For 1991, Emanuele Pirro, who drove for the team the previous year, was retained while Andrea de Cesaris was replaced by JJ Lehto, who crashed the car heavily in pre-season testing. Scuderia Italia's failure to score any points the previous year, together with the number of teams attempting to qualify for races in the current season, meant that for the first half of the year, both drivers were forced to pre-qualify. When Lehto secured the team's best finish of the year by finishing third at the San Marino Grand Prix, the four points earned from the race meant that from the German Grand Prix onwards, he and Pirro had direct entry to qualifying. While pre-qualifying was no barrier for Lehto, Pirro had failed three times. When he qualified for races, Pirro enjoyed relatively good reliability in contrast to Lehto who only finished five races all year. Pirro's best race was at the Monaco, where he scored a single point for sixth place.