Remembering a lost Italian F1 hero 40 years on

Back in 1979, there was only one way to watch Formula 1 qualifying. In the absence of computerised timing and television pictures in the media centre, it was essential to stand trackside. You may have had no idea about the top 10 order, but you got the full sense of what the drivers were doing, regardless of their team’s place in the pecking order.

At Hockenheim, I chose the outside of the corner leading into the stadium. Drivers were flat-out on the long straight before dropping down a gear and getting on the power as early as they dared for the fast right-hander. The favourite, Williams, looked quick, the super-efficient ground effect of the FW07 making up the advantage lost to the turbo Renaults on the straight.

Suddenly, in the middle of this snarling throng, one car stood out.

A Shadow was being urged into a superb power slide, the angle of the black car being at spectacular variance to those around it, this being the only way to wring lap time from a car yet to finish inside the top six and score points. It was quick and graceful. A perfect summary of the driver himself.

Elio de Angelis may not have had the best car for his debut season in F1, but that did not blunt his style, both inside and outside the cockpit.

Having started in karting, de Angelis had stepped up to F3 and finished second at Monaco in 1977. When a move to F2 was hamstrung by the glorious but gutless Ferrari V6 engine in his Minardi, de Angelis gambled on a return to F3 at Monaco with a year-old Chevron. A win from sixth on the grid took on a controversial edge after Elio made quite brutal contact with another car when snatching the lead. But he had done enough to catch the eye of F1 team owners, including Don Nichols, the boss at Shadow. It would be a pay drive, funded by de Angelis’s father, Giulio.

Elio was the eldest of four children born into a wealthy family from Rome. Having made his money from building contracts, Giulio raced powerboats with some success and owned a Ferrari. By bank-rolling his eldest, de Angelis was not only living vicariously through his son but also propagating the view that Elio was no more than a handsome dilettante with a modicum of talent.

A wet race at Watkins Glen later in 1979 would allow de Angelis to display his sublime car control as he finished fourth in the United States Grand Prix; an appropriate adjunct to a natural charm and modesty that had banished any thought of the 21-year-old being a spoiled brat. Keen to be a part of this small team, it was not uncommon for Elio to use an old stove and supply Italian ingredients when rustling up lunch for everyone at the Shadow factory in Northampton.

De Angelis caught the eye for Shadow before winning a five-driver shootout for a place at Lotus

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

Being fastest in a five-driver test at Paul Ricard was enough to earn a place as team-mate to Mario Andretti at Lotus in 1980 – just as the former champions went into serious decline.

When Andretti left at the end of a desultory season, the American was replaced by Nigel Mansell, a meat-and-two-veg (with plenty of ketchup) racer compared to the Roman gastronome in the other Lotus. An initial disconnect between the two soon grew into a genuine warmth, Nigel regarding Elio as one of his best friends in the paddock.

While Mansell gradually became a tenacious fighter with occasional spectacular performances, de Angelis emerged as the more consistent and successful of the two.

Appreciation of Elio’s qualities as a human being would become widespread at the start of the 1982 season when the F1 drivers, unhappy with a clause in a recently introduced superlicence, locked themselves in the function room of a Johannesburg hotel. As the standoff continued into the night, Elio soothed nerves, particularly among novice drivers anxious about their future, by using his talent as a gifted pianist to play classical music on a grand piano.

"I got him on BBC’s Question of Sport. We had dinner with [the host] David Coleman and the BBC guys absolutely loved Elio because of his charm. He was so natural" Tony Jardine

De Angelis used his flair as a driver to lift the Lotus team later that year. It was a pivotal season as turbo power gradually usurped the normally aspirated Ford Cosworth DFVs used by many teams, including Lotus.

Turbo reliability continued to be a problem, particularly in the Austrian GP as the Ferraris, Brabham-BMWs and Renaults fell by the Osterreichring’s picturesque wayside. De Angelis, finding himself in the lead, was being caught rapidly by Keke Rosberg, the Williams and the Lotus crossing the line with de Angelis 0.05 seconds ahead. The first victory for Lotus in four years would encourage John Player to retain much-needed sponsorship.

“I had a special relationship with Elio,” recalls Tony Jardine, who looked after the tobacco company’s PR interests at JPS Team Lotus. “He was from a very aristocratic background. He was a linguist, a concert pianist – and he had this absolutely wicked sense of humour. We loved him for that. He was a totally charming man. I remember a pre-British GP dinner for hundreds of JPS people, including the chairman. Elio got up and told a couple of stories in perfect English. He brought the house down.

As well as a growing talent, de Angelis was a sponsor's dream too

Photo by: Motorsport Images

“Elio was a football fanatic – Roma was his team. I got him on BBC’s Question of Sport. We had dinner with [the host] David Coleman and the BBC guys absolutely loved Elio because of his charm. He was so natural. I asked if the BBC could help us get Elio and I tickets for a match. They got us into the Directors’ Box for Everton vs Ipswich. It was a brilliant game; Elio was completely at home – but only after we got inside. He went very quiet as we parked on a bomb site carpark and joined the rowdy mob shuffling down a side street towards the gate at Goodison!

“Elio and his girlfriend Ute, a German model, came down to watch me play rugby at Camberley,” continues Jardine. “They were pushing our four-month-old daughter around in a pushchair. It was in incredible scene inside the club house. You had all these rugby types and this Grand Prix driver in the middle of them, buying beers and joining in. He was just a man of the people. They adored him.”

