Enzo Ferrari interview

Then, to our right, a light voice said "Bon giorno," and instantly we got to our feet. Enzo Ferrari walked slowly to the middle chair and sat down. No, he said, he had no prepared statement or 'message' for us. Simply, he invited our questions.

The trip to the Italian Grand Prix is always a highlight of the year for me. Past is that frenetic mid-season blur of airports and hire cars, when a weekend off seems like being absent without leave. Autumn arrives, and with it the capacity consciously to enjoy motor racing once more.

As well as that, of course, we are talking about Italian motor racing, and if you don't understand the subtlety of that you have probably never attended a Grand Prix in Italy. If you have, and still don't, you have my sympathy. It is a flinty heart which is untouched by the ambience of Monza. And Monza means, above all else, Ferrari.

Imagine, therefore, how much more we felt it this time, having previously stayed a couple of nights in Modena, the county town of motor racing down the ages. The day in between was spent at Maranello.

During the morning we went round the factory, saw the road cars being built - can you imagine a Testarossa assembly line? - and visited the race shop, where the cars for Monza were being prepared. The factory has a cheerful, lived-in, quality untypical of today. This is not to say there are cigarette ends on the floor, or anything of the kind, but it is not immaculate in a McLaren sense. We are talking easy chairs rather than chrome and smoked glass and leather.

It was after this that we went to assembly, and the Old Man began to talk. The conversation began, not surprisingly, with a question about John Barnard, and we came swiftly to realise that this was not to be a day of revelations. "Now is not the right time for comment," came Marco Piccinini's smooth interpretation of Ferrari's answer. "After the Portuguese Grand Prix, I will be in a position to explain fully the programme for the future..."

And would there be a new Ferrari driver for 1987? Was it to be Berger alongside Alboreto? "After Portugal I shall announce our plans, but for now any comment would be premature...

Well, it was nothing less than we expected. And it seemed wiser to turn to less immediate topics. After achieving so much, someone asked, did any ambitions remain? At this he relaxed, smiled.

"I've been involved in racing since 1919, and to go on living a human being must always have new ambitions. At Ferrari the most beautiful victory is always the next one."

There is indeed little sentiment for machinery at Maranello. Down the years Grand Prix cars have habitually been broken up once their useful purpose has been served. There is not in existence, for example, a single 'shark nose' of the kind which dominated the 1961 season. As I later poked around the garage at Fiorano test track, therefore, it was with some surprise that I discovered, under polythene dust sheets, Villeneuve's Monaco-winning car of five years ago.

Gilles's team-mate, of course, was Pironi. And, following the French-Canadian's death at Zolder in 1982, Didier looked on course for the World Championship - until his dreadful accident at Hockenheim. At the end of the year Ferrari sent a special trophy to the hospital in Paris; it bore the inscription 'Didier Pironi - the true 1982 World Champion'. And at the same time he said that if the Frenchman were ever to return to racing, there would be a Ferrari waiting for him.

Now, four years on, I asked him if such was still the case. Ferrari hesitated. "Pironi has had a lot of suffering," he said finally, "and I'm very much concerned that it could happen to him again..." No, in other words. The Frenchman, he obviously considers, has been out for too long.

As he sat and talked, the Old Man was flanked by Piccinini and by Piero Lardi Ferrari, his illegitimate son whose status was formally acknowledged only after the death, in 1978, of Ferrari's wife, Laura. Piero is 41, a charming man uncannily like his father at a similar age. He owns 10% of the company, the remainder broken down thus: Enzo Ferrari (49%), Fiat (40%), Pininfarina (1%).

The only child of Ferrari's marriage, Dino, died of muscular dystrophy on Jun 30 1956, and the following day, when Fangio, Collins, Castellotti, Portago and Gendebien went to the grid at Reims, each wore a black armband.

Peter Collins won that race, the French Grand Prix, which perhaps further amplified the affection in which Ferrari held him. When we asked of drivers for whom he had a special regard, the Englishman was mentioned in the same breath as Nuvolari: "A great driver, and a generous gentleman".

After Dino's death Ferrari changed in subtle, sometimes puzzling, ways. He stopped, for example, wearing a Prancing Horse badge in his lapel, and for years wore a plain black tie. There are many who say he has never emerged from the shadow of his grief, and in one way, at least, his habits have been set these 30 years. He has seen his cars race only once since his son died: in the autumn of 1957 he attended the Modena Grand Prix, not because it was close at hand, but because it marked the debut of the V6 engine on which Dino had worked, and which was later named for him.

What about Senna? someone asked, abruptly changing the timbre of the proceedings. And Ducarouge? Had not Ferrari spoken to them about a move to Maranello?

