NOVEMBER 11, 1996

Minardi confirms Hart

GIANCARLO MINARDI has confirmed that the Minardi team will be using Brian Hart's V8 engines next season.

GIANCARLO MINARDI has confirmed that the Minardi team will be using Brian Hart's V8 engines next season. The announcement is a big disappointment for Minardi who had hoped that a new alliance with Flavio Briatore would land the team a supply of Mugen Honda V10 engines.

It was the possibility of such a deal which convinced Minardi to ally himself with Briatore, who became the leading shareholder in the small Italian team.

A Hart deal is a marriage of convenience as the Minardi team needed engines and Hart was without a team to supply - having been dumped by TWR Arrows - but there seems to be little enthusiasm on either side for the new alliance.

Ironically, Minardi has been struggling to find a competitive engine since a deal he signed with Mugen Honda in the autumn of 1994 was canceled after Briatore managed to convince Mugen to break the contract and supply Ligier - which Briatore owned - instead. This left Minardi in enormous difficulty in 1995, using Ford V8 engines. Without any results that year Minardi had no choice but to stay with the same engines this year.