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The final throes of Brazil's fleetingly successful F1 team

Emerson Fittipaldi is better remembered for his Formula 1 world championships and Indianapolis 500 successes than for the spell running his eponymous F1 team. Despite a hugely talented roll call of staff, it was a period of internal strife, limited funding and few results - as remembered by Tim Wright.

I recently came across a photograph of the Fittipaldi F9, which transported me back to 1982 when I was working for the Brazilian-owned team - a period which doesn’t bring too many happy memories.

I had been working at McLaren in the late 1970s when Alastair Caldwell left the company to be team manager at Fittipaldi. He convinced me to follow him, as they needed to bolster the design team due to the departure of chief designer Ralph Bellamy for Ensign. The only other person on the design side there was the late Ricardo (Richard) Divila, a long-serving employee and compatriot of the Fittipaldi brothers Emerson and Wilson.

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