Thanks to the fact that the grid was on a curve, there was a little confusion when the field lined up. Starter Derek Ongaro decided to abort, but Andrea was one of several drivers who misinterpreted his signal and took off, slicing between Tambay and Prost to take the lead.
“When I managed to get into the lead I was very disappointed when they stopped the race. I realised after only three corners, when I saw the red flags, but still I was really disappointed. It’s not something that you can do every time from the second row, especially at Spa, where the straight you start on is very narrow. I thought, ‘This is not going to happen again!’ ! was upset. Why do these things happen to me? I always had problems, and now I was leading a race — and they had stopped it. I felt like I would never get it.”
However, at the second attempt, he again barged into the lead.
“It looked like I did the same start, but it wasn’t. I remember when I watched on TV, one time I went to one side of Prost, and the next time I went to his other side. But both times it was a good start — the kind of start that you rarely do in the whole of your career.
“I was very happy and, after a few laps, I realised that I really deserved to be leading the race, because Alain couldn’t keep with my pace; I was pulling out one or two tenths over him on each lap. So when I came in for the tyre change I was feeling really confident that maybe this was my time.”
Second try, same result: De Cesaris leads
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Andrea pitted on the 19th of 40 scheduled laps, by which stage he was holding a 7sec lead over Prost. Alas his Euroracing mechanics fumbled the stop, and over 10sec were wasted before the left-rear was secure and he could blast out of the pitlane.
The first of the front runners to pit, he had fallen down to sixth, but as Keke Rosberg (Williams), Eddie Cheever (Renault), Tambay and Nelson Piquet (Brabham) came in, he climbed back up to second. Only one man emerged from his pitstop still ahead of the Alfa: Prost.
For a while it seemed that Andrea might be able to catch the leading Renault, but he was soon back in the pits. The turbo V8 had failed. He was out of the race.
“I had a problem a few laps after the pitstop — the engine started to sound not quite right. I was a bit angry, but when a driver knows he has done his job properly, he doesn’t feel so unhappy. It’s one thing when you lose points when you’re fighting for the championship; then you feel depressed. But I had got used to the problems that the car had; if I’d got depressed each time it had stopped, I would have never gone back to the track!
“In those days I thought, ‘When you do your job properly, you’re quick, you’re making no mistakes and are performing well, all the rest is up to the team.’ Spa was the first race after the team had sacked Gerard Ducarouge, the chief designer of the car. We’d lost a guy that I was very confident in. That’s what was worrying me as I left Spa, more than the result itself.”
“It does piss me off…”
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De Cesaris would score a couple of second places later that year, but never again would he come so close to a victory. However, there would be one more tantalising chance — also at Spa — in 1991.
On that occasion Andrea was catching the leading, but crippled McLaren-Honda of Ayrton Senna (its gearbox was playing up) when his Jordan‘s engine failed on lap 42 of 44. Cosworth had forgotten to inform the first-year team that it required an extra two litres of oil.
Instead, that race is recalled for the short debut of Andrea’s temporary team-mate…
“Michael Schumacher beat me in qualifying, but I think I would have been as quick as him in the race if he hadn’t stopped [Schumacher had fried his clutch at the start and retired on the first lap]. That would have been a good memory.”