The Pembrey circuit in Wales is not an obvious destination for potentially career-making Formula One testing. But for future sports car ace Nicolas Minassian, the opportunity to drive the Dallara Honda test hack on the remote Carmarthenshire circuit in 1999 meant the very real opportunity to step in the door with the BAR Honda team in 2000 to get. The result was a little less exciting and Minassian never drove an F1 car again, but he fondly remembers the “very good experience”.
The Frenchman had had success at Pembrey in 1997, the year his British Formula 3 campaign was hampered by a two-race ban for throwing Thruxton gravel at backmarker Michael Bentwood. He was unable to start the first race due to a suspension problem on his Promatecme machine, recovered from Brian Smith’s punt on Turn 1 and took his third win of the year in race two after both Peter Dumbreck and Ricardo Mauricio had an argument.
For Minassian, the three-day Honda test meant something like a third chance to get into F1.
His first impression of Formula 1 was in 1997 in the Williams, which won the championship, as part of a shootout against Formula 3000 drivers Juan Pablo Montoya, Soheil Ayari and Max Wilson. A broken hand still healing from a Macau Grand Prix crash threw him back and he was not selected as a tester for 1998. The test opportunity came after Minassian had sent letters “to every single team in F1”, a sign of the future.
“Williams liked the results I had in Formula 3 and they actually liked the stupidity I did!” He says. “You saw that I have a bit of character.”
Another F1 connection emerged when he signed a contract with the McLaren junior team West Competition in F3000 in 1998. But Minassian was never able to drive the MP4-13 in a year where he struggled to reach his teammate and Mercedes junior Nick Heidfeld. With just five points, he left the team before the Nürburgring final after a dispute with team boss David Brown.
For 1999 he ran out of options and joined the young Kid Jensen Racing Team owned by disc jockey David Jensen. Breathing new life into his career wasn’t the obvious choice, but it proved an inspired move as Minassian forged a strong bond with engineer Phil Barker and marketing director, his Anglophile colleague Vincent Franceschini. He played in Monaco and was in second place before the gas broke, but he made up for that with a commanding win from pole at Silverstone. Suddenly Minassian was hot property again.
He didn’t have a manager but was just persistent in his efforts to get his foot in the F1 door again.
Nicolas Minassian is on the F3000 podium after winning the 2000 season opener in Imola
“In the F3000, we went to the F1 paddock very easily, it wasn’t complicated,” he says. “After every race you could go to the paddock and talk to the team owners and team bosses. I remember being with everyone the whole time because you are trying to find the best for your career. I knocked on the door everywhere I could. [BAR boss] Craig Pollock appreciated it and I tried to get myself a ride. I wasn’t a fucking driver, so that helps. “
He lived in Quainton, near Aylesbury, and regularly molested Pollock in nearby Brackley. Finally he got his reward.
“I was always very hungry to drive in Formula 1,” he says. “I contacted Craig until he gave me a chance. One day he told me to visit him in his office. I asked him whenever something was going to happen, I would like to drive an F1 car. “
“At first it was great to drive in Formula 1, but Pembrey was definitely very close. The car took up almost the entire width of the route! It was very entertaining, let’s say… “Nicolas Minassian
The Honda F1 project, led by a group of former Tyrrell employees who worked under Harvey Postlethwaite, was abandoned after the veteran designer’s death in April, as bosses in Japan preferred an engine supply contract to a full team. Honda had allied with BAR in 2000 and, crucially for Minassian, both Barker and Franceschini had previously worked with Tyrrell – and therefore had good connections within the Honda F1 group when it scaled back its activities. Minassian believes their feedback helped Pollock make up his mind.
“They gave me a good boost,” says Minassian. “I had good people around me and when [BAR] asked Phil and Vincent around, it was just something that helped me too. “
Minassian was hired by Pollock to work on a semi-automatic transmission, electronics and engine development, using the Honda test chassis built by Dallara that made headlines with Jos Verstappen earlier this year.
“The car I tested was the Dallara and we did a lot of laps around Pembrey – can you imagine Pembrey in an F1 car?” He chuckles. “Fortunately, I knew the place well from my F3 days. We drove many, many laps. It was really run by Honda, the Japanese. It was engine and electronics and not much on the chassis. “
The Honda test car written by Dallara that never made it onto the F1 grid
Minassian recalls that the test was led by Japanese engineers at Honda with the assistance of Postlethwaite’s group and a few BAR staff – who had their hands full debugging the eternally unreliable 1999 Supertec-powered chassis. Still, Minassian saw it as an opportunity to impress.
