“I really need to feel that the car and I are talking to each other before I can really give it a go."Ī test was hastily arranged at Fiorano in order to allow Andretti to get to grips with Ferrari’s punchy 126C2, and much to the delight of all involved the chemistry between car and driver was almost instant, resulting in a new lap record at the test track. "And that was why, if I was going to take up Ferrari's offer I wanted to come over here in good time, do plenty of testing, get to know the car, which wasn't really possible with Frank because there was so little time. "I was never really happy with myself that weekend at Long Beach," he’d explain.
Worse still, his indifferent showing at Long Beach had led some to question whether, at 42, he still had what it took to compete at the highest level. There was just one problem: Andretti had never driven a turbo-powered F1 car before. The fact that he was born and raised in Italy was simply a bonus - both to the mechanics he’d work with and to the Scuderia’s adoring Tifosi. The American fit the bill on many levels: not only was he a world champion with a proven track record (including victory at Monza in 1977), he was also familiar with the team’s unique character having raced for them in the early Seventies. In short, Ferrari’s prospects for their home race - and for their ongoing constructors’ championship challenge - looked bleak. To make matters worse, Patrick Tambay, the man with the unenviable task of filling Villeneuve’s vaunted number 27 cockpit, had been forced to pull out of the most recent round at Dijon because of severe back pain.
Sure, he had commitments stateside, and no, his last Grand Prix outing - a one-off appearance for Williams at Long Beach earlier in the 1982 season - had not gone at all smoothly, but how could he turn down the chance to race for Ferrari at Monza, the very same circuit where, as a 14-year-old, he’d screamed himself hoarse supporting Prancing Horse star Alberto Ascari?Īndretti’s Monza invitation had come amid desperate times for the Scuderia, who’d lost talismanic star Gilles Villeneuve to a fatal crash at Zolder in May and then seen his championship-leading team mate Didier Pironi suffer what looked to be career-ending injuries in another horrific shunt at Hockenheim barely three months later. Mario Andretti had been out of F1 proper for the best part of a year, racing Ind圜ars in his homeland, when he received the call from the Old Man. But mainly I did it as a favour to me! Jesus, what kind of guy can say no to Ferrari at Monza?" “Did I accept as a favour to Mr Ferrari? Well, sure, up to a point.
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