After these fraught weeks of blood, sweat and tears, Minardi made it to Australia, the place the primary pages of Alonso’s record-breaking F1 profession could be written. Losing no time, Alonso positioned seventeenth (forward of a Jaguar, Prost, Arrows and Benetton) in opening observe, and would go on to qualify a highly-commendable nineteenth – beating two unquestionably faster vehicles.
However race day could be even higher as Alonso – piloting a PS01 with out energy steering and stricken by an array of early-season points – made it to the chequered flag within the giddy heights of twelfth place. It represented an unbelievable end result for Minardi, given their rollercoaster of a winter, and left Stoddart in little doubt that Alonso was destined for greatness.
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“What I at all times bear in mind is I got here off the pit wall completely elated that we’d completed the race and that Fernando had come dwelling in twelfth place, then I walked into the storage and I may see all of the mechanics in tears,” Stoddart remembers.
“I believed, ‘What’s occurred right here that I don’t learn about?’ However the actuality was, they have been simply tears of satisfaction, the truth that we’d acquired there, because the mechanics all thought the staff had gone below in December. Right here we have been a few months later in Melbourne and competing.
“As soon as Fernando acquired into the pit lane and out of the automotive, everybody was hugging him and grabbing him, they usually have been simply elated that he’d managed to realize that. It was an unbelievable begin to his profession and what was to comply with.
