What ever happenned to Alex Caffi?

Mate of mine is working up a piece on the recent ALMS star, and is looking for stories and images of Alex at work, in F1, Super Tourers, ALMS.....

anyone got any stories?

http://www.alexcaffi.com/home_ing.htm

Thanks for the nice link, Desmo.

Thanks for the link Desmo, Alex was one of my favourites.

Cheers
Matt

I was watching reviews of the 1988 and 1989 seasons the other day, and noticed Caffi and the Dallara run quite promisingly on a number of occasions, although a lot of it was down to Pirelli qualifiers in 1989, he seemed like one for the future. However, when he went to Footwork/Arrows his F1 career seemed to nosedive - anyone have insight into why particularly? Yes the cars weren't that good, but even a past his best Michele Alboreto came out the other side and had a brilliant 1992 with the Footwork-Mugen, did Caffi just lose interest or were his two years at Footwork enough to drop him of F1 bosses radars?

I recall interest being shown by Sir Francis at one point

Originally posted by FerrariV12
I was watching reviews of the 1988 and 1989 seasons the other day, and noticed Caffi and the Dallara run quite promisingly on a number of occasions, although a lot of it was down to Pirelli qualifiers in 1989, he seemed like one for the future. However, when he went to Footwork/Arrows his F1 career seemed to nosedive - anyone have insight into why particularly? Yes the cars weren't that good, but even a past his best Michele Alboreto came out the other side and had a brilliant 1992 with the Footwork-Mugen, did Caffi just lose interest or were his two years at Footwork enough to drop him of F1 bosses radars?

Who better to ask then Alex himself?!

From my interview with him at the GPM covering that & Andrea Moda:

RJ: Going back, first, to Andrea Moda - sorry for bringing it up! - when you were left without a drive, were there any options or offers to stay in Formula 1?

AC: (laughs) It's okay, you can mention Andrea Moda, now, I'm over it! Honestly, no, no, there was not really.. the problem was the previous season, when I was with the Footwork Arrows team, you know, and we had a big big problem with the engine - in the beginning, we had the Porsche engine, we had a very bad season, we had a few times we had failures to qualify and we had good drivers, you know, Michele (Alboreto) won Grand Prix after all. But the car was bad, the engine was a disaster and you know..

RJ: Was Andrea Moda the only option left then for you?
AC: No, no, it wasn't quite like that. I had so many problems in 1991, I decided to leave Formula 1 then, or in a way, I did leave Formula 1 in 1991, not 1992, because also I had a big accident out of racing (Caffi was badly injured in a road accident) in my home town, when I broke my jaw, so I was forced out of racing for a time and I think then I finished with F1 at that time because I had problems with nearly everything, you know? So, I find Andrea Moda are interested, and at the beginning, I was impressed, there were a lot of good guys, they gave a good impression, he (Andrea Sassetti) had a lot of money & he wanted to invest in the team.....



Basically, his heart wasn't it, no motivation & a bit of mistreatment, whereas Alboreto, as we all know, just loved racing and had the motivation to carry on. Ultimately, I think that's your answer in a nutshell.

Alex raced in the last GP Masters.

I was at the Baja Espana (a round of the FIA International Cup for Cross Country Bajas) and Alex was competing in a Fornasari RR450, start number 235.

Maybe we'll see him on the Dakar.

Fred

Originally posted by Richie Jenkins




Who better to ask then Alex himself?!

...

Basically, his heart wasn't it, no motivation & a bit of mistreatment, whereas Alboreto, as we all know, just loved racing and had the motivation to carry on. Ultimately, I think that's your answer in a nutshell.

Great insight, thanks

Alex Caffi in GPM at Silverstone 2006 :









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I remembered A.Caffi for its terrific drive at Monaco in 1987 with its Osella, I always wanted to write something about that, him and his car during that GP. Finally, all the pieces were complete one week ago when I received some words of him talking about that time. I just finished the page, that's here : http://www.gurneyfla...sellacaffi.html