How a fine avoidance exercise created a forgotten piece of F1 history

This writer doesn’t profess to know an awful lot about American football. But Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch’s infamous press conference prior to the 2015 Superbowl and Scuderia Italia’s appearance in the 1988 Brazilian Grand Prix bear some similarities.

“I'm just here so I won't get fined,” was the only answer that Lynch repeatedly gave baffled reporters. And the same could have been said of what can be deemed a token effort from Beppe Lucchini’s Formula 1 newcomer to enter the 1988 season-opener with a car that had floundered in Formula 3000...

“For us, it was just a holiday because we know we don't have a chance to race, no chance to do anything,” asserts the driver of its singleton entry, Alex Caffi. “We were just there to not pay the fine and say ‘OK, we exist, we are here, just be ready’.”

The Concorde Agreement’s requirement that teams attended every Grand Prix presented something of a problem for Scuderia Italia. Brabham designer Sergio Rinland had been approached, he believes around October or November of 1987, to devise the first F1 car to bear the Dallara name, although company boss Giampaolo Dallara had F1 experience working with Frank Williams on the De Tomaso 505/38 for 1970 and Iso–Marlboro IR three years later.

But with the first race of 1988 scheduled for 3 April, it was plain that Rinland’s new Dallara F188 was unlikely to be ready for the first race. Round two at Imola, one month later, appeared the safer bet. But that left Scuderia Italia in a tight spot. Sporting director Patrizio Cantu remembers its dilemma: “We cannot have the car ready for Brazil, and you have a fine eventually if you don't go; we cannot arrive in F1 without making all the races”.

“We knew from the beginning we have this kind of problem,” agrees Caffi, who had joined Scuderia Italia for his second full season in F1 from Osella. Outside-the-box thinking was required but, even if it meant facing short-term ridicule, a pragmatic solution would be worthwhile to avoid a heavy financial penalty. As Rinland puts it, “they had to be in Rio with something”.

Caffi was never going to succeed in qualifying an F3000 Dallara for the 1988 Brazilian GP, but that wasn't the objective

Photo by: Sutton Images

Rinland doesn’t know who came up with the idea of entering Dallara’s ungainly 3087 F3000 car at the Jacarepagua Circuit, but suspects “that decision was probably taken before I joined”. The Argentinian ultimately supported the plan “as long as they didn't use any of my resources, because we were five designers with me included”. These included Ferdinando Concari, who headed up Dallara’s Formula 3 programme, and Luigi Urbinelli, for many years part of the AF Corse GT programme.

The F3000 project, he says, “was something that the mechanics at Scuderia Italia did on their own with [team manager] Remo Ramanzini running the show there, while I was designing the car at Dallara”.

Rinland would need every bit of help he could get on the mission to get Scuderia Italia’s first true F1 racer, and his first F1 car as a chief designer, off the ground. The concept was realised from his house in Esher during a particularly unforgettable point in his life while expecting the arrival of his daughter, Jessica. He still has a drawing of the F188 in his office, dated three days before she was born on 15 December 1987.

There was no hope of Caffi qualifying the 3087, which had never been close to the pace in F3000

“It was probably the beginning of December when I was hired and came back to England,” he remembers. “I couldn't go to live in Italy until my daughter was born, and so I started to work at home; I must have been working on it for two or three weeks. Just before Christmas, it must have been 20 December, I flew to Italy with the drawings under my arm, instructed all the designers that Dallara put at my disposal, and went back after the New Year, leaving my wife and the newborn baby here.”

He recalls a “pretty hectic winter” in which he spent “every single day working at Dallara, day and night and weekends” and didn’t visit the team’s F1 workshop in Brescia until March. There could be no possibility of making meaningful modifications to the 3087, which would be run by a staff of roughly 10 according to Cantu, to accommodate parts for the F188. This was ultimately launched less than a week after Rio at the Ghedi military airfield and completed a shakedown at Mugello before heading to Imola – Rinland having overseen the project from the first sketch to the first test in four months.

In the meantime, the race team had departed for an exercise in box-ticking. All F1 outfits convened in Rio a week before the first race for testing, although this was of little use to Scuderia Italia. There was no hope of Caffi qualifying the 3087, which had never been close to the pace in F3000.

