I was poking about the web looking for the name of the former Minardi coffee sponsor (not MoKaDor) and found this article:
SEPTEMBER 24, 1989
BY JOE SAWARD
GLOBETROTTER
Forza Faenza
It was one of those friendly gatherings you rarely see in the modern Formula 1 era, when people were present because they wanted to be there and not because the were obliged to be.
It was Sunday night in Estoril. We were gathered under a wind-blown awning, drinking a few beers and generally mulling over life, love and the universe.
Outside in the gusty blackness, the Mansell/Senna/black flag rumpus was working itself up to a fine old frenzy.
What a difference a piece of canvas can make. Inside there was a guy from McLaren, a happy Ferrari man, some folk from Lotus and me. It felt a bit like being in a foxhole in No Man's Land, avoiding a barrage and not bothering to shoot at each other.
In the course of this get-together, everyone around the table expressed their delight that the Minardi team had led the race - if only for half a lap.
It might seem a little strange in the dog-eat-dog world of F1 that people can wish good fortune on others, but in the case of Minardi, it really does exist.
There is a massive closet Minardi fan club in the paddock. Everyone loves the underdog; to see the little guys sticking two fingers up to the big guys and making them squirm.
Before the race, sitting with a driver - not a Minardi driver - we toasted the success of the little team from Faenza with cups of the glorious, thick espresso coffee that the team's coffee machine churns out at all hours of the day. It's the kind of coffee that makes you dizzy - a couple of sips of heaven.
The Minardi coffee machine is possibly the most popular machine in the Formula 1 paddock - if not the best designed. Around this venerable contraption, people gather to chat and gossip in a homely-environment.
The Minardi motorhome is not one of those scary mobile land-based facilities with dark-tinted windows, leather seats and satellite links to numbered accounts in the Cayman Islands. It's an ingenious van with awnings pointing out in all directions, under which the chef is always hard at work. You don't feel afraid to venture in.
Having fallen out with the new management at Ferrari over the Mansell/Senna black flag business, the heavy-hitters in the Italian press have been banished from the sacred Ferrari awning and now take their coffee with Minardi. Things are more simple with there.
The Minardi boys are friendly, polite and honest. For them being present in an F1 team is good, being successful is amazing, but keeping your feet on the ground is most important. A few races back the Minardi coffee-machine broke down. It is no exaggeration to say that more mechanics were working on this than on the cars - and they were supervised by Giancarlo Minardi himself. The priorities seemed just about right.
Giancarlo gives the impression of being a world-weary, but benevolent, leader. He doesn't tell lies (which is most odd in F1 team manager circles) and he has an unusual idea about contracts. When you read that a Minardi driver has signed a contract it probably means he has shaken hands with Giancarlo. From his point of view, he is happiest if his drivers get on well together.
Giancarlo knows all about struggling and while he still needs money for next year, he is hoping to keep Luis Sala alongside Piero Martini. They were team mates in F3000 before moving to F1 and they work well together.
The present competitiveness of the team is a combination of many things. The Pirelli tires are good, Martini is now able to show the skills which have been hidden in the past, everything has gelled at the same time.
The Minardi team seems to have fan clubs in most countries visited by the F1 circus. No, I didn't believe it either, but I keep bumping into fan club members while visiting the coffee machine.
The British GP was Minardi's finest hour until the recent Iberian Peninsula events. Flying home that night, on a plane with the Ferrari men, the Minardi crew arrived at Bologna Airport to find crowds of celebrating race fans. Mansell's Ferrari had finished second, Minardi fifth and sixth. The Ferrari men slunk home, while Minardi and its fans had a party in the airport.
What is the secret of this popularity? Why do people cheer the team along or secretly hope it does well?
Personally I don't understand it, but I know I feel the same way. Lovers of the underdog have had a bumper season this year. Everywhere young heroes are charging into F1 and some of the hard luck stories of the past have been given happy endings.
Take Martini, for example, Pierluigi had an awful time in the first Minardi season, back in 1985. It nearly destroyed his career. The bright star of European Formula 3 in 1983 was quickly forgotten and had to go back to F3000 to rebuild his career. The teams which once shunned him are now looking again.
There are times when F1 seems like a monster, devouring its children and spitting out the remains. It's very much a consumer society.
There are more deserving cases than there are seats available, inevitably careers go to the wall. Thus, there is always the temptation for youngsters to grab at anything when they are struggling to make it into F1.
It is inevitable that there will be victims of Formula 1's voracious appetite for the latest whizz kid.
The only big news is today's news. Where was JJ Lehto a month ago? In the middle of a frightful F3000 season. Now he is a name on everyone's lips. Remember Julian Bailey? Did he not regret jumping into F1 with an uncompetitive car? It was a risk which didn't work out. Would he do the same in the future?
"It's better to be driving a shitbox than not driving at all," Julian said earlier this year as he was hanging around, looking for an F1 seat.
What anything?
"Anything," he replied.
