Over the long history of Formula One, many teams have come and gone. Some good, some bad...
...some just outright stupendous. But only one team stands out above all others, for all the wrong reasons.
Although very brief, the story of a Andrea Moda Formula started way back in the early 1990s...
...at the hands of another team.
(Commentator) Bertrand Gachot, in the Subaru-Coloni. That car, with the...
...flat-12 engine and news that Subaru have sold the team back to the Italian entrepreneur Enzo Coloni
As usual the car circulated slowly...
...and at Silverstone, there was an oil mist following it.
The car sounded distinctly rough and rarely ran on anything more than nine or ten of the twelve cylinders.
OK, so that didn't go very well(!)
It's fair to say that the campaign of the Coloni team was not very successful
Having just qualified for only 14 out of the 82 Grand Prix that they attempted to qualify for
Eventually the team hit the anchors and was put up for sale
Enter at this point Italian shoe designer, Andrea Sassetti. Sassetti bought and a mountain of wealth from...
...well, nobody really knows where.
Some claim it was through inheritance, some through poker...
...others claimed that was through links with the Mafia and illegal dealings.
That said, it's not as if the sport has really been totally clean in it's entire history.
Yeah...
But anyway, Sassetti had bought the team rebranded it as his own and took his newly acquired franchise...
...to South Africa, for the first Grand Prix of the 1992 season
Except, it didn't really go to plan. Having arrived with the old Coloni chassis...
...(which as we know, wasn't very good), the team were excluded from the event due to not having paid the...
$100,000 deposit set for new teams that enter the championship.
Sassetti attempted to argue that the team was not new, as it was essentially the Coloni team.
Despite the fact that it was rebranded as 'Andrea Moda', with new cars (sort of) and...
...now had a new owner in Andrea Sassetti.
Leaving the only comedy act to come out of the weekend to be Giovanna Amati
Onwards to the next round in Mexico, where by now, hopefully the cars will be ready...
...after a three-week break since South Africa. Alas the cars weren't ready.
This didn't impress drivers Alex Caffi and Enrico Bertaggia, who chastised the team for being ill-prepared.
Sassetti, being a mercurial Italian, told them both to get lost and got himself some new drivers.
Roberto Moreno was known to be quite quick, but only had luck in finding himself in the worst cars in the grid.
To say that this was a new low is saying something.
The other driver was Perry McCarthy
not especially fast nor successful in junior formula, who would only gain recognition for his role as The Stig on BBC's Top Gear...
...and for his role in the shenanigans that the Andrea Moda team would afflict upon him in the later rounds
The next round in Brazil wasn't that great.
Moreno have failed to qualify which was bad in itself, but McCarthy went one step further by not being able to compete at all,
For you see, he didn't have the Super Licence, which is kind of critical to race at all.
He would eventually get a Super Licence at the next round in Spain.
McCarthy would eventually get some time in the car.
But not on track. As his car packed up the sulks...
...meters down the pitlane. Around about this time...
...Enrico Bertaggia had come back to Andrea Sassetti with a bill of goods and a load of money.
Andrea loved money, and therefore loved Bertaggia.
After getting back on his good side, Sassetti told McCarthy to buzz off...
...only for the FIA to tell them "Na, you can't do that, mate".
Of course, this made Andrea very angry.
He would begin to neglect McCarthy in the rounds to come. Which would ultimately lead to the team's downfall.
If there is one place you can qualify with the rubbish car, it's on the streets of Monaco.
Sure enough, Moreno managed to qualify his S921 into the Monaco Grand Prix.
Marking the first Grand Prix appearance for the Andrea Moda team.
Well, at least the first one where they actually raced anything.
McCarthy marginally missed out in pre-qualifying after posting a time of 17 minutes and 5 seconds.
Meanwhile, Moreno would start the Grand Prix, only to retire from it after the Judd V10 engine blew itself to pieces on lap 11.
Following this, a comedic series of errors would plague the team until its demise
For the next race in Canada for example, the team turned up minus that one important component for the car.
The engine(!).
They 'borrowed' an engine from Brabham, but they STILL failed to qualify the car.
By this stage, a heap of personnel had buggered off and the sponsors started retreating as well.
By this stage, the team qualified for only one Grand Prix, had multiple problems with the car...
...and were losing sponsors faster than when Israel Folau discovered Twitter.
But, for Andrea it was about to get worse.
The French, being French, stationed a blockade of trucks back in 1992 as a means of protest.
This meant that travel throughout France was a little bit difficult.
But the majority of the teams trucks arrived at the Circuit...
...let's just say 'Magny-Cours', no problem at all. Except for...
Yeah
What this essentially meant that Andrea Moda did not even achieve a 'Did Not Pre-Qualify'.
They instead got a 'Did Not Attempt'. At the British Grand Prix, Sassetti felt the need to josh...
...McCarthy by sending him out on a bone-dry track with (wet) tyres.
Whilst hilarious for Andrea, the FIA was starting to get a little bit pissed off.
The Hungarian Grand Prix was just as rubbish for the team, with both cars failing to qualify...
...with McCarthy being particularly hard done by when the team kept him in the garage before finally letting him out...
...when there was only 45 seconds left in the session.
Not even Ayrton Senna could have achieved that in his McLaren-Honda...
...much less Perry McCarthy in an Andrea Moda. By now, the FIA made it clear to the team...
"Run McCarthy's car properly...
...or you lot will be down at the dole office". Having decided to pay no attention to the FIA's demand...
...the team turned up to the Belgian Grand Prix where...
...once again, both cars failed to qualify.
Although, that would not be the worst thing to come out of this weekend. The gendarmes arrested...
...Mr. Sassetti in the paddock after was alleged that he had forged invoices. Now, imagine that!
Both cars being loaded onto a truck early, after having failed to qualify...
...whilst the team owner is being arrested for forging invoices(!)
Eventually, the FIA had had enough and...
...suspended the team for the remainder of the 1992 Formula One season.
They showed up to the gates at Monza, only to be told to take their kit and bugger off.
The official reasoning behind the suspension was...
"(failure to operate a) team in a manner compatible with the standards of the championship or in any way brings the championship into disrepute".
And with that, the Andrea Moda Formula team had bitten the dust.
Having not fared to well in Formula One, they can at least be remembered for a reason.
Although, I'm not sure they would have wanted to be remembered as the worst Formula One team in history.
