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.
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