After Vincenzo Lancia's son Gianni Lancia became director of the company, Lancia entered Formula One with a Grand Prix car designed by Vittorio Jano. The Lancia D50 was entered into the 1954 Spanish Grand Prix, where Alberto Ascari took pole position and set the fastest lap. At the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix, Ascari crashed into the harbour after missing a chicane; one week later Ascari was killed at Monza driving a Ferrari sports car. With Ascari's death and Lancia's financial difficulties the company withdrew from Grand Prix racing. In total Lancia took two victories and ten podiums in Formula One. The remnants of the Lancia team were transferred to Scuderia Ferrari, where Juan Manuel Fangio won the 1956 championship with a Lancia-Ferrari car.
Prior to the formation of the WRC, Lancia won the final International Championship for Manufacturers with the Fulvia in 1972. In the WRC they won constructors' titles with the Stratos in 1974, 1975 and 1976, with the 037 in 1983, and with the Delta in six consecutive seasons from 1987 to 1992. The Delta is the most successful individual model designation in rallying history. Lancia accumulated 11 championships in total and 15 European Championship titles from 1969 to 1992.
Juha Kankkunen and Miki Biasion each won two drivers' titles with the Delta. Other drivers to take multiple WRC wins for Lancia included Markku Alén, Didier Auriol, Sandro Munari, Bernard Darniche, Walter Röhrl, Björn Waldegård, and Henri Toivonen.
Lancia's rally history carries a tragic dimension. At the 1985 Tour de Corse, Italian driver Attilio Bettega was killed in a Lancia 037. Exactly one year later at the same event, Toivonen and co-driver Sergio Cresto died in a Lancia Delta S4. These deaths were among the factors that led to the abolition of Group B rallying.
At the 1951 Mille Miglia, the Lancia Aurelia B20 GT finished second overall. In 1953, Umberto Maglioli won the Targa Florio at the wheel of the Lancia D20. The D24 sports racer, an evolution of the D23 rebodied as a spider by Pinin Farina, won the 1953 Carrera Panamericana, the 1954 Mille Miglia, and the 1954 Targa Florio. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Lancia ran the Beta Montecarlo Turbo, which won the 1980 World Championship for Makes and the 1981 World Endurance Championship for Makes. The Group C LC2 coupé, powered by a Ferrari engine and introduced in 1983, secured 13 pole positions but was hampered by reliability and fuel economy issues and won only three European and World Endurance Championship races. The team withdrew from sports car racing at the end of 1986 to concentrate on rallying.
In May 2024, Lancia announced the revival of its HF division with the Ypsilon HF and a Rally4 version, marking a return to rally competitions. The Ypsilon Rally4 HF competed in the Italian Rally Championship from 2025 and achieved one victory in the European Rally Championship ERC4 and Junior classes. The Lancia Ypsilon Rally2 HF Integrale made its WRC2 debut at the 2026 Monte Carlo Rally. In April 2026, at the 2026 Croatia Rally, driver Yohan Rossel and co-driver Arnaud Dunand gave the Rally2 car its first WRC2 victory — the first WRC victory for the marque since the 1992 season.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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