Carlo Abate

Born: 10th July 1932, Turin, Italy.

Carlo Abate was primarily a sports car driver in his motor racing career, racing mainly for the Scuderia Serenissima team owned by Count Volpi, but also for Scuderia Centro Sud and the factory teams of Ferrari and Porsche. He won the 1959 Mille Miglia regularity race (a successor to the classic Italian road race) sharing a Ferrari with Gianni Balzarini, and also won the GT class of the Trophee d’Auvergne at Clermont-Ferrand in 1962, a round of the World Sports Car Championship.

Around the same time as his WSC success, Abate tried his hand in Formula One cars, finishing fourth in the 1962 Naples Grand Prix in a Porsche. He entered the World Championship French Grand Prix but withdrew his entry after his Lotus 18/21 was damaged in a crash at Reims in the lead-up to the event, and he also withdrew the Scuderia SSS-run car from the German Grand Prix later in the year. He would return to the track with a third place in the Lotus at the Mediterranean Grand Prix in Sicliy later in the year.

1963 saw Abate in a Cooper-Maserati entered by Scuderia Centro Sud, taking fifth at the non-championship Imola Grand Prix and third at Syracuse, but he again withdrew his only World Championship entry at the Italian Grand Prix. That same year however he enjoyed his greatest success, winning a thrilling Targa Florio in Sicily sharing a Porsche 718 with Joakim Bonnier and defeating the Ferrari works effort by just a few seconds after nearly seven hours of arduous road racing.

After retiring from racing at the end of 1963, Abate became the director of a private clinic in Italy.