Juan Zanelli

Juan Ernesto Zanelli de Vescovi (1906 to 19 August 1944) was a Chilean racing driver, born in Iquique, who became the first Chilean and the first South American to win a Grand Prix in Europe. The son of an Italian immigrant who made a fortune in the nitrate fields, he studied in England and Switzerland and settled in Nice as Chile's consul, where a shared passion for motorsport drew him into the circle of wealthy gentleman drivers. Racing Bugatti, Alfa Romeo and Maserati cars, he won the Bugatti Grand Prix at Le Mans in 1929 and 1930 and the Penya Rhin Grand Prix on Barcelona's Montjuic circuit in 1933, and in 1931 he took the European Hill Climb Championship in the Racing Cars category. He made 29 Grand Prix starts, the last at the 1936 German Grand Prix. He later joined the French Resistance and was fatally wounded in a shootout with German forces at Toulouse.