Andrea Moda Formula

The Legend of the Formula One Team Too Bad To Be True

by Ian Strathcarron

If you’ve never heard of the Formula 1 team Andrea Moda Formula you won’t be alone. Ian Strathcarron— make that Ian Macpherson, 3rd Baron Strathcarron—English motorsports author and chairman of Unicorn Publishing, has taken on a subject that fits the name of his publishing house just right.

The subtitle of this book is The Legend of the Formula One Team Too Bad To Be True, and, to subvert an old saying, his tale demonstrates that fact can be stranger than fiction, and more embarrassing. In keeping with the brief life of this team, the book is a short read. The story is, however, both interesting and entertaining.

In his Introduction, the author reveals his own unsuccessful flirtation with a motorsport dream, in his case, the creation of a light-weight, low-cost track car. He tells this story to explain his interest in and empathy with the character, Andrea Sassetti.

Chapter One sets the scene, with a brief and interesting history of the Scuderia Coloni Formula One team. Then Strathcarron relates how 29-year-old Andrea Sassetti, a successful Italian shoe manufacturer and budding entrepreneur, improbably purchased Scuderia Coloni with the delusion that if fashion house Benetton could do Formula 1, then why couldn’t he?

Three intertwined stories follow: Sassetti’s, his team’s disastrous 1992 F1 season, and the Formula One environment at that time.

The author paints the picture of a young, gung-ho Italian chancer who has come a long way in a short time through some entrepreneurship plus a lot of bluff and bluster. But bluster and bullshit only bought him a short honeymoon in what is the bear pit of F1. Sassetti’s naivety in his dealings with F1 honchos Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley is revealed, as is his failure to quickly understand his place as a very small fish in a big pond. He was no match for the Piranha Club.

There is one chapter for each of the Grands Prix that the team attended. It seems that after every disaster, someone is quoted as saying, “Surely it can’t get worse.” But it did. The cockups and embarrassments are legion. There was, however, one highlight that occurred halfway through the short life of Andrea Moda Formula: one car qualified for and started a Grand Prix. The driver, Roberto Moreno, who had a lot to do with this success, tells his part of the tale, which involved some middle-of-the-night skullduggery, a beautiful woman, and Coco Chanel perfume.

In recent years, we have grown accustomed to the club of franchised F1 teams. This story reminds us of the time when almost anyone who had the wherewithal could own an F1 team. As many as 39 cars would be entered for a race, resulting in a pre-qualifying session to pare the entries down to 30, then qualifying to further reduce the number to 26 starters.

The author opines that the antics of teams like Andrea Moda Formula finally pushed Ecclestone to introduce a much higher cost of entry, before eventually limiting the number of teams to 10, and currently (2026), with the acceptance of Cadillac, 11.

Despite the myriad disasters and embarrassments detailed in the preceding chapters, in the last chapter, after Strathcarron applied his own formula to determine which Formula One team was the worst ever, it turns out not to be Andrea Moda Formula. Sixteen teams made the cut to be considered the worst team in living memory. Each failed to score any points during their time as F1 entrants. The list was then shrunk to four, being the teams that didn’t even manage to survive one season. I won’t steal the author’s thunder by revealing which of these four he decided was the worst. Not everyone will agree with the verdict, which opens the door for endless and entertaining discussions over beer and wine.

With only 131 pages, I read the book easily in an afternoon. Eight pages of color photos complement the text. A minor distraction were the few typos that evaded the proofreader.

There is a useful Bibliography but no Index. If you are now intensely curious, look for the 2023 documentary film Last and Furious – The true story of the Andrea Moda Formula (released internationally as Andrea Moda Formula – The craziest team ever).