Team story
Origins
The first De Tomasos in the championship were run by small private entrants. Giorgio Scarlatti gave the marque its debut at Reims in 1961; Nino Vaccarella, Roberto Bussinello and Roberto Lippi appeared during the same period. Alejandro de Tomaso, an Argentinian who had settled in Modena, was building racing cars before the Mangusta and Pantera made his name more familiar on the road.
The Formula 1 journey
Appearances remained sporadic between 1961 and 1963. A more organised return came in 1970, when Frank Williams ran the Giampaolo Dallara-designed 505/38 for Piers Courage. Courage died in a crash in his car at the Dutch Grand Prix.
The programme continued with Brian Redman and Tim Schenken but scored no points, and the agreement ended after the season.
Historical timeline
Three chapters in the story of De Tomaso
Three episodes to revisit the people, cars and races that shaped this journey.
First appearance · French Grand Prix
Giorgio Scarlatti · French Grand Prix 1961. The recorded outcome is DNF. This is the first recorded race start, or the first entry if the team never started a race.
Sporting landmark · De Tomaso
No classified race result is documented for this part of De Tomaso’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 · United States Grand Prix
Tim Schenken · United States Grand Prix 1970. The recorded outcome is DNF. This is the last race start attributed to this constructor in the archive, not necessarily the end of the organisation behind it.
A distinctive way of racing
The two phases were technically different. The early single-seaters used engines from various sources; the 801 also explored a 1.5-litre De Tomaso V8, failing to qualify at Monza in 1962. The 505/38 instead belonged to the three-litre era and used the Ford-Cosworth.
The return was therefore not simply an evolution of the earlier cars.
What remains
The Zandvoort tragedy remains inseparable from that relationship with Williams. It was not, however, the origin of the later championship-winning Williams team, nor a winning De Tomaso season. The marque continued mainly in road cars; in Grand Prix racing it left two separate experiments, with changing constructors, teams and engines that never produced a points-scoring result.