Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously thought...

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Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously thought...

Post by Ferrim »

I've just found something between amazing and awful about Luca Badoer's ill fated race, that day at the Nurburgring.

I was googling for some info about Minardi, and I came across the book "Forza Minardi" in Google Books. As you can expect, it is a book about the history of the beloved Faenza team. Here you can read about the 1999 European GP: http://books.google.es/books?id=9WKmFIo ... &q&f=false

Notice when Badoer says: "I was fourth and, I have to say, with the wrong pit stop, otherwise it would have been an even better result."

That comment about a wrong pit stop surprised me, because I didn't remember it. I checked Badoer's biography in the main site and it isn't reported. At first I thought Luca was probably mixing things belonging to another race, but just in case, I decided to have a look at that day's pitstops from FORIX. I was stunned to find this:

Image

Yes. Badoer was running 4th that day in spite of having lost almost half a minute (in relation to his teammate) during his pitstop. I still couldn't believe it, so I went to check the race order from the lap before his pitstop. In lap 34, Badoer had been running 7th, just 3.5 seconds behind Trulli (who eventually finished 2nd). After both of them pitted, in lap 35 (Jarno, who had previously made one pit stop, to switch to wet tyres; Luca, who was yet to pit and was running out of fuel, made his first and only stop and continued on dry tyres). The following lap, Badoer was already lapped, and we can't directly compare his and Trulli's gaps to the leader, but we have their respective total race times for that lap: Trulli's was 56'44.163 while Badoer's was 57'22.262 (I can take screenshots, it's just that I don't want to post too many of them). That is, Trulli's gap to Badoer increased from 3.5 to 38 seconds, which is coherent with their reported pitstops times (with a small increase probably due to the fact that the track was slippery and Trulli's wet tyres provided for better grip).

From that point on, Badoer, who was now running in 10th place, showed excellent pace on dry tyres over the slippery surface. Between laps 37 and 40, his gap to Häkkinen increased (!) from 6.6 to 23.2 seconds (!!!), to Panis from 15.6 to 25.3... He was also lapping faster than Gené in the sister car, also on dry tyres: a mere 4 seconds a lap (!!!), so that by lap 42 he was again ahead of his teammate. This unbelievable pace explains how he was able to make such a big jump forward in spite of his botched pitstop, the reasons of which we sadly don't know.

A few laps later, he manages to unlap himself (after a Ralf Schumacher pitstop) and he goes faster than the race leader, Fisichella, from lap 45 to 48, reducing his gap from 1'21.360 to 1'17.176, that is, well over a second per lap. The thing is, Fisichella was going quite faster than those behind him! Then, Badoer crosses the line for the final time at the end of lap 53, and the standings are:

Image

And this means what you think it means. If not for the problem in the pitstop, Luca Badoer would probably had been running second at the time of his retirement. In fact, I would say that it's perfectly possible that the long pitstop time had an impact in the internals of his car and that, had he enjoyed a normal pitstop, the failure would have never happened and we would have had a Minardi in the podium.

And you thought Luca Badoer was unlucky...?
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by AndreaModa »

That's insane. I'm lost for words just imagining what a Minardi podium might have been like!
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Londoner »

To this day I still cannot watch the footage of him retiring, and this revelation is only gonna make it worse. :cry: :|
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Sunshine_Baby_[IT] »

It would have been great to see him in second position. :o
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by pasta_maldonado »

Given that he was lapping faster than Fisi when he retired, he may have even been able to take the lead!
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by f1-gast »

Yes i remember this race as one of the fewest from the 90's.
Badoer was even driving to the 3th position, for some reason the minardi was very good that day, that race, but failed.

Like it happend with Jos Verstappen in Brazil 2003 and if im correct Germany 2003.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by thehemogoblin »

I want to cry now.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by tommykl »

thehemogoblin wrote:I want to cry now.

ERMAHGEHRD!!!! HEHRS BEHRK!!!!
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

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thehemogoblin wrote:I want to cry now.


