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Guido Cappellini

Italian motorboat racer

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ1775136 ↗
Source-derived summary

Guido Cappellini (born 7 September 1959 in Mariano Comense) is an Italian motorboat racer and the most successful driver of all time in the F1 Powerboat World Championship, with ten world titles. He has also raced in other classes of boat racing, notably the Class 1 offshore championship, since his retirement from Formula 1 at the end of 2009.

Career

Cappellini began his motorsport career not in a boat, but on four wheels, racing in karts. In 1981 he won the 135cc Italian Championship, and repeated the feat in 1982, alongside victory in the 135cc European Championship as well. During 1982, Cappellini was given the chance to try out a Dallara-Toyota Formula 3 car and took pole position in his first race, showing real promise. However, in 1983 he made the switch to boats, and in the 100 Miglia del Lario that year, he took victory in the S850 class. Cappellini also triumphed in the F3 Inshore category at the Six Hours of Paris in 1983, and in 1985 he finished fifth overall in the F3 Inshore World Championship.

FONDA Formula Grand Prix

Making his debut in the Formula Grand Prix series in 1986, Cappellini started off driving a Mercury-engined Molinari hull, and during the year enjoyed a best result of two fourth-place finishes in Hanover and Singapore. Whilst Formula 1 disappeared as a world championship and moved entirely to the United States, Cappellini continued to compete at the top level in Europe with DAC Racing, the factory team of the DAC hull manufacturing business. In 1987, a third place in Miami brought Guido his first ever podium and in 1988 he scored three second-place finishes at Augusta, Dublin and Singapore, ultimately finishing the year fourth overall in the final standings.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Guido Cappellini” as italian motorboat racer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1959, 2009, 1981, 1982—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1959-09-07. The account is most persuasive where Guido, Cappellini and Italian can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as italian motorboat racer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1775136. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 2009, 1981 and 1982.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Guido Cappellini” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.