A transitional year with a lacklustre car brought little in the way of glory for the famous Italian team, although the experience contributed to establishing the path to later glory
JAKE BOXALL-LEGGE PHOTOGRAPHY
Fortunes wax and wane in Formula 1, and it has been forever thus. In the early 1990s, the teams that the late Enzo Ferrari had so uncharitably labelled as “garagistes” were ruling the roost, while the squad bearing his own name had suffered a short and sharp decline at the turn of the decade.
After contending for titles in 1990 with a John Barnard-designed car and Alain Prost behind the wheel, both of those constituent elements had departed the team over 1991. Barnard left for Benetton, while Prost was released following his increasingly antagonistic relationship with Ferrari’s management, unhappy with the 643 chassis introduced during the season.
Ferrari’s 1992 offering, the double-floor F92A penned by Jean-Claude Migeot, was a disaster. The Frenchman had been signed after his work developing the successful Tyrrell 019 and, although his team could do little about the engine giving up power through blow-by, straightline performance was hampered further by the aerodynamics. The engineers had failed to tune in floor stall at certain speeds, so the car was running around with excess drag on the straights because the downforce could not be shed. Harvey Postlethwaite rejoined the team and hoped that rebuilding the rear end around a transverse gearbox would help, but to no avail.
With just 21 points scored that year, Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo chose to ring the changes for 1993. Migeot was let go at the start of the year, albeit with the F93A already in production at that stage. According to Migeot, the car he left was based upon the F92A chassis, and Ferrari had struggled up to that point to find the active suspension advances that the other frontrunners had achieved. Postlethwaite remained for the first half of the year, but had already felt put upon by the political undercurrent present at Maranello as Montezemolo continued to wield the hatchet.
On the driving front, Jean Alesi offered much-needed continuity in his third season with the team, while Gerhard Berger rejoined for 1993 after two years away with McLaren. Regardless, it was already set up to be a transitional year, particularly as key personnel changes that laid the foundations for subsequent successes did not happen until later in the season: Jean Todt was not due to join up until mid-way through th
