“Grenzwertig”: How Andrea Moda Played with Perry McCarthy’s Life

(Motorsport-Total.com) – When a Formula 1 driver says that it was “borderline” how his team played with his life, then that is a harsh statement. In modern Formula 1, you can’t imagine that at all because everything has become so professional, but back in the 90s, some drivers had to be glad if they made it back to the garage safely.

For some, life was even played with – and not just out of negligence, but because the driver was basically forced to get into a life-threatening junk car that was actually not made to do meaningful laps around the track. Perry McCarthy can tell a tale about that.

The Brit was the second driver for backmarker Andrea Moda in 1992 and was treated so neglectfully by the team that it literally was a matter of life and death for him.

In the podcast Beyond the Grid, he describes moments that would probably cause shaking heads not only from today’s perspective. After his first qualifying attempt in Barcelona lasted only 30 meters, but was at least a serious attempt, he quickly realized how hopeless the situation in the team was.

At that time, he still had hope that it would get better: “We’re talking about a pretty low level here. If you can’t imagine it going up from there, you’d probably be a pretty sad person,” he says. “The funny thing is: It didn’t get much better after that.”

After Barcelona, Imola was on the schedule, where McCarthy at least got to drive a few laps in pre-qualifying. But: “I immediately noticed that we had massive understeer because the differential was locking. I could feel that almost immediately. I came in to tell them, and that was it.”

“They said they couldn’t do anything about it, and that was that. That was my entire quota for the qualifying attempt in Imola: those seven laps,” he recalls and jokes: “Luckily, I had kept fit, because by my Andrea Moda standards, that was already an endurance race.”

Of course, McCarthy couldn’t secure a spot in the actual qualifying with a ten-second gap to the fastest car that had to go through pre-qualifying – just like all other pre-qualifying attempts.

And then came Monaco. And McCarthy says: “I was scared.”

Completely overwhelmed in Monaco

“I am often asked about fear in motorsport, and Ayrton (Senna; ed.) once said something really cool. He nailed it. He said: Of course he was afraid. In my opinion, everyone is afraid. Anyone who claims never to have been afraid either lies or doesn’t drive fast enough,” he says.

But what he had to experience in Monaco was on another level. The attempt to even qualify for the event was a mammoth task – and one that McCarthy could never accomplish.

“I had never driven in Monaco before and I knew that damn thing wouldn’t last long, and they sent me out late in the session. The seat didn’t fit, there was no windshield, and the steering column moved,” he describes.

“I was thrown around everywhere while trying to push as hard as possible in those few laps. My head was slammed everywhere because there was no protection,” says McCarthy.

“And as I said, the column moved, and I couldn’t feel the car because the seat wobbled and I wasn’t sitting properly in it. And I can honestly tell you: That was something completely different than just being startled for a moment,” he says and admits: “I was really scared, and you think: You know what? I’m probably in the wrong place here.”

“I am completely overwhelmed. Completely overwhelmed,” he repeats.

“I sit in this thing, which is still a Formula 1 car, even if it’s a junk heap – so it’s still fast. But I slide around in the seat, I can’t steer properly, my head is being banged everywhere, I’ve never seen the track, and I have one or two laps to try to qualify it.”

Doubts gnawed at McCarthy: The killer instinct that had gotten him through his career so far might kill him here, he thought, “because I just couldn’t control the whole thing.”

“I was driving around out there thinking: ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here.’ And I had never had something like that before. It was too much. I just couldn’t, I couldn’t do it,” says the now 65-year-old.

McCarthy makes it clear: “That was borderline!”

His descriptions vividly show what his car basically was: a spare parts warehouse for his teammate Roberto Moreno – who, by the way, was able to qualify for the Grand Prix. It was to be the only one in the short history of the Andrea Moda team.

McCarthy admits that this was actually the logical approach – just not for him: “From Roberto’s point of view, it was completely right to manage things the way he did. Namely to say: ‘Don’t worry about the second car. You are not capable of running a second car. Put all resources into my first car.'”

Only: “What you get as the second driver in this situation is a pile of junk – and a pretty dangerous one at that.”

