The brilliant Nicola Larini and his place in Italy’s lost F1 generation – Motor Sport

He raced for Ligier in 1990 and enjoyed a season glorious by comparison with his two dismal years at Osella, the highlights impressive seventh places at Estoril and Suzuka. But 1991 was a case of same old same old. Yes, he found an F1 drive, but yet again it was in an unsorted car managed by a chaotic Italian team: a Lambo 291 run by Modena. He entered all 16 grands prix, failed to pre-qualify for seven of them, failed to qualify for four of the nine for which he had managed to pre-qualify, and therefore raced just five times all year. At Phoenix he finished seventh, but he had been lapped three times by Ayrton Senna’s winning McLaren.

In 1992, understandably frustrated by F1, he decided to give touring cars a go, entering the Italian Superturismo Championship in an Alfa 155. He won at Monza, Binetto (twice), Vallelunga (twice), Imola (twice), and Misano (twice), and those nine wins earned him a championship that felt extremely good after so much F1 heartache. Moreover, he had triumphed against a cast of top-class fellow Italians including Alessandro Nannini, Emanuele Pirro, Roberto Ravaglia, and Gabriele Tarquini.

In 1993 he stepped up to a punchier touring car series – the punchiest in fact – namely DTM. Again he raced an Alfa 155, but the 1993 DTM-spec 155 was the magnificent 2.5 V6 TI DTM. The car was a beast – in a good way. Equipped with four-wheel drive, it was powered by a jewel of an engine: titanium inlet valves and other money-almost-no-object mods kept that wonderful V6’s weight down to just 110kg and it was good for 420bhp at 11,800rpm. The car’s body was carbon fibre, limiting its overall mass to only 1040kg. Larini won at Zolder (twice), Nürburgring (three times), Wunstorf, Norisring (twice), Donington, Diepholz, and Alemannenring, and became champion by a handy margin.

His winning ways had not gone unnoticed – and Ferrari duly hired him as an F1 test driver. Just before the end of the 1992 F1 season, one of the worst in the Scuderia’s history, Ivan Capelli was given the boot – and Larini was drafted in to replace him for Suzuka and Adelaide. He acquitted himself well, finishing both races in a version of the already tricky and underpowered F92AT made less competitive still by the recent addition of a 30kg active suspension system that worked only erratically. Nonetheless, at Suzuka he had outqualified the Scuderia’s regular driver, which was no mean feat when you consider that he had not raced in F1 all year and that that regular driver was Jean Alesi.

Larini made no grand prix appearances in 1993, but he was again called upon by Ferrari in early 1994, to sub for the injured Alesi. At Aida he qualified an impressive seventh, just two places behind Gerhard Berger in the other 412T1, but on lap one he was punted out of the race (along with Ayrton Senna) by Mika Hakkinen. Next time out, at Imola, Larini did something very special. He qualified sixth and kept a level head on a shambolic afternoon to finish second in front of the adoring tifosi, beaten only by Michael Schumacher’s world championship-winning Benetton B194. In F1 terms, it was Larini’s day of days. But very few noticed it then, and almost no-one remembers it now. You know why. Roland Ratzenberger had been killed in qualifying the day before, and, soon after Larini had appeared on the Imola podium alongside Schumacher and Hakkinen, TV stations worldwide were beginning to broadcast the news that one of the very greatest drivers in F1 history had just died.