:shock:
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Londoner »

It's like the old F1 Rejects guard is returning one by one. First Coops, then Carlos, and now Hemo. Maybe even Watka will return. :o :shock:
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by solarcold »

Oh my...
I don't even know how to react on this. As a fidele Minardi fan... I feel robbed.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by S951 »

wow that is so so sad :(
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Sunshine_Baby_[IT] »

pasta_maldonado wrote:Given that he was lapping faster than Fisi when he retired, he may have even been able to take the lead!

If he had took the lead and won, that race would have been the greatest ever.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Ferrim »

To be honest, for the last 20 laps or so the track was fully dry again, and Badoer was only as fast as the people ahead of him (which was no small feat on itself). He would had caught Barrichello, who also stayed all the time on dry tyres, around lap 44 and would have overtaken him, given that, in real life, he was 30 sec behind in that lap, then 26 in lap 45, 21 in lap 46, 18 in lap 47... he was the fastest man among those who stayed on dry tyres, and by a ridiculous margin! Then he would have moved up to 2nd when Trulli pitted to switch again to dry tyres, as the Italian was faster but not enough to build a gap. But Herbert, also on wets, was too far ahead and would have always rejoined in front of him.

But given that, before his retirement and now with everyone on the same tyres, he was keeping the same pace or marginally faster than the leading trio of Herbert, Trulli and Barrichello, we can safely assume that he wouldn't have been overtaken before the end of the race.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by midgrid »

THIS is what F1 Rejects is all about! Great research and post. :D
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Sunshine_Baby_[IT] »

midgrid wrote:THIS is what F1 Rejects is all about! Great research and post. :D

I'm wondering what would have happened on this forum if Badoer had finished the race in 4th position or on the podium. Probably we weren't talking about him...
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Nuppiz »

Sunshine_Baby_[IT] wrote:
midgrid wrote:THIS is what F1 Rejects is all about! Great research and post. :D

I'm wondering what would have happened on this forum if Badoer had finished the race in 4th position or on the podium. Probably we weren't talking about him...

And if we were, he would likely be called a Lucky Bastard.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Sunshine_Baby_[IT] »

And if we were, he would likely be called a Lucky Bastard.

I hope not! :D
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by pi314159 »

Nuppiz wrote:And if we were, he would likely be called a Lucky Bastard.

I don't think so. The Lucky Bastard award is for drivers who certainly didn't deserve unrejectification (Danner, Karthikeyan).
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Sunshine_Baby_[IT] »

pi314159 wrote:
Nuppiz wrote:And if we were, he would likely be called a Lucky Bastard.

I don't think so. The Lucky Bastard award is for drivers who certainly didn't deserve unrejectification (Danner, Karthikeyan).

Certainly Badoer deserved.
I'm wondering what would have happened if Ferrari had chosen him to replace Schumacher after his leg injury in 1999.


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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by FullMetalJack »

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!

I'd have sacrificed Frentzen's championship challenge to see Badoer finish 2nd, maybe. Definitely would have for a win.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by eytl »

Brilliant Ferrim - thanks for that bit of detective work!
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

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My heart is broken. I am going to cry myself to sleep tonight thinking about this.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Butterfox »

It's a conspiracy :x
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

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I am now miserable, though fascinated and intrigued.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by AdrianSutil »

I'm gutted to read all this. Badoer 2nd?! The mind explodes. Mind you, what stunning pace halfway through the race from him!
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Aerospeed »

This wrote:It's a conspiracy :x


The bigger conspiracy theory is Irvine's botched pitstop - why on earth did they have only three wheels?? That bad pitstop probably cost him the championship, mind you.

