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The unofficiall Andrea de Cesaris page
Andrea de Cesaris- Fact File
Andrea de Cesaris was born on the 31-th May 1959 in Rome.Andrea's rise from karts to Formula 1 was extremely fast, perhaps too fast. He started racing karts, winning a number of National and International Championships before graduating to single seaters in 1977.In his first three Super Ford races he won two and was second in third race. With the backing of Marlboro Andrea competed in the British Formula 3 Championship in 1978 and 1979.Almost immediately he proved to be front-runner, although it took him a year to score his first victory. During 1979 Andrea won six races in F3 series, showing himself to be one of the quickest drivers of his day, top finish second in the Championship behind Serra.Moving onto F2 in 1980 Andrea won at Misano and was quickly offered an Alfa Romeo F1 drive at the end of the season. Making his debut in the Canadian GP, he ran 7th before retirement, having qualifying very well. Andrea good showing in the US GP prompted McLaren to sign him to partner Prost for 1981. Internal power struggles within the McLaren team, the defection of Prost to Renault and signing of Watson as his team mate and struggling with an outdated car Andrea didn't have the best entry into his first F1 season. Obviously trying to impress he gained an undeserved reputation of being a "crasheris", but a lot f his crashes in '81 season were result of errors by more established drivers. Anyway his confidence quite naturally waned and he gradually slipped down the grid in qualifying. His best result was 6th place in San Marino.
The Alfa Romeo cars of 1982 and 1983 were the best cars Andrea drove until to Jordan, as his result showed. Alfa Romeo, one of the oldest marques in motoracing, was not prepared or able to inject money into development the engine at this turbo era of F1. During this period unless a driver had a turbo behind him he may as well not gone racing. Ferrari, BMW and Renault were injecting mega money, but despite this Andrea as was his want gave it 100% effort. The Monaco GP in 1982 was heart breaking for Andrea. Patrese was leading with Pironi second and Andrea third with only two laps to go. Patrese spun and stalled on the wet track, Pironi went into the lead, but suddenly he stopped in tunnel, out of fuel. Andrea was leading and with less than lap to go for his first GP win, he himself ran out of fuel. In the meantime Patrese had bumped started his car down a slope and won. Andrea was classified third which was his best result, beside pole position in US-West GP. The following season he took two second places, but mechanical failures accounted for numerous retirements, in particular at the Belgian GP, where Andrea was forced out of a commanding position at the head of the field. On this occasion, he qualified third, behind Prost and Tambay, but at the start he muscled his way outrageously between the two to lead into La Source. A first lap accident necessitated a red flag, but at the restart Andrea pulled exactly the same move again, stunning the established cars. Luck was once more fated to play a crucial part in the outcome of the race, and de Cesaris retired with electrical failure shortly after a lengthy pit stop cost him a lead. Andrea finished eight in the 1983 World Championship with two second places in German and South African GP and fourth place in European GP.
At the end of the 1983 season Andrea wanted to stay with Alfa Romeo for a third year, but contractual problems with Euroracing Alfa Romeo tem boss Pavanello and team sponsor Benetton decided to leave. In November 1983 Andrea was signed as No1 driver for Ligier-Renault team. The signing of de Cesaris, member of the Marlboro Team, caused a lot comment at the time due the fact that Ligier's main sponsor was the giant French tobacco company, Gitanes, although Gitanes logo didn't appear on the car. Despite Guy Ligiers contacts with the French Government, vast resources, it has not produced a race winning car since the early 80' and the JS23 was heavy and unreliable, a couple of points for 5th in South Africa and being promoted up to 6th after San Marino when Tyrrells points were declared void. At Dijon de Cesaris' fire extinguisher was discovered empty, his times from first dry session disallowed and it rained on second session so he didn't qualify. Guy Ligier in another of his weird and wonderful decisions made Hesnault "step down" for the race so that Andrea could take his place and started 26th and last on the grid.