These were queries which revealed again that Ferrari's grasp of the English language (and doubtless several others) is considerably greater than he would have you believe. Long before the questioner was through, the Old Man's face was cracking into a grin.

"Ah, Senna," he said, relishing the word. "Well, at first we were in touch with Ducarouge because we thought he was available to discuss some projects with us, but we had to stop when we realised he was committed to Lotus. And as for Senna, we felt it inappropriate to go to Marlboro (who pay our drivers) with the financial expectations which were advanced by the driver. They were, shall we say, imaginative!"

That brought the house down, as did the throwaway answer to the supplementary question: had Senna made any request to nominate his team-mate? "Oh," said Ferrari, with a dismissive wave of the hand, "we didn't even get that far!"

Did he consider that Grand Prix drivers were overpaid these days? "Well, you must remember the risk involved. But if a driver's first motivation is the love of racing, then risk and money are not relevant. If, on the other hand, he is mainly motivated by money, then I suppose he wants to put the right value on his life . . . When Antonio Ascari was killed at Montlhery (in 1925), he was earning perhaps one thousandth of what they get now."

He was unconcerned, he said, at the possibility of there being fewer cars in Grand Prix racing over the coming years. "I can remember when there were only three marques - Alfa Romeo, Bugatti and Delage - and the racing was good. You do not need 26 cars for a race. Eighteen strong ones would be as good."

It was also clear from his remarks that Ferrari would prefer to see fewer races. "Is it sport? Or business? When I started there were four to five Grands Prix each year. Now we are up to 16. You can die, you know, just as easily from indigestion as from starvation..."

An hour or so later we were getting a tangible reminder of that. Lunch was served at the Cavallino, the famous restaurant across the road from the factory. We sat at a huge table in the sun, blanching as the waiters swept up with yet another course, uncorked further bottles of Lambrusco.

A famous place, this, with a visitors' book that an autograph fiend would kill for. "I used to test at Modena all morning," Chris Amon once told me, "and then have lunch with the Old Man. And there was always wine with the pasta. Once, in my early days there, I realised we'd each had a bottle of Lambrusco - you know how easily that stuff goes down. And Ferrari said, 'Good - you'll go faster this afternoon!' I did, too, believe it or not..."

That anecdote, though, is from a more intemperate age. It is not easy to envisage most of today's serious young men taking a glass or two of fizz at lunchtime - with or without after testing, there is the risk of forgetting your briefcase in the haze.

Ferrari used to eat here everyday, and there remains upstairs a private room for his use. But nowadays he usually eats in his farmhouse by the test track at Fiorano. As a wine connoisseur, it is a great sadness to him that he can longer drink it, but he allows himself a good lunch each Saturday, with a Scotch before and 'real' coffee afterwards.

As we sat there with our coffee, in the warmth of the afternoon, we talked about the press conference. Hadn't it been terrific? This was a day we'd member. No matter that we hadn't really learned anything, that there had been many more questions than answers. We'd known that going in. Ferrari has always been that way, moulding his carefully-prepared replies to the shape of the topic at hand. Even at 88, he says nothing by chance.

Later we went to have a look at Fiorano, even took our hire cars out for a few laps, keeping an eye open for Piccinini, who was blasting uncertainly round in his GTO. It was this place, with its bank of TV screens and mass of computerised equipment, which revolutionised Ferrari's approach to racing in the early seventies.

Marco described the workings of the place, and it is obviously a source of great pride to all at Maranello even if, as one or two Ferrari drivers have whispered over the years, its ultimate worth as a test facility is open to question. "Fiorano?" Gilles used irreverently, but not unaffectionately, to say. "Well, I think mainly it's there so the Old Man can look out of his window and see us flogging round in his cars..."

At the end of the press conference, as we had prepared to take our photos, Ferrari had waved his arm for quiet. "I want to tell you," he said, "that I think Britain is a great country, and I have done so since I went to Brooklands in 1923. You enjoy a fine and old democracy, which used to be administered by a great dictator - Churchill. And today have the good fortune of enjoying a democracy administered by a very strong woman. I hope it carries on. I have no interest in political parties of any kind, only in nations."

Throughout the morning we addressed him as 'Mr Ferrari' - no one would have dreamed of using his Christian name, and he hates being called 'Commendatore'. Churchill, at a similar age, was asked how he would wish to remembered, and said, "As a good House of Commons man". Ferrari likes to be known simply as ''.

At Monza we spoke about the visit, the conference and all, and the reaction of more than one person was scornful - 'Oh, come on, you didn't fall for all that old Ferrari hokum...' Well, yes, I'm afraid I did, and always have. There was no point whatever in my trying to talk to people like that - beyond wondering how and why they got involved in this business in the first place. I just felt sad for them.