Scuderia Coloni - a Formula One adventure.......

If you take a look at the history of any team over the 70 years of Formula One you are likely to see many teams formed by former racing drivers; Enzo Ferrari, Bruce McLaren and Jack Brabham are some of the more obvious, but turning race craft into building a successful team isn't always a straight forward process.

In a previous blog I mentioned the BBC Grand Prix magazine I bought in preparation for the 1989 magazine, and whilst the cutting edge designs of McLaren, Ferrari and Williams leapt out of the pages, towards the back of the team list was a racing car which appeared a little less than front running in a bright yellow colour - Scuderia Coloni.

Whilst I watched the season from the sofa Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost dominated the season, with a splash of Mansell in the Ferrari (and Johnny Herbert's dream debut in the Benetton). However the Coloni cars made very little impact on the telly......occasionally involved on the coverage as their car was lapped. However with the benefit of google I felt it was time to better understand the Coloni story; any team that makes it to Formula One has made a significant leap in my book, and success is often measured by this achievement alone (ok, so that's my artistic licence speaking )

Enzo Coloni was a late starter into the world of motorsport, starting to race at the age of 30 in the mid 1970's, and became Italian Formula Three champion in 1982 at the ripe old age of 36.....for comparison Max Verstappen got to Formula One aged 17!!! However Enzo had an interest in staying in the sport after he stopped driving and set up Scuderia Coloni in 1982.

Success followed relatively quickly with another Italian Formula Three title in 1984 for Ivan Capelli and a third drivers title with Nicola Larini in 1986. The team also tried its hand at Formula 3000 with an outdated March chassis in 1986, again with Nicola Larini at the wheel.....and as appears to be the case with a number of relatively unsuccessful racing teams throughout Formula One history, moderate success in Formula 3000 led the team to build a car (the FC187) and enter Formula One.

Making their debut at the 1987 Italian GP again with Larini taking the reins, the team and driver failed to qualify, but made the grid at the Spanish race, 26th and last. The team had qualified for a Formula One race, but Sundays race lasted just 8 laps before Nicola ended his first grand prix with a suspension problem.

At quick glance a team only established 5 years earlier had arrived in Formula One - pretty incredible in my book, and whilst Enzo had achieved his first aim, there was plenty of work still to do, and the team entered the whole 1988 season. A new car, the FC188 was built (which looked very similar to the FC187) and with a very tight operating budget testing and development was close to zero.

Against all the odds the season was more positive than might of been expected; new driver Gabriele Tarquini had a very challenging season (6 times he didn't pre-qualify, 2 races he didn't make the top 26) but the races he dragged the car onto the grid led to an 8th place in Canada, an 11th, 13th and 14th place finishes (Portugal, Hungary and Mexico respectively) and 4 other retirements. Admittedly no points were scored, although 8th nowadays would score you something I'm sure, but four race finishes in a car with no development is again a pretty good return.

1989 saw the team enter two cars, the FC188B, but the racing gods didn't look on the team in a positive way at all! 22 times neither driver pre-qualified, 5 times they didn't make the grid and the remaining 5 races that they started a race they all ended in retirement. Maybe the moderate success of 1988, running one car, was a false dawn ? On very , very limited resources were the team simply stretched too far ?

The FC188B was notably difficult to drive and was around 20kph slower than the nearest opposition, but the tale sadly doesn't end there. Prior to the 1990 season an unusual partnership with Subaru led to the teams debts being paid, 51% ownership of the team being taken on by the Japanese company, and a supply of "works" engines.

Works engines are one of those Formula One aspirations for almost every team (at least they were in the 1980's and 1990's ); the expense of buying and maintaining engines has always been a significant part of any teams budget from the beginning of motor sport, so a manufacturer paying for you to use their engines is always going to be very tempting. This particular engine had been built by Italian firm Motori Moderni, who had previously built engines for Minardi, bank rolled by Subaru. The Minardi team even tested the new engine, but chose not to run them - not enough power, and significantly overweight. Around 140 kg overweight.....given an entire car on the grid at the time was only 500 kg in total this was a significant disadvantage.

However recent F1 history shows the lure of a works engine is always a risk worth taking on paper; Jordan using Yamaha motors in 1992 (disaster) and McLaren using Peugeot motors in 1994 are notable failures......and the Subaru was worse than any works motor that I can recall over the past 40 years of the sport.

Carrying the Subaru engine Bertrand Gachot had 8 straight non pre-qualifications, and the team hastily ended the relationship , Subaru selling their share back to Enzo, and a modified chassis saw the installation of a Ford V8 led to 2 more non pre-qualifications and 6 non-qualifications. The revised car was quicker with Ford power, but not fast enough to make a race.

1990 was therefore nothing short of a disaster, even with a new chassis, the C3, and 1991 with a team workforce of only 6 people using a mildly updated chassis carrying a Ford V8 motor led to a sad statistic of 15 non pre-qualifications with Pedro Chaves and later Naoki Hattori on board.

From mild early success Scuderia Coloni had faded very quickly into oblivion; Enzo sold the team to Andrea Sassetti who renamed the team Andrea Moda Formula for the 1992 season. Surely the team's performances couldn't get any worse ?!?

Even now, some 28 years later , its really hard to measure the level of success Enzo and his team achieved; 3 Formula Three drivers titles and creating a Formula One team for me feel like significant achievements, and keeping the team on the grid (or at least turning up for race weekends) for 6 seasons even with almost a total lack of prequalification or qualification is some form of achievement. Out of 82 races the Coloni team only started 14 races, but that's 14 races more than me, and 14 more than lots of other wannabe racing team owners, so whilst not one of the biggest F1 achievers I for one respect what Enzo achieved.