Ricardo Rodriguez was a true racing phenomena, bursting onto the international racing scene at a young age and immediately proving himself as both a winner and potential champion. Born in Mexico City, Ricardo started racing bicycles and then graduated to motorbikes winning several national championships before we has even 14. As a teenager he switched to saloon car racing. He made his international racing debut at just 15 and won his class in a race at Riverside and repeated the victory in that year’s Nassau Tourist Trophy race.

He tried to enter for Le Mans in 1958 but was denied due to his age. He did however make his debut at the classic 24 hour race the following year at just 17 years of age, and in 1960 came second in his class making him, at 18, the youngest person ever to be on a Le Mans podium.

In 1961 Ferrari offered him a guest drive in one of it’s Formula One cars for the Italian Grand Prix, where Rodriguez stunned everyone by qualifying second, just 0.1 seconds off the pole time, and dicing for the lead until a fuel pump failure took him out of the race.

He joined the Ferrari team on a full time basis in 1962 and was always impressive even if they didn’t always get the results the team wanted. He also scored a victory in the Targa Florio sports car race that year.

When Ferrari elected not to compete in the season ending non-championship Mexican Grand Prix Rodriguez arranged a one-off drive for Rob Walkers private Lotus team so he could run at his home event. During practice he entered the difficult Peraltada corner at high speed, clipped the edge of the banking and left the road. No-one knows what caused the accident, there are some suggestions that the Lotus’s suspension broke, others cite Ricardo’s unfamiliarity with the oversteering Lotus compared to his regular Ferrari which had a tendency to understeer. Ricardo died from his injuries and perhaps the brightest young star in the history of GP racing had been lost.

The circuit where he lost his life was renamed in his honor.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Drivers, Formula One, Le Mans, Racers Past. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.