Formula 1 and Fashion Coming Together For a Team Effort

The period between 1985 and 1995 is filled with some truly great names. Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell, Keke Rosberg and Niki Lauda to name just a few.

The ten years is filled with great drivers and some great racing. The ten years is also filled with some examples of the complete opposite of the this. Filled with drivers who only got in the sport to help teams that were in their death throws before bankruptcy.

Drivers such as Taki Inoue, Jean Denis-Deletraz, Hideki Noda, Giovanna Amati, Paul Belmondo and Pedro Chaves to name just a few. The time was also filled with the teams that employed them. The teams that had more passion for the sport than they had to back it up.

There were teams such as Life who I did a piece about before. They considered being 20 seconds off the pre-qualifying pace to be a great success. A team that existed purely to advertise an engine with around half the power off the others.

Teams such as Coloni, Eurobrun, Pacific, Simtek, Forti, Onyx and Rial. All teams that went into Formula 1 with high hopes of one day being world champions and all of which left the sport with nothing.

The main problem these teams had was financial. Whether it was due to the team owner not wanting to put money into the team or sponsers not paying or not existing in the first place the teams ended up folding after a few years at most.

In 1992 a new bar was set for poor teams, set by a team called Andrea Moda. One of the most amateurish outfits that has graced Formula 1 over the sports history, rivalling such efforts as the Kauhsen debacle. The team was began when Andrea Sassetti purchased the remains of the Coloni team at the end of the 1991 season.

To begin with Andrea Moda simply resprayed the old Colani C4 cars in a black paint. They bought a supply of Judd engines and a Dallara gearbox and fitted them to the car. They hired Alex Caffi and Enrico Bertaggia as drivers and they went to Kyalami. After a shakedown in practice they were looking forward to pre-qualifying

But it made no difference when the teams was excluded from the first event. This was due to the fact that the FIA said that despite buying all of Coloni's equipment they hadn't bought the entry.

At this point Sassetti realised how rubbish the Coloni was and purchased a chassis from Nick Wirth (now the Virgin Racing designer). Wirth had designed a car for a BMW works team that never happened in 1990. The car was once again given the black paint job and the new car named the S921 was born. They missed the event in Mexico entirely while the mess was sorted.

Due to the team missing out in Mexico, Caffi and Bertaggia said some things that Sassetti disliked and both were sacked. So when it got to Brazil, Roberto Moreno and Perry Mccarthy were hired to take the seats. 

But upon arriving in Brazil, Mccarthy had his superlicence removed and wasn't allowed to pre-qualify. Moreno was allowed out but was 15 seconds off the pace. After this Bertaggia came grovelling back to Sassetti with a million pounds of sponsorship and Sassetti tried to sack Mccarthy only for the FIA to tell him that he had run out of driver changes.

Sassetti was annoyed because he had lost out on a million pounds of sponsorship. He was stuck with Mccarthy a driver he didn't want. Sassetti and Mccarthy’s relationship was virtually non-existent. Sassetti seemed determined to ensure Mccarthy never got a fair go.  Such examples of this like when Mccarthy making it a whole 18 yards before the engine cutting out in Spain. Moreno's car broke down with in one lap and that was his session, and weekend, over.

In San Marino both Moreno and Mccarthy were allowed out. Mccarthy did have a differential problem and was eight and a half seconds off the pace of Moreno who just failed to pre-qualify.

In Monaco, Mccarthy was allowed just three pre-qualifying laps before his car was kept as spare for Moreno. Mccarthy was once again in the wars not having a proper fitting seat in Monaco, one of the bumpiest tracks, so after a few laps he had severe bruising.

Roberto Moreno somehow managed to get the Andrea Moda through pre-qualfying and then managed to get the car 26th and last on the grid. Moreno though managed a few laps before the car broke. The team at best can be said to run one and a half cars. The team ran a car for Roberto Moreno and used Perry Mccarthy's car as nothing more than a rolling spare.

In Montreal things began to go from odd to totally bizarre.

The team turned up only for the engines not to. They managed to get Brabham to give them an engine which went into Moreno's car and Moreno was 15 seconds again off the pace, Mccarthy never moved.

Then at Magny Cours it got even worse. A strike meant that meant there was panic about whether the teams could turn up. All of them did except.... Andrea Moda.

At Silverstone, Mccarthy was given wet weather tyres for a dry track. He somehow put together a lap only 16 seconds slower than everyone else. Moreno once again just failed to escape from pre-qualifying. In Germany, Mccarthy wasn't told he had to get his car weight check, didn't go to the check and was then excluded. Moreno failed to get out of pre-qualifying again.

After Germany though, Brabham, who were on the verge of bankruptcy decided to slim down to a one car operation. This meant pre-qualifying only had to remove one car, meaning one Andrea Moda was going to get through to qualifying proper whatever happened.

This was likely to be Moreno since Mccarthy wasn't allowed out until 45 seconds from the end of the session in Hungary. The final straw came at Spa the steering column began to flex whilst Mccarthy was blasting through Eau Rouge. The team already knew about this fault as well. Moreno and Mccarthy came nowhere near qualifying either.

Andrea Moda was not allowed into the Monza circuit and was banned for bringing the sport into disripute. Andrea Moda were never heard from again.

The fact they were happy to let Mccarthy in a death trap meant the team went from being comical to something sinister.

Outfits like this one should never allowed in Formula 1 and hopefully never will again.