Esteban Tuero Alternate History

[Aislabie]

Esteban Tuero was, at the time of his debut, the third-youngest Formula One driver in the sport's 49 seasons. The fresh-faced Argentine had apparently been highly sought-after by Benetton, but instead chose to accept a drive with pirennial back-marker Minardi.

He would go on to endure a miserable season, finishing just four races, being denigrated by first by Martin Brundle and then by the Argentine press, before damaging one of his vertebrae and retiring from the sport at the too-young age of 20.

This alternate-history will imagine a very different career path for one of the most unfortunate F1 Rejects.
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1998 - World Champion: Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) / Esteban Tuero (Minardi): 14th (2 points)
1999 - World Champion: Eddie Irvine (Ferrari) / Esteban Tuero (Minardi): 18th (2 points)
2000 - World Champion: Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) / Esteban Tuero (Minardi): 17th (2 points)
2001 - World Champion: Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) / Esteban Tuero (Minardi): 22nd (0 points)
2002 - World Champion: Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) / Esteban Tuero (Minardi): 20th (1 point)
2003 - World Champion: Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) / Esteban Tuero (Minardi): 23rd (0 points)
2004 - World Champion: Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) / Esteban Tuero (Minardi): 19th (3 points)
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Career Stats (to 2004)
Race Entries - 117
Classified - 61
Points Earned - 10
Best Finish - 5th: BEL '98, BRA '00
Best Season - 17th: 2000
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NB: I will be using real-life results as a loose basis for my new reality, but with a heavy dose of artistic licence.

[Aislabie]

World Championship points: 2
World Championship position:14th
Best finish: 8th place in San Marino
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For Minardi's rookie Argentine, the 1998 season was what might generously be labelled a learning experience. He suffered a succession of accidents and mechanical failures that saw him see the chequered flag just six times, only five of which were actual classified finishes. He managed 8th place at Imola, 11th place at Monza, 15th place at Catalunya and 16th place at Hockenheim and a most remarkable race at Spa-Francorchamps.

It was not especially remarkable for Tuero's own driving prowess, more for the huge first-lap shunt that occurred coming out of La Source. After Hakkinen led through that area with Villeneuve hot on his tail, David Coulthard hit the throttle too early and spun across oncoming traffic into the wall. Although he missed the cars of front-running cars of Fisichella, both Schumachers and Frentzen, he rebounded back and collected almost the entire rest of the field with only Damon Hill, Jean Alesi and Esteban Tuero managing to get through the wreckage unscathed. Out of the race were: Coulthard (McLaren), Irvine (Ferrari), Wurz (Benetton), Barrichello and Verstappen (Stewart), Herbert (Sauber), Panis and Trulli (Prost), Salo and Diniz (Arrows), Takagi and Rosset (Arrows) and Nakano (Minardi). After the race got back underway, Hakkinen and Villeneuve, then later also Schumacher and Fisichella had race-ending accidents leading to a remarkable fifth place for Tuero, and one-two for Jordan.

Despite these points, Martin Brundle labelled him as a "pay driver with zero credibility" and such slurs may have deeply affected him had it not been for the support he received in the Argentine press, which showed understanding of the fact that he was an unexperienced driver in an ill-equipped car. All the same, the low-light of his season must surely have been the truly horrific 42-second pit stop at his home Grand Prix, a race he may never get to contest again as it looks set to fall off the Formula One calendar.

However, it was ultimately Tuero, by virtue of a typical rookie mistake, who had the deciding hand in the Drivers Championship. In the final Grand Prix of the season at Suzuka, the 20-year-old attempted a clumsy overtaking move on Toranosuke Takagi and instead ploughed straight into the back of his Tyrrell; both drivers were lucky to avoid serious injury in a collision that left debris all over the track. One such piece of debris punctured the Bridgestone tyre of Championship and race leader Mika Hakkinen. Eddie Irvine was promoted to the lead of the Grand Prix at the head of a Ferrari one-two, which was enough for Schumacher to clinch the title by just two points.

Despite his services to their team, Ferrari did not come knocking for Tuero, so he signed on for a second season with the Faenza-based Minardi team. He was originally to be partnered with Marc Gene, but the Spaniard was displaced by the promising Italian Luca Badoer, who last raced with Forti in 1996.
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Final World Championship Standings


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Okay, so not the most exciting first season - nothing changed but for the lack of debilitating injuries, the attitude of the press, which tyre got punctured, and the lack of an electrical failure at Montreal. Things do get a little more interesting from here onwards, though.

