Unholy matrimony
Author
- Mattijs Diepraam
Date
- 8W January 1999 issue
Related articles
- Stefano Modena - Touted as the next Ascari, but forsake his claim, by Mattijs Diepraam
Who?Oscar Larrauri, Stefano Modena (Luis Perez Sala) What?EuroBrun-Cosworth ER188, EuroBrun-Cosworth ER188 (Minardi-Cosworth M188) Where?Adelaide When?1988 Australian GP |
 |
Why?
The only event in which two EuroBruns managed to qualify was the last of the team's first-year campaign.
EuroBrun was the unhappy marriage between the Italian Pavanello Euroracing team, an outfit with a fine F3 pedigree, and the Swiss sportscar team of Walter Brun which had fielded customer Porsches in the World Endurance Championship. Euroracing had been involved in F1 a few years earlier, having taken over the Alfa Romeo works operation in 1984. This wasn't a success though, since even the efforts of Riccardo Patrese and Eddie Cheever and the funding by Benetton didn't salvage the team from going under at the end of 1985. Pavanello's outfit had been more successful in F3, taking the European Championship by storm three years running in the early eighties. In 1980 and 1981, first Michele Alboreto and then Mauro Baldi won the title in Euroracing-run March-Alfas, while Oscar Larrauri took the self-built Euroracing-Alfa Romeo to the 1982 championship.
Larrauri was also the driving force behind the Brun/Euroracing merger. After his F3 title the Argentinian had become a sportscar regular in Brun's 962s and was looking for his F1 break. Thus a alliance between the Alpes and the Apennines was struck up, looking promising after Brun and Pavanello managed to sign reigning F3000 champ Stefano Modena as their lead driver. But when push came to shove the cars only qualified for half of the races. Remarkably, it turned out to be the team's most successful season!
1989 saw Larrauri return to the team after Gregor Foitek, a favourite within the Swiss faction of the team, had failed to make a single race. But 'Poppy' could not do better in the updated ER188B and this effectively finished his F1 hopes.
Of late he has been busy rekindling the old flame in the burgeoning SudAm Super Touring series, winning the inaugural championship for ProAs BMW and repeating the trick in 1998, before signing to drive Race Team's new Alfa 156 in the 1999 season and making it a title treble in 2000. In 2001, after the Superturismo series had gone belly-up, Oscar diverted his attention to the local TC2000 silhouette series but could not create a niche for himself in between the seasoned players and decided to hang up his helmet for good.
EuroBrun became a disgrace in the 1990 season, again fielding a year-old car. Roberto Moreno will have been used to being a tail-ender and managed to qualify the ineffective ER189 on occasion, but poor Claudio Langes must have been totally demoralized by the wretched thing.