Scheckter joined as Ferrari took the fight to the new ground-effect cars with the 312 T4, but says that he wasn’t overawed by its designer’s reputation. “Mauro Forghieri was the person who made everything happen at Ferrari in 1979 and 1980, and if I wanted anything done I went to Forghieri,” said Scheckter, following news of the engineer’s death.
“He spoke good English, he was always there for me. When I left Wolf and went to Ferrari everyone told me I wouldn’t get on with the management but I had a fantastic time at Ferrari, Gilles [Villeneuve] and I had a lot of fun in spite of all the pressure.
“I saw Forghieri as the person who got things done, not so much as the engineer who’d designed so many cars before I ever went to Ferrari. As a driver you didn’t always know what was going on behind the scenes but I know he oversaw everything on the cars and the engines. He was the technical person, very much so, a man with a lot of experience way before I was there. I had a good relationship with him, he was the man I went to.”
Scheckter in discussion with Forghieri in 1979
Hoch Zwei/Getty Images
Forghieri previously told Motor Sport how he saw the team as a family that was dedicated to racing, and which won and lost together. “We were truly a family,” he said in 2019. “Our life was our work, total commitment… for little pay. We were not just colleagues… we were brothers. There were a few days when our work succeeded and results made Ferrari very happy. There were days when he was not.”
After Scheckter’s championship win over team-mate Gilles Villeneuve, Forghieri went on to design Ferrari’s first turbocharged engine, which went on to win the 1982 and 1983 constructors’ championships.
“There’s no question,” said Scheckter. “If you look at what Forghieri achieved, some of his projects were brilliant and he was absolutely a huge part of the Ferrari story.”