Ricardo Londoño

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Nel 1981 il team Ensign e il suo proprietario Morris Nunn non se la passavano per nulla bene. L'incidente che aveva troncato la carriera di Clay Regazzoni a Long Beach nel 1980 li aveva privati non solo del pilota di punta della squadra ma anche dello sponsor principale che ne avrebbe dovuto garantire la sicurezza economica.

La situazione del team era piuttosto "disperata", con Nunn che rabbrividiva ogni volta che una sua vettura rompeva un motore per la paura di non riuscire a presentarsi al GP successivo. Per cercare di andare avanti e di provare a pianificare un futuro, anche a breve termine, servivano "liquidi" veri. A Long Beach sulla Ensign aveva corso Marc Surer, ma non bastava.

Per il successivo GP del Brasile, che si correva per la seconda volta sul circuito del Jacarepaguà, la FIA aveva previsto una sessione di test per permettere ai piloti di familiarizzare con la pista.

La Ensign indicò come pilota titolare tale Ricardo Londoño-Bridge, 32 anni, colombiano che come sponsor sfoggiava sulla sua Ensign una generica scritta "Colombia". La FIA, senza sapere assolutamente chi fosse questo pilota proveniente dalla Colombia, decise di subordinare la concessione della Superlicenza F1 al comportamento di Londoño durante i test.

Londoño nella sua "carriera" aveva corso a due ruote nella 350cc, qualche gara in IMSA e Can-Am e una presenza nella Formula Aurora alla guida di una Lotus 78. Un palmares piuttosto magro per chi puntava ad entrare in Formula 1. Nonostante tutto i tempi durante i test furono piuttosto interessanti.

Il tempo migliore della sessione fu quello di Carlos Reutemann in 1'37''48, Londoño con la sua Ensign girò in 1'41''77 facendo meglio di piloti molto più blasonati di lui come Piquet, Arnoux, Daly, Giacomelli e Jabouille. Tuttavia una collisione con Keke Rosberg, che gli frenò davanti per intimidirlo, fu presa come pretesto dai commissari della FIA per rifiutare la superlicenza a Londoño. In realtà le cose andarono diversamente.

Appena il nome di Londoño venne messo tra gli iscritti al test Ecclestone e la FIA si informarono da dove provenissero gli sponsor portati dal pilota colombiano. Le risposte arrivarono mentre le prove di Rio erano in corso, altrimenti mai e poi mai gli sarebbe stato concesso di entrare nell'abitacolo della Ensign.

Londoño era semplicemente finanziato dai maggiori trafficanti di cocaina di Medellin, in stretto contatto niente meno che con il boss per eccellenza Pablo Escobar. Ecclestone e la FIA, già in imbarazzo per la presenza di Alex Hawkridge (coinvolto in passato in una brutta storia di sesso minorile) nel team Toleman, non potevano permettersi anche un personaggio come Londoño. Fu così che la breve storia in F1 del pilota colombiano ebbe fine.

Intervistato qualche anno dopo sulla vicenda Morris Nunn raccontò: "Andai in Colombia alla ricerca di sponsor perché mi dissero che lì esisteva la reale possibilità di trovare dei finanziatori. Visitai l'azienda di Londoño e incontrai diversi personaggi che abitavano in case incredibili, difficilmente raggiungibili via terra, oltre a diverse persone armate. Qualche anno dopo, in un documentario americano, scoprii di aver incontrato uno tra i maggiori ricercati degli Stati Uniti. Come pilota Londoño non era male, un tipo particolarmente coraggioso".

Londoño nel corso degli anni era diventato un vero e proprio signore della droga. Nel 2000 gli vennero sequestrati beni per un valore totale di 20 miliardi di pesos. Il 18 luglio del 2009, fuori da un ristorante nei pressi di una spiaggia chiamata "Isla dos Milagros", Londoño venne ucciso insieme alle sue guardie del corpo con dodici colpi di pistola di cui tre alla testa. La polizia archiviò subito il caso come un "regolamento di conti" tra Narcos.

Finiva così a 59 anni la vita di Londoño, l'uomo a cui la FIA aveva negato per la prima volta nella sua storia la superlicenza in F1.

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Road America, 1980, campionato Can-Am... Londono con la Lola T530...

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Last year, I received a phone call out of the blue. At the other end of the line, speaking from Colombia, was Ricardo Londono, a racing driver with whom I had made friends in the early Eighties at a time when he was trying to get a foothold in F1 racing. I had lost touch with Ricardo long ago, but as the conversation flowed it became clear that our relationship had lost nothing since we parted in 1982. He had got my phone number, by chance, after meeting my brother-in-law at the city airfield in Medellin (Colombia's second city) where Diego keeps his single-engined plane, and he was overjoyed to hear that I was now married to a Colombian woman. As he reminded me more than once, this had been his advice to me all those years ago. He insisted that next time the Brunette and I went to Colombia, he would be our host.

