Romeo drivers, who were driving the aged 155. But with the advent of the new Alfa Romeo 156 in 1998, Fabrizio Giovanardi in particular took the fight up to Naspetti, eventually taking the title and leaving Emanuele 2nd with 335 points. Naspetti took 5 wins, including four in a row, but the pressure told as he spun out and crashed 3 times, as well as suffering more mechanical failures. 
At this stage, Naspetti had the confidence to try to return to open-wheelers, and tested for the Arciero Wells CART team, which eventually went with Indy Lights champion Cristiano da Matta instead, leaving Emanuele to continue in Italy in his 320i, against Giovanardi's 156. Once again the Alfa man got the better of him, scoring 401 points to his 386, but Naspetti did take 4 wins and never finished out of the top four except for two races, one of them when he was punted off by team-mate Fabrizio de Simone!

2000-02: FIA GT effort starts to fall apart, but Naspetti and Mimmo'll be back for ALMS tilt 

In 2000 the national super touring championships were amalgamated into the European Super Touring Cup, and Naspetti confidently took his CiBiEmme BMW 320i into the series. But, faced with greater opposition, and despite 16 consistent top-six places, Emanuele failed to score a win and came 5th with 174 points. He also joined the Rafanelli team for his first crack at the Le Mans 24hrs, but in their Lola B2K/10 Judd shared with Didier de Radigues and Mimmo Schiattarella, his engine expired after 154 laps. 
For 2001 he remained with Rafanelli to contest the FIA GT championship in a Ferrari 550M with Schiattarella, but after 5 rounds, including two 5ths and a 4th, the effort started to fall apart. Schiattarella left, and Naspetti drove with Eric van de Poele, Philippe Steveny and Martial Chouvel at the Spa 24hrs, and with Marc Duez at the A1-Ring. Eventually Naspetti left as well, and contested the Estoril round in a Racing Box Chrysler Viper GTS-R with Luca Cappellari. But for 2002, it looks like Rafanelli, Naspetti and Schiattarella will team up again in the Ferrari in the ALMS, along with Cecotto.

(c) F1 Rejects