Forgotten F1 Teams - Forti
- Length: 4:09
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- File: forgotten3.mp3
- Transcript: forgotten3.pdf
- Torrent: forgotten3.torrent
Welcome to Forgotten F1 Teams, a miniseries from Sidepodcast focusing on those teams that didn’t make headlines, at least not for reasons they would have hoped for. We’ve looked at Simtek and Pacific, and now it’s time for Forti.
If you heard yesterday’s show about Pacific, you’ll know that when they re-entered in 1995, they were guaranteed a place on the grid. That’s because two teams had dropped and there was only one new team on their way in - that was Forti.
The team was created by Guido Forti at the tail end of the 1970s, and had run in Formula Ford, South American F3, then successfully in the Italian F3 series - taking three consecutive championships. By the early 1990s, the team had moved on to F3000 and were taking wins and aiming for the title. In 1993, two new drivers appeared in the Forti car, Olivier Beretta and Brazilian Pedro Diniz. The latter brought plenty of money with him, and a connection with Carlo Gancia, who was the driving force to the team’s entry to Formula 1. With Diniz money, plus plenty of Brazilian sponsors on board, the team entered the sport in 1995 with a pretty good starting budget.
The team sourced designers and engineers from many different teams, including Fondmetal, Osella and Brabham. Forti got use of the Aerotek wind-tunnel in South Africa, although it appeared that the FG01-95 was just a reworking of a previous Fondmetal design. They were slightly behind the times as well, boasting the only manual gearbox on the grid, and starting life without an airbox. It wasn’t unusual to see the team qualifying about 10 seconds off the pace, and finishing races sometimes 7 laps down. The car seemed to have good reliability, but being at the lower end of the grid made crashes almost inevitable. Both drivers finished just over half the race distance available in 1995.
In 1996, Diniz decided to move to the slightly more successful Ligier team. Moreno also left, so the team now comprised of Luca Badoer, and Andrea Montermini. The problem was, of course, that Diniz also took his money with him, and so Forti had to use their old cars for the new season. The new qualifying rules meant drivers had to be within 107% of the pole time, and this made things slightly more difficult for Forti. Only one car qualified in Australia, but the next few races saw both -drivers make it to the back of the grid. In Argentina, Badoer had an incident with his predecessor Diniz, where the Ligier flipped the Forti upside down. Badoer was fine, but it was just another notch on the DNF tally.
A new car was in the works, just the one, and when it was introduced, Badoer found himself almost 4 seconds faster than his team mate in the old chassis. The first result in the new car saw Badoer finish 10th. That was quite a result. When both drivers were given the new car at Monaco, they both qualified for the race. Unfortunately, Montermi didn’t make it out of the tunnel in one piece, following a wet practice session, and Badoer scored himself a ban for bashing into Villeneuve.
Whilst the drivers had better equipment, and now just had to control themselves, there was some corporate work happening behind the scenes. A group called the Shannon organisation were interested in taking over Forti, as they were already running well in F3 and F3000. It all gets a little bit political, as the boss of Belco Avia announced the deal. They had done some work on the car, and rumours were that they were owed money by Forti. Shannon were reported to now own 51% of the team, but according to Forti, he had not seen any money, and so this was simply not true.
Out on track, the team were still struggling to qualify, and when they did, they barely made the finish line. In France, both cars got onto the grid, but had to be withdrawn because their engines had reached the end of their useful life. Money was owed to Cosworth, it appeared, and without Shannon coughing up, things were going downhill rapidly. Forti took the problem to the courts, trying to regain control of his ailing team from Shannon, but unfortunately things went Shannon’s way. The announcement was made in September, and Shannon folded soon afterwards, meaning the end of the team.
That’s all for Forgotten F1 Teams today. Leave your thoughts about what we’ve discussed at Sidepodcast.com or via the Voicemail, 0121 28 87225. I will be back tomorrow to discuss another F1 team.
Theme music: Bloc Party, I Still Remember.
August 9th, 2008 at 10:05 pmJordan Allen said:
Well, “Christine’s House of F1 Horrors” have dug up their first zombie in the form of Forti…..Do not say I did not warn you….
Wait a minute, I am sure a traditional pre-1970’s movie Zombie would still be faster than a Forti. Walk away slowly people, we should have a week while that Forti-Zombie moves ten feet….
And that sums up Forti pretty well….
Now that I have finally gotten my head around what this series is all about I look for to tomorrow’s mobile chicane, cruifix and stake at the ready.
August 9th, 2008 at 10:10 pmScott Woodwiss said:
Nice pronunciation of Ligier
Great job as always
August 9th, 2008 at 10:29 pmme said:
we’re not even halfway through the series yet?
