Just looking at him is enough to say: he’s just like his father. «But I’m bigger than him» she replies, smiling Stefano Renzo Pasolini. By now he is used to the joke: he can only be the son of Renzo Pasolinithe champion of heroic motorcycling who on 20 May 1973 in Monza met a
terrible fate. On the first lap of the 250 race the “big bend” became one
branch of hell: eight down, flames, drama. Pasolini skidded due to a seizure and went off the trackthe motorbike bounced off the guardrail and killed Jarno
Saarinen. Instead «Paso», born in 1938, from Rimini who moved to Varese for competitive and work needs, a passion for boxing (practiced) and a talent as an attack pilot, died shortly after. This is then the story of a tragedy that an entire family had to deal with and in particular a child who found himself navigating the sea of life without his father.
Stefano Renzo, that day he was too young to understand…
«I have only vague memories. I realized that something had changed,
but I wasn’t even three years old. The neighbor came to turn it off
television, the following days are still shrouded in fog. Slowly
they told me and Sabrina that our father had died.”
So your mom wasn’t in Monza, right?
«We were all at home: Sabrina, my sister, had undergone surgery
appendicitis. We had played a prank on dad. She had gone out on Saturday, the
day before that damned race. But we had made him believe that he was still in hospital. He was angry, but then Sabrina came out and told him
hug”.
How many years passed before he metabolized the tragedy?
«You never metabolize something like this: you have it inside, you struggle,
you’re left with this figure that you only hear about. His absence left me empty.”
What does he have about his father?
«We were born almost on the same day, he on July 18th and I on the 21st: mother says that we are similar in our speech, in our ways of acting, in the way we move our hands».
The situation is similar to that of Franco Ossola junior, son of Franco Ossola who fell at Superga and himself from Varese. Ossola never even saw his father: he was born 8 months after the crash of the Turin plane.
«I didn’t have the opportunity to meet dad either. Mommy has me
told everything about him, I imagine as Franco Ossola junior’s mother did. Coming back to us, it wasn’t easy for you to talk about Renzo: the first years after the tragedy were hard. He then always kept me away from motorbikes. Dad had given Sabrina and me a scooter with little wheels: at a certain point she disappeared. I managed to do a few laps, even ending up against a gate. But one fine day I couldn’t find her anymore.”
Have you ever wanted to imitate dad?
«Actually yes, but at home the motorbike has always been a taboo. Become
professional driver? I couldn’t even talk about it. If dad had stayed alive he would have pushed me in that direction. Mum, on the other hand, made a clean break: when I became of age I left her motorbike with a friend.”
Despite everything, he has never seen motorbikes as enemies.
«I’ve always liked them, but to drive them I had to get a license
secretly. My mother was not like that of Jacques Villeneuve, who helped her son in motor racing despite the tragedy of his father Gilles. And she would have preferred a husband at home.”
His sister passed away recently. What was your relationship like with her?
«We got along well and Sabrina will always be in my heart. The year
Last year, together with her and the others of the family, I was in Monza for the 50th anniversary of the
father’s death: an unforgettable day.”
How did it go with your mother instead?
«She was a kindergarten teacher, she had the job and it’s one of the reasons why we stayed in Varese. She left things ready, we made do:
Sabrina prepared food for me, then we played. I often asked mum what dad was like: and she told stories. My mother gave us 200% of herself, but her father figure cannot be replaced. Now that I have a little daughter, I understand the support a child needs.”
For Renzo, family was the safe corner.
«It was the place to retreat to. Mom said she when she came back
at home he only thought about us.”
He finds the surname Pasolini cumbersome or passes it on
tenderness?
«Above all it gives me pride. Dad is still remembered today. What does not
obvious, given that we even forget about world champions and he wasn’t even one.”
But it’s as if he won.
«Yes, he was loved. But it weighed on him not having won at least one world title: he lost the last one due to a fall.”
Those were the years of the gladiator motorcyclists.
«They were taking crazy risks. I participated in race re-enactments
of the time, a circuit like that of Ospedaletti was shocking: if
you made a mistake, you ended up on a wall or on people. And they didn’t earn the money of today’s pilots, it was passion that motivated them.”
According to Giacomo Agostini, Renzo Pasolini was more popular in Italy.
«I think it’s true. In his Romagna, especially. The rivalry with
James? It only existed on the track.”
«Paso» and «Ago» have been defined as the Coppi and Bartali of motorcycles. But who was Coppi and who was Bartali?
«I quote a phrase from my mother Anna Maria: “Renzo could have had the
tenacity of a Bartali. But I compare him to Coppi if I look at the premature deaths of both.”
Do you follow the MotoGP?
«Especially on TV, I haven’t been on the circuits for a few years. When
I see today’s drivers using their knee to help them in the turns, here, mi
one has to say that dad was a precursor: that technique, now
essential, he had introduced it.”
Let’s get into the time machine: what Renzo would do
Pasolini in today’s racing?
«Everything has changed, but it would look good. I don’t know if he would win, though
whoever was strong at the time would be among the best even now.”
She tried both the Aermacchi and the Benelli, her father’s motorbikes.
«The Aermacchi two-stroke is “bad”, the Benelli has a magnificent “sound”. You have to know how to manage them and they must be treated with respect.”
Renzo Pasolini was funny: since he used glasses, he stuck two large cartoon-like eyes on the bowl-shaped helmet.
«At mum’s house there is the white helmet painted with her hands. She used glasses, contact lenses didn’t yet exist. To be ironic, she added two eyes: four eyes… plus two, six in total. A way of saying that she saw better than her rivals.”
She is a driver of uphill speed races and vintage motorbikes.
«The lockdown stopped me, I still haven’t started again since 2020. I don’t know if I’ll start again: now I have a little daughter and I’m close to my family. But the bike, an MV F3, is ready.”
Does he have dad’s competitive “vis”?
«I don’t know, I should have started at 20 and not at 35. And if I started again I would have to explain it to my mother… On the other hand I have already put in two or three
times my daughter on her grandfather’s motorbikes. In Monza, on the Aermacchi, she went crazy, screamed, kissed and licked the tank. And if she watches the GPs on TV she says “brumm, brumm” ».
At MV you are an administrator: haven’t you thought about the technical sector?
«Proper studies would have been needed. My father had become attached to his grandfather and a family culture, I lost the chance to carry on the tradition. If dad hadn’t died I would have become either a good pilot or an excellent mechanic. But I have no regrets.”