Even still, that evidence for Badoer alone is just mind boggling. Now Minardi can kick themselves even more for the blunder - probably cost them who knows how much. :? Sponsors, money, further development, championships??? Who knows? If anything, a better career for Badoer? We shall never know.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by dinizintheoven »

This wrote:It's a conspiracy :x

It's all Alex Wurz's fault! Start looking for the 10s and 49s amongst the stats...
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by WaffleCat »

dinizintheoven wrote:
This wrote:It's a conspiracy :x

It's all Alex Wurz's fault! Start looking for the 10s and 49s amongst the stats...


Simple one to start off.The pit stop time was 57.181 seconds.However,Alex Wurz's in-car clock was a bit off,rendering the pit stop as having lasted as 57.182 seconds.Wurz secretly chuckled as the lap Badoer made his pitstop on(lap 35),and added to the amount of whole seconds he was in the pits(57 seconds) makes 92,which is 10 more than the last two digits of the duration of the pitstop on Wurz's watch,82.

Also,it seems he was planning the whole 1049 scheme at a young age,when he won his BMX championship in 1986 at the age of 12.86+12=98,which is 2 x 49.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by pi314159 »

WaffleCat wrote:
dinizintheoven wrote:
This wrote:It's a conspiracy :x

It's all Alex Wurz's fault! Start looking for the 10s and 49s amongst the stats...


Simple one to start off.The pit stop time was 57.181 seconds.However,Alex Wurz's in-car clock was a bit off,rendering the pit stop as having lasted as 57.182 seconds.Wurz secretly chuckled as the lap Badoer made his pitstop on(lap 35),and added to the amount of whole seconds he was in the pits(57 seconds) makes 92,which is 10 more than the last two digits of the duration of the pitstop on Wurz's watch,82.

Also,it seems he was planning the whole 1049 scheme at a young age,when he won his BMX championship in 1986 at the age of 12.86+12=98,which is 2 x 49.


Sorry to disappoint you, but you can create every number out of 10 and 49 using the following method: (5*10)-49=1, so n=(5n*10)-n*49. So constructing any Wurz-related number out of 10 and 49 isn't any evidence at all for a Wurz conspirancy.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Sunshine_Baby_[IT] »

pi314159 wrote:Sorry to disappoint you, but you can create every number out of 10 and 49 using the following method: (5*10)-49=1, so n=(5n*10)-n*49. So constructing any Wurz-related number out of 10 and 49 isn't any evidence at all for a Wurz conspirancy.

Maybe that method was discovered by Wurz...
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Cynon »

Minardi.

On the podium.

What.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Butterfox »

There's actually enough evidence to suggest, that the Minardi M01 was one of the greatest formula 1 cars to ever been built. Shame it was so underpowered, and decided to be unreliable at the wrong moments.
In fact, all of Minardi's cars from this era were quite good, and i dare to say they never produced a bad car.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Ferrim »

The M02 was better actually. Its race pace on Gené's hands was rarely more than 2 seconds off the leaders, with a deficit of around 100 HP to the best engines. It even made Mazzacane look decent at times.

I've wanted to write an article on Minardi under Rumi ownership for a long time, and I know I will write it eventually. It deserves a retrospective.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

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Why were they never able to secure customer Ferrari powerplants? Too expensive?
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

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They actually were able to, back in 1991. But they weren't as successful as they expected, and as the engines were very expensive, they couldn't extend the contract for 1992. Back in 1991 Ferrari was much more wary of supplying other teams than they are today, and apart from being expensive, the engines weren't too close to the works ones.

In later years Minardi never had the money -except in 2000, when Telefónica signed as a title sponsor. But they did it too late, with the result that the car was already designed, the engine contracts for rebadged customer Cosworths signed, and they had to stick with those underpowered powerplants instead of getting hand in some nice Supertecs, as was initially the intention.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by Butterfox »

Ferrim wrote:They actually were able to, back in 1991. But they weren't as successful as they expected, and as the engines were very expensive, they couldn't extend the contract for 1992. Back in 1991 Ferrari was much more wary of supplying other teams than they are today, and apart from being expensive, the engines weren't too close to the works ones.

