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This article first appeared in GP Racing magazine.
John Barnard's second sojourn at Ferrari might have proved less fruitful in terms of innovation and his ongoing quest to build the perfect car, but it produced some of the most elegant cars of the 1990s (and one noticeably less so) as well as delivering a victorious send-off for the V12 engine in Formula 1. And there are some who believe that, in different hands, Barnard's penultimate Ferrari, the 412 T2, might have been a championship challenger...
Barnard had been out of the Maranello orbit for just two and a half years when, in the summer of 1992, Niki Lauda began to phone him. Initially, Barnard instructed his staff to tell Lauda he was out. Ferrari was at a low competitive ebb with the catastrophic F92A and, as a result, the management revolving door was spinning furiously.
Luca di Montezemolo had assumed control and recruited Lauda as a consultant; soon Jean Todt would be hired from Peugeot and institute sweeping change, but for now Lauda worked his contacts book, approaching those he rated highly: Gerhard Berger to drive, and Barnard to superintend the technicalities.
