The best thing since Minardi

Phil: Greetings to both our readers, who've missed out on the second of our I Was Having a Blog live events, the Grand Prix Trivia pub quiz. Congratulations to my co-blogger who scored a creditable second place, and shouldn't pay any attention to the old adage that second place is the first loser, particularly given that he was faced with questions about, for example, the 1968 Moroccan Grand Prix*.

Any, we discovered last night that my co-blogger was curiously ignorant of the existence of Minardi, so to enlighten him, here is my Minardi featurette about a team that competed for two decades and achieved pretty much nothing, apart from helping launch the careers of some great drivers. Here are a few of them.

1. Fernando Alonso. When Alonso took his first world title in 2005, his old boss at Minardi, Paul Stoddart, joked that he was Minardi's first world champion. His début season at Minardi in 2001 was less succesful, eleventh place at the last race of the season in Japan being his best finish, but as has often been the case, opened the door for him at Benetton, and the rest is history.

2. Mark Webber. Alonso's replacement at Minardi might very well be Minardi's second world champion, and perhaps as early as this year. Mark impressed at his very first outing for Minardi, taking fifth place at his home grand prix in 2002, the team's first points for nearly three years, and 16th place in the championship.

3. Alessandro Nannini. Nannini drove for Minardi in early days of the team, in 1986 and 1987. Like Alonso he went on to Benetton, and took his only grand prix victory in Japan in 1989, after Prost's and Senna's infamous collision. He retired from the sport a year later having been seriously injured in a helicopter crash.

4. Giancarlo Fisichella. Fisi drove half a season for Minardi in 1996, before being replaced by a pay-driver. His best result was eighth at Montreal, but it was enough for Jordan to sign him for the following season. A career of midfield mediocrity, punctuated by occasional moments of brilliance, beckoned.

5. Jarno Trulli. Long before Jarno Trulli got old enough to need naps in the middle of races, he started his first six races at Minardi in early 1997, scoring two ninth places. When Olivier Panis crashed at Montreal, and would miss the rest of the season, Alain Prost chose Trulli to replace him.

One final factoid about Italy's number two team: nobody ever stood on an F1 podium, wearing Minardi overalls. Ever.

*Made considerably trickier by the fact that the only Moroccan Grand Prix actually took place in 1958.