1985

Motori Moderni's power unit debuted at the 1985 San Marino Grand Prix with the newly-born Minardi Formula One team. Rookie Pierluigi Martini qualified the M185 19th on the grid but was forced to retire after 14 laps. Martini failed to score a point in 1985 with a best finish of 8th and last in the season ending Australian Grand Prix. The Motori Moderni engine produced 720 bhp (537 kW; 730 PS). This compared unfavourably to the approximately 1,000 bhp (746 kW; 1,014 PS) of the Renault, Honda and BMW turbo engines, and the 900 bhp (671 kW; 912 PS) of the TAG-Porsche and Ferrari engines. At Silverstone for the British Grand Prix, Martini was 8.054 seconds slower than Keke Rosberg's pole winning Williams-Honda (Rosberg had set the pole at an average of 160.9 mph (258.9 km/h), the fastest ever turbo lap speed). At the Österreichring in Austria he was 11.2 seconds slower than Alain Prost's McLaren TAG-Porsche, while at Monza in Italy he was 8.8 seconds slower than Ayrton Senna's Lotus-Renault.

1986

In 1986, as the Minardi team expanded to running two cars, Martini was replaced with Andrea de Cesaris, and paired with F1 rookie Alessandro Nannini, who showed his class by often out pacing his more experienced countryman. Again, no points were scored with the Motori Moderni engines rated at approximately 780 bhp (582 kW; 791 PS) next to the leading Honda, BMW, Ferrari, Renault and TAG-Porsche units which were producing well over 950 bhp (708 kW; 963 PS) in race trim (the BMW was said to be the most powerful qualifying engine at around 1,400 bhp (1,044 kW; 1,419 PS)).

The AGS team was Motori Moderni's second customer. The team only participated in two races during the 1986 season, with Ivan Capelli retiring from both the Italian and Portuguese Grands Prix.

1987

1987 would be the last season the Motori Moderni engine would be used in Formula One. Minardi, who had retained Nannini after an impressive debut season, replaced de Cesaris (who had moved to Brabham) with Spanish driver Adrián Campos. Once more no points were scored throughout the season, despite some spirited drives by Nannini which only resulted in 11th-placed finishes in Hungary and Portugal. The engines, now rated at 800 bhp (597 kW; 811 PS) after the introduction of the FIA's mandatory pop-off valve aimed at limiting the turbos power to 4.0 bar, were often struggling against the 575 bhp (429 kW; 583 PS) V8 Cosworth DFZ powered cars.

At the 1987 Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide, Nannini qualified an impressive 13th on the grid only 3.434 behind Gerhard Berger's pole winning Ferrari. Unfortunately his race only lasted a few hundred metres as he was pushed into the fence just out of the chicane after the start. Campos qualified 26th and last (3.42 seconds slower than Nannini), with his race ending with transmission failure after 46 of the scheduled 82 laps.

With 1988 being the final year for the turbos in Formula One (until 2014), Motori Moderni pulled out of the sport at the end of 1987 rather than try to adapt the engine for an even lower pop-off valve limit of 2.5 bar and a lower fuel limit of just 150 litres. As a result Minardi switched to the Cosworth DFZ engine in 1988.