Reflections on the No of Alonso to Ferrari in 2000

By role
April 15 2003

A very interesting article appeared this weekend in theNewspaper El Mundo with an interview to Alonso's personal manager Adrian Campos. Adrian Campos raced in the 80s for one and a half years for the team Minardi and it was the person that discovered Alonso when he was a teenager driving karts.

When Alonso was struggling at the beginning of his F3000 season, Gabriele Rumi, owner of Minardi had set his eyes on him. He demanded Alonso to sign a contract if he ever wanted to drive for Minardi in F1. Campos and Alonso, that had tried to postpone that signature as much as possible waiting for something better to come along, had to sign an agreement for five years. Today that may sound like a bad decision but back then it was a great chance for the young driver. He was going to be an F1 pilot at age 19 and he did not even have to pay for the drive

That same year Minardi invited Alonso for a private test in the circuit of Maranello where Ferrari had also been testing. On the second day on the track Alonso was able to match, on a Minardi, Badoer’s time with a Ferrari. Ferrari took the telemetry and Campos had a phone call:
“I had a phone call from the sport director of Ferrari and he told me that Jean Todt wanted to have lunch with me. We met and Todt told me that they wanted Fernando. His idea was for him to spend one year at Prost and then to replace Barrichello. They even mentioned that Schumacher had made that petition. But they said that they would not buy the contract from Minardi. They put their lawyers to our disposal to search how to break the contract with Minardi, but they said they did not wanted to pay, as Fernando was still an unknown driver".

Everything started to get out of hand and Gazetta dello Sport was running a front-page article titled “Ferrari wants Alonso as the future replacement for Schumacher” making Campos quite nervous. “We were in a historic moment and it was a huge risk to make a mistake". Alonso was clear when asked: “Minardi made a bet on me and we are not going to left them empty. If there is a team interested in me, they should negotiate with Minardi”. This meant saying NO to Ferrari…

The phone continued to ring. Frank Williams’ son, Jonathan, called to tell them Williams was interested in having Alonso as tester. Also on the phone and interested was the person in charge of Renault, Flavio Briatore. After so many calls and interest Campos decided to call his friend Pacuale Lacunedu, right hand of Bernie Ecclestone. Campos told him the situation and half an hour later Lacunedu called Campos telling him Ecclestone was awaiting them in his office at 10 AM the following day.

Campus could not believe what he had heard: “In one year and a half as an F1 pilot I had only shaken hands with Ecclestone twice, Fernando had not even started in F1 and he had been called to his office”.

That night they met Briatore in London and the Italian offered to buy the contract from Minardi and design an ambitious plan: one year on lease to Minardi, a year as tester in Renault and then, as long as he showed progress, official driver for the French team.
Next morning they met with Ecclestone and he said: “Forget about Minardi. Williams now has two drivers – Schumacher and Montoya – that will last many years. To Ferrari Fernando will go once he has been World Champion. He has to stay at Renault”.

Campos and Alonso were heavily criticized for saying no to Ferrari. The reason of the no was the intention of respecting their contract with Minardi.

The following year Alonso raced for Minardi, he unqualified his teammates 16-1, and even if he did not score any points he was able to put his Minardi in front of many of the mid-grid teams as Benetton, Arrows, Bar and even Jaguar. At the end of the season Sauber and Jordan were interested in him. Both teams wanted Alonso for 2 years, something Briatore was not willing to give so Alonso spent a year testing and developing the Renault F1 car and to get ready for this season in which he has scored two podiums in three races.