[Aislabie]

World Championship points: 2
World Championship position: 18th
Best finish: 6th place in Canada, Europe
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After the chastening experience of 1998, Esteban Tuero wanted to show that he had learned from the experience. He was successful in adding to his career points tally with a brace of sixth place finishes: the first, at Montreal, mostly the result of attrition and the magnetic pull of the Wall of Champions, and the second at the Nurburgring as one half of Minardi's greatest ever day.

At Canada, Tuero's drive was unremarkable. Having started 22nd on the grid, he completed the first lap in fifteenth, thanks mostly to a lunatic move from Jarno Trulli into turn one that one that took out himself, Alesi's Sauber, Coulthard's McLaren and left Herbert's Stewart with a puncture that ruined his suspension. As the retirements mounted up, Tuero progressed through the field. With just a few laps to go, he had climbed all the way to seventh (only Panis and Badoer were behind him and still running) when Heinz-Harald Frentzen's brakes failed catastrophically, sending him into the wall. A safety car then neutralised the race and secured his sixth position.

But that was nothing compared to that wonderful day at the Nurburgring. It started off pretty normally, but then it rained, and rained hard, and Luca drove like an absolute god in the changing conditions. He was several seconds faster than anyone else on the circuit, and shot up through the field. The work that our strategists did meant that when the conditions dried up, I was seventh with Luca roaming the lofty heights of second and trying to chase down Johnny Herbert for the win. He never got there, but I got to sixth thanks to Jacques Villeneuve's retirement due to clutch trouble. The only difficulty for me was the pair of cars behind me: Championship protagonists Mika Hakkinen and Eddie Irvine. Showing maturity that belied his years, but perhaps reflected his ever-increasing Formula One experience, Tuero successfully held kept both drivers behind to gain his second Championship point.

And once again, this was an example of Tuero indirectly deciding the Championship: had he not kept Mika Hakkinen behind him, then the Finnish driver would have finished the season level on points with Eddie Irvine. Instead, Irvine finished one point ahead, thanks to Michael Schumacher handing over second place in the Malaysian Grand Prix. This was an unpopular result, however, with Hakkinen being labelled "the people's champion" owing to the fact that at least six of Irvine's points came through team orders.

It meant another season of Tuero finishing behind his team-mate, but after a drive like Badoer put in at the Nurburgring, how could he begrudge it? Badoer was one of two drivers in the running for the second Ferrari seat after Irvine announced that he would be leaving for the new Jaguar team, but ultimately that seat would go to Rubens Barrichello with Badoer as the reserve driver. Minardi, meanwhile, will have an all-Argentine line-up with the addition of Gaston Mazzacane to the team for 2000.
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Final World Championship Standings:


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Right, so you're probably getting the feel now for the kind of story this is going to be - broadly real-life results, with two or three turning points in each season. And how could I possibly deny Zanardi at Monza, or Badoer at the Nurburgring?

[Ciaran]

I was kind of hoping you'd use the likes of F1 Challenge or rFactor to simulate the results, but I'm hooked already. Good luck with 2000!

[Aislabie]

I was kind of hoping you'd use the likes of F1 Challenge or rFactor to simulate the results, but I'm hooked already. Good luck with 2000!

To be honest, I'm too much of a cheapskate. If you have any driver transfers you wish had gone differently from here until the present day, feel free to let me know as they can be accommodated. As you can see, I very nearly decided to give Barrichello's Ferrari seat to Badoer, but I needed Barrichello for a later bit of the story arc

[TomWazzleshaw]

I was kind of hoping you'd use the likes of F1 Challenge or rFactor to simulate the results, but I'm hooked already. Good luck with 2000!

