Martini in numbers
18 official points · best championship finish: 11th in 1991
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Pierluigi Martini is the Minardi driver. He raced eight seasons with the team from Faenza and gave it almost all of its best days. An Italian born in 1961, he made his debut in 1985 with a Minardi team new to Formula 1 and ended the year without points.
He came back in 1988, halfway through the season, and finished sixth in Detroit: the first point in the team's history. The following year he added five more, with two fifth places at Silverstone and Estoril, and started third in Australia. At Phoenix, in the first race of 1990, he qualified second, on the front row next to Gerhard Berger's McLaren.
His two best results came in 1991: fourth at Imola and fourth at Estoril. He spent 1992 with Scuderia Italia, in a Dallara, and returned to Minardi halfway through 1993. In 1994 he was fifth in Barcelona and at Magny-Cours, and in 1995, after nine races, the team gave his seat to Pedro Lamy. It was his last season.
Nearly a hundred and twenty races without a podium, almost all of them with the same small team, which scored its first point and its best grid slot with him.
What if Martini had another car?
We took his real attributes and put him in the best car of each era: in a real driver's seat, against the team-mate that car actually had. 30 full seasons in each.
| Car | Team-mate | Finish | Wins | Titles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| McLaren1988 | Alain Prost-126 pts | P2 | 0.8 | 0% |
| Williams1992 | Riccardo Patrese-79 pts | P3.1 | 1.1 | 0% |
| Ferrari2002 | Rubens Barrichello-67 pts | P2 | 4.4 | 7% |
| Red Bull2013 | Mark Webber-61 pts | P2.2 | 4.7 | 3% |
| Mercedes2016 | Lewis Hamilton-156 pts | P2 | 1.7 | 0% |
| Red Bull2023 | Sergio Perez-67 pts | P1.8 | 6.6 | 17% |
| Cadillac2026 · 11th on the grid | Valtteri Bottas+3 pts | P12.5 | 0 | 0% |
The only one who beats him is Lewis Hamilton in the 2016 Mercedes: 156 points clear over a full season.
Ver en españolRating by season
- First season
- 72 1988
- Peak
- 74 1991
- 1995
- 71 Minardi
7 seasons in the database, from 1988 to 1995. Our own rating, from 50 to 99.
Teams
Tags
Best year
1991
What would Pierluigi Martini have achieved with a different car or in a different era?
His team-mates
9 team-mates across 8 seasons. When both finished the race, Martini was ahead in 16 of 22; on the grid he started ahead in 67 of 93.
| Year | Team-mate | In the race | On the grid |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 | Luis Pérez-SalaMinardi · 9 races | 1-0 | 7-2 |
| 1989 | Luis Pérez-SalaMinardi · 11 races | 4-0 | 11-0 |
| 1990 | Paolo BarillaMinardi · 8 races | 1-0 | 7-0 |
| 1990 | Gianni MorbidelliMinardi · 2 races | · | 2-0 |
| 1991 | Gianni MorbidelliMinardi · 15 races | 2-0 | 9-6 |
| 1991 | Roberto MorenoMinardi · 1 race | · | 1-0 |
| 1992 | Jyrki JärvilehtoDallara · 15 races | 1-4 | 7-8 |
| 1993 | Christian FittipaldiMinardi · 6 races | 2-1 | 4-2 |
| 1993 | Jean-Marc GounonMinardi · 2 races | · | 1-1 |
| 1994 | Michele AlboretoMinardi · 16 races | 3-1 | 13-3 |
| 1995 | Luca BadoerMinardi · 9 races | 2-0 | 5-4 |
The first number is always Martini's. A team-mate is whoever started the same race for the same team. "In the race" only counts races both finished, because a retirement says nothing about who was quicker. "On the grid" is the starting position, with penalties already applied.
Compare Martini with another driver
Titles, wins, poles and podiums side by side, against any of the 789 drivers in history.
Keep reading
Where Pierluigi Martini comes up in what we have measured, with our own numbers.
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