Dario Resta

Dario Resta competed in the first race ever held on Britain’s hallowed Brooklands circuit on July 6, 1907, and died there trying to set speed records on September 3, 1924. In between the two, his European career had its highs and lows, but his exploits in the United States were, without doubt, the stuff of heroes. He won the 1915 American Grand Prize, the 1916 Indianapolis 500 and, in that same year, became the only non-American to win the American Automobile Association Championship.

But who was Dario Resta? It’s a complicated story. He was born in Milan in 1884, to an Italian cavalry officer and his wife. They moved to London when Dario was two years old, and the boy was sent to all the right schools. That’s why he ended up speaking English with such an upmarket accent, which caused a few mouths to fall open in the States. He originally went to America on business in 1914, when a certain Alphonse Kaufmann, a Peugeot importer, prevailed on him to race the French cars in U.S. The stage was thus set for Resta’s remarkable American career.