Mugello Circuit is a race track in Scarperia e San Piero, Tuscany, Italy. The circuit length is. It has 15 turns and a long straight. The circuit stadium stands have a capacity of 50,000. Grand Prix motorcycle racing host an annual event here. Between 2006 and 2008 the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters held an annual event. The track is property of Scuderia Ferrari which uses it for Formula One testing. The first race of the A1GP 2008–09 season was originally planned to be held at the Mugello circuit on 21 September 2008. However, the race had to be cancelled due to the delay in building the new chassis for the new race cars. It has been announced that the circuit would host its first ever Formula One race on 13 September 2020, named the Tuscan Grand Prix, as part of the season being restructured due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This Grand Prix will be the 1000th Grand Prix for Scuderia Ferrari.
History
Road race (1920–1970)
Road races were held on public streets around Mugello since the 1920s. Giuseppe Campari won there in 1920 and 1921, Emilio Materassi in 1925, 1926 & 1928. The Mugello GP was revived in 1955 and from the 1964 to 1969 as a Targa Florio-like road race consisting of eight laps of 66.2 km each, including the Passo della Futa of Mille Miglia fame. The anticlockwise track passed the towns of San Piero a Sieve, Scarperia, Violla, Firenzuola, Selva, San Lucia. It counted towards the 1965, 1966 and 1967 World Sportscar Championship season. The last WC race was won by Udo Schütz and Gerhard Mitter in a Porsche 910. After two Porsche wins, the local fans could celebrate again in 1968, when the Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 driven by Luciano Bianchi, Nanni Galli and Nino Vaccarella prevailed over the Porsche driven by Rico Steinemann and Jo Siffert, and in 1969, when Arturo Merzario won with an Abarth 2000, and he won again in 1970 with the same car, where Abarth prevailed 1–2–3 with Leo Kinnunen and Gijs Van Lennep finishing 2nd and 3rd respectively. The 1970 event brought about the end of the 66 km Mugello public road circuit; a seven-month-old baby was killed when local racer Spartaco Dini crashed his Alfa Romeo GTA into a group of people at the village of Firenzuola during a private test there, when the roads were open to the public. Four other people, including two young children, were seriously injured. Although there had only been one previous fatality at the original Mugello circuit, this incident put a bad stain on the entire event and the 1970 race turned out to be the last one held on the public road circuit, which was won once again by Merzario. After this incident Dini spent two months in prison, and after his time served he left Italy and did not return for years.
Permanent circuit (1974–present)
The present-day closed Mugello circuit was constructed in 1973 and opened in 1974, about 5 km east from the easternmost part of the original road circuit. The circuit was used over 1–3 May, for the in-season test during the 2012 Formula One season, by all teams except HRT. The track was praised by Mark Webber, who stated that he "did 10 dry laps today around Mugello, which is the same as doing 1000 laps around Abu Dhabi track in terms of satisfaction". Four-time Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel was impressed too, saying that “unfortunately we don’t have this track on the calendar. It’s an incredible circuit with a lot of high-speed corners”. It holds a grade 1 FIA license, meaning it meets the standards to host a Formula 1 race. An unofficial track record of 1:21.035 was set by Romain Grosjean during the test. On 10 July 2020, it was announced that the circuit would be the ninth race in the 2020 Formula One calendar, marking the 1000th Grand Prix for Ferrari.
Winners of the Mugello Grand Prix
The winners of the Mugello Grand Prix for automobiles are:
