Contract between Tazio Nuvolari and Scuderia Ferrari discovered

The 1935 contract that Tazio Nuvolari had signed with Alfa Romeo—through Scuderia Ferrari—has recently been rediscovered.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the agreement is its extreme brevity; it is arguably one of the most important sports law agreements of the 1930s: just one page in which Nuvolari agreed to make his services available to Scuderia Ferrari (which, as is well known, managed and prepared Alfa Romeo cars at the time).

It is therefore estimated that Nuvolari could have earned nearly half a million lire a year in salary, bonuses, and Scuderia payments. This was a very high figure for the time, much higher than the numbers alone might suggest (if, for example, we compare the 40 million lire a year earned by Alonso, the highest-paid driver in F1, with the 13,000 euros a year earned by a factory worker).

Another interesting fact is that the value of the accident and life insurance policy amounts to nearly 10% of the player’s salary.

Another interesting fact is the distribution of prize money. In an era when media rights did not exist, one of the main sources of revenue for racing teams was precisely the prize money awarded by the organizers. The agreement reveals a distribution that was quite favorable to Nuvolari: a full half of the prize money went to the driver.