| Founded | 1969 |
|---|---|
| Founder(s) | Lamberto Leoni |
| Folded | 1991 |
| Teamprincipal(s) | Lamberto Leoni |
| Former series | European F2 International Formula 3000 |
| Noted drivers |  Marco ApicellaFabrizio Giovanardi Éric HélaryLamberto LeoniPierluigi MartiniGabriele Tarquini Marco Greco Jean-Denis Delétraz |
First Racing (sometimes written asFIRST Racing) was an Italian motor racing team founded byLamberto Leoni, which competed inInternational Formula 3000 from1987 to1991 and theItalian Formula 3 Championship in 1990. The team also made an unsuccessful attempt to enterFormula One in 1989.
In 1987 former Formula One racing driver Lamberto Leoni returned to competitive racing by founding his own Formula 3000 team. First Racing debuted inSilverstone with two cars, one for Leoni and another one forGabriele Tarquini. Although Leoni was the first of the two drivers to score points, with a sixth place at thePau Grand Prix, Tarquini was able to finish on the podium twice, with a third place atPergusa and a second place atImola. Over the course of the season, the team occasionally fielded a third car, withAldo Bertuzzi,Beppe Gabbiani,Claudio Langes andAlain Ferté alternating at the wheel. For the following season, Leoni decided to limit his involvement to management, and hiredPierluigi Martini andMarco Apicella, with Martini scoring the team's first win atPergusa and finishing fourth in the championship. In 1989, First set off to a promising start whenFabrizio Giovanardi won the second round of the championship atVallelunga. Apicella, in the second car, proved to be a regular points-scorer, and finished fourth in the final standing podium finishes at Pau, Jerez, Birmingham and Spa. With the line-up of Giovanardi and Apicella confirmed, the team entered the 1990 season full of expectations, but the two drivers, despite scoring points on a regular basis, were not able to win any races. 1991 proved to be First's final season in Formula 3000. Financial difficulties prompted Leoni to hire twopay drivers,Michael Bartels andJean-Denis Délétraz. The car, however, was uncompetitive, and following a string of poor results, Leoni decided to retire the team and concentrate on managing the career of Apicella.
Buoyed by the promising results accomplished during his first Formula 3000 season, Leoni commissionedRichard Divila to design a car for entry into the 1989Formula One championship.[1] The team opted to use aJudd V8 engine.Gabriele Tarquini was signed to drive. After a run at the 1989Attilio Bettega Memorial event inBologna[2] and theFormula One Indoor Trophy, the team realized that the chassis was poorly manufactured due to a temperature mistake in the autoclave, with the result that a second chassis had to be re-commissioned.[3] Having concluded that the delay would cost the team a penalty for missing the first two races of the season, Divila and his engineers tried to reinforce the chassis with injections of a material called Redus 410 NA.[4] Although the car passed the mandatoryFIA pre-season crash test inCranfield, it was now significantly overweight. Divila himself claimed that the car as it was, was good for nothing but being "an interesting flowerpot".[5][6] Faced with the perspective of racing an uncompetitive car in a packed field (the1989 Formula One World Championship counted over forty participants with pre-qualifying sessions), Leoni decided to withdraw before the openingBrazilian Grand Prix and concentrate his efforts on the Formula 3000 season.
The second chassis commissioned by Leoni would be later purchased by Ernesto Vita and used in the1990 Formula One World Championship for hisLife L190.
| first column of every race | 10 | = grid position |
| second column of every race | 10 | = race result |
†Éric Hélary finished season with Cobra Racing
