F3 History

In 1971 Christiano del Balzo, under the Quasar name, built 10 F Ford 1600 cars based on the 1970 De Sanctis car, del Balzo had raced various examples of the De Sanctis marque in Italian F3 over the years using the pseudonym “Gero”. It would seem as if some of these cars may have been converted to F3 specification and raced in 1971 and ’72. The two pictures of the Quasar show it fitted with a 1600cc Ford crossflow engine but the wheels and tyres are clearly F3 sized. In 1971 a spaceframe chassis wouldn’t necessarily have been at a disadvantage, constructors such as Brabham and Alpine were quite happily winning races with their spaceframe designs. The Quasar had a few reasonable runs and del Balzo, racing as “Gero”, had a best finish of 5th at Imola. In 1972 two teams ran Quasars but half way through the season when both had only managed a couple of 7th places both teams switched to Brabhams and the Quasar was seen no more.