Then, last weekend, my mother-in-law got a message to us to say that Ricardo Londono was dead and to let me know that reports of his brutal murder were all over the TV and newspapers. It was a horrific story. Surrounded by family and friends on the beach, he had been preparing to leave the restaurant where they had enjoyed lunch when six hit men suddenly appeared. The killers didn't mess around: the shooting lasted five minutes and there were 12 bullets in Ricardo's body, including three in his head. Two other men, believed to be his bodyguards, went down with him. The local police told a national newspaper that the assassinations were part of the settling of accounts in the drug trade. In a country still racked by the curse of drugs, nobody doubted that verdict.

To avoid any misunderstandings, it might help here if I insert a few personal details. I have visited Colombia three times, twice on motor racing business and once, in 2001, to meet my wife's family six months after we were married in England. Coincidentally, my best friend, whom I met through motor racing in England (and who was instrumental in introducing me to Mrs Hack 10 years ago), is a prominent Colombian figure who has political connections with two of his country's Presidents and currently serves it as a diplomat. He also happens to have a family relationship with Ricardo Londono. Let us call my friend Bill. Neither he, nor I, nor anyone in our immediate families, has ever been involved in the sale of narcotics. We deplore the use of illegal drugs. In fact I'm not particularly thrilled when Bill lights up one of his beloved Cuban cigars.

This does not mean that we have never had contact with people involved in the drug business. In Colombia, a troubled but democratic country of 30 million people whose economic output is distorted by drug exports valued in the billions of dollars, it is virtually impossible to know the background of the people one encounters as part of everyday social or commercial contact. Nevertheless, even a foreigner like me rapidly acquires a nose for a mafioso. He won't smell particularly bad, but he will tend to lack social graces and he often has terrible taste in clothes, jewellery and cars. More obviously, his companions will be scary-looking blokes with guns tucked into their armpits.

As a racing driver and a national celebrity, Ricardo Londono could not avoid being lionised by the narcotraficantes. Born in 1950, from his teenage years he was an extraordinary daredevil who raced bikes, cars and boats. Along the way he did a lot of crashing and broke a lot of bones - but always came back. His sharp wits earned him the nickname "Cuchilla" ("Koo-tchee-jah" in the local pronunciation), which roughly translates as "Razor." Colombian motorsport - karting and cars - is administered by FIA-affiliated federations, and there are several important championships. There have been some good Colombian drivers, as we know, but there's an air of circus about racing there, and top talent has to move abroad to find success and recognition.

The mistake that Ricardo made in his career was to stay at home, where his ability garnered him increasingly meaningless successes, not to mention enhancing his celebrity. It was only when his fellow countryman Roberto Guerrero, eight years his junior, started to have success in British F3 racing, that he decided to head for England at last. At the end of the 1980 season, at Silverstone, he arrived to drive an ex-F1 Lotus 78 in a round of the Aurora series. The car, entered by one-time Lotus mechanic Colin Bennett, was already thoroughly battle-scarred. Ricardo crashed it in practice when yet another tired component broke, but he drove sensationally well in the race, coming through to finish 7th.

Ricardo's talent, and the possibility of raising some money in Colombia, came to the attention of Ensign boss Morris Nunn, whose team was close to my heart and for which I worked, as its lap-charter, at all the GPs. Morris had always operated on tiny margins, and he was about to lose his best-ever sponsor, Unipart. There was going to be some sort of tie-up in 1981 with Colin Bennett, who was understandably pushing for the 30 year old Colombian. It was therefore decided, early in 1981, that Ensign should send an expedition to Colombia in search of sponsorship. This foraging party consisted of Morris Nunn, my Colombian mate Bill and me. No, I don't know why either. Perhaps the presence of a journalist added some weight to the expedition. Because I was owed some holiday by my magazine, Motor - then the UK's best-selling car weekly - I was happy to help out. I requested no fee, neither did I accept one.

The general plan, as I remember, was to concentrate our search on - for want of a better word - legitimate businesses. Cafe Colombia, the huge state-supported coffee exporting commission, was already on board, so we started with Pasta Doria, an old-fashioned business owned by devout Catholics whose products were available in every supermarket. They stumped up enough to buy a few stickers, despite some misgivings about the tearaway driver. So far, so legal. The difficult part came when we got word from some of Ricardo's less savoury backers that they didn't want to be left out of the bidding process.

Thus it was that I made the acquaintance of a notorious Colombian family, a father and two sons whose wealth and influence can have been generated only by a deep involvement in the business of distributing the product which has cast such a long shadow over Colombia in the eyes of the world. This was an invitation, however, that we could not refuse. We took a long trip to the family's farmhouse in the countryside on the eastern (Atlantic seaboard) side of the country. It may have been a working farm, but it also had a colossal runway, capable of taking even the biggest cargo plane. After a brief conversation, during which I found myself tongue-tied, we sat down to a delicious lunch of wild duck, shot personally by our host. I couldn't help wondering if he'd used a 12-bore or a Thomson machine gun...