The bulky machine which Rinland notes “was a big car, bigger than the F1,” had managed a best result of fifth in 1987 in mixed conditions at Spa, courtesy of a well-timed red flag. EuroVenturini driver Marco Apicella therefore finished ahead of demonstrably faster cars that were prevented from reaping the benefit of stopping for slicks on the increasingly dry circuit. The car’s greatest impact, unquestionably, would come courtesy of Enrico Bertaggia against the Paddock Hill Bend tyre barrier in August 1988, which cut his Forti-run car in two.

The first Dallara F1 car was devised in a hurry by Rinland, pictured with the original sketches framed in his office, which meant a Plan B was required for Rio

Photo by: Sergio Rinland

Having not tested the 3087 beforehand, Rio would mark just Caffi’s second outing in an F3000 car as he had skipped the increasingly popular training ground for Grand Prix drivers. Money troubles prevented a planned graduation for 1986 after winning the previous year’s European Formula 3 Cup at Paul Ricard with Coloni, which facilitated his only other F3000 run with an ORECA-run March.

“I worked a lot to have a seat in F3000,” he says. “That was the right way to try to go in Formula 1, but at the beginning of '86 I didn't find the sponsor so I decided to make again Formula 3 with Venturini.” He graduated directly to F1 later that year at Monza with Osella – “it was a jump like to go to the moon!” – and continued with the team in 1987 running its uncompetitive and unreliable Alfa turbo engines.

If the Cosworth DFV in his incongruous Rio steed was more proven, it was also significantly less potent. An engine that made its winning debut over 20 years previously had last been seen in F1 four years before, its 1984 final hurrah preceding a second lease of life in F3000. It remained in F3000-spec at 3.0-litres, rather than the larger capacity 3.5-litres of the Cosworth DFZ used by fellow most normally-aspirated teams, although did at least have the 9,000rpm rev-limiter disengaged…

Caffi says the team’s most pressing change was the striking red paint scheme. “We put just the wheels and tyres on and we used exactly the car that was racing the year before in F3000,” he adds. True enough, the unsponsored car ran without any pretence of a smart livery. Nor was any effort made to cover the engine. The exposed exhaust architecture was as much an anachronism as the engine itself.

Cantu, whose Crypton Reynard team would go on to win the F3000 title with Luca Badoer in 1992, recognises that it faced a hopeless task. But as a means for getting the new team acquainted, with the bulk of its staff recruited from rallying, it was an ideal low-pressure scenario. “That was the reason we stayed basically 15 days in Rio without the big work; many times we went to the seaside!” chuckles Cantu.

But most importantly, it was present. Veteran motor racing journalist David Tremayne was, in 1988, in the early days of his career as an F1 correspondent, and says there was a certain admiration for the team doing the best it could to push ahead in less-than-ideal circumstances. He is charitable in remarking that the car “wasn't pretty, it did look like a tank”.

“They knew they weren't going to qualify, it was just a lip service thing, but you had to be physically at every race, otherwise you were in trouble,” Tremayne remembers. “At least they were there; we knew that something much better was coming along.”

Apicella (25) had wrangled oversized Dallara to a best result of fifth in 1987 F3000 season - it wasn't a machine with F1 pedigree

Photo by: Sutton Images

That Caffi failed to pre-qualify, with a time that ended up being 18.346s shy of Ayrton Senna’s pole time in the turbocharged McLaren-Honda MP4/4, could not be viewed as a surprise. “Not even Alain Prost could have heaved the jalopy into the field,” concluded Autosport.

In any case, Cantu confirms, the fuel tank was not big enough for the car to last the 60-lap race distance. “If we had eventually qualified with Caffi, we cannot race it,” he shrugs.

While not the most enjoyable weekend of his career from a competitive standpoint, Caffi remembers “a good time in Rio; also the mechanics remember very well when we speak about that weekend”. Ultimately, the knowledge that “it was just for one [race]” and the team had decent potential meant he was prepared to put on a brave face before getting his hands on a DFZ-powered car.

Never again would a car attempt to enter an F1 race with arguably its most famous engine. This would also be the last time a car not designed to for grand prix racing appeared on an F1 world championship entry list

This would make the cut for every race thereafter bar Canada. Its performances satisfied Lucchini to the extent that he didn’t see fit to switch out the Koni dampers for Penske alternatives proposed by Rinland once Caffi outqualified Minardi for the first time in Mexico.