To be honest, I'm too much of a cheapskate. If you have any driver transfers you wish had gone differently from here until the present day, feel free to let me know as they can be accommodated. As you can see, I very nearly decided to give Barrichello's Ferrari seat to Badoer, but I needed Barrichello for a later bit of the story arc

There's a really good archive of F1 articles here (http://www.grandprix.com/newsarchive.html) that could be used for inspiration for future years

[Aislabie]

World Championship points: 2
World Championship position: 17th
Best finish: 5th at Brazil
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Once again, Minardi were able to boast a fantastically designed Gustav Brunner chassis, but once again it was powered by a Ford lawnmower engine which simply didn't allow the team or its pair of Argentine drivers to show their true potential. Nonetheless, they did manage to score points: two of the most controversial points in Formula One history at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Throughout, the race was remarkable only for how bumpy the track was. Like Tuero, most drivers just circulated and tried to take good care of their cars and tyres as some of the bumpier locations . Tuero, in the sole remaining Minardi, crossed the line tenth of eleven cars with only Ricardo Zonta behind him on the track; Mazzacane had been forcibly retired from the race by his failing lawnmower engine on Lap 31. So far, so normal.

However, while the teams were packing up their garages, and quite some time after the podium festivities, word came from the FIA that the top five finishers were being investigated because the floors of their cars were had worn away further than the regulations allowed. That was when it started getting weird. First, David Coulthard had lost his second place because his endplate was in the wrong place. Then Giancarlo Fisichella lost his inherited second place because the floor of his car had worn away. Then, Michael Schumacher lost his race victory for the same reason. After that, it all went quiet for a while, and the festivities started in the Jordan garage as they celebrated their first one-two since Spa in 1998.

All of a sudden, the festivities ceased, and word spread that the Jordan cars had also been disqualified, but that all other finishers had passed FIA inspection, and that the race result was therefore: Ralf Schumacher, Jenson Button, Jos Verstappen, Pedro de la Rosa, Esteban Tuero, and Ricardo Zonta in sixth and last place. There were all manner of appeals and interviews from the big teams, asking how so many cars could be disqualified, how the winners of the Grand Prix could have finished in in sixth and seventh place at the chequered flag, not even on the lead lap, and whether the FIA would be sacking the stewards responsible for the mess. Despite it all, the result stood, and Minardi finished the season with two points to their name.

Jordan did at least claim their race victory though, after a superb Monaco qualifying saw Jarno Trulli line up on the front row with Heinz-Harald Frentzen behind him in fourth. They held these positions until Frentzen's gearbox packed in on Lap 36, promoting Rubens Barrichello into fourth. Then, on Lap 55, disaster befell Michael Schumacher as his car suffered an unspecifiied failure that caused him to retire from the lead, promoting the young Italian driver into a first place that he would hold all the way to the chequered flag.

Michael Schumacher went on to win the World Championship, thanks to a late charge that saw him win the final four Grands Prix of the season and deny Hakkinen yet again. The Finn must surely be rueing his engine failure in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, which ultimately cost him a net fourteen points to Schumacher.

There were also some changes at the back of the field, as Prost's finances were aided by Pedro Diniz's family investment in the team which also secured him a race seat; meanwhile at Minardi, Australian entrepreneur Paul Stoddart bailed the team out and hired young Spaniard Fernando Alonso to partner Tuero for the 2001 season. Prospects are not good.
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Final World Championship Standings:


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Okay, that took a little longer than expected because I got distracted by a very good John Francome novel. Should have some fun with the changes during the 2001 season!

[Aislabie]

Side note: I think the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix was a real missed opportunity - simply by removing the drivers who totaled their cars at the first start, I end up with the real-life top four (Damon Hill, Ralf Schumacher, Jean Alesi, Heinz-Harald Frentzen) followed by no other finishers. All Tuero would have to do to grab points would be to trundle around in last and pick up two points, elevating him to 14th in the WDC ahead of Diniz, Herbert, Trulli, Magnussen and Nakano.

Alas!

[Aislabie]

World Championship points: 0
World Championship position: 22nd
Best finish: 9th in Brazil, Canada
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The season opener in Australia was a happy occasion for Esteban Tuero, marking as it did his fiftieth Grand Prix: the only Argentines to achieve this milestone previously being Carlos Reutemann and Juan Manuel Fangio.

Unfortunately, it was also clear by the end of that race that Minardi would not be competitive this season: in qualifying, Alonso and Tuero were on average four seconds per lap slower than the pole-sitting Ferrari of Michael Schumacher, and fell off the lead lap very early in the race - or at least Alonso did; Tuero had long since dropped out of the race with a battery failure.

