Alba Engineering

Giorgio Stirano (born 23 February 1950 in Turin) is an Italian racing car engineer, who worked for Forti and Osella in Formula One.

During his university years Stirano was a rally co-driver and used to contribute to the motor sports pages of the daily newspaper Tuttosport. In January 1976, after graduating in aeronautical engineering in 1975 at the Politecnico di Torino, he was hired by Osella Race Team as Sports Director and then went on to take on the role as Team Manager and Project Manager. At the time Osella raced in Formula 2, a category which they had entered into for the first time during the 1974 season after a period of minor successes in Italian sports car races and hillclimbing.

When the young Stirano started working at Osella, he was given the assignment of managing all the projects relating to the sport competitions, including Formula Super Ford, Formula 3, Formula 2 and sport. In the winter of 1978, Stirano designed an evolution of the old Osella FA2 for the 1979 season: this new car allowed Eddie Cheever to win races at Silverstone, the Pau Grand Prix and Zandvoort. Cheever’s victories and the car's good performances convinced Enzo Osella to invest in the team and to move up to Formula 1.

For the 1980 season, Stirano early support the design of the race car, the Osella FA1, managed by Nicola Materazzi, and when in October 1979 he left the team for Ferrari, Stirano became the chief engineer. Cheever was announced driver of the Osella FA1 which had its debut at the Argentina GP. The Osella FA1, did not achieve good results, only a 12th place at the San Marino GP and Imola collecting 9 drop outs and 4 failed qualifications. To compensate for the start-up flaws, a second version of the car, the FA1B, was designed and built in collaboration with Giorgio Valentini. Stirano, together with Valentini designed the 1981 car, the FA1C, which was entrusted this time to two private drivers, Beppe Gabbiani and Miguel-Angel Guerra. The inexperience of the two drivers brought about very poor results that season. (Guerra failed to qualify at almost all the races and was involved in a serious accident). Despite the change of designers and the withdrawal of Stirano around the middle of 1981, the team never achieved good results, to the point of disappearing altogether in 1990.

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