“When we ran there, we did 42-second laps or something like that,” he says. “At first it was great to drive in Formula 1, but Pembrey was definitely very close. The car took up almost the entire width of the route! It was very entertaining, let’s say …
“The left turn in the back was so fast, no run-off zone and, to be honest, the feeling in the car was pretty direct. Whatever you do, you have to give the car something or you will look like an idiot – even if the track isn’t really tuned for the car – so I pushed really hard, every lap I drove there. I just wanted to show everyone my potential, even if it’s in Pembrey! I had as much fun driving there as I would have had on any other track.
“I had the instructions to do this or that, the car was wired with electronics and special – there were some special sensors that they put on the wheels to calculate the tire and a lot of other things, so they took in a lot of information and I just did my job. “
Unfortunately, testing for Minassian did not result in any further opportunities in the BAR setup for 2000. Instead, the team selected 1999 Macau Grand Prix winner Darren Manning as their test driver for 2000. Ironically, Minassian would win the Super Nova Take up space, the Manning had targeted after a strong debut test in Jerez for David Sears’ sister team Petrobras (which had already committed to the use of Brazilian drivers). The Yorkshireman had set the second fastest time in a test best remembered today, Jenson Button’s only appearance in F3000 machines.
“In the end, I was just a guy who fit into the program at the time,” says Minassian. “I’ve talked to Craig Pollock a lot, but I never got the test drive with BAR, I’m not sure why.
“I did my job, I made no mistake, I did exactly what I was told because I was just the type of guy who followed instructions to break in the car. I really enjoyed it – driving in Formula 1 wherever you drive is always something very special. It was a very good experience for me, but there was no test drive in the next year. “
Nicolas Minassian leads the later F3000 title winner from 2000 Bruno Junqueira in Imola. at
Photo by: Motorsport Images
It should also prove to be Minassian’s last chance to drive a contemporary F1 car. He drove Bruno Junqueira near the 2000 F3000 crown on Super Nova, scoring victories at Imola, Magny-Cours and the A1 ring, and then signed a deal with Chip Ganassi Racing to join Junqueira in the 2001 CART Indycar.
“I was in very good advanced talks with Minardi at the end of 2000 to get an F1 place,” says Minassian. “Then I went to America to test the Champ Car and they offered me the ride immediately after the test, so I didn’t pursue F1 after that. I thought, ‘I’m going to drive the Ferrari of America, or the last car on the grid in F1,’ so I took this opportunity instead of pushing the Minardi drive.
“In hindsight, my champ car days weren’t going very well after I hit the wall and got a concussion. But that’s life.”
Minassian later had another potentially career-defining moment with sliding doors in sports cars.
“I did my job, I made no mistake, I did exactly what I was told because I was just the guy who followed the instructions to break in the car. I really enjoyed it – driving in Formula 1 wherever you drive is always something very special ”Nicolas Minassian
After making his debut at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1994 with an Alpa, he was a regular at the 24 Hours and drove for Hughes de Chaunac on both sides of his short-lived time in America in 2000 and 2002.
For 2005, de Chaunac had bought an Audi R8 for the last year of the car before Ingolstadt returned as a works company with the turbodiesel R10. Minassian was a well-respected member of the Underdog Creation setup at the time and turned down the chance to represent Audi to stay on the team. Two years later he competed against Audi in the Peugeot team.
As head of the IDEC Sport LMP2 team, which won the European Le Mans Series title in 2019, Minassian never won the Le Mans 24 Hours as a driver, but would certainly have made it in 2010 if he had won the 908 with Franck Montagny and Stephane Sarrazin shared would not have blown his engine in a spectacular way on Sunday morning.
Nicolas Minassian, at the 2018 Le Mans 24 Hours
Photo by: Nikolaz Godet / Motorsport Images
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“The thing is, when I went with Creation, it was like an adventure,” he says. “I’ve been with Creation since the prototype era and it was a fantastic little crew. The car, I loved driving it. It was a tough decision, but a decision from the heart that I made to ride with creation and I didn’t look back to be honest. “
After that, ORECA switched to the GT1 class with a Saleen, and Minassian says he hasn’t regretted his decision to stick with the prototype minnows until Peugeot entered the fray in 2007.
“You never know how a career will go, you make a decision at a point in time that feels right,” he says. “With Creation, we not only competed in Europe, but also a little in the USA, which was good for me. The conversations I had with them with Audi weren’t as specific as with Creation, so I just did that and didn’t look back. “
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