By the end of the season, Tuero finished above his young team-mate in the Championship standings, owing largely to the fact that when he made it to the chequered flag at Interlagos and Montreal, he was last of only nine finishers. Alonso was the pacier of the two, and was rewarded with a place in the Renault team for 2002, albeit only as a Test Driver. Tuero meanwhile had no option but to sign up for another season of torture with Minardi.

In fact, the season was generally regarded as being reasonably exciting, with four drivers (McLaren's Coulthard and Hakkinen, Ferrari's Barrichello and Williams' Schumacher) locked into a fierce battle for second place in the Championship - although first place had been long since won by Michael Schumacher.

It was also a season marred by chaos and occasional tragedy. In Australia, Jacques Villeneuve was involved in a huge collision with Ralf Schumacher that ultimately led to the death of a marshal who was struck by part of Villeneuve's ruined car. Villeneuve was ultimately stood down for the Malaysian Grand Prix, and was temporarily replaced by Anthony Davidson. Then, at the fourth round of the season, Luciano Burti found that his Jaguar seat was to be reassigned to Pedro de la Rosa, leaving him jobless. Then, at Canada, Ricardo Zonta was forced to step in for Heinz-Harald Frentzen thanks to lasting effects from crashes earlier in the weekend. Then, after Silverstone, the German was sacked entirely by the Jordan team, and was replaced first by Zonta, then by Prost's Jean Alesi. At the German Grand Prix, a sickening accident ended the careers of both Pedro Diniz and Enrique Bernoldi as Diniz's car was launched into the air over Michael Schumacher's misfiring Ferrari and landed on top of Enrique Bernoldi. Diniz escaped unhurt but declared that he would never again step into a Formula One car, while Bernoldi was hospitalised. They were replaced by Luciano Burti and Jonny Kane respectively. But even then, the carnage wasn't done - a horror crash for Burti at Blanchimont meant that he was unable to race in the last three races of the season.

Such carnage has led to a debate about whether Formula One should be made slower. If that happens, it could suit Minardi down to the ground!
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Full World Championship Standings:

[Aislabie]

World Championship points: 1
World Championship position: 20th
Best finish: 6th in Australia
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The World Championship was simply a one-man show once again as Michael Schumacher romped his way to a virtually unopposed Championship. He finished every race this season: ten of them in first place, seven of them in second. He was mathematically untouchable. Had Ferrari chosen to implement ever-unpopular team orders, Schumacher's win tally could have soared as high as fifteen; only Juan Pablo Montoya (at Sepang) and David Coulthard (at Monaco) ever managed to get in front of Schumacher in a car that wasn't a Ferrari.

At the other end of the table, a remarkable weekend in Australia ensured that it was Toyota and not Minardi who would prop up the Constructors Championship. As is often the case at the first race of the season, it was a race with very few finishers: just eight this year, one of which was Pedro de la Rosa's wounded Jaguar five laps down. Of particular note, though, is that none of the retirements was a Minardi driver. Thanks to a few moments of luck, the two Minardis entered the final laps inside the points, with Tuero in fifth and his faster team-mate Webber in sixth, but nursing a wounded gearbox that was without top gear. Incredibly, Tuero let the Australian through into fifth place, then proceeded to back Salo's Toyota away from his team-mate in order that Webber could focus solely on nursing his car home. The strategy worked, and Salo was stuck in seventh place, though this was due mostly to the frustrated Finn spinning off with two laps to go. There was even a special, only slightly patronising podium celebration for Minardi after the top three were done up there. Those three points were enough to earn ninth in the constructors, ahead of the bankrupt Arrows (2 points) and Toyota (1 point).

Again, this season featured several substitute drivers due to drivers being indisposed after some heavy crashes. In Australia, Ralf Schumacher was launched over the back of Barrichello's Ferrari, with a sore coccyx needing a weekend to recover; he was replaced by Giorgio Pantano, who instantly claimed a highly impressive podium. Rodrigo Sperafico replaced Takuma Sato for three weekends after he got absolutely flattened by Heidfeld's Sauber at Spielberg, while Heidfeld himself took a weekend out and gave Fabrizio Giovinardi an opportunity that would ultimately last two weekends after Felipe Massa was left concussed by a Monaco brake failure. Finally, after a big crash at Magny-Cours, Giancarlo Fisichella had to sit out the race. Test driver Satoshi Motoyama happened to be nearby, and got the eleventh-hour call to race.

