Paul Stoddart on how he bought the Minardi team

There were several periods in the history of the team from Faenza, which is now called AlphaTauri, but now they say again that it may change hands, although so far these are just rumors.

However, she has actually changed hands three times in the last twenty years, and one of her former owners, Australian entrepreneur Paul Stoddart, told how he took over Giancarlo Minardi’s bankrupt company and in six and a half weeks was able to actually starting a team with zero, after which she started the Australian Grand Prix. By the way, this was Fernando Alonso’s debut race in Formula 1.

Paul Stoddart: “It was December 15, 2000. I was in Nice, I was going to buy a yacht. And then Mike Gascoigne calls and says Flavio Briatore wants to talk to me. I called Flavio and he said, “Paul, do you want to buy an F1 team? We have been eyeing Minardi to supply them with Renault engines, but nothing has come of it. But they are literally on their knees now and you can buy them cheaply.”

I didn’t have to be convinced for a long time, I immediately flew into my plane to the good old Faenza, to the airport of Forli. There was a meeting with Giancarlo Minardi and on the same day we shook hands. My main asset was Fernando Alonso, who was still a test driver at the time, but we didn’t have a car.

It was six weeks and three days before the race in Melbourne and instead of the car we only had the wooden model with a Renault engine. Therefore, decisions had to be made very quickly and, moreover, few team members remained. Many left and we thought we had only one way out.

We had our own team in Formula 3000 (European aviation), about 35 people, so we gathered them all and they flew to Faenza to join the Minardi staff. I quickly made a deal with Bernard Ferguson, head of Cosworth, although he couldn’t sell me the engines and couldn’t build them.

So I acquired the rights to their engine and we organized an engine building workshop at our base, hired five Cosworth specialists and started building our engines (under the European brand). Meanwhile Gustav Brunner, our first designer, was busy converting the chassis to Cosworth engines.

But all this still had to be built, having previously paid the suppliers to whom there were debts, and work continued around the clock. It was a nightmare to deal with when we bought a bankrupt company and then started in Melbourne.

This could only be done by connecting all the resources we had. To be honest, it was another record from Minardi: I assure you, no one has set up a Formula 1 team in six weeks and three days. And when we got to Australia, Fernando finished 12th there.

By the way, Tarso Marquesh’s car was not finished. We only focused on Fernando’s car and before sending all the cargo to Australia we only managed to do one test on a straight line. That’s why we actually continued to assemble the Tarso car in the pit lane in Melbourne. And it’s a pity that she didn’t make it to the finish line due to the generator failure, but Fernando still took 12th place.

Then I stepped off the pit wall and thought, “Wow! We did it!” Then I went into the garage and saw that all our people had tears in their eyes. And so I look at them and say, “Why are you crying? We made it to the finish line, you know?” And they wept with the sense of pride that overwhelmed them. No one believed that we would succeed, but we overcame everything…”