It took a major shake up within the team and the addition of some very useful management and engineering staff from Renault to convince Andrea to stay for another year with Ligier with Gerard Larrouse managing and Michel Tetu designing. The car was still grossly overweight at the start of the season and it was not until Monaco GP that the lightweight version arrived. Switched to Pirelli tires when Michelin pulled out of F1 at the end of 84. The season started for Andrea with accident in Brasil on lap 26 with Arnoux. In the French GP both cars used too much boost to impress the home crowd and both went out early. The British GP was a good race for de Cesaris. Qualified 7th, 3rd fastest in the warm up behind McLarens. Ran lonely 4th until lap 41 when Ligier's clutch and gearbox disintegrated. He parked in front of the pits to sympathetic applause from the crowd. This was the high point of 85'season for de Cesaris, it was all downhill after that. In German GP Laffite nudged Andrea at the first corner and he immediately retired with a broken steering arm. Now we come to the famous barrel roll accident at the Austrian GP. On lap 14 Andrea lying 11th with Laffite behind. He put a rear wheel went onto grass, the car slide sideways with the rear catching the sloping bank which sent Ligier into series of barrel rolls. As the marshals ran to the car he didn't move. Everyone feared the worst. After a few moments undid his straps and climbed out and walked calmly away with mud and grass stains on his helmet. Afterwards Andrea just said: "I escaped well". Guy Ligier, supposedly short of money, cars and patience, wasted no time in letting everyone know that Andrea wouldn't complete the season in either of his remaining cars. Liger had in fact asked de Cesaris to pay for his shunts, unheard of in F1, out of his salary and he quite naturally refused. Phillipe Streiff replaced Andrea for the last five races of 1985.
In 1986 Andrea signed for the Minardi-Motori Moderni team, with Alessandro Nannini as his partner. In 1986 Minardi team was just another band of no hopers. They continued into 1986 with a two car team in updated M185, powered by Carlo Chiti's Motori Moderni V6 turbo engine. Both Caliri's chassis and the engine were totally outclassed and as the season progressed Minardi like its fellow no hoper teams, simply fell further behind development race raging between the big money teams in front. At the later end of season Minardi resorted to placing Andrea and Alessandro on the grid with soft tires, very little fuel and telling them just to drive the car as hard as possible until it ran out of fuel or blew up. This put the cars up with the big teams for a time, giving Minardi TV coverage and keeping their sponsors happy.
In 1987 de Cesaris joined Brabham BMW with Patrese as his team mate. After Piquet left the team started it’s downward. To accommodate the chassis BMW cajoled into developing a lay down engine. It was a stunningly expensive exercise and BMW disappointed by the results in 1986 to the extent they really wanted to pull out of F1. Then team owner Bernie Ecclestone persuaded the Germans to continue in 87. The same lay down engine that powered BT55 was installed in the BT56 and engine problems blighted the team throughout the season. Andrea and Ricardo only finished in the points three times, I lost count of the number of times I saw the elegant white cars coasting a halt in a cloud of turbo smoke. Andrea's high spot of the season was his 3rd place at Spa, one of the very few times car didn't let him down.
In 1988 de Cesaris signed for the German Rial team, the team owned by the ex-ATS owner Gunter Schmidt and the car was designed by the ex-Ferrari designer Gustav Brunner. 1988 was dominated by McLarens and Andrea only scored in one race, Detroit, where he finished 4th. The car, ARC1, was the only car the team ran, but without a proper testing programme and not a lot of money resulted in the car not being reliable. Andrea left the team at the end of the season, but what a looked promising team for the future just went down and disappeared from the F1 grid.
In 1989 partnered with Alex Caffi, Andrea drove for BMS Dallara team, later renamed Scuderia Italia. The teams fortunes shot up this year with de Cesaris scoring the teams first Championship points with fine 3rd place in the Canadian GP in Montreal. But in the very next race, French GP, he due to several engine problems failed to qualify. This was the story of the season for Andrea and his teammate, if the car went okay, they were both up in the contention for the points, but as always with a young team mechanical problems left both drivers frustrated.
