Elio de Angelis: money greased the wheels, but talent turned them

There followed a brief flirtation with Ferrari, starting with the test of a sports car intended for Le Mans (nothing came of it) and then an invitation to test an F1 car as a possible temporary replacement for an unwell Gilles Villeneuve (the Canadian quickly recovered). Elio was asked to sign some papers, although it seems not to have been a full-blooded commitment, as he told me a couple of years later. “The document I signed in Maranello wasn’t a full contract, although I was given the opportunity to test with Ferrari. I drove their F1 car on several occasions. Looking back, I think it was just a question of luck I didn’t race one of their cars. I came close in 1978: if Gilles had had one more accident, I would’ve been given his place in the team.

“I have to admit there cannot be many 19-year-old drivers who have quit Ferrari”

“In Italy, when a team is going through a bad period, there is a tendency to look at the driver before anything else. I realised that my position with Minardi was in danger, and I decided to leave. I spoke to my father about it first and he advised me, ‘You can’t do it, you have a contract,’ but I did. I knew I was taking a risk with my career, but I had to do it because I knew I’d be able to do well with an English team. So I drove one of the ICI F2 cars, and immediately I knew I’d done the right thing. But I have to admit there cannot be many 19-year-old drivers who have quit Ferrari. As I said, it was a matter of luck that it paid off. You’re always alone when you make the big decisions of life: now, fortunately, even my father agrees that what I did was right for me.”

By the end of ’78 the precociously talented Roman had come to the attention of several more F1 teams, including Brabham, with Shadow inviting him to test at Silverstone in September. The first team owner to get the de Angelis signature on a contract, however, was Ken Tyrrell, although he must have known that his new recruit had not done enough in F2 to be sure of obtaining the Superlicence necessary to race in F1. Eventually the CSAI (Italian sporting authority) intervened to ensure a Superlicence was issued, allowing an agreement to be reached with Shadow, supposedly just for the first half of the ’79 season.

Still not 21, Elio was firmly on the F1 radar, although the combination of inexperience and Shadow’s outdated equipment stood in the way of hard results. Eventually team owner Don Nichols took advantage of the fact that Elio was behind with his payments to push him into a long-term deal as a paid driver. The first eight races still had to be paid for, though, for which Elio had to borrow money from his father. He made sure that those close to him were aware he’d been punctilious about repaying it, which he was eventually able to do from his Lotus earnings.

The hurriedly concluded Shadow deal turned out to be legally inconvenient when Colin Chapman, in search of a replacement for Carlos Reutemann, organised a test at Ricard at the end of 1979 in which five young drivers — Elio, Nigel Mansell, Stephen South, Eddie Cheever and Jan Lammers — were invited to take part. Even though Elio was quickest on the day, Chapman favoured the two Brits. But he had recently done a big-money sponsorship deal with the American-born oil trader David Thieme — a self-publicising rascal with seemingly limitless resources — and Thieme liked the idea of employing the debonair de Angelis with his tanned good looks and sophisticated tastes. Chapman could hardly refuse, having already been dropped by long-term sponsor John Player and having rejected an extension of a deal with the Martini & Rossi liquor giant.

The sheer brilliance of Senna’s driving, coupled with the brutal ontrack tactics he brought with him from F3, made him the logical star of the team. But de Angelis was also picking up solid points (he’d finished third in Brazil), so when he won the San Marino GP two weeks after Estoril he moved into the championship lead. This second F1 victory, like the first, would not have happened if faster cars hadn’t been left by the roadside (out of fuel) or disqualified for being underweight, like race ‘winner’ Alain Prost’s McLaren. But then a solid third place at Monaco left Elio two points ahead in the table. If he felt this entitled him to preference over Senna, however, he was badly mistaken. As he told me later, he was made aware that he had outstayed his welcome — and he was able to pinpoint the day, even the hour, when the relationship ended.

