At the San Marino G.P. the frenza based squad unleashed its new PS05 car with a staggering extra 60bhp cosworth engine. It has been everyone’s dream, not only of Minardi fans but everyone alike to one day see the Minardi’s off the back of the grid. Huge expectation was around the franza team but qualifying showed that their not their quite yet. Everything and everyone is quickly pointing out the potential of the new radical PS05 but even with a huge budget Ferrari couldn’t exert the best from their car on the first outing and with the smallest budget in F1 neither could Minardi although we all hoped they would.

With a lot of time wasted in the practice sessions during the weekend trying to iron out the problems before qualifying on Saturday, Minardi just couldn’t get the best out of the car but with these problems occurring and being fixed the better chance the team have in Barcelona.

The race itself at the Enzo e Dino Ferrari track wasn’t all to good either, with both drivers retiring with gearbox-related problems. Patrick Friesacher was the first of the two drivers to retire on lap 8 costing down the pit lane, which was later discovered as a broken clutch shaft, which took him out the G.P. From the TV coverage that was shown, I didn’t even know he retired till the commentators confirmed it, which just shows how much TV team Minardi get and why they badly need good results to improve TV coverage.

“The start was not too bad, and I was quite happy with the opening laps, as I was ahead of Christijan and able to stay with Monteiro, but then suddenly, as I was accelerating out of the last corner, it seemed like something broke said the disappointed Friesacher. Generally, the car felt good today, but we need to find some more down force. We’ll be working on this area when we test at Mugello on Wednesday and Thursday of this week.”

Albers retired on lap 20 with a hydraulics problem, when a serious fluid leak was discovered during the first scheduled pit stop and the team had no choice but to retire the car in order to avoid damage to the new gearbox.

Albers told MagicMinardi, “The first thing is that we did some race laps today and learned a lot about the new car. During the first stint, I had strong over steer, which we were going to deal with at the pit stop, but unfortunately, there was quite a bad leak from the gearbox and I was not able to continue. I wish we could have delivered a better result to the guys for all the work they have put in, but it was not possible this weekend. We’ll see what we can do in Barcelona.”

Minardi’s team principle Paul Stodart added, “Despite a valiant effort by the drivers and the whole team, it wasn’t really a surprise that reliability stopped both Minardi’s in today’s race, as one has to consider that this is the first serious outing for the PS05. Both failures were gearbox-related, and hopefully, this week’s Mugello test will give the team the opportunity to perfect certain aspects of the car. On a positive note, though, we believe the overall potential of the new package, especially of the Cosworth TJ2005 engine, bodes very well for the future.”

Even though it was exciting to finally see a new Minardi car in over 4 years, the frenza team has a lot of work cut out for them. They will need to work hard at Mugello on Wednesday and Thursday when they do some more testing on the new PS05 and it will require a huge effort by the team to develop the car to outpace the Jordan’s.

Cathal O’Brien
Editor

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