Forti

Forti Corse, commonly known as Forti, was an Italian motor racing team chiefly known for its brief and unsuccessful involvement in Formula One in the mid-1990s. It was established in the late 1970s and competed in lower formulae for two decades. The team's successes during this period included four Drivers' Championships in Italian Formula Three during the 1980s, and race wins in the International Formula 3000 championship, in which it competed from 1987 to 1994. From 1992, team co-founder Guido Forti developed a relationship with the wealthy Brazilian businessman Abílio dos Santos Diniz that gave Diniz's racing driver son, Pedro, a permanent seat in the team and the outfit a sufficiently high budget to consider entering Formula One.

Forti graduated to Formula One as a constructor and entrant in 1995, but its first car—the Forti FG01—proved to be uncompetitive, and the team failed to score a point. Despite this setback, Forti was committed to a three-year deal with Diniz, which was broken when Pedro moved to the Ligier team prior to the 1996 season, taking most of the team's sponsorship money with him. Nevertheless, Forti continued to compete in the sport, and produced the much-improved FG03 chassis, before succumbing to financial problems mid-season after an ultimately fruitless deal with a mysterious entity known as Shannon Racing. The team competed in a total of 27 Grands Prix, scoring no points, and is recognised as one of the last truly privateer teams to race in an era when many large car manufacturers were increasing their involvement in the sport.

Forti was founded by Italian businessmen Guido Forti, a former driver, and Paolo Guerci, an engineer, in the late 1970s and was based in Alessandria in northern Italy. It was registered as a Società a Responsabilità Limitata, or Limited liability company. It was initially run in lower motor racing categories such as Formula Ford and Formula Three, both at Italian and European levels. The team was well equipped and soon became a regular winner. Forti drivers Franco Forini, Enrico Bertaggia, Emanuele Naspetti and Gianni Morbidelli (who would all go on to drive in Formula One) won Italian Formula Three titles in 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1989 respectively. In addition, Bertaggia won the prestigious Macau F3 Grand Prix and the Monaco Grand Prix F3 support race in 1988, and Morbidelli won the FIA European Formula Three Cup in 1989. Teo Fabi and Oscar Larrauri also raced for the team in its early years, the former winning the Italian FFord 2000 championship in 1977, and the latter racing as far afield as South America, in the Argentine Formula Three Championship. Forti continued racing in Formula Three until the end of 1992, when it quit the formula in order to concentrate solely on International Formula 3000.

For 1987, Forti moved up to International Formula 3000 with less immediate success than experienced in Formula Three. The main reason for this was the chassis the team chose to compete with. Instead of using customer Lolas, Marches or Ralts, all of which were produced by established companies who had many years' experience of designing and building such cars, Forti stuck with their Italian Formula Three chassis supplier Giampaolo Dallara, who had just designed his company's first F3000 machine. Forti was the first team to use this machine, which was dubbed the Dallara 3087 (a chassis which later would make a single appearance in Formula One for the BMS Scuderia Italia team, as that team's car was not ready for the first race of the 1988 season). This combination of an inexperienced team and an untested car did not score any points in its first F3000 year, nor did the team attend every race on the schedule. Forti used 1988 to gain valuable experience in F3000, and this helped the team to perform better in following seasons, as did a change to more competitive Lola and then Reynard chassis.

After a full season in 1988 and the team's first championship points, courtesy of Claudio Langes in 1989, it became apparent that Forti was improving as a competitive force. In 1990, Gianni Morbidelli scored Forti's first victory in an F3000 race, and although no Forti driver won a championship title in this category, the team established itself as a frequent front-runner, scoring nine wins and five pole positions in International F3000. From 1993 onwards, Forti concentrated solely on F3000, and ran drivers such as Naspetti, Fabrizio Giovanardi, Andrea Montermini and Hideki Noda. 1991 was Forti's most successful season in F3000, with Naspetti finishing third in the Drivers' Championship, ten points behind champion Christian Fittipaldi. Although the team's form dipped over subsequent years, by 1994 Forti was the most experienced team in the championship, employing Noda and Pedro Diniz as drivers.

As his team became more successful, Guido Forti started to think about a move upwards, into Formula One. However, there had been several discouragingly recent examples of teams, such as Coloni and Onyx, which had graduated from F3000 into Formula One and failed more or less immediately due to a lack of finance. Conversely, Eddie Jordan had shown that the move could be made successfully, with an impressive performance in 1991 with his Jordan team, which had finished fifth in the Constructors' Championship with a total of seven points-scoring finishes. Forti considered a solid financial base to be the most important factor for success. In 1991 he therefore started working on his Formula One project. At the end of 1992, he signed a deal with wealthy Brazilian driver Pedro Diniz, whose personal fortune and sponsorship connections proved invaluable in increasing the team's budget. Diniz's father, Abílio dos Santos, was the owner of the large Brazilian distribution company Companhia Brasileira de Distribuição and the supermarket chain Pão de Açúcar. By offering companies preferential product-placement in the Brazilian market, the Diniz family was able to obtain personal sponsorship deals with brands such as Arisco, Duracell, Gillette, Kaiser, Marlboro, Parmalat and Sadia, in addition to backing from Unibanco, to fund Pedro's career. By 1993, through Abílio dos Santos, Forti met Carlo Gancia, an Italo-Brazilian businessman. Gancia became a co-owner of the team, buying Guerci's shares, and started working on the team's Formula One project. He finally managed to ensure a respectable budget for Formula One by late 1994, which was "effectively underwritten by the Diniz family". He also hired several experienced personnel, including designer Sergio Rinland and former Ferrari team manager Cesare Fiorio. Furthermore, retired driver René Arnoux was employed as a consultant and driver coach for Diniz. Guerci remained with Forti as one of its race engineers.

This securing of financial assistance and recruitment of staff meant that Forti's ability to participate in Formula One for 1995 was assured. Financed by the companies brought in by Abílio Diniz, the team was guaranteed financial stability in the short term, with a claimed first year budget of around $17 million. In addition, this was only the first year of a planned three-year contract with Diniz and his backers.

The hardest task for the team was designing and building its own car for the first time, instead of buying one from a general supplier such as Dallara or Lola, as was required by the Formula One Technical Regulations. Guido Forti's first attempt at an F1 chassis, the Forti FG01, resulted in an outdated, overweight and very slow machine, and has been described as nothing more than "a revised F3000 car" and, more harshly, "a fearful pile of junk".