Andrea, o doido

E-mail do Mike Lawrence, veterano jornalista automobilístico, respondendo a uma observação que eu fiz sobre o número de porradas que o ex-piloto e eterno maluco Andrea de Cesaris deu:

Dear Carlos

Hi!

I remember a mechanic at McLaren trying to explain to Nigel Roebuck how it felt. He said, "Imagine you have just written an article. You have worked on it, giving your best, and then someone comes along and shreds it, and you have not made a copy. That is how we feel about de Cesaris."

I had supper with him a couple of times and every so often he would go into some sort of fit and his eyes rolled up so his pupils where somewhere in his skull. You saw the whites of his eyes and that was it. White globes in a skull, like something you get in a movie. The bits of the eye which record vision were in his cranium.

All he was doing was eating in a decent restaurant in Italy and Lancia was picking up the bill. His eyes rolled at any time. He was not being interviewed, he was eating supper. The hacks at the table were all Brits, but we were not even talking about motor racing and, besides, there was Eddie Cheever and Riccardo Patrese to talk to.

At the time, there were senior people in motor racing who were amazed that de Cesaris had even a basic driving licence. The eyeball rolling occurred every 10-15 minutes. I think you have answered anyway: Daddy's money.

You keep better count than me, but we can agree on one thing: Andrea de Cesaris made the case for carbon composites.

I wonder what occupation he might have pursued without the money and an ability to drive fast when the eyes were seeing. I am not convinced that he was employable in many areas. You would not want to give him charge of a large truck, for example.

Let me say again, he must have been completely blind when the eyes went walkabout. The story was that it did not happen when he was racing. I saw Stefan Johansson in the pitlane at Thruxton (F3 days) having to be restrained from using one of de Cesaris's limbs as a baseball bat. De Cesaris broke down in tears.

There is a tragic side to the man, though with all that money behind him, maybe it should not be 'tragic; but 'slightly disadvantaged' plus 'under some circumstances'.

Thank you for taking the trouble to write, it is appreciated.

My best

Mike

Em seguida, em outra resposta, complementou:

I speak only for myself, but I think that nobody wants to see those eyeballs. I have not even seen those eyeballs in a horror movie. People will believe aliens arriving in Chevy hubcaps before they will believe that the eyes of an F1 driver (once set pole) used to do that.

The big problem is how you explain this to F1 fans 25 years on.