Luca Badoer joins Minardi

Published on 22 February 1999 by Thorsten Hendriks

There were a lot of candidates for the remaining seat at Minardi, but it was eventually de (by now) former Italian Ferrari test driver Luca Badoer to take the second seat with Minardi. That the team made progress was made clear again when Minardi joined the test session with Ferrari at Mugello were he was 'only' 1.4 seconds behind Michael Schumacher. Gaston Mazzacane is assigned as test driver with Minardi, he completed his first kilometers in Italian service on Friday. Eddy Irvine also completed his first test in the new Ferrari F399, only 0.4 seconds slower then his Michael Schumacher.