It would be wrong to call the 1998 season a very successful one. However it was the first step into a new era for the Minardi team. The most important thing was (next to the arrival of the Ford [[Cosworth]] V10) the return of [[BrunnerGustav Gustav Brunner]]. He had worked with [[Ferrari]] for 4 years and had already been with the Minardi team in 1992. He started immediately with the design of the [[M01]] (the '99 car). In addition to that, the factory in [[Faenza]] was almost doubled in size. The drivers were the very young [[TueroEsteban Esteban Tuero]] from Argentina and the fast [[NakanoShinji Shinji Nakano]] from Japan. Tuero was, due to his age and his reckless driving style, very popular with lots of fans and the media. RTL Germany for example dedicated a part of their F1 TV show to him (letting him do all kinds of funny things like sticking an Austrian motorway vignette on his car during the Austrian GP).
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Tuero crashes with Johnny Herbert at Zeltweg

Shinji Nakano who raced for Prost during the '97 season had a very constant year. He finished 7th in Montreal and had several other good races. Commentators called him one of the best Japanese drivers ever.
{{image url="../images/content/19983.jpg" title="Shinji Nakano" alt="Shinji Nakano"}}

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//This page belongs to the [[Categoryhistory History]] category.//