De Sanctis

Jonathan Williams winning at Monza in 1966.

Based in Rome the De Sanctis family, father Gino and son Lucio, ran a large FIAT dealership and towards the end of the 1950s Lucio De Sanctis began competing in Formula Junior in a car of his own design. By 1959 the De Sanctis was the car to beat in Italy with their tubular space frame, coil and wishbone front suspension and swing-axle at the rear. However when they came up against cars powered by the Ford 105E engine or the BMC "A" series, their FIAT engines would not prove to be man enough for the job.
In the 1960s they continued with Brabham influenced, Ford powered F Junior and F3 cars and Jonathan Williams in particular went very well in them.

"Tiger" waits on the grid for the start of the 1964
Gran Premio Lotteria at Monza.

The first F3 de Sanctis continued on from their run of quite successful F Junior cars. Their lead driver was the pseudonymous "Geki" and he proved the de Sanctis to be very quick at the traditional Monza slipstreaming blinds winning four times there during the year as well as taking one other victory.

"Geki" in the 1965 De Sanctis F3 at Monza.

Development for 1965 seems to have been minimal and it showed with "Geki" only winning twice during the course of the year. At least one car appeared powered by a Lancia engine.

The rather spindly looking chassis of the 1966 car.

A new car was introduced for 1966 with a modified version of the earlier spaceframe chassis utilising double wishbone suspension at the front and a lower wishbone/top link with twin radius rods set up at the rear. Power came from a Ford Cosworth MAE engine, the gearbox was a Colotti-modified VW four-speed unit with variable ratios.
The new car was obviously at home on the fast Italian tracks with Jonathan Williams dominating the season winning 10 out of 16 races and securing the Italian Constructors Championship (albeit only for Italian built cars) for de Sanctis.

Jonathan Williams leaves the pits in the 1967 car.

The Weber-equipped engine installation in the 1967 car.

Development almost ground to a halt for 1967 and with Jonathan Williams moving to Ferrari good results were few and far between although he did return for the Monza Lottery and won.

Jonathan Williams leads the field in the Coppa Fina at Monza, he finished second.

Some concerted effort went into improving the car for 1968 and results improved but the car to have in Italy was the Tecno. For 1969 de Sanctis marked time with few results of any consequence although Claudio Francisci won races at Monza and Vallelunga.

Claudio Francisci waits on the grid in the 1969 De Sanctis.

The downdraft Ford engine fitted to the 1969 car.

It was further revisions for 1969 as the car moved further away from it's Brabham heritage, aluminium panelling was used in an effort to stiffen the chassis and de Sanctis cast their own magnesium front uprights. Results were generally disappointing with no wins during the year.

Marcello Gallo heads the group during the 1970 Trofeo Shell at Imola.

It would seem as if 1970 was the last year de Sanctis produced a car, a one-off based heavily on a Brabham BT21. As the company found it more profitable to build cars for the Formula 850 and F Ford series, F3 no longer appeared important.

The De Sanctis name appeared a few times on the grid in early season Italian F3 races but it does not appear that they were new cars, rather they were older 1-litre cars uprated with 1600cc engines. However later in the year a 1600cc car did appear in the UK at some late season races were it ran in the lower half of the field.

*Drivers*

*1964*	Giovanni Ballico-Lay, Sergio Bettoja, André Durantou, Corrado Ferlaino, "Miro Gay", "Geki" (Giacomo Russo), "Tiger" (Romano Perdomi).

*1965*	Massimo de Antoni, Franco Bernabei, Mario Casoni, Carlo Facetti, "Geki" (Giacomo Russo), Francesco Godia, Dino Marniga, Otelli Rinaldi, Nestor Salerno, "Tiger" (Romano Perdomi).

*1966*	Giorgio Alberti, Giovanni Alberti, Walter Froldi, Ignazio Giunti, Marco Macciantelli, Antonio Maglione, Giuseppe Piazzi, Otello Rinaldi, "Tiger" (Romano Perdomi), Jonathan Williams.

*1967*	Giovanni Alberti, Marino Benagli, Franco Bernabei, Jorge Cupeiro, Claudio Francisci, "Geki" (Giacomo Russo), Salvatore Genovese, "Gero" (Cristiano Del Balzo), Antonio Maglione, Carlos Martin, Manfred Möhr, Luigi Petri, Sverrir Thoroddsson, "Tiger" (Romano Perdomi), Jonathan Williams.

*1968*	Giovanni Alberti, "Droopy", Jürg Dubler, Carlo Franchi, Claudio Francisci, Giancarlo Gagliardi, "Gero" (Cristiano Del Balzo), Luigi Petri, Pino Pica, Jonathan Williams.

*1969*	Claudio Francisci, "Gero" (Cristiano Del Balzo).

*1970*	Yuri Andreyev, Marcello Gallo, Ré.

*1971*	Sandro Cinotti, Carlo Franchi.