The Jezebel, of course, was none other than Senna, and the venue was a Lotus test session at Ricard, two days after the Monaco race. “I was put on one side by Lotus,” he said. “Starting right then, all they could think about was Senna. There had been some criticisms of the way I had been driving, because I’d been more cautious than Ayrton. But when I got to the circuit they allowed me on the track just to do three laps. Imagine, on the day that I was leading the World Championship, I was left to trundle round like some new kid on the team.

“It was that night, when I left the circuit, that I made up my mind to leave Lotus. From that moment on, as far as I was concerned Lotus was a chapter in my career that had been completed. I didn’t want to be treated like that ever again.”

His sense of rejection was all the more acute because he felt that Senna, for all his undoubted ability and speed, had acted in a fashion that was less than responsible. “I knew from the start that it was going to be a difficult year. I knew he would be a difficult person. I admired his determination, and he is very determined — maybe too much. I felt he found it necessary to show off his ability: even with the success he had with Toleman the previous year, he was desperate to show he had something more. Like the Arabs say, ‘It is written’. There is something strong inside his mind: sometimes it is good for him, sometimes it is very bad. Ayrton became a protege to Peter, almost like a son, his own discovery. But he is very quick, I must say.”

There was a feeling at Lotus in 1985 — which Warr never evoked in so many words — that Elio had become something of a plodder, less motivated than he should have been in comparison with his brilliant young team-mate. Elio maintained that he, too, had once indulged in the sort of risks Senna was now taking, and that the time had come to concentrate on consistent points-scoring. “As far as motivation is concerned, I have much more now than when I started,” he insisted. “Now I know exactly what I want: I’m not doing this just for the pleasure of driving in F1. That pleasure is what my team-mate has been enjoying.”

The season did not finish happily. With the McLaren-TAG juggernaut picking up momentum, so Elio’s commitment to himself and his team proved increasingly fragile. As the year progressed, Senna hammered home a total of seven pole positions and scored a second win, in Belgium. Only once, in Canada, was Elio able to summon up the will to beat him, which he did with a resounding pole that left Senna powerless to respond.

In the race, though, the pole winner was fifth. As if to mark the passing of the baton, Senna, unhappy with the service he was getting from his crew, somehow managed to wangle the transfer of Stepney and two other mechanics from Elio’s car to his. At the end of the season, at Kyalami, the Lotus team-mates tangled in the race: “I was so angry,” said Elio, “that I almost came to blows with him in the pits afterwards.”

Although he had seriously considered retirement, Elio responded enthusiastically to the offer of a place at Brabham for 1986 and a chance to drive Murray’s ultra-low-profile BT55. Plagued by an almost horizontal driving position and shortcomings in the lubrication of its lie flat’ BMW engine, the car was a step too far. In his four outings as a Brabham driver, Elio never completed a race distance. His funeral was attended by hundreds, including none other than a tearful Senna.

“I wanted to have a life of my own, not simply [to be] the product of a certain family or a certain class”

So just how talented was de Angelis? Stepney pulls no punches: “Elio sometimes outperformed Senna which not many people could do, certainly not in qualifying, like the time Elio outqualified him in Canada. But in the race, as soon as tyre wear and other factors started to make things difficult, Senna would become stronger in the later stages, as his ability to manage the car came into effect. To maintain any advantage he had over Senna, Elio would be using his car to the maximum and destroying his tyres. Even so he did occasionally outshine Senna, which shows he had the ability, but he wasn’t able to demonstrate it on a consistent basis.”

Maudlin though it may seem now, Elio had elegantly justified his choice of career to an Italian journalist. “I was concerned with knowing who I was,” he declared. “I wanted to have a life of my own, not simply [to be] the product of a certain family or a certain class. You have to build your own life. When you’re young, there is no happy medium, there are two distinct sides: black and white. Never any grey. I thought the sport was like that, and I’d be able to express myself within it.”

So it would be. Motor racing has never been anything but a harsh discipline. Without it, though, the world would not have heard of the gentle and talented Elio de Angelis. Many of us still miss him.