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 can be written. Losing no time, Alonso positioned seventeenth (forward of a Jaguar, Prost, Arrows and Benetton) in opening apply, and would go on to qualify a highly-commendable nineteenth – beating two unquestionably faster automobiles.
However race day can be even higher as Alonso – piloting a PS01 with out energy steering and affected by an array of early-season points – made it to the chequered flag within the giddy heights of twelfth place. It represented an unimaginable consequence for Minardi, given their rollercoaster of a winter, and left Stoddart in little doubt that Alonso was destined for greatness.
WATCH: The rivalries which have outlined Fernando Alonso’s F1 profession
“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 house in twelfth place, then I walked into the storage and I might see all of the mechanics in tears,” Stoddart remembers.
“I assumed, ‘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 obtained there, because the mechanics all thought the workforce had gone below in December. Right here we have been a few months later in Melbourne and competing.
“As soon as Fernando obtained into the pit lane and out of the automobile, everybody was hugging him and grabbing him, and so they 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.
