By Alan Baldwin
MEXICO CITY, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Alberto Ascari was a boyhood hero for US motor racing great Mario Andretti, now 86, but few of Kimi Antonelli's compatriots were around when Italy's last Formula One world champion was making headlines.
Antonelli, 20, is set this weekend to become the only living Italian who knows what it feels like to take the chequered flag and win the Formula One championship. He would be the first to do it in 73 years, since Ascari's second title with Ferrari in 1953.
"I know the corner in Monza is named after him," the Mercedes driver told Reuters when asked what he knew about his illustrious predecessor, who was also champion in 1952 after Giuseppe "Nino" Farina won the first title with Alfa Romeo in 1950. Farina died in 1966.
"I know that he was the last Italian champion. And it was a long time ago. A very, very long time ago."
LUCKY BLUE HELMET
Ascari was the son of a racing driver, as is Antonelli, with father Antonio a multiple race winner before his death in the 1925 French Grand Prix at Montlhery, south of Paris, long before the Formula One world championship started in 1950.
Antonio Ascari was 36 when he died, the same age almost to the day as Alberto when he crashed fatally at Monza while testing a Ferrari sportscar in 1955.
The younger Ascari had not been due to drive the car, present only to watch his friend Eugenio Castellotti in action, but decided to try it out.
Borrowing a helmet, instead of the lucky light blue one the superstitious driver always wore, and dressed in regular street clothes, the Milanese was thrown out of the car after it skidded and somersaulted off the track at the Curva del Vialone.
The chicane is now known to F1 fans as the Variante Ascari.
Four days earlier, wearing the blue helmet, he had plunged his Lancia into the Monaco harbour at the chicane coming out of the tunnel -- miraculously missing an iron mooring hidden by a hay bale -- and emerged relatively unscathed.
"You have to get straight back into the saddle after an accident, otherwise doubt sets in," he was quoted as telling a friend before the fateful drive.
Italians turned out in their tens of thousands for the funeral, with his blue helmet resting on the coffin, and he was buried beside his father.
"He was the fastest driver I ever saw," Britain's first world champion Mike Hawthorn recalled later. "Faster even than (Juan Manuel) Fangio".
Andretti, the 1978 world champion and now on the board of newcomers Cadillac F1, has described Ascari as his "absolute idol".
"Very cool and relaxed. He sat back doing his thing, totally in control of his car. I loved that style," the Italian-born American recalls on his website.
"When I was 14, I saw my first Formula One race in Monza, Italy — the Italian Grand Prix. Alberto Ascari didn’t win that day, but he was fighting with Mercedes, the stronger team at the time," Andretti also wrote in the New York Times last April. "He was my hero regardless. That’s when the dream really was cemented."
Until Antonelli came along, Ascari held the record for most wins by an Italian in a single season and for successive victories.
Ascari still holds the record for most career wins by an Italian (13 from 32 races) but, with Antonelli on nine from a single campaign, it is probably only a matter of time before that too falls.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ed Osmond)
