Former Formula 1 world champion Jody Scheckter has described the clandestine nature of his first meeting with Enzo Ferrari as something straight out of a mafia movie.
The anecdote, recounted in an interview with Motor Sport in the July issue, offers a rare insight into how Ferrari operated behind closed doors – and how the power games inside Ferrari‘s Maranello headquarters helped shape the grid for the 1979 season.
Scheckter, who had been courted by Ferrari since his Tyrrell days, recalls how “Mr Ferrari came knocking again” in early 1978 after a disappointing start to the season with Wolf.
“That first time, I drove from Monaco to meet a Ferrari guy in a café on an autostrada somewhere in Italy, then we went to Maranello together, and I met Mr Ferrari,” Scheckter told Motor Sport.
“It was like a mafia scene: an old man with white hair, in a suit, wearing dark glasses, in a dark office, with bodyguards all around.”
Enzo Ferrari’s first words to Scheckter were as direct as they were revealing.
Scheckter said: “His very first question was: ‘How much money do you want?’ I replied, ‘I’m too young to talk about money.’ We didn’t do a deal then. But they came after me again in 1978, as I say, and they were insistent this time.
Mauro Forghieri, Gilles Villeneuve, Marco Piccinini, Enzo Ferrari and Jody Scheckter
Getty Images
“So I asked for a big number – a good whack of money – and they went for it. Piero [Ferrari, Enzo’s son] said I was the highest-paid F1 driver in 1979, but actually I think Lauda was getting more at Brabham.”
Still one of the most high-profile transfers of that era, the eventual move to Ferrari came two years after a breakout 1977 season that included wins in Argentina, Monaco and Canada.
The signing created immediate friction with Carlos Reutemann, who didn’t welcome the news.
“My deal hadn’t been announced yet, but Reutemann got to hear about it,” Scheckter recalls. “I’d been told that I’d be the number-one driver for 1979, and he knew that, so I suggested we meet to discuss how we were going to work together in 1979.
“I was living in Monaco and he was living in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, which is a half-hour drive down the coast from Monaco, and he insisted we had to meet on neutral ground halfway between. Funny guy.”
Reutemann would eventually walk away from Ferrari to join Lotus, clearing the path for a legendary pairing with Gilles Villeneuve for 1979.
Scheckter and Villeneuve had a good relationship until the Canadian’s passing
Grand Prix Photo
“Gilles was quick, proper quick, so I thought, ‘I’ve got to raise my game.’ People thought he was a hooligan, but that was an act really,” Scheckter said.
“When we used to travel from Monaco to Maranello, he’d drive normally for most of the way, then a couple of miles from the factory he’d start wheelspinning and powersliding to impress the local tifosi. People said he was faster than I was in 1979, but he drove with no margin.”
Their title run in 1979 culminated at Monza, but Scheckter is keen to dispel the long-standing myth that Villeneuve was ordered to let him win.
“He didn’t let me win at Monza that year, either, which is another thing people often say,” he said. “We were running 1-2 near the end of the race, and Ferrari’s policy was that you don’t fight each other when you’re running in line astern like that, so I started short-shifting to save the engine, changing up at 10,000rpm instead of 12,000rpm.
“Just behind me, he knew what I was doing, so he did the same. Neither of us was driving at ten-tenths at that point, although I put the hammer down on the last lap just to make sure.
“But I needn’t have, because Gilles was good like that. He’d never have done the dirty on me, like Didier Pironi did the dirty on him at Imola three years later. Anyway, I won the race and the championship that day at Monza, and I felt relief rather than joy. I’d done what I’d set out to do.
“I stayed close to Gilles after I retired from F1 [at the end of 1980] and when Pironi didn’t obey those team orders at Imola in 1982, and he stole a win off him, and Ferrari didn’t back him, Gilles was absolutely broken. Two weeks later Gilles was dead. Incredibly sad.
“I’d retired already by then, and one of the reasons I did so was that, in my last season, 1980, Gilles was more competitive than I was. The Ferrari was crap, we were getting nowhere, and I thought, ‘I’ve won the championship already, so this just isn’t worth getting killed for.’ And also, for me, the magic of F1 had gone.”
