TG’s guide to motorsport: Piaggio Ape racing

It’s a storied motor racing series with literally some years of history. And it shows. With such a glorious and action-packed eight years and counting as a premiere racing series on British soil, Piaggio Ape racing has captivated the hearts and minds of drivers and spectators alike.

For decades, the racing prowess of Piaggio’s three-wheeled rockets went unappreciated, like all great artists in their time. But, before the Ape could suffer the same fate as Vincent van Gogh himself, an enterprising group of visionaries saw what had been waiting in the wings all along: the sheer, unbridled potential of a three-wheeled delivery van.

Luckily, Ape racing has evolved from its origins in the Thunderdome, where two Apes enter and one Ape leaves. These days, Ape racing sees a group of race-ready Piaggios matched with combat-ready drivers and taken to the absolute limits of man and machine around a tight, technical track that instills fear and fascination in equal measure. It’s also known as a go-kart track.

Some enterprising Europeans have built on the untapped motorsport pedigree of the Ape, fitting a wider rear axle, motocross suspension and 600-odd cubic centimetre motorbike engines in an effort to improve the breed. While we’re personally of the opinion that you can’t improve on perfection, nor should you tamper with a design that’s nearing 75 years basically unchanged, watching an Ape hold a perfect powerslide to the tune of a free-revving Triumph Speed Triple engine is something of a game-changer. These custom builds take to drift tracks, hillclimbs, dirt rally stages and even snow with equal aplomb, highlighting the always-on performance of the Piaggio.

Well, the first Piaggio Ape left the factory in Pisa in 1948. And, given the thoroughbred nature of the machine, we’re guessing that as soon as the second one left the factory in Pisa in 1948, unofficial Piaggio racing was born.

And while Ape racing didn’t break into mainstream acceptance for decades, a major moment came in 2013, when Top Gear was there to witness the inaugural British Ape GP. Such was our reverence for the Ape that we begged, borrowed and begged again for an opportunity to join the starting grid. And then, even after famed hotshoe Ollie Marriage found more neutrals in the Ape’s gearbox than an abridged history of Switzerland, we managed to claim outright victory. It’s a defining moment for Top Gear and a memory we often returned to in the pub, miming oversteer hands and spilling pints in equal measure.

The Ape’s design echoes with the sound of ages. Specifically the sound of how it’s been ages since it first came out and it hasn’t really changed since then. But would you try to remodel Michelangelo’s David?

Power comes from a Piaggio scooter engine which, as we’ve seen in the hands of modern-day Romans, is less an engine and more of a warp drive. While the base model Ape hides its light under a bushel with a 50cc engine, the Ape Omologato uses anything from a 125 to a 218cc leviathan.

Definitely Loris Rosati. His fame derives from his maximum-attack race strategy, his ‘actually, let’s redefine maximum attack because that guy is insane’ driving style, or the fact that his Ape is liveried to look like Lightning McQueen. Also the small matter of replacing the Ape’s original engine with a 100bhp sport bike engine, bolted to a bespoke rear assembly and motocross-spec shock absorbers.

Image: Loris Rosati

Without a doubt, one of Piaggio racing’s finest hours came when, back in 2013, a 65-year dream was realised as five race-prepped Apes took to the grid at Britain’s world-renowned Rye House Raceway in Hoddesdon. As they sat across the start/finish straight and five steely-eyed, hard-bitten racers took their places for a Le Mans-style start, it was all we could do to hold back a torrent of tears.

Or, if you’re so inclined, there’s also the fact that it’s been a grassroots motorsport in Italy for generations, providing a hilariously entertaining spectacle for a handful of lira. But our story is more self-aggrandising, so that’s the one we’re going with.

Remember how Mercedes pulled out of racing back in the 1950s? The official narrative is that Mercedes abandoned its racing program in the wake of the Le Mans disaster of 1955. The real story is that Erich Erfunden of Mercedes had seen the Ape come out of nowhere in the seven years since its debut and feared that not even the might of the three-pointed star could match Piaggio in wheel-to-wheel combat.

If that weren’t unfortunate enough, the head of Piaggio’s racing division, Vincenzo Ovvia Bugia, was a great fan of Mercedes since he first watched a leg of the Corsa non Esiste pass by his home in Pisa. Crestfallen, he shuttered Piaggio’s in-house tuning house and forbade factory support from that day until his last.

YouTube abounds with videos of seasoned racers in the zone, as well as overconfident Johnny-come-latelys trying their hand at the sport, only to realise too late that Piaggio Apes don’t just kill giants; they murder egos, too.

We have angled to get a televised race series on British telly, but then realised it was one more opportunity for David Croft to talk about tyres on TV and decided against it.

The question really isn’t if you can get involved, but rather a series of far more searching questions. If you get involved, could you ever give up the thrill? Do you have the wits to master a raging Ape and the strength to bring it to heel? Are you willing to lose yourself to the reckless abandon and red-mist melee that only comes from taking these Italian stallions to their limits? And are you free on Sunday afternoons?