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And even though the team’s path was probably the best, he says today: “Where the team was wrong was the fact that they had a duty of care to actually keep me alive. And that became borderline,” he makes clear. “And I really mean borderline.”

Because suddenly Andrea Moda really only let McCarthy do completely pointless things to avoid breaking contracts. At the home race in Silverstone, the Brit had to go out on Moreno’s used wet tires – in dry conditions!

“I even found it almost cool that the team came up with something like that at all,” he laughs. “I went out and just thought: I’m fed up with this crap.”

Clutch failure saves him from accident

McCarthy slowly developed a screw-it attitude and was willing to stay flat out on those tires and under those conditions. But it turned out differently: “On the following lap, the clutch gave out.” And that was probably McCarthy’s luck.

“The problem is that you stop asking yourself the questions you should be asking because you desperately try to get through somehow. But that a team does this to you, sends you out under these circumstances, and then your own mentality says: ‘I’m staying out, I’ll keep my foot on the gas next lap anyway’ – that would have ended badly in the wall,” he says.

“So I couldn’t be dumb enough to keep pushing just because I had lost control, which was stupid.”

Nevertheless, McCarthy did not think about giving up even after that. In Hungary, the team sent him out only 45 seconds before the end of the session – too late to even set a timed lap.

“I was about to beat up everyone in the team,” he admits. “I had to be held back massively because I had completely lost control.”

Bad luck for McCarthy: After qualifying, he actually wanted to talk to team owner Andrea Sassetti about getting clearance for an Arrows test, who wanted to use him in Spa. “Well, and then they sent me out 45 seconds before the end.”

“I came in, made a huge scene after almost beating up everyone – and strangely, Andrea no longer agreed to my request to be released for the Arrows test afterwards. So I shot myself in the foot …”

Near disaster in Spa as final point

So McCarthy sat in the Andrea Moda again in Spa – it was to be his and the team’s last appearance, which had been warned by the FIA beforehand to allow the Brit a meaningful attempt to qualify for the race – otherwise exclusion would threaten.

This time the team was even allowed to participate in qualifying, as after Brabham’s withdrawal, no longer two cars had to be filtered through pre-qualifying. “So we are in the actual qualifying for the first time. That’s it. Under the right conditions, I could put this damn thing on the starting grid,” McCarthy says.

He drove full throttle towards the famous Eau Rouge section and began to turn in. “But the steering was really – and I mean really – heavy,” he describes. “I swear: If it had been any other car, I would have stayed flat out. I would have thought: I can handle this.”

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“But in my head, an alarm bell went off that said: Brake! And when I was on the brake, I was in the middle of the corner at the foot of the hill. And I couldn’t steer the car. The steering wheel was locked.”

“I don’t know what I did there, but sometimes I do the right thing. It’s just a gut feeling. I took my foot off the brake. That lifted the front of the car. I yanked the steering wheel. It was incredibly heavy. I flew off the track, along the wall, but not into it. I turned the car away instead of crashing head-on where the wall is right in front of you.”

“I made it up the hill, over the crest, and I had survived. That was damn close, because even in the Andrea Moda you come there at about 290 km/h, the wall stares at you, and the steering wheel won’t turn. So I got away with it.”

Why McCarthy sees himself as lucky

At low speed, the steering wheel could be turned, but not at high speed. “Imagine the steering housing as a hollow tube through which the steering rods run. When you turn the steering wheel, the steering rods pull. But if this tube is bent, it doesn’t let the steering rods through, causing the steering column and the steering wheel to freeze. That was it for me. The end.”

When he returned to the pits, he could hardly believe his ears because to his statement that the steering was locked, he only got a “we know” in response. The team had tested it on Moreno’s car beforehand and then installed the bent part in McCarthy’s car for qualifying.

“That’s when I knew it was time to leave the team,” he says. But basically, he didn’t have to because Andrea Moda was excluded from Formula 1 after the incidents and the arrest of team owner Andrea Sassetti for check fraud.

McCarthy was never to get another chance in Formula 1, yet he sees himself as lucky in hindsight.

“I wasn’t unlucky to have sat in the car; not unlucky to have made it into Formula 1; not unlucky because the chance evaporated,” he says. “I was lucky that it didn’t end shattered in the wall.”