It's a risk, of course, but like junkies taking a chance and injecting themselves with dirty needles, racing drivers are willing to take big risks to get where they want. There are seldom second chances. Martini had one, Roberto Moreno too. It took the Brazilian a lot longer. The first chance came at Zandvoort in 1982 when Roberto did a one-off for Lotus. He failed to qualify.
"It took years to get over that," he muses now, "It's very hard to make F1 people change their minds about you. I don't know why I ever did that Lotus thing. It was crazy. If you look at it, very few of the drivers who tried to go straight from F3 into the ground-effect cars made it."
Take Tommy Byrne for example.
"Tommy was ***king good," said Eddie Jordan the other day - in his own unique way.
We were chatting and discussing, in a totally arbitrary way, who would still be in F1 next year and who would get fired.
Eddie, of course, knew much more than he was letting on and was fishing for any further information I might have stumbled across. We came up with a list of 12 drivers "on the bubble", and then divided that number by three to allow for the innate conservatism of the mainstream team owners.
It is better, they figure, to rely on known talents rather than take a flyer on a young hero. What they forget is that there is a world outside F1, where drivers show their talents long before ever getting close to a Grand Prix car. Leopards rarely change their spots.
If Ivan Capelli is having a bad year now - and his reputation is waning - through poor reliability, he hasn't forgotten how to drive an F1 car quickly. But the world has forgotten he can. Yannick Dalmas was very good at every stage of his career and that talent hasn't just evaporated.
Perhaps that's why people like Minardi. It is not the off-the-shelf, "we are very professional because we can tell good lies" type of team, it has been tempered by struggle and is built to last. Minardi may not have designer labels, but the team will be going long after the flashier types have retired to the Caymans to spent their ill-gotten gains.
Comments
Loved it.
Who was the most famous Minardi Chef?
Thanks for posting that, it brought back good memories and a good feeling.
Fantastic article, good find Emmett.:D
Liked the last paragraph "tempered by struggle and built to last" could be a Minardi motto with the current addition of "built to return"???
Tempered by experience: Pierluigi Martini
MARCH 1, 1990
BY JOE SAWARD
Sitting on the front row of the grid for the USA GP in Phoenix was the Minardi of Pierluigi Martini. In recent months the Italian has emerged from the shadows and built himself the reputation of being one of the fastest competitors outside the big name teams of Grand Prix racing. Few remember that in 1985 Pierluigi had been consigned to F1's scrap heap as a no-hoper.
Back in 1983 Pierluigi was the bright young star of European racing. In October of that year at Thruxton Ayrton Senna and Martin Brundle fought out the British Formula 3 title. On the same day at Croix-en-Ternois in northern France Pierluigi took the European title. He had beaten the likes of John Nielsen, Tommy Byrne, Emanuele Pirro, Roberto Ravaglia and Gerhard Berger.
A few weeks earlier he had tested a Brabham Formula 1 car and, driving a Minardi, had finished second on his Formula 2 debut at Misano.
He was 22 years old and, quite clearly, a man who was going places in Grand Prix racing.
And yet it all went wrong. Pierluigi did scarcely any racing in 1984, but the following season he was picked as Minardi's first F1 driver when Alessandro Nannini was refused a superlicence by the FISA.
The 1985 season was a disaster, the fledgling Minardi outfit, using Motori-Moderni turbo engines, was hoplessly off the pace. By the end of the year Martini was being written off by F1.
"It was mainly the engine," he explains, with disinterest in his voice. "We couldn't do more than a handful of laps each time and it wasn't letting us develop. Whatever we had -- and we didn't have the best -- couldn't be developed.
"Generally-speaking the team was inclined to blame others and did criticise itself. For many of them the driver was at fault.
"I have nearly totally forgotten 1985," he says now, "but I know that it was good for me in the sense that I had to understand that one must always fight, without ever losing hope, and without ever stopping that fight. I really try and get positive experience from the past."
Had that disastrous year been a case of too much too soon?
"No, I don't think so. If I had had a competitive team or a competitive car I would not be the Martini I am today."
"The positive thing was that this was never the case with Gian Carlo (Minardi) himself. He has always admitted his own mistakes."
"I had a very good relationship with Gian Carlo which did not break even when I left in not a very nice manner. Between us everything continued to be quite friendly."
Friends or not, Pierluigi's career lay in ruins. There was no chance of another F1 drive, so Pierluigi decided to go backwards -- to Formula 3000 -- in an attempt to rebuild his reputation. He rejoined Luciano Pavesi Racing, for which he had won the European F3 title.
"I really wanted to go back to race for Pavesi. I was sure that that team knew me. At least they knew what I was worth and believed in me the same as I believed in myself. That let me take it easy. I didn't have to prove anything to them, because they knew me. I was fighting against everyone else, but at least I didn't have to fight in my own house.
"The results came right away and therefore I started to get even more confidence in myself and more enthusiasm that I nearly lost in 1985."
Pierluigi ended 1986 as the runner-up to Ivan Capelli in the International F3000 Championship.
