Team story
Origins
The D46 preceded the World Championship by four years. Piero Dusio brought it to racing in 1946 through his Turin-based Cisitalia company: Tazio Nuvolari also competed in the Coppa Brezzi, where he was photographed holding the detached steering wheel. This small post-war single-seater was conceived for a racing landscape still being rebuilt, not for the championship that would begin in 1950.
The Formula 1 journey
Cisitalia appears in the championship record only at Monza in 1952. Dusio attempted to qualify a D46 for the Italian Grand Prix but did not secure a place on the grid. That entry therefore never became a race start.
The car's earlier competition career was far broader than this single attempt, which yielded neither points nor a race result.
Historical timeline
Three chapters in the story of Cisitalia
Three episodes to revisit the people, cars and races that shaped this journey.
First appearance · Italian Grand Prix
Piero Dusio · Italian Grand Prix 1952. The recorded outcome is DNQ. This is the first recorded race start, or the first entry if the team never started a race.
Sporting landmark · Cisitalia
No classified race result is documented for this part of Cisitalia’s record. The entries and cars listed elsewhere on the page provide the available reference points; they should not be read as completed races.
Latest recorded appearance · Cisitalia
No final race start is documented for this part of Cisitalia’s record. The entries and cars listed elsewhere on the page provide the available reference points; they should not be read as completed races.
A distinctive way of racing
Alongside the D46 was a project on an entirely different scale: the 360 Grand Prix, with twelve cylinders and four-wheel drive. The Cisitalia Museum presents it as one of the marque's major technical ambitions. It was not, however, the car entered for the 1952 championship race: confusing the two would give the 360 a debut it never made.
What remains
The name survives above all through cars such as the 202 and the 360 preserved by the Porsche Museum. The one-make racing experiment held in Egypt in 1947 also belongs to this wider history. Cisitalia's legacy of engineering and sporting initiatives therefore extends well beyond its brief appearance in the championship, which never reached the starting grid.