He stayed with Scuderia Italia another year, but didn't score points because of poor chassis and unreliable engine. His best result was 3rd place on the grid at US GP in Phoenix.
After leaving Scuderia Italia Andrea tested for AGS, then when the announcement of him signing for Jordan this caused a lot of Anti-Andrea Brigade to put pen to paper to criticize Eddie Jordan for signing de Cesaris. Eddie at the time said he needed a quick, experencied driver to:
a) get the team out of the dreaded pre-qualifying
b) to have a driver who knew all the circuits
c) to score points for the team
Andrea was undoubtedly the driver to for fill these requirements, but unfortunately he didn't get off to the best starts by failing to pre-qualify in Phoenix due to "buzzing" the engine by selecting 2nd instead of 4th gear on Friday. At Monaco he nearly touching Alesi's gearbox until broken throttle cable retired him. What can one say about Canada and Mexico the first points for Jordan and Andrea proving what all his fans have known for years, give him a good reliable car and he will show he is a front runner in F1. One could write a book on Belgian GP 91. Gachot in prison for the notorious CS gas incident and Schumacher taking his place out qualified de Cesaris. Schumacher lasted about half mile whilst Andrea got the hammer down and drove race of his life, carving through the field. On lap 32 he was only 2 sec. behind Senna who was leading the race, in fact in Radilion he nearly got alongside Senna. In the Jordan pits, they were exited, but also a touch resigned. On the radio Andrea told them his water temperature was climbing into red, and they told him to go for it, which he did. Then his engine gave up on lap 42. He deserved to win, not just a rostrum place. It just 20 p. hose clip allowing water to leak out throughout the race. Anyway he was "revelation" of the year and got more fans than ever before.
After scoring the first points for Jordan and finished 9th in the Championship he was not signing for Eddie Jordan due mainly to a conflict of Andrea's sponsor Marlboro and Barclay sponsorship that Eddie had obtained for '92. He signed for Tyrell a month before the start of the season. Driving the 020B he scored 8 points and finished 9th in the Championship. Andrea drove consistently well through the season, experienced enough to know the Tyrrell would not blow away the big four, he was always lurking behind these four to pick up points when they dropped out. His best result was 4th place in Japan, much to the great joy of the marketing people who were always looking for a new sponsorship from Japan. From Andrea's point of view his best result was taking 6th place in his own GP at Monza, the first time in his long career he has scored in this race. Reading the reviews of '92 in racing magazines the general consensus was that Andrea has matured into a very experienced driver, still a racer, he overtook more cars than anyone else, he knows the limitation of his car, his team, and knows when to push on and when to hold on, depending on cars performance, the track conditions etc.
He stayed with Tyrrell for 1993, but the old 020B, with its fourth engine in the back, was totally outclassed by its high-tech contemporaries. When it finally arrived, the new car was a big disappointment, and no amount of hard work by de Cesaris and Katayama could compensate for its marked inadequacies. At the end of the season it was all-change at Tyrrell and the luckless de Cesaris was left without a F1 drive for the first time in 13th years.
Fortune did eventually shine on the Italian at San Marino and Monaco GP in 1994 when Jordan recalled him to deputize for the suspended Irvine. A typically fine drive saw Andrea claim 4th place at Monaco, having been about the only driver with the skill and courage to overtake on the tight street circuit. Eddie Jordan claimed it was the best drive he had ever seen in Jordan. Standing in for the unfortunate Wendlinger at Sauber, he found a car in which he can once more prove himself to the few doubters that remain. With Sauber he drove his 200th race in Canada and scored one point in France. He finished his GP career in Jerez with 208 races and become third driver who drove the most races.
Andrea has, to use an old cliche, a typical Latin temperament. He was excitable and emotional, has been known to cry with joy or anger at what happens to him during the race weekend. He sometimes seemed to ignore reason, preferring to stick to his own ideas even though experience has proven him wrong. And there were his eyes, a nervous twitch which caused them to roll momentarily into his head. The critics rose up and asked was this not the reason for so many accidents in his career?
By Goran Manov
manov66@yahoo.com
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