Alessandro Piccini

Before KZ existed, before the modern factory-driver economy, there was a kid from Vinci who found his father's abandoned kart in a shed and never really got out of the seat again. Alessandro Piccini raced karts at the sharp end for more than four decades, won four world championships in the 125cc gearbox classes, and only stopped when he turned 50. If the term "karting lifer" needed a photograph next to it, it would be his.

The karting years

Born in 1964, Piccini stumbled into the sport aged twelve or thirteen, won his first two races before his parents even knew he was competing, and was shaped by the mechanic Marcello Cortigiano — a man Piccini later described as being like a father to him. His breakthrough at world level came in 1987 at Magione, taking the 125 Formula C world title with DAP, the same Milanese factory that had once run Ayrton Senna in the 100cc classes.

The peak years belonged to the gearbox categories that would eventually evolve into today's KZ. With Birel he won the world championship again in 1990 at Laval and defended it in 1991 in Parma; a fourth crown followed in 1993 at Val Vibrata with CRG, where he would spend nine seasons in total. The 1990 title was the one he rated highest: fastest in qualifying, penalised to the back of the grid, he carved from twentieth to win the pre-final, then cleared off to win the final by seven and a half seconds. His CV of employers reads like a history of the Italian kart industry itself — All Kart, DAP, Birel, CRG, Chiesa Corse, Tony Kart, Intrepid and finally Maranello, with whom he was still racing internationally past his 49th birthday.

What made him different

Longevity, and the anger to go with it. Plenty of drivers from the golden age drifted away when the money or the results dried up; Piccini simply kept turning up and kept being fast, decade after decade, against opponents young enough to be his sons. He belonged to the generation that treated shifter karting as a profession and a craft — reading engines, reading tracks, reading rivals — long before data engineers arrived in the paddock. The 1990 Laval weekend summed him up: hand him an injustice and he would beat you by half a straight rather than argue about it.

Legacy

Piccini is one of the bridges between eras. He fought the greats of the 100cc-to-gearbox transition years and was still on the grid when the class had become modern KZ, racing against men like Davide Foré and the generation of Marco Ardigò. Four world titles with three different manufacturers made him proof that the driver, not just the chassis, wins championships — a useful lesson in a sport that loves its equipment debates. The surname has not left the entry lists either: since stepping out of the seat, Piccini has poured his energy into the career of his son Alessio, part of the endless Italian production line that still feeds the KZ2 and OK grids today. Forty years, four crowns, one family obsession.