The shocking act 'F1's worst team' committed against its own driver

The early 1990s were an interesting time in Formula 1. Whilst most of the attention was on Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost using each other as ramming devices and Nigel Mansell retiring before being enticed back by Williams, there was also a flurry of minnow teams hoping to strike gold. 

Whilst the likes of Jordan and Sauber would stay the course, plenty would not, including one Italian team, which today would be rejected by the FIA before you could say: 'Expression of Interest process is opening.' The team is Andrea Moda.

Emerging from what was left of the Coloni team, Italian businessman Andrea Sassetti brought a chassis which had actually been designed for an aborted BMW project in 1990, and with a Judd V10 planted in the back, and shipped everything off to South Africa for the season-opener. 

This is where the comedy of errors began. 

Andrea Moda was not permitted to run as it had not paid the $100,000 deposit for new teams, despite Sassetti's claims he had simply re-badged Coloni. It fell on deaf ears, and the team was barred from the weekend.

By the second race in Brazil, a new driver line-up had been formed with the experienced Roberto Moreno paired with Briton Perry McCarthy, a driver who had taken more than a few risks simply to get a chance in F1.

After not being awarded a super-licence, he was finally granted permission to take part in round four in Spain.

It would be the start of quite a journey, one which ended in farcical scenes.

Making it to F1

"The drive came about because I'd been on the scene for quite a long time, and I'd been knocking on the door of F1 for a good few years," McCarthy tells RacingNews365. 

"Often, it was a situation of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and teams were saying: 'Perry, we want you in F1, but you've got to bring some money, and clearly, I didn't have access to that.

"I felt a bunch of people knew I could do the job, but it was a question of identifying the opportunity and keeping the eyes and ears open for anything which may be on hand."

And it seemed that money would spell the end of McCarthy's young F1 career even before it had started. 

Enrico Bertaggia was one of the original drivers of the team who had made way for McCarthy and Moreno, but just before Monaco, he reapproached the team with $1 million in sponsorship funding. Sassetti's mind was clear that he would be in, and McCarthy, out. 

However, the FIA stepped in, and as the team had already used four drivers in the season, a further change was prohibited, meaning the team lost out on the funding, and Sassetti made his displeasure known by switching full focus to Moreno's car, effectively leaving McCarthy to rot. 

In Monaco pre-qualifying, McCarthy (below, centre) had one flying lap, and with it, set a 17:05.924, such was the sub-standard nature of his equipment. To this day, it remains F1's slowest-ever lap.

"I probably could have walked Monaco in 17 minutes," he recalls. 

"It was probably one of my most frightening laps ever to be quite frank, because I was still trying to qualify on a circuit I'd never driven, and the seat didn't fit. 

"There was no windshield, the steering rack was flexing, and even an Andrea Moda is incredibly fast on acceleration, and I was barreling up to these corners, thinking: 'I don't know what I'm doing. The situation I was put in was nothing short of stupid, as was I, trying to qualify the bloody thing.

"But you don't go through everything [I did to reach F1], and then walk away, it was ingrained in me to stay and make my mark, but it didn't matter what I did. I was starting to make Mickey Mouse look like a good option."

The article continues below. 

The nadir

After trudging around Europe, with a 'Did not Arrive' in France, things came to a head in qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix, where the team knowingly and willingly placed McCarthy in serious danger.

"I made the decision to leave at Spa and there was a particular reason for that," he says.

"Before, it had been ineptitude and a lack of experience and money, but at Spa, they actually fitted a faulty steering rack.

"I knew Spa, and was determined on getting this car onto the grid, and decided to forego the warm-up lap, but as I was going into Eau Rouge, the steering column tightened up, and I immediately realised something was wrong and jumped on the brakes, but was able to only take out a tiny bit of speed.

"I was just able to avoid piling headfirst into the wall, and when I got back to the pits, I explained the steering rack is flexing and they went: 'We know.'

"I said:'What do you mean, 'you know?' 

"'Well, we tested it on Roberto's car last week'.

"So you tested it on Roberto's car and put it on my car?' and they just went 'Yeah' as if there was nothing to it - and I'd had a bunch of close calls, that goes with the territory, but this was a step too far. It was mental. 

"I was speaking with the journalist Tony Dodgins before qualifying, and he was begging me not to get in the car: 'Perry, I've just got this worst, terrible feeling, please don't get in the car.'

"I said: 'Look, I've got no choice, I may be able to get it on the grid,' but he said: 'No, something is badly wrong, I've had a horrible premonition, which didn't fully come to potential, but it wasn't far off."

The article continues below.

So, why do it?

Fortunately for McCarthy and F1, Andrea Moda was promptly kicked out of the championship after Sassetti was arrested in the paddock at Spa. 

And for McCarthy, who would later find fame as the original tame racing driver on Top Gear, it spelt the end of his F1 career, unable to find the budget to piece together a deal elsewhere.

"When you're shot blasting, welding and scaffolding on an oil rig for 15-18 hours a day, seven days a week for months on end, you've got to be quite driven to get there," he says.

"There were a number of times with Tyrrell, but Jean Alesi managed to get the seat; there was Leyton House, but they desperately needed some kind of backing; it would have been fantastic at Footwork as well."

So why did he decide to join a team as ill-prepared and ramshackle as Andrea Moda? The answer is quite simple.

"I was approaching 30 years old, and the chance came to go to Formula 1, and you think all your Christmases have come at once," he recalls.

"There's validation for everything you've put your family, yourself through, but clearly I joined a circus that had never seen anything like it..."