Tough times would come for de Angelis in 1985 when Mansell was replaced by Ayrton Senna as the burgeoning Brazilian star began his second season of F1.

Senna’s sometimes brutal determination soon began to make its mark on his team-mate. When de Angelis took his second GP victory at Imola (largely at the expense of others running into trouble) and finished third at Monaco, he found himself at the top of the championship. But such a position of potential influence was undermined at a test session a few days later when de Angelis, in his view, was treated as a number two as Lotus lavished their attention on Senna.

After being limited to just three measly laps, de Angelis was determined to leave. Elio was the first to accept Senna’s utter brilliance at the wheel. He was less certain about the Brazilian’s ruthless self-interest when outside the car.

“Elio absolutely knew Senna was on a different level,” recalls Jardine. “I remember de Angelis’s old man going up to Senna's dad – probably after Ayrton’s first win in the rain in Portugal – and saying ‘Complimenti! Complimenti!’ and shaking his hand warmly. Elio quietly recognised there were times when he couldn’t find that final tenth compared to Ayrton. It didn’t freak him out. But he just wanted a fair crack of the whip.”

After briefly considering retirement at the end of 1985, de Angelis happily accepted a seat with Brabham; a seat that, in fact, was almost horizontal. Gordon Murray’s low-line BT55, with its long wheelbase and canted engine, would be plagued by lubrication problems with the four-cylinder BMW. De Angelis failed to finish the first four races.

Unreliability stalled de Angelis on his start at Brabham

Photo by: Motorsport Images

In a bid to sort the ongoing problems, Brabham held a test session at Paul Ricard.

The French circuit featured ‘S de la Verrière’, a daunting left-right sweep after the pits. It was here that the Brabham’s rear wing broke, sending the BT55 up and over the right-hand barrier before landing upside down.

The chassis withstood the impact, de Angelis’s injuries limited to a broken collarbone. But he was trapped in the cockpit as the car caught fire. Alan Jones, who had just left the pits in his Lola, was first on the scene.

"The bloody thing was upside down, with his arm hanging out. I couldn't do anything. There was no one there. I couldn't lift the car. It was absolutely terrible" Alan Jones

“I saw bits of fibreglass all over the place and a plume of smoke coming from the other side of the Armco,” said Jones. “I jumped out of the car and ran over. The bloody thing was upside down, with his arm hanging out. I couldn't do anything. There was no one there. I couldn't lift the car. It was absolutely terrible.”

In the absence of official communication but seeing the smoke, a number of F1 personnel drove from the pits, among them Tyler Alexander, McLaren’s seasoned crew chief. Appalled by what happened (or didn’t happen), Alexander took the rare step of later writing to Bernie Ecclestone, the de facto head of F1 and also owner of Brabham. In his letter, Alexander noted the complete lack of official communication; a fire marshal dressed in T-shirt and shorts with hopelessly inadequate equipment; the rescuers having to finally use a team’s tow strap to turn the car over. The scenario was made worse when, as a fire engine finally arrived, the hose blew off the machine. Twice.

Robin Day, a seasoned mechanic, had joined Brabham. This was his first day with the team.

“We saw the smoke and shot straight down there,” says Day. “Some other guys turned up and we eventually got Elio out of the car. He had stopped breathing. So we started giving the kiss of life. I did the lips and Darryl [Kincade, a Brabham mechanic] was doing the heart. We got him going again. About 10 minutes later, medical help arrived. It was a f*** up of Factor 50.”

A dark day at Paul Ricard led to the loss of the charismatic Italian

Photo by: Motorsport Images

The following day, Elio died in a Marseilles hospital from inhalation of smoke and fire extinguisher powder.

“It was probably one of the worst days of my life,” says Jardine. “I was hosting a launch in Lowestoft when the guy from PA [Press Association] gave me the news. I was in bits when they did Elio’s obit on BBC News.”

“Obviously, I’d only just met Elio,” says Day. “But it was immediately obvious how well-liked he was. It was a small team and everyone was very close. It had a truly devastating effect on guys like Gordon and Harvey [Spencer].”

“I worked on Elio’s car,” says Spencer. “We knew him before he came to Brabham. He would come over for a chat – in those days, that’s what happened in F1. It might not have been a long conversation but it was the fact that he had no airs or graces.

“One night, we went out for dinner in Bologna and he taught me about beef carpaccio which, being a typical Aussie, I’d never had! He went into great detail about how important it was to have really good beef and the best olive oil. It was absolutely gorgeous – and he seemed so chuffed that I liked it. Although he was only with us for a short time, everybody on the team loved him to bits. We were destroyed by what happened at Ricard.”

Ten days later, Mansell stood on the top step of the podium at Spa. It was the Williams driver’s first win of the season, but you wouldn’t have known it, judging by his glum expression. Nigel dedicated victory in the Belgian GP to his friend and former team-mate.

The genuine bond between the curmudgeonly Englishman and the aristocratic Italian may have been surprising, but Nigel’s profound sadness that day reflected a deep sense of loss felt across the motorsport spectrum – and far beyond.

Mansell dedicated his first F1 win after de Angelis's death to the Italian

Photo by: Motorsport Images

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