FERNANDO ALONSO   

Biography
By signing Fernando Alonso, new Minardi boss Paul Stoddart may have unearthed a diamond.

Stoddart will have watched Alonso at close quarters last year in F3000 having run his own team in the category, and will know all about the Spanish teenager's precocious talent.

He won at Spa and finished second at the difficult Hungaroring right under the noses of the F1 paddock. He only scored one more points
finish but he had already made his mark, a superb showing in only his second year of car racing after graduating from karts.

In fact Alonso was so impressive that talent-spotter extraordinaire Flavio Briatore has signed the youngster up to a long-term deal with Renault's F1 programme. He will test for Benetton this year while
racing for Minardi.

He and Briatore will treat 2001 purely as a learning year and if he does well he may get a chance with Benetton in the future.

At 19 he is the third youngest driver in F1 history after Mike
Thackwell, whose F1 career spanned all of two races, and Sixties racer Ricardo Rodriguez.

Some will say he's taking a risk by jumping into F1 at such a tender age. But the emergence of Jenson Button and Kimi Raikkonen confirms F1's obsession with finding the next big thing and despite his tender years Alonso shows every sign of being made of the right stuff.

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Last Major Update April 2001