He stayed with Pavesi for 1987, but nothing went right and, at the beginning of 1988, he joined Lamberto Leoni's First Racing. At the same time he was contracted to Minardi as the team's test driver.
In the course of the summer Martini's fortunes took a turn for the better. Minardi's Adrian Campos quit the team and Pierluigi was called in to replace the Spaniard. In his first race, the Detroit Grand Prix, he finished sixth, scoring Minardi's first World Championship point.
Within a matter of weeks he was a winner again in F3000 at Enna-Pergusa.
Surely, he must have been wary about going back to Minardi after the experiences of 1985?
"I didn't think too much about it, Within myself I knew what happened and knew what was changing and I had no reason not to have confidence.
"I knew, or I believe I knew, the motives and reasons for which Minardi was what it was in 1985. They had gained a little experience since then and the whole team was wanting to progress and recognise their own errors. The team's policy had changed completely.
"With Gian Carlo and me there had always been a reciprocal knowledge of each other's competitiveness. The proof was that when he could choose a driver, he chose me. That was proof enough. When I realised that the whole thing could be handled by Gian Carlo instead of leaning on other people, I took my decision and that was it."
Pierluigi signed for the team fulltime for the 1989 season.
"Minardi is my work desk. I am doing my job and I am paid for it like everyone else but, of course, there is a special kind of feeling. We come from the same part of the country and we've known each other for a long time."
The team started to work with Pirelli and as the season progressed so did the competitiveness of Minardi. At Silverstone that hard work was rewarded with an emotional fifth-sixth finish for Pierluigi and his team mate and friend Luis Sala. It came on the day that Minardi was threatened with a future of pre-qualifying unless there were points on the board.
"It was not a day that I can easily forget. It was one of those days that stay with you because it makes you think how hard it is to work and how rewarding it can be when you get the result you have been chasing. In Italian there is an expression 'Dalla stalla alle stelle' -- from the stables to the stars. That is what really happened to us.
"That is what really makes this sport nice, but it also teaches you that something that is very important: never over-estimate yourself. It's difficult enough to get up there to the front, but its very easy to fall back down again. You always need to work hard and be on the ball. The most difficult thing is not to get to the stars, it is remain there..."
Pierluigi has managed to achieve that. By the end of last year, he was challenging McLarens and Ferrais for pole positions and mounting a serious threat in the races.
"We worked a lot with Pirelli during the winter and probably the reason for our success is that not only did they developed their own product but also that we developed alongside them. Minardi was building the way Pirelli wanted and the same vice-versa. Without even thinking about it we met in the middle and solved our problems together. The results have been the fruit of that relationship."
At the end of last season Pierluigi's name was being linked to bigger and more celebrated teams, yet he stayed on with Minardi.
"I had many contacts with other teams," he explains, "but the programme that Minardi had put in front of me, was better than the offers I received. So I did think about it, but not for long, because I knew this was my way -- at least for the time being.
"It is an immense satisfaction to realise that you are showing others what you believed you were anyway. I believe that the people around me are the thermometers for what happens outside. I am very happy about the satisfaction, but, at the same time, I am very conscious and responsible that I have to do it again next weekend. In other words, I am keeping my feet on the ground and not running away on horses.
"It is even more important because I am not fighting against a crowd of incompetents -- all my adversaries are very competent -- possibly some are better than I am, or more experienced that I am. I just have to work harder and harder and harder. Not only me, but the whole team.
"And even if sometimes I do forget about keeping my feet on the ground, it doesn't last long because I immediately go back and say 'Yes, okay, I've had fun and vented my feelings, I have to go back now and work on my line'.
Talking with Pierluigi you get the impression that he has built a wall around himself, to protect himself from the kind of hurt he experienced in 1985. He is not unfriendly, but he is reserved. He is doing a job and the real Pierluigi Martini is not available for everyone to see. Does he feel that?
"Yes. I have my friends and my fun in very simple ways. In doing those things I'd rather that no-one recognises me and they let me do whatever I am doing.
"It has to change when I am at the track, but that is my profession.
"I don't like to be involved in too much chaotic activity. I like to take a walk in the country or play golf. My family and private life is one thing, my profession is another one. I like to keep them separate."
It seems, looking back, that Pierluigi is much changed from the delighted, emotional, youngster of 1983. F1 has not been kind to him in the past and he is guarding against the same happening again. He will not let his hopes and ambitions run riot.
Does he feel that change?
"Possibly," he says without a smile. "It happens."
While he is cautious, there is no doubt that the same fire still burns as did in 1983. His ambition then was to be World Champion and this has not changed.
"I will try to be World Champion with whatever team takes me up to the standard necessary," he says.
"I do not want to imagine the future. I want to try to give my best at the moment. If I lose my concentration I can easily fall back -- with the team -- to where I was before.
"I don't believe in planning too much. You never know what might happen. You are really planning without all the necessary information, so it's not very intelligent. You know what direction you want to go, but you shouldn't plan with too much detail because things might change.
"It is not in my plans to think about the future until I reach the future."
Available to view on www.minardiusa.com Published with kind permission of www.grandprix.com
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