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Now here's something that I didn't know: Giancarlo Minardi once chased Ron Dennis with a hammer. Simon Vigar's account of what used to be everyone's second-favourite F1 team (well, everyone except Dennis, perhaps) is just 10 pages old, and he's already managed to trigger one of the year's most bizarre visuals.
"I was running Miguel Angel Guerra at Mugello [ED: in Formula 2, late 1970s]," Minardi said. "He ran an extra lap after the chequered flag, although he was shown the sign with an arrow to return to the pit.
"He made a mistake. When Dennis arrived, he offended me, he said 'the same old Italians,' he even added Italian spaghetti. I didn't speak English then and there had been some conflicts between us in the Formula 2 commission meetings ... I got really upset under those circumstances, I ran after him with a hammer and they stopped me."
The question of how F1 history could have different if Minardi had managed to follow through on his moment of red mist is one that can be saved for a long night in a bar over several drinks. But the notion that 'things could have been different ...' is one that permeates Minardi's history from beginning to end.
