Ettore Chimeri

4/6/1924 - 27/2/1960

Record updated 03-Jun-06

Ettore Chimeri
Ettore Muro Chimeri was born in Lodi, Milan, to Dante Luigi Giuseppe and Giuseppina (Rigamonti) Chimeri. His family moved to Venezuela in 1926.

He had a successfull contruction business which permitted him to indulge in motor racing. In May 1958 he won the Premio Cuidad di Valencia in a Ferrari 250 GT (0619GT->0805GT) as well as the Vuelta Aragua-Maracay. Then in November he came 7th in the Venezuela Grand Prix sports car race.

He must have been quite a character as apparently at Sebring in 1959 he stopped his Maserati at a hot dog stand during qualifying! An hour later he restarted to find that he was still faster than Roger Ward in his Kurtis Kraft. Unfortunately he was disqualified and not allowed to race.

He rented a Ferrari 250 (0726) from Lino Fayen which he raced in the Nassau Speed Week in 1959 coming 4th in the Ferrari Classics, Handicap Race and 14th in the Governor's Trophy.

In 1960 he was one of the local drivers who bolstered the grids for the two-race ‘Temporada' series which consisted of the Argentine and Buenos Aires Grand Prix's. In the Argentine Grand Prix on February 7, he failed to finish the race when he ran into the back of Harry Schell's stalled car but he did manage to take his, by all accounts, rather tatty and outdated Maserati 250F to fourth place in the Formula Libre Buenos Aires GP, an event of huge attrition.

He raced in the Gran Premio de Habana on the 24th February 1960 finishing 6th in a Stanguellini-Fiat 29 before being killed three days later practicing for the Gran Premio Libertad sports car race at the Camp Freedom military airfield near Havana.

He had rented the Ferrari 250 (0726) from Lino Fayen again but in the two days of practice before the race he was not particularly competetive. On the Saturday (February 27th, 1960) the day before the main race, he lost it at the end of the long straight, went of the road and backwards into an embankment before ending up in a ravine. Chimeri was thrown from the car. And though seriously injured he was still alive. He was flown to hospital by helicopter but died later that afternoon.

The car was very heavily damaged and Fayen decided that it was not worth recovering it. The car thus remained where it came to rest until 1963 when it was removed and dumped in a Cuban Military scrapyard.



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