With Mark Webber leaving to join Jaguar, Paul Stoddart has opted to replace him with Jos Verstappen, meaning that the two drivers will have 164 Grands Prix weekends between them.
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Full Championship Standings

[pasta_maldonado]

What were Mazzacane and Marques doing in Malaysia?

[tommykl]

What were Mazzacane and Marques doing in Malaysia?

Failing to convince the public that Phoenix Finance was legitimate?

[Aislabie]

What were Mazzacane and Marques doing in Malaysia?

Failing to convince the public that Phoenix Finance was legitimate?

Yeah, this.

[Aislabie]

World Championship points: 0
World Championship positions: 23rd
Best finish: 9th in Canada
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The 2003 Championship battle was a titanic clash between six-times World Champion Michael Schumacher and the highly impressive Finn Kimi Raikkonen. It would go down to the season finale in Japan in which Schumacher's team-mate Barrichello was able to hold off Raikkonen after starting on pole, thereby securing that both World Championship titles would go back to Maranello for yet another year.

However, the thrilling racing that took place at the front of the pack would have been far easier to appreciate had the season not been marred by a series of ferocious crashes which ultimately led to no fewer than 29 drivers being used over the course of the season. Among the substitutes were several promising young drivers including: Sebastien Bourdais (standing in for Alonso after Brazil) and Andre Lotterer (standing in for Webber at the same race), while Marc Gene, Luciano Burti, Patrick Lemarie and Zsolt Baumgartner also stood in for injured colleagues.

So many heavy crashes in one season raised some serious eyebrows with officials at the FIA; although it may be too late to do anything about the 2004 regulations, most experts now expect that speeds will be greatly reduced for the 2005 season.

At the back of the grid, things remained miserable for Minardi as Paul Stoddart desperately tried to keep the team afloat. They used four drivers this year: they started out with Tuero and Verstappen before Verstappen chose to quit after the French Grand Prix. His replacement Justin Wilson then got called up by Jaguar, leaving yet another vacancy at Minardi. Verstappen refused to take it, so Nicolas Kiesa was called up. Looking forward to 2004, there is little hope of a successful season for Minardi as they continue to use positively antique Cosworth CR-3 engines (in comparison, Jaguar are to use a CR-6). The one positive is that Zsolt Baumgartner is highly regarded by team principal Paul Stoddart.
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Full Championship Standings

[Aislabie]

World Championship points: 3
World Championship positions: 19th
Best finish: 7th in America
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The 2004 World Championship was hardly a thriller as Michael Schumacher put in one of F1's most dominant seasons to win twelve of the first thirteen races of the season - the thirteenth of which he crashed out of while leading. At the opposite end of the grid, the Minardi car was an absolute tractor, but although Tuero and Baumgartner could never aspire to match the pace of the rest of the field, they did manage to pick up some points.

It all started in Tuero's record breaking 104th Grand Prix for Minardi, at Monaco. He was happily circulating a couple of laps down behind the safety car when Michael Schumacher (at the head of the safety train) braked suddenly. Montoya then had no choice but to hit him from behind, and Schumacher spun into the wall. They both ended up having to retire, so Trulli inherited the win from Button and Barrichello. Of the eight finishers he was eighth and last, six laps down or something silly, but points are.

Then later in the season, there were the tyre issues at Indianapolis. First Fernando Alonso, then Ralf Schumacher suffered big crashes due to tyre failures. Renault decided that they had to withdraw Jarno Trulli from the race for safety reasons, and although nobody else did so, they said afterwards that they didn’t regret their decision. So, in a Grand Prix with five accidents, five mechanical retirements, one withdrawal and one disqualification, there were once more only eight finishers. This time, two of them were Minardis, so Esteban and Zsolt strolled home for seventh and eighth, three laps off the pace, to score Minardi’s fourth ever double-points finish (GBR '89, EUR '99, AUS '02 and now USA '04).

Minardi remained a resounding last place in the Constructors Championship thanks to Jordan scraping together six points to their four, but four points was a very good effort seeing as Paul Stoddart appeared to have bought the cars from Lidl. Despite his point at Indianapolis, Zsolt Baumgartner was to be replaced by Patrick Friesacher for 2005, giving Tuero his tenth team-mate in eight years with Minardi.
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Full Championship Standings