With Tambay having already used his second set of the super sticky qualifying tyres, Ferrari’s hopes now lay with their super sub. But the excitement levels were soon dimmed when Nelson Piquet then went quicker still in his BMW-powered Brabham. In what proved to be an intense final session, Tambay set the pace, sending the assembled masses into raptures. Saturday, however, was an altogether different story. Hopes for Monza began to rise – as did ticket sales for the event…Īndretti’s only previous outing for Ferrari on home soil in 1972 had yielded seventh, both on the grid and in the race, but the so-called Americano was destined to do much, much better for the Scuderia this time around.įriday’s first qualifying session saw Andretti place sixth, the veteran bemoaning the fact that he’d allowed himself to be blocked on several occasions.

“I really need to feel that the car and I are talking to each other before I can really give it a go.”Ī test was hastily arranged at Fiorano in order to allow Andretti to get to grips with Ferrari’s punchy 126C2, and much to the delight of all involved the chemistry between car and driver was almost instant, resulting in a new lap record at the test track. “And that was why, if I was going to take up Ferrari’s offer I wanted to come over here in good time, do plenty of testing, get to know the car, which wasn’t really possible with Frank because there was so little time. “I was never really happy with myself that weekend at Long Beach,” he’d explain.

Worse still, his indifferent showing at Long Beach had led some to question whether, at 42, he still had what it took to compete at the highest level. There was just one problem: Andretti had never driven a turbo-powered F1 car before. The fact that he was born and raised in Italy was simply a bonus – both to the mechanics he’d work with and to the Scuderia’s adoring Tifosi. The American fit the bill on many levels: not only was he a world champion with a proven track record (including victory at Monza in 1977), he was also familiar with the team’s unique character having raced for them in the early Seventies. In short, Ferrari’s prospects for their home race – and for their ongoing constructors’ championship challenge – looked bleak.

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