Forti 1995

His Formula One career began with one lap too many. In the first qualifying session for the Brazilian Grand Prix, on Friday 24 March 1995 at Interlagos, Pedro Diniz ran 13 laps when the rules allowed 12, and his times were struck out.

The radio in his car let the team hear him but not speak to him, and the team’s pit, the last in the lane, stood near the first corner, where the signal boards were hard to see. Carlo Gancia, one of the team’s owners, took the blame: “We asked him to come in, but he didn’t see … The mistake was ours, but we accept it. Since that’s the rule, we move on.” Diniz said: “Now I hope it doesn’t rain. Otherwise I’ll have no chance.”

On the Saturday he qualified 25th of 26, 7.7 seconds slower than Damon Hill’s pole position and two places behind his team-mate, Roberto Moreno. It was the first Brazilian Grand Prix since Ayrton Senna’s death, and there were three Brazilians on the grid: Rubens Barrichello in a Jordan, Moreno and Diniz. Folha de S.Paulo’s profile of Diniz on the morning of the race cast him as the outsider of the three, and as the rich man’s son; asked whether he was a playboy, a daddy’s boy, he said: “I’m just a normal person.”

Prefiro arrojado. Mas já aprendi que na F-⁠1 não posso andar no limite.

I prefer ‘daring’. But I’ve already learned that in F1 I can’t drive on the limit.

Afterwards he explained his race to Folha: “I chose to start the race with a lot of fuel so as to make only one pit stop. It worked.” The Forti still had a manual gearbox, probably the only one on the grid; he had trouble with the brakes too, and with the suspension over the bumps, and by the end his right hand was blistered. He finished 10th, 7 laps behind, the last of the 10 cars classified. Moreno had spun off at the Laranjinha after 47 laps. When Diniz reached the pits, the mechanics threw him into the air.

Five hours after the race Michael Schumacher and David Coulthard were disqualified over their fuel, and the next morning’s Folha had Diniz 8th. On 13 April the FIA’s Court of Appeal reinstated them. The record says 10th.

The team and the money

Forti Corse was Guido Forti’s team, from Alessandria, and it had moved up from Formula 3000, where it had run Diniz for his two seasons in that series. It had met Gancia through him, and Gancia, co-owner and commercial director, had driven the move up. The engineering and the logistics were Italian; the money, the sponsors and both drivers were Brazilian.

The team claimed a budget of US$17 million. Parmalat, the title sponsor, was reported to provide about a fifth of it, and the other names on the car included the beer maker Kaiser, Arisco and Sadia. Folha reported the next year that Pedro had raised about 90 per cent of the budget himself, from companies that supplied his family’s supermarkets, and grandprix.com wrote later that in effect the Diniz family had underwritten all of it.¹

Meu pai não deu um tostão para a equipe … Só colocou o pessoal em contato com pessoas certas.

My father didn’t give the team a penny. … He only put people in touch with the right people.

On the morning of his debut he had put it his own way, and Gancia, the team’s commercial director, agreed in the same pages that Abílio had opened many doors for him. What the record supports is money that came through companies connected with the family’s business, Parmalat above all, and none that can be shown to have come from Abílio Diniz’s own pocket.

The car was the FG01, built at Alessandria around a customer Ford Cosworth V8. It was designed under Giorgio Stirano, with Chris Radage and the aerodynamicist Hans Fouche, though its roots were disputed, and it was heavy and slow. At a test at Estoril in early March, Diniz was the slowest of those listed, about 7 seconds from the fastest, and through the season the Fortis were usually 7 to 9 seconds a lap from pole. Sergio Rinland, taken on as technical director in late March, left after a few weeks. By the summer Gancia was plain about it to Motor Sport:

Unfortunately, we had a bad car. Our designer made an old car worse, rather than improving it. We have to live with it.

