In 1989 he debuted as sporting director of Ferrari, with the hard task of making the team competitive again after some disappointing seasons in the mid-1980s.; the team won the first race in Brazil with Nigel Mansell, and then again in Hungary and in Portugal, but poor reliability prevented the team from competing with McLaren and Williams. In Ferrari employed the reigning World Champion Alain Prost, and almost won the title, losing it in Japan with the second of the infamous Prost-Senna collisions. Fiorio was sacked by Ferrari weeks before the beginning of the 1991 season, but only left after the team′s troubles at the 1991 Monaco Grand Prix.