EPIC FAIL MINARDI

SAM PHILIP

The finest failures in automotive history “I have not failed,” Thomas Edison once said. “I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” And when it came to winning Formula One races, no team found more ways that didn’t work than Minardi, the plucky Italian outfit that, over 21 glorious years, became a byword for wholehearted motorsport failure. A family business, Minardi competed in Formula Two in the early 1980s. The fact this yielded no great success failed to dissuade the team from stepping up to F1 in 1985, where it continued its admirable strategy of ‘losing, but enthusiastically’. The stats are impressive, just not necessarily in a good way. Over two decades in F1, Minardi contested 346 races and some 20,000 laps in total. Championships? Zero. Wins? Zero. Podium finishes?…

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BBC Top Gear (digital) - 1 Issue, March 2025

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