Slightly, in fact, it was Scuderia Italia that got the Ferrari Contract under their nose, so Minardi settled for Lamborghinis instead. After that, they preferred cosworths. But Minardi has seen a lot of engine deals fail at the last moment: Alfa-Romeo for 1985, Mugen-honda for 1996, Supertec for 2001. And lot of engine deals didn't quite work out, like Motori Moderni or Asiatech.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by AdrianSutil »

This wrote:There's actually enough evidence to suggest, that the Minardi M01 was one of the greatest formula 1 cars to ever been built. Shame it was so underpowered, and decided to be unreliable at the wrong moments.
In fact, all of Minardi's cars from this era were quite good, and i dare to say they never produced a bad car.

1995 was probably their first year where the car was very good. The front-wing design was years ahead of its time. 96 and 97 had nothing of interest. The 98 car was very stable and smooth, but had to put up with 2 year-old engines. Same for 1999 and 2000. The 2000 season saw Minardi and especially Gene fight the lower midfield nearly every race. Austria jumps out at me: Gene was on a mission all weekend and finished around 20 seconds off a point in 9th.

Sadly, it was always the engines that let the team down. Poor old Nakano couldn't pass Magnussen at Canada In 1998 for a point because the tired, old Ford lump was underpowered.

Sadly after Rumi left, the cars became typical backmarker cars again under Stoddart. I can't remember any car from 2001 that had any distinctive designs.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by eytl »

AdrianSutil wrote:Sadly after Rumi left, the cars became typical backmarker cars again under Stoddart. I can't remember any car from 2001 that had any distinctive designs.


That's because the ultra-professionalism of the current era was starting to take hold, at the same time as rules were tightening that ever-increasingly emphasised aerodynamics, and so the way to get ahead was no longer about ingenuity and cleverness even if on a budget, it was about honing incremental improvements via endless testing and windtunnel technology. In other words, performance became increasingly tied to spending rather than smarts. And, in the early-2000s, it was also about having a close partnership with a tyre supplier during the Bridgestone-Michelin war, which Minardi never did. As I recall it, at the start of 2003 for example Minardi hadn't even secured a tyre deal.

This was also at a time when Stoddart had saved Minardi thanks to what his entrepreneurial skills had earned him. In which industry? Aviation - the very industry that took a hit post-9/11.

Design developments were also hampered by the fact that, as HWNSNBM told us, Minardi were essentially using the same chassis from 2002 to 2004, and were just bolting on new aero parts.
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Re: Luca Badoer was even unluckier than we previously though

Post by TomWazzleshaw »

AdrianSutil wrote:
This wrote:There's actually enough evidence to suggest, that the Minardi M01 was one of the greatest formula 1 cars to ever been built. Shame it was so underpowered, and decided to be unreliable at the wrong moments.
In fact, all of Minardi's cars from this era were quite good, and i dare to say they never produced a bad car.

1995 was probably their first year where the car was very good. The front-wing design was years ahead of its time. 96 and 97 had nothing of interest. The 98 car was very stable and smooth, but had to put up with 2 year-old engines. Same for 1999 and 2000. The 2000 season saw Minardi and especially Gene fight the lower midfield nearly every race. Austria jumps out at me: Gene was on a mission all weekend and finished around 20 seconds off a point in 9th.

Sadly, it was always the engines that let the team down. Poor old Nakano couldn't pass Magnussen at Canada In 1998 for a point because the tired, old Ford lump was underpowered.

Sadly after Rumi left, the cars became typical backmarker cars again under Stoddart. I can't remember any car from 2001 that had any distinctive designs.


I wouldn't say Rumi was behind all that; most of the credit for their brilliant cars must go to Gustav Brunner, who had spent the best part of two decades designing extraordinary good cars in relation to the shoestring budgets he had to work with.
Biscione wrote:"Some Turkemenistani gulag repurposed for residential use" is the best way yet I've heard to describe North / East Glasgow.
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