Pizza...Andrea Moda style and flavour

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Corpsegrinder
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Pizza...Andrea Moda style and flavour

Post by Corpsegrinder »

Hi All

being from the same region as Andrea Sassetti (Andrea Moda F1 team founder) I decided while being in Italy, to go and look at what's left of it or its owners, if there's any.

I read on some posts on Youtube that he now owns a pizzeria in a small town not far from here, called Magliano di Tenna. That post was from 5 years ago, so I went to google to make sure this place was still open and running. It was! This afternoon I drove 1 hr through the countryside and found it rather easily.
Firstly, the name of this place: PizStop !!!
Secondly, outside roadside there was this:
DSC_2062.JPG
At that point I was 100% sure this was the place. Once inside the very small pizzeria I saw one table made of 3 fat wet tyres which was very cool, I couldn't stop staring at them, amazing how wide those Goodyears were. The tyres were complete with the aluminium alloy wheels inside.

Hung on the wall there are some mechanical parts of the S921, steering wheel, exhausts etc and the dustbin on the floor was actually a black Agip fuel barrel! The pizza is made by Andrea Sassetti's younger brother, Sandro, who jointly runs the place.

While eating pizza my wife pointed at the ceiling: I raised my head and I was astonished to find the floor of the Andrea Moda hanging right over my head! It is better looking than any piece of art in my opinion, really good stuff, and noticed that carbon fibre was only used on the front part of it.

Eventually I started chatting to Sandro Sassetti, asking him if Andrea is ever around and he said he hardly goes there. He confirmed he also was involved in the F1 affair and was glad to talk through some curious anecdote.
He kept saying the Judd V10 engine wasn't lacking of horsepower, but it was extremely fragile and any slight over-revving would damage it. They did not have enough money to afford to send it back to Judd to fix it, so they were often left with no engine to run at all.
He said in Hockenheim for the pre-qualifying session Agip agreed one-off to "lend" the same fuel used by Ferrari to Moreno: the car resulted 40 km/h faster down the straights though a problem with the clutch slowed him down at the end of the lap...I think he exaggerated with the speed (40 km/h is too much) but the message was clear, the fuel would make a big difference without tweaking the engine. He and his brother are still very bitter with Ecclestone as he was OK to welcome them at the end of 1991 but once in the game for 1992, he put a lot of hurdles on their way and picking up an excuse to throw the team out at Monza.

The saddest thing is that when I asked the whereabouts of the two S921 he answered that both of them were dismantled and there are only few spares here and there, not much left. Only one of the two cars had an original Judd engine inside and Andrea used to race it in Misano circuit sometimes, but it was getting harder and harder to get spares in case they needed to change something, and too expensive to get it made by someone else so the car was taken down to pieces. So no more Andrea Moda cars to be seen anywhere anymore. What a shame.

Sorry if I wrote too much and this post got too descriptive and not enough pictures, but unfortunately this is what I could get on camera, not much really but better than nothing. I secretly was hoping that Sandro or Andrea Sassetti would have shown me the car parked in one of their factories (it used to be kept in a warehouse nearby) but I arrived too late, there's nothing to see anymore!

Here's the pictures of today's trip:
DSC_2034.JPG
The floor of the S921 right over my head
The floor of the S921 right over my head
DSC_2045.JPG
DSC_2043.JPG
I want that dustbin
I want that dustbin
DSC_2051.JPG
This place has a Facebook page where you can see Andrea Sassetti's brother, Sandro:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pizzeria ... 4070103619

...oh, and the pizza was excellent!

Ciao!
Last edited by Corpsegrinder on Sun Oct 29, 2017 4:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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marlborored
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Re: Pizza...Andrea Moda style and flavour

Post by marlborored »

Looks like a cool place! Thanks for posting this!
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Re: Pizza...Andrea Moda style and flavour

Post by turboF1 »

Very interesting story. Thanks for sharing. It's a shame the car is dismantled A bit shortsighted with regard to historical value down stream

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Re: Pizza...Andrea Moda style and flavour

Post by jordan »

Thank you.. :P

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Re: Pizza...Andrea Moda style and flavour

Post by Jeff »

Great story & pics, thanks for posting
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Re: Pizza...Andrea Moda style and flavour

Post by jaws »

Very cool thanks for posting this neat story and the pictures.
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Re: Pizza...Andrea Moda style and flavour

Post by badun »

So...how was the pizza? Is Perry McCarthy a waiter there? And do they give his shifts to other people when Perry is all ready to go to work?
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Re: Pizza...Andrea Moda style and flavour

Post by Eagle50 »

That's a great story! Thanks for the history lesson. Too bad the Andrea Moda cars were dismantled...

Yeah, the fuels they used in the 1990s. I remember Japanese television presenters here commenting on how foul the top teams' fuel smelled. They said it smelled nothing like petrol, and guessed the fuels were just custom mixes of explosive liquid chemicals. Said it was fiendishly expensive, too. A big reason why the top teams were so much faster, that you don't often read about.

Glad you enjoyed the pizza!

Cheers, Chris
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Re: Pizza...Andrea Moda style and flavour

Post by Seiiki »

There was clearly a lot more of what went on there. Andrea was charged with fraud so there was 'nothing minor' about that. Also I didn't have a chance to read Perry McCarthy's book, "Flat out, flat broke". I am sure there would be a more detail account on what was going on.

Seriously, if a competent driver like Alex Caffi and promising Enrico Bertaggia both left after sick of waiting for 2 whole GP without a car to run. You know there is a huge problem somewhere! Also Andrea tried to by-pass the FIA license fee simply because they bought the remaining of the Coloni Team to pull the fast one on Bernie. Any idiot will know that is never going to fly.

The entire project was doomed from the start. What Moreno did at Monaco was a miracle in itself. That team was even more hopeless than Brabham, which by then was days from the Deathbed.

Interesting story, but they certainly left out with a ton of holes for sure!
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Re: Pizza...Andrea Moda style and flavour

Post by drledford93 »

Eagle50 wrote:That's a great story! Thanks for the history lesson. Too bad the Andrea Moda cars were dismantled...

Yeah, the fuels they used in the 1990s. I remember Japanese television presenters here commenting on how foul the top teams' fuel smelled. They said it smelled nothing like petrol, and guessed the fuels were just custom mixes of explosive liquid chemicals. Said it was fiendishly expensive, too. A big reason why the top teams were so much faster, that you don't often read about.

Glad you enjoyed the pizza!

Cheers, Chris
I read in the past that shell fuels we're good for up to 50 horsepower more then other fuels in certain seasons. It's amazing to think that high of a percentage of an engines performance is due only to fuel. Oils also were massive performance boosters.

I know in the late 80s in the normally aspirated aspirated era, toluene was used. That certainly is a nasty chemical that has a smell nothing like fuel...
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