INTRODUCTION

rival Ayrton Senna for the World Championship in 1990; a race that ended in the famous high-speed collision at Suzuka. The following year things fell apart with Prost, who parted with the words, ‘Ferrari doesn’t deserve to win’.

Todt changed all that, but it took time. When he arrived, he realised that the structure of the company didn’t work. Having half the technical operation in the UK – one of the conditions of employment stipulated by designer John Barnard – meant that it was disconnected from Maranello in Italy. This was a problem and so Todt brought it all back together under one roof. His mission was to take the politics out of Ferrari, or at least to draw it onto himself like a lightning rod and let the team work calmly underneath him.

Under Todt, everything became joined up – the engine department was just a short corridor away from the design office and workshop, where the race chassis were built up to be shipped to Grands Prix. The sense of history was palpable, it oozed from the walls, but so did an unsettling political undercurrent.

‘At Ferrari you have a lot of people who have been around for fifty years, and they have a certain way of seeing things,’ Todt told me at the time. ‘They say things like “The engine is not good, if Ferrari were still with twelve cylinders they would win”. There are lots of rumours and inside the team there are still a few people who are not happy about the way the structure is working. And then the stories come out.

‘I like the image of an orchestra; my job is not to play the piano or the guitar. My job is to find the right people to play those instruments. And I must make sure that the pianist and the guitarist work well together. It’s a team.’

Todt created a band of brothers, brought together with a very clear goal, which was to win the World Championship for Ferrari, and each with very clear roles and responsibilities. Ross Brawn, the technical director, called it a ‘circle of fear’, in the sense that the group of leaders all relied on each other and didn’t want to let the others down, so they would always push everything to the maximum all the time.

It was fascinating to go inside Ferrari and to see this in operation during that period from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s. I was fortunate to have that chance, partly through my broadcast role with ITV Sport, but mainly because I wrote two books on Schumacher and was given access by both the great German driver and the team.

This was Ferrari’s most successful period ever in F1: the Schumacher years when they won five consecutive World Drivers’ Championships and dominated the sport. It’s easy to forget that, before the first of those titles in 2000, there had been three nearmisses when they lost the title at the last gasp: against Jacques Villeneuve in 1997, Mika Häkkinen in 1998, and then in 1999 when Schumacher broke his leg mid-season and Eddie Irvine narrowly lost the title to Häkkinen.

Todt’s management style was about team unity and always being there for his people. He spent the minimum amount of time away from Maranello to attend the races or meetings, and he made sure that his people could see him when they needed to; he stayed ‘close to the problems’, so that he was able to help sort them out. ‘I have strong views and make sure that things happen,’ he said. ‘I like us to be an educated family, without being too bothered by what’s going on around.’

ERCOLE COLOMBO WAS BORN IN 1944 AND GREW UP close to the Monza circuit, near Milan, the home of the Italian Grand Prix, where he still lives today. His passion for cars and racing was there from an early age, inherited from his father. Wanting to find a way to work full time in the sport, he began taking photographs in his spare time while holding down a job in commerce. Like Rainer Schlegelmilch, he began photographing in the 1960s and has attended over 700 Grands Prix. For decades he was known as the leader of the Italian contingent of photographers in Formula One and for many years was Ferrari’s official photographer, ‘the insider’, capturing key events and behind-the-scenes moments of the Scuderia.

My first experience of Ferrari was as a child, as a fan. My father was a great motorsport enthusiast, so I used to go with him and see a lot of motor races. He would point out the great drivers, like Ascari and Fangio. To me, they were immense heroes. And then naturally there was the red Ferrari, and the passion just went up to the highest level!

I remember once seeing two Grands Prix on consecutive weekends – F1 and motorbikes! That was very exciting for us kids who lived close to the Monza racetrack, and it was all we talked about at school.

Then, as time went by, I grew up and began going alone to the Monza circuit. Because I went frequently, I started to get to know all the people there. In 1961, in order to get closer to the cars on the race track, I volunteered as a marshal. We had a small team at each corner, and everyone had their roles. We had a stretcher in case a driver was injured, and I was one of the stretcher-bearers. It was in the days when there was still banking at Monza. On race day I was stationed on the banking, and I will never forget the magnificent view of the cars at full speed, up above my head! We were not far from the Parabolica corner. Tragically that was the year when there was the terrible accident which killed Wolfgang von Trips in the Ferrari at Parabolica. Luckily, we were not called on to attend to the accident.

Gradually, I got to know the mechanics and engineers at Ferrari, and at the same time I got very interested in photography. I started taking photos of the races at Monza and I managed to get passes from the Monza Press Officer as I was pretty good at taking pictures. It grew from there and I started travelling around Europe. I got a contract with Beta, one of the sponsors of Vittorio Brambilla, a local guy who raced in F1 in the early 1970s, and that was the key to me quitting my day job in commerce and becoming a professional motorsport photographer. I started travelling beyond Europe to Brazil, South Africa and other countries. I was at the famous 1976 F1 season finale in Fuji, Japan, with Niki Lauda in the Ferrari and James Hunt in the McLaren. I picked up lots of contracts, for sponsors and for publications like Gazzetta dello Sport and for Ferrari. They used my images for all their publications, for books and so on.

My first meeting with Enzo was like meeting a god. Gradually we got to know each other, and he liked looking through my photos. In 1977, he created a journalism prize named after his late son, Dino. There was one category for journalists and one for photographers.

In 1979, the year of Jody Scheckter’s World Championship, I won the prize. I had lunch with Enzo and after that I was brought closer on a professional level and photographed the key events, the behind-thescenes moments.

When he did his press conferences, I had to take great care. The Commendatore had a problem with his eyes, with bright light, which is why he wore dark glasses. In those days when we shot on film, to get a good interior shot you needed to use a flash. Alongside me there might be two or three agency photographers and when a flash would go off Enzo would say, ‘Colombo, no flash!’

These press conferences were a real show. Enzo was always ready with a line – he had an answer for everything. A journalist would ask, ‘Ingegnere, how much budget has FIAT given you for this season?’ Enzo would say, ‘I tell you what: take a day off tomorrow, go up to the head of finance at FIAT in Turin and ask for the budget sheet’. He hammered everyone!