“I knew it was not a bad team or a team that doesn't have money, like the experience in Andrea Moda [in 1992],” Caffi says. “I was a driver, I was paid, and if they give me a horse to ride, I ride the horse. So it wasn’t a problem for me. I just say ''OK, we have to lose the one race’. We just spent some time on the beach and then our season starts from the second race.”

Cantu has no regrets over the team’s left-field contingency plan. “When we started with the new car, everybody could see that we were very serious because in '88, Caffi was fast,” he says. “And Sergio did a fantastic job with Dallara, the ‘88 car was very good.”

“From the second race, we were ready, and we were competitive,” adds Caffi, who says that was “important” for demonstrating Rio was unreflective.

Once Rinland's 188 design broke cover, it proved to be a well-regarded machine

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Never again would a car attempt to enter an F1 race with arguably its most famous engine. This would also be the last time a car not designed for grand prix racing appeared on an F1 world championship entry list; even if questions could be asked about precisely what regulations certain designers have been interpreting over the years…

Caffi points out that the era of non-F1 cars participating – such as when Jacky Ickx famously set the third-fastest time in qualifying for the 1967 German GP in a Tyrrell-run Matra Formula Two car – had truly finished many years before and “was another kind of world, another kind of sport”. The divide could not have been starker in 1988; turbo engines were one year away from being phased out and Scuderia Italia was up against what would for over 30 years be regarded as F1’s most dominant car. But Caffi says the experience had its upsides too.

“It's something that was bad, but everybody is remembering now,” he reflects. “It's remained in the minds of people, because it was something different, something that never can happen now. And I was the last one.” As a way to stand out from the crowd, it was certainly a bold step.

How Scuderia Italia’s F1 story unfolded

Scuderia Italia became a two-car team for 1989, when Pirelli qualifying rubber occasionally allowed it to transcend its status as a respectable midfielder

Photo by: LAT Photographic

Autosport’s 1988 season review highlights BMS Scuderia Italia [the designation standing for Brixia Motor Sport] as “easily the most impressive” of the newcomers attracted by the return to normally-aspirated powerplants – even if turbos continued to be used by the likes of McLaren, Ferrari, Lotus, Arrows, Zakspeed and Osella before being outlawed for 1989 – that included Rial and EuroBrun. The mark made by Alex Caffi prompted Autosport to characterise “a young driver of more than ordinary promise,” before adding, “and the same is true of his team.”

Following its inconspicuous start, Scuderia Italia became a reliable midfield presence for the remainder of its tenure in F1 and even troubled the podium twice.

“I always thought that they thoroughly deserved to be there,” says racing journalist David Tremayne. “They had two podiums, had some good drivers; it was a good, respectable little team. Of all the little teams, they were one of the best and I thought their preparation and presentation was always of a very high level.”

His impression is shared by the designer of its first F1 car. Sergio Rinland had returned to Brabham at the end of 1988, but looks back fondly on his time at Scuderia Italia working with a group of “fantastic people” he still regards as friends today. He even continued to lunch in the team’s motorhome while working at rival outfits “because they had such a good cook!”

Expanding to two cars for 1989, as Pirelli tyres entered the mix, Andrea de Cesaris finished third in Montreal while Caffi impressed by qualifying third in Hungary and finished fourth in Monaco. Following a pointless 1990 with de Cesaris and Emanuele Pirro, its eighth-place constructors placing from 1989 was matched in 1991 as JJ Lehto equalled the team’s best finish with third at Imola.

Friday favourite: The Italian underdog combination that caused Senna to dig deep

But sixth place for Pierluigi Martini at the track in 1992 proved its last points finish, as a link up with Lola for 1993 was disastrous. Michele Alboreto and Luca Badoer never came close to scoring points in the T93/30 and a loose merger with Minardi for 1994 was in name only as it dropped off the grid.

“Eric [Broadley] had this thing for doing new cars in zero time,” remembers former Lola designer Mark Williams. “It never saw the wind tunnel, had no aerodynamics. Somehow, he would think he could wing it.”

Scuderia Italia had a miserable final year with Lola in 1993, scoring no points - although under today's system, Luca Badoer would have been rewarded for seventh at Imola

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images