My companions had to rush back to Europe that same afternoon, but our hosts insisted that I stay the night, to regale them and their friends with stories of F1 racing. My own flights home via Miami were magically re-scheduled so that I could fly out of the beautiful coastal city of Cartagena, about 100 kms north, and it was decided that we would drive down there that evening to have dinner by the harbour. The bosses chose to ride the bumpy road on their motorbikes, with their ladies on the pillion and me in one of the pickups that escorted them. At intervals of 10 kilometres or so along the way there were police roadblocks, designed (I was told) to facilitate the apprehension of wanted criminals. Every time we passed one, I couldn't help noticing that the cops had stopped a bus or a taxi and were far too busy searching crates of fruit and chickens to bother with us.

After overcoming my shyness over some excellent wine and food, I was escorted to a luxurious yacht in the harbour and shown my quarters, the air-conditioned master cabin. There I was left in the care of the crew, no more than ten or 10 of them. Next morning a man in a big Mercedes took me to the airport. While the other passengers had to check in and negotiate immigration, I was taken directly to the waiting plane. No questions asked.

The first race of the 1981 season was at Long Beach, where Marc Surer (talent but no money) was driving the sole Ensign. Although Ricardo was with the team, he didn't yet have a super licence. I was staying with my friend Chuck Jones, an American who later put some money into Ensign, and one night we organised a party. Chuck's neighbours, some of whom had pretty daughters, were there, and I introduced a particularly comely lass to Ricardo. He invited her to join him at the next race, in Rio de Janeiro, and to his delight she accepted. Several days later, we all set off for Brazil.

Because the Jacarepaguà circuit in Rio had not been used by F1 cars for a few years, the FIA had decided to have an acclimatisation session on the Wednesday before the race. The idea was that Ricardo would drive in the session in order to give the federation's observers an idea of his competence. He showed real flair at the wheel of that excellent little Ensign, setting respectable times and outpacing several of the up-and-coming big names. Perhaps his track etiquette was a bit raw, however, and Keke Rosberg took such a disliking to him that when an opportunity arose, the tough Finn brake-tested him. Taken by surprise, Ricardo understandably failed the test and thumped into the back of the Fittipaldi. The FIA observers noted the incident and the upshot was that Ricardo Londono never got his superlicence. Surer took over the car for the Brazilian GP and in a torrential downpour did such a sensationally good job (finishing fourth) that the seat was his for the rest of the season.

Undeterred, Ricardo at last did what he should have done years before and resolved to race in Europe. It was too late to contest a full season of F2, which is what I suggested, but he managed to finish ninth at the notoriously difficult Pau street circuit in one of Alan Docking's cars. He then showed up at Pergusa, still accompanied by the Californian sweetie. By now, however, she had met the other Colombian, Roberto Guerrero, and in a romantic midnight flit she shifted hotels (and her affections) to be with him. Ricardo swore revenge, and in the race a terrified Roberto was convinced that his rival would deliberately push him off the track. It didn't happen, though, and the story had a happy ending. At the end of 1982 - by which time Roberto had graduated to F1 - he and Katie were married at her home, with me as one of the witnesses. They have three delightful children and live happily to this day in Orange County.

Ricardo never did make his mark in Europe. In 1982, he showed up in the USA, driving one of those gigantic F5000-based central-seater Lola Can-Am cars, and I was invited to his first race, at Sears Point north of San Francisco. By now it was no secret where the sponsorship was coming from, and I became distinctly nervous to learn that half a dozen of his backers had showed up in person. We were all staying at a Holiday Inn where the manageress was so excited that she asked to have her picture taken with all her exotic South American guests. After the snaps had been taken she casually (but innocently) informed me that her husband was the Sheriff of Marin County. I thought it best not to pass on this information to the various gentlemen involved.

A few weeks later, one of the American news weeklies ran a story about the world's most wanted criminals. There were portraits of nine of them on the front cover, and three of the "most wanted" had stayed at that Holiday Inn, supporting the Colombian. I often wonder if the manageress ever found an opportunity to mention this to her husband.

At the age of 32, and downcast by the Brazilian experience, Ricardo eventually went home. I believe he did some more racing, but I never heard any results. What I did hear was worrying. He had started a business selling expensive American hardware - boats, planes and helicopters - to the bad guys. There must have been a lot of money in it, because in 2000 the Colombian courts issued a confiscation against him under legislation aimed at denying known traffickers the fruits of their criminal activities. Properties valued at several million dollars were seized.

When Ricardo called me last year, I had heard only the vaguest reports of these difficulties. He certainly didn't sound despondent and talked about coming to visit us in Europe. Rather naively, I invited him to come and stay with us in England. He was delighted to accept, perhaps because he was getting weary of having to look round every corner before he could go for a walk. As it happens, our little corner of Sussex doesn't see much in the way of hired assassins and million-dollar drug deals. It is a visit, though, which will not now take place.

I've made a lot of friends through motor racing. Ricardo Londoño was one of the more interesting ones, and certainly the scariest. Like Tommy Byrne, whose biography entertained us last year, he was undeniably and exceptionally gifted. Like Tommy, the circumstances of his life weighed against him and his talent was tragically mismanaged. I will speculate until the end of my life about what would have happened 28 years ago in Rio if he hadn't come up against a truculent Finn. For all his manifest faults, he was jovial company and a good friend. The sort of man with whom it is best to be friends rather than an enemy.

BY MIKE DOODSON

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