Roberto Moreno, the teacher in the other car

The second car went, late, to Roberto Moreno, and at first only for the races in Brazil and Argentina; he stayed all year. Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1959, he had finished 2nd in the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix for Benetton, lost his seat the next year to make room for Michael Schumacher, and had not raced in Formula One since Andrea Moda’s fiasco in 1992. Gancia saw him as a teacher, for Diniz and for the team, and Diniz said that Moreno, with 25 Grands Prix behind him, was teaching him a lot.

In testing, grandprix.com had found Diniz a long way off the pace and expected Moreno to do much better. Over the whole season Moreno out-qualified him nine times to eight; when both were classified, Diniz finished ahead three times out of four; and Diniz was classified nine times to Moreno’s five.² grandprix.com’s encyclopedia would later say that sometimes Diniz was the quicker of the two.

At the back of the grid

There was no 107 per cent qualifying rule in 1995. Measured against each pole time, Diniz was outside 107 per cent at all 17 races, and Moreno inside it only once.³ The FIA had wanted to bring the rule in during the season; Forti, Gancia told Motor Sport, had vetoed it, while backing it for 1996. Had it applied, the magazine reckoned, the team would still have been waiting for its first start.

In Argentina both Fortis were running at the finish but too far behind to be classified, and Moreno counted that as the job done: “At least we achieved our aim, which was to start and finish the first two races of the championship.” At Imola Diniz started last and was classified 15th, 7 laps down. At Monaco he qualified 22nd, ahead of Moreno and three other cars, and finished 10th, the last of the finishers, 6 laps behind.

At Silverstone in July he qualified 20th, his best qualifying of the year, ahead of Moreno and both Pacifics, until gear-selection trouble stopped him after 13 laps. At Hockenheim both Fortis qualified ahead of both Pacifics for the first time.

He was 13th at Spa, 9th at Monza, where a pile-up on the first lap stopped the race and put Moreno out of it, and 16th at Estoril; at Spa and Estoril he finished ahead of his team-mate.

The European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, on 1 October, started on a wet track, and McLaren sent its cars out on slicks; in the opening laps they were passed by Pacifics and Fortis. Diniz said afterwards: “It was great to fight for position with the McLaren. It was the first time I’d been able to do that in F1.” On lap 18 Heinz-Harald Frentzen, coming up to lap him, went off into the gravel trying to get by. Diniz’s verdict was brief: “But he tried it at the wrong place.” He finished 13th.

At Suzuka he started 20th, a place higher than he had qualified because Aguri Suzuki had been injured, and after 32 laps he slid off on oil at the same place as Mark Blundell, Frentzen and Eddie Irvine.

Adelaide, 12 November 1995

The season ended at Adelaide, at the last Grand Prix on its streets. Moreno qualified 20th, inside 107 per cent of pole for the only time, and Diniz 21st, with both Pacifics behind them. It became a race of attrition: Damon Hill won it by 2 laps, and only eight cars were classified. Moreno spun off. Diniz kept going, and finished 7th, 4 laps down, ahead of Bertrand Gachot’s Pacific and one place outside the points. It was the best result Forti ever had.

Leaving Forti

By the end of October he had told Forti he would not be staying. The talk was of Ligier, and of US$8 million of sponsorship for any team that would sign him; by December grandprix.com put the sum at around US$10 million, and the Ligier deal was all but done. The British verdict on his year came on New Year’s Day:

Pedro Diniz made Lavaggi and Deletraz look like amateurs when it came to throwing money away. The Forti was a fearful pile of junk and not even Roberto Moreno could make it go quickly. Diniz has some talent, but it will be his money which wins him a Ligier seat in 1996.

Without his money, Forti began 1996 with Luca Badoer and Andrea Montermini, was taken over in a disputed deal with the Shannon group, lost its engine supply, and was gone after the German Grand Prix at the end of July.

On the morning of his first race he had given Folha a plan: qualify for every race in the first half of the year, finish races in the second, and score a point or two the year after. He started all 17. From July on he was classified in six of the 11 races, the last of them at Adelaide. The point or two came in 1996, with Ligier: a 6th place in Spain and another at Monza, 1 point each.