My relations with Fiat as a function of the expansion of Ferrari’s sports programs intensified on the occasion of the secret meeting between Alain Prost – with whom I agreed on behalf of Mauro Coppini and whom I accompanied to the Turin Palace hotel in Turin – Ghidella and of course “engineer Coppini” – as everyone called him – to discuss the signing of Ferrari, where the French driver would land two years later, in 1990. An important friendship relationship – which I still have – is that with Nelson Piquet, born on the occasion of the 1979 Canadian Grand Prix. For Nelson, a great driver and man of rare human qualities, I took care of aspects related to communication and his image, to the point that many believed I was his manager. Prost and Piquet were friends and lived together in Paris.
Mauro Coppini was responsible for the communication of the Fiat Group, occupying the post that belonged to Alberto Nicolello, but, in particular, he had become Ghidella’s personal advisor, unhinging the scaffolding of the hierarchies that governed Corso Marconi. Coppini was a true Richelieu who enjoyed a privileged relationship with the top management of Fiat Auto, the seat of industrial power as opposed to Cesare Romiti, expression of the financial and political power of the Group led by the lawyer. Not only did we journalists expect Romiti to be “set aside”, as he had had his day, while Ghidella had been the true proponent of the great relaunch of Fiat on international markets, which is why we were waiting for the natural change that should have rewarded the engineer Ghidella. But as we know, this was not the case in the comparison between the Agnelli brothers. Defining Mauro Coppini as a Richelieu is perhaps an understatement, because he was a much listened to advisor, playing an undercurrent role as an absolute protagonist, always a step backwards, profound connoisseur of the internal balance of the company and of Ferrari itself, which technically and financially depended on Turin. It was Coppini himself who asked me to test the ground to bring Piquet to Maranello even before Prost, an operation that was not possible due to the complex contractual intertwining, not easy to dissolve in a short time, to which Nelson was bound.
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