August 9th, 2008 at 11:09 pmSteven Roy said:
This is an interesting idea for a series. I ti easy to always cover the great and the good but it is important to remember the desperate and the hopeless too. While Jordan is talking about Life who decided a W12 was a good idea I am looking forward to Andrea Moda.
It looks like your day to have your pronunciation picked on. Guido should be pronounced Gweedo.
August 9th, 2008 at 11:18 pmR.G (Formally known as Gaulty) said:
The F1 equivelent to Eastenders
August 9th, 2008 at 11:40 pmJordan Allen said:
But that is my point Steven. Everyone covers the great as teams to aspire to, and the rotten corpses as gruesome tales of what to avoid, but what about the decent teams that could win races and the championship on occasion?
Teams like Vanwall that turned the term “Britsh Motorsport” from a joke in very poor taste to a force to be reckoned with; back in the days when an awesome car was either a Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Lancia Mercedes, Auto Union, something a bunch of American hillbilles threw together for the Indy 500, an orange crate on wheels and finally the Australian Cooper.
Who has heard of Penske F1? Wolf F1? BRM? Even Cooper? I admit I will have to check on this next one but how about Shadow? These are all F1 teams that where able to get out of the basement, grab at the least a lot of points to what end? They are completly forgotten.
August 9th, 2008 at 11:41 pmJordan Allen said:
Get garlic, Quick!
August 9th, 2008 at 11:45 pmme said:
the title of the series is forgotten, and we can only do one team a day.
we’ll keep a list of everyone you’ve mentioned these past few days though, and there’s always series 2, 3, 4 etc.
personally i’m learning a lot, so there’s no reason to think we can’t cover the great, the good, the bad and the sad eventually.
August 10th, 2008 at 12:47 amAlianora La Canta said:
I remember Forti quite well. My first taste of fantasy F1 was in 1996 when Grand Prix 1996 had a competition. While my dad entered it properly, I simulated playing it using a pen and paper. You had £30m to spend on two drivers and two cars (the cars had to be from different teams, and the best-performing in any given race counted). If you spent more, you got a penalty. After spending too much money on my drivers (£15m on Hill and £8m on Herbert), I ended up spending £7m on Sauber and… …£1m on Forti.
Now, this game had not only qualifier and race finisher points for the top six drivers, but also improver points (you scored 10 points for each place a driver improved over their qualifying position). Despite the bumpy start, the Forti team ended up scoring more points than anything else on my fantasy team except Damon Hill by Monaco. Hopes of beating my dad (who’d gone for Hill/Schumacher/Williams/Ferrari and taken a massive pre-season penalty) faded as Forti went under and Sauber (and Herbert within it) went nowhere.
August 11th, 2008 at 3:59 pmLynch said:
*BAD JOKE ALERT*
Where did Forti get their name from?
… Its because they were always Forti laps behind the field!!!!
I am here all week!
August 11th, 2008 at 4:28 pmR.G (Formally known as Gaulty) said:
Oh dear, oh dear. That was awful, but accurate
August 11th, 2008 at 4:31 pmChristine said:
Taxi for Lynch!
August 11th, 2008 at 4:54 pmJordan Allen said:
See, Forti are not forgotten, they just become the source of bad jokes, starting from their conception.
Forti. Bad Joke for a Bad team equals Bad joke of a team.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:00 pmR.G (Formally known as Gaulty) said:
Why are there so many soccer am puns going about when its an f1 blog?
August 11th, 2008 at 5:09 pmme said:
what’s soccer am?
August 11th, 2008 at 6:14 pmR.G (Formally known as Gaulty) said:
Its a popular British football show on SS1
August 11th, 2008 at 6:50 pmLynch said:
Its not something that was made up by Soccer AM (That show ruled when Lovejoy was presenting it!) but I think it is just a general saying!
August 11th, 2008 at 10:18 pmme said:
i’ve never heard of it, and we don’t have sky, so i’m in agreement there.
i didn’t think it was called soccer in europe anyhow?
August 11th, 2008 at 10:24 pmR.G (Experiencing Technical Difficulties) said:
I think they thought it was better than football am
But they made it bigger though.
August 11th, 2008 at 10:33 pmme said:
well, now you say it, i see what you mean.
btw… the lovejoy?
August 11th, 2008 at 10:35 pmR.G (Experiencing Technical Difficulties) said:
I hope you reading the spam box, tim lovejoy, presenter till last year, now presents Sunday brunch cooking/chat/gadget/drink/tv show
August 11th, 2008 at 10:37 pmme said:
oh right. thought you meant the man with the antiques.