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Pedro
DINIZ: |
| STOIC |
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In
Formula 1 nobody loves rent-a-drivers.
And what for? They don't give any good results. Not having talent and
racing experience, they frequently are not capable to adequately
estimate the situation on the track and are direct threat to the safety.
Maybe thats why there's no such drivers in F1 at present time... But
they brings the money. That's why the press-releases of the teams which
gives them chance are so stupid and comments of press are so wicked. |
Once having flashed in Grand Prix they become famous, though this
popularity is of a rather specific sense. They quickly quits. Some races,
seldomly - season, noone wants them for more. Pedro Diniz has spent 6
years in the world of Formula 1.
He began his career as a money bag in
the cockpit and up to the last season in Sauber he continued to pay
for his place in the team. It's especially strange because the results
that he showed was quite decent. Despite of it, press and the fans
continued to talk about him as about the man who takes someones else
place.
|
The debut of the young Brazilian in F1
was really awful. The Forti team was preparing to it's first season in
Formula 1. The team hasn't sponsors and expirienced an absence of money.
So Pedro, with his millions from the Brazilian Parmalat office (remember
a Nelson Piquet's debut), has come in handy. That fact that he does not
have any racing experience at the serious international level doesn't
excite the management of the Italian team. Nobody expected him to be a
pilot. On the Guido Forti's plan the result should be broughten by
another Brazilian - by a very experienced Roberto Moreno. Actually
nobody expected a great speed from the debuting team, which gathered
it's budget by a crumb, but Diniz has managed to amaze everyone. |
Pedro Diniz
driving Forti FG01 in the rain. 1995 Belgian Grand Prix. |
At the
first Grand Prixes he stopped from time to time on the track to take a
short rest. So on the finish line yellow Forti's lost to the leaders
9-10 laps. Martin Brundle has joked, playing by the according of the
English words "Forti" and "forty", that he has to
overtake them so frequently that it seems that there's not less than 40
Forti's on the track.
Also the Brazilian has managed to get
to the backstage
scandal. Gerhard
Berger, the well-known F1 lady-killer, has
withdrawn a Pedro's girlfriend - model Melani. So in the short words
Diniz became an everyone's laughing-stock.
 |
Doesn't it similar to the beginning of
the tale about the ugly duckling?
Everyone has beat him, but he has turn into the beautiful swan. But
there's no place for a miracles in F1 and something like this hasn't
happened to Pedro Diniz. Though he hasn't disappeared from Grand Prix as
Jean Diniz Deletraz or Giovanni
Lavaggi. Moreover, Diniz has made a step
forward, moving in 96 to the strong Ligier. The team was standing on the
crossroads. Flavio Briatore who has bought it in 93 because of the
Renault motors, hasn't need it anymore. But he didn't throw ito away: he
has made a contract contract for a Mugen/Honda motors and supplied a
solid addition to the budget with a Diniz's money. And then he began
pass it's actions to his former Tom Walkinshaw.
Weanwhile
Pedro continued to collect his experience. He wasn't a stupid rookie
anymore and the Ligier bolids were more competitive than Forti (which,
by the way, having lost Parmalat's money, has held on only first half of
the 1996 season). But the attitude to Diniz didn't vary. he was
continued to consider as a daddy's son paying for the pleasure. And
all the incendents happened to him were presented in such a light. But,
you see, it is difficult to accuse the pilot that the mechanics has
spilled the fuel to the cowl and the car has blazed up just like a match.
Or that Luca
Badoer suddenly has feeled himself a boxer.
In 1996 Walkinshaw
has intended to move Ligier to the England and rename it to TWR. The
Frenchmans has driven an alarm: last French team, property of a nation
And the pragmatic Scot has prefered to simply bought an another team
- Arrows. Also he has invited to the new team some people from Ligier,
including Pedro Diniz. It is difficult to tell what Walkinshaw actually
thinks about Pedro, he doesn't signfull by the talkativeness, but he
could leave Riccardo
Rossett, who drove Footwork in 96, as a second
number.
Especially that he has more money than Diniz.
Arrows'97 was just like a "Potemkin's
villages".
Loud announcments, arrogant projects and complete absence of results.
And the first pilot of a team acting World Champion Damon Hill has
hardly managed to pass the qualifying of the first Grand Prix in
Australia. Pedro didn't relax in this circumstances. He just did his
work. And did it proudly. And he has forced to stirred up Hill and,
probably, indirectly became an accomplice of the Hill's triumph in
Hungary. |
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Diniz's fire at
1996 Argentinian GP |
The next season Diniz
has spent in the same team with the driver who, despite of all his
failures and problems, have constant reputation of a not revealed star -
Mika Salo. And, not wishing it, has provoked intensity in a team. The
Finn has met with the professional who is doing his job and doesn't
distracting into the backstage games. And though Diniz lost to Salo in
the pure speed (the score of their qualifying fights is 5-11 benefit of
Salo), in the final standing the supertalented Finn and the money bag
in cockpit has share the 13th place with 3 points each one.
In the 98/99 winter Diniz
moves to Sauber and receives again the partner-star Jean Alesi and the
bad car. On the car launch the team-manager Peter Sauber has firmly
declared that he chose Diniz because of his driver's qualities, instead
of his money, which he continues to regularly deliver to the team's
budget. A season the Brazilian has finished with 3 points and
outstripped Alesi in Drivers Standing.
| A new Sauber C19 designed to the 2000
season comparing
to last year's car became are big step forward, as Diniz and Salo has
announced. But the season has became the one of the most disappointing
one in Sauber's history. The Brazilian has remained without points.
That's the way life goes - in the modern F1 it is difficult to expect
the success with the last year's engine. By the end of season it's
became obvious that Diniz will leave Sauber. As the most probable place
of his employment was named Prost. But nobody expect that this
employment will be such unusual. Diniz is the heir of the large private
means, his family owns a huge network of supermarkets in Brasil. |
Pedro driving
Sauber C19 at the 2000 USA Grand Prix |
And
Pedro decided to finish his racing career and made an investments to the
Alain Prost's team and became it's manager.
Pedro Diniz has
not disappeared from F1 after his awful debut. And he hasn't quit even
after the finish of his racing career. So those who sneered at him all
of this time wasn't right. It is impossible to tell, that he has managed
to made an appreciable trace in a history of auto races. Perhaps, that
in absence of money he could not even make his way into the Formula 1.
The circumstances developed in a such manner that money leaded a way for
him. But in all of this time he worked hardly and proudly. In absence of
a bright talent he has nothing to oppose to the world, except for the
professional attitude to his job and intense work related to everyday
risk. And he has deserve our respection.
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