Austrian Alexander Wurz was a candidate for a Ferrari cockpit in Formula 1 in the 1990s: How he found out and why nothing came of it
Alexander Wurz was something like the man of the hour in Formula 1 in 1998, because behind the two top teams, McLaren and Ferrari, it was often the Benetton driver who scored solid points – and was in fifth place in the drivers’ standings at the halfway point of the season. Or as Wurz himself put it on ORF: He was “best of the rest” at the time. And that’s how Ferrari became aware of the Austrian
For Wurz, the contact from the traditional racing team from Maranello came as a surprise, especially due to the high level of secrecy involved: “I received a call from someone I didn’t know. He didn’t make himself known,” says Wurz.
But the instructions that Wurz was supposed to follow were all the clearer: “He told me to drive to a highway service station, park my car there and get into another car.” Wurz played along. “In the end, I was at Jean Todt’s private villa.” And then things got serious.
The Ferrari team boss at the time, Todt, soon came out with it. “He asked: ‘What about your contract? We are very interested [in you] because we need to rejuvenate ourselves.”
Wurz, 24 years old at the time, could have replaced either the then 29-year-old Michael Schumacher or the then 32-year-old Eddie Irvine in the Ferrari cockpit. But that didn’t happen.
Why not? Wurz was asked on ORF. His answer: “Because I [Jean Todt] said I had a Benetton contract. I believed Flavio Briatore. “
Wurz stays with Benetton, Ferrari gets Barrichello
And so Todt and Wurz parted company again without reaching an agreement and “then it dragged on a bit,” says Wurz, who remained without points for the entire second half of the 1998 season. This had consequences: in 1999, Todt was “no longer interested”, “because our form had dropped off at Benetton and also with me,” says Wurz. “And that was it.”
Ferrari stuck with Schumacher and Irvine for 1999, Wurz remained at Benetton alongside Giancarlo Fisichella. For the 2000 season, Ferrari completed the generational change in the cockpit and brought the then 27-year-old Rubens Barrichello to Maranello as team-mate for Schumacher.
Wurz remained a regular Benetton driver up to and including 2000, but was unable to build on his early form from the 1998 season and switched to McLaren as a test and replacement driver for 2001, where he completed a race as a substitute in 2005 – and finished third straight away.
In 2007, Wurz contested a final Formula 1 season for Williams and finished eleventh in the World Championship, achieved his second overall victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans for Peugeot in 2009 (after 1996 with Porsche) and finished third for Toyota in the World Endurance Championship (WEC) in 2012. Today, Wurz is a director of the Formula 1 drivers’ union (GPDA) and commentates the Grands Prix live on ORF.