La Scuderia, Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2009.
It is my first fiction novel – a spy and love story set in the exciting and glamorous world of mid-1930s motor racing where danger loomed on and off the racetracks. Despite its 2009 publication date, LA SCUDERIA is the first book that I started to write, in the mid 1990s, long before I knew that I would one day publish a book – any book. Known within the publishing house before my actual first book was published (LA ROSSA E LE ALTRE, 2000), it suffered – so to speak – from the success of that first book, a success that materialized in three sequels in 2002, 2003 and 2004. The SCUDERIA of the title is Enzo Ferrari’s first racing team: Scuderia Ferrari. Though the plot is pure fiction, LA SCUDERIA is based on a strongly researched and detailed knowledge of the actual racing feats that made the 1936 European racing season one of a kind. Fiction characters thus interact with real-life people such as the great drivers of that golden era of motor racing (from Italy’s Tazio Nuvolari to Germany’s Bernd Rosemeyer), automotive power houses (from the striving French and Italian racing teams to the German government-backed Auto Union and Mercedes), larger-than-life figures like Alfred Neubauer, Winston Churchill and, naturally enough, a young Enzo Ferrari. LA SCUDERIA is a book of passion and intrigue, of love and betrayal – a story where friendship and ambitions must at times take a back seat to politics and propaganda in a world that is quickly sliding into the largest conflict the world has ever seen.