F1 Rejects Interview with

Adrian Campos

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Adrian Campos Adrian Campos is the principal of a team on the move. Currently competing in GP2, there are rumours that Adrian might have F1 as his long-term goal. He has a great motorsporting pedigree - starting from becoming the Spanish champion of radio-controlled car racing in the 1980s!

He moved through F3 and F3000 before landing a race drive with Minardi for 1987 and 1988. 21 eventful races later and Campos found himself out of a drive. In the early 1990s, he turned to Spanish touring cars, and became champion in 1994. For full details of Adrian's time in F1, and information on his career, please see our Adrian Campos biography.

But in 1998 he tried a new endeavour and set up Adrian Campos Racing with immediate success, Marc Gene winning the Opel Fortuna Nissan series. The following year he gave a breakthrough drive to an unknown Spanish prodigy called Fernando Alonso! Campos' team now competes in GP2, and we have David Cameron of GP2Series.com to thank for the following interview, conducted exclusively for F1 Rejects. David regularly records with Will Buxton an Audio Review covering the goings-on in GP2, available at GP2Series.com.



• I'll just start at the beginning. You started with radio control cars...

I was very young!
• What made you start with that?

Because, if I have to be honest, I started with motorcycles, and I had a hobby in my free time. I liked to do model cars, and in that moment in Spain I started to play with 1:8 scale with a 3.5cc engine. I entered a little bit more into that world and I became Spanish champion, but, you know, it was a joke, it was just for fun. And then, with time, when I started to be more mature, I decided to put my life into real racing cars.
• In Formula 3 in Germany, you had a very good year, a very consistent year in 1985. Why was that year so good? And then the transition to F3000 looked a lot more difficult compared to that...

Maybe it was because I was with very good people in the Volkswagen Motorsport team [in German F3]. I remember it was Klaus Peters who was the boss of Volkswagen Motorsport at that moment, and he did a lot for me. And, you know, when I went to F3000, I made a mistake to make an agreement with the new team of Peter Gethin's. It was a disaster! I'm sorry for Peter but it was a disaster.

I had the opportunity to do the last two races in a Lola car. I remember it was Le Mans, and I retired late in the race without fuel when I was in first place. And the following one was Jarama, and I was not on the podium because ... well that was a very strange race. There was rain at the start of the race, and at another time it was dry, and the engineers put me on old tyres and not new ones like everyone else and I finished 7th.

But I had the opportunity from Giancarlo [Minardi] to make an agreement with Minardi. We made the agreement, and in the same week Lois [Jeans] and Marlboro arrived [as sponsors], and it was perfect. But, you know, sometimes you have the opportunity in front of you and you have to take it. Now, I know that it was very difficult because in Spain there was not a culture of racing. And, you know, to have an opportunity after Minardi was very difficult. And maybe for that, I pushed very hard for Fernando [Alonso] to have opportunities after Minardi.
Campos in F3000 during 1986.
• 1987 was a very eventful year for you guys. What are your memories of being at Minardi that year?

I think it was the year that changed my life, because in Spain, nobody knew that it was not possible with Minardi to win races, and people expected me to fight for the championship. And then I became very famous because I was the first Spanish professional Formula One driver. And, you know, it changed my life completely. It gave me a name, and opened a lot of doors, and I think, with time, I [reminisce about] that year very well because it worked well for me.
• You changed from the turbo Minardi M187 to the non-turbo M188. What was the different like between the two cars? Was it a big difference in driving style?

[Laughs] I remember that I took four days with the Minardi M187 to find a way to do a quick lap. And I remember that Sandro Nannini [Campos' team-mate at Minardi that year] told me one time when I was sitting in the car, and I was struggling to find a way [to do a quick lap] - we were in Jerez, and it was the second day and I was three or four seconds from Nannini - he told me, "If you don't understand that, with that car, you have to drive in the opposite way, you will never be fast."

I didn't want to ask because it seemed like I didn't know what I was doing [laughs], and I tried a lot to see what he tried to tell me. You know, I came from F3000. F3000 had an atmospheric engine. When you needed power, you put your foot on the pedal and you got the power that you needed. With the turbo engine, you had to put all the throttle down, and when the power came in, you had to lift. And when I found the way it was quite easy for me, and I arrived at good lap times.

I remember at Rio, Sandro was in front of me by only one tenth of a second, and everyone was very surprised by that. But, you know, sometimes I think how hard it was to drive that kind of car, and the gear changes by hand ...

And then with the atmospheric car [the non-turbo Minardi M188], it had half as much power, and it was much easier to drive. We went from 800 horsepower with the turbocharger, 850 maximum, and with the atmospheric engine it was 550. This was then Formula One was starting to go towards atmospheric engines in 1988. Now it's double that, more or less! But non-turbo engines started at 550 horsepower, it was completely different, it was another thing and it was much easier to drive.

I remember many, many times the power of Piquet with the BMW, or Senna with the Honda, they had 1,000 horsepower. It was difficult to have the tyres on the wheel because everything moved. It was funny, and I have good memories of that time.
Adrian in his Minardi in 1987 at the Australian GP in Adelaide.
• After that, you went to Spanish touring cars and you did very well. Do you think, after some of the difficult times with Minardi, going well in touring cars let people realise how good you were as a racing driver?

I think I am one of those drivers who had a big talent for driving, because for me it was very easy to go fast. But maybe my physical condition for Formula One at that moment was not enough. But I would like to see 90 per cent of the drivers of today in those cars. Many, many times I had to put oxygen [masks] on - this is true! - because we finished [races] very, very tired.

But, you know, in Spain there was no [racing] culture, and it was very difficult. I was very alone. And to have an opportunity after Minardi was very difficult. At the time, [Luis] Perez Sala was doing two full years completely in Formula One, taking one point - that was the difference between him and me, one point - and it was not possible even for him to have an opportunity after Minardi.

Those were the conditions in Spain at that moment, and with time, everything changed and Spain was prepared when Fernando arrived. But also because there were people like me who had been there before, but I tell you, I think I was a talented driver, just not at the right moment maybe!
• What made you think to go into team ownership?

Because when I decided to finish the part of my career in Formula One, I had three years when I wanted to know nothing about racing. I was very tired of racing and the pressures of the press and the comments of the people, and I was very, very burnt out.

Three years later, I started to miss racing. And I had the opportunity from Alfa Corse to be part of their team of drivers, and they offered me the possibility to race in Spanish Super Touring at that moment. They won the championship in England, they won in Spain, and other countries too. For me it was a very nice contract for the following three to four years which I decided to take, and I won a lot of races and I was very happy about that.

And then I started to think, how can I have continuity in racing, and then I decided to put my experience in favour of younger drivers. I started to build my own team. I convinced my family to put money into this future risk. I took Antonio Garcia, Fernando, and many, many drivers to invest in.

I understand many, many things about racing outside of the car now, and over the experience of the past ten years, the ambitions of many drivers are completely crazy. They want to go fast, not only on the track, but they want to make their careers go very, very fast. This is a big mistake. And the fathers, 90 per cent of the fathers are crazy. And I took the decision that if I saw one that I thought had potential, I would say so. But if I saw one without any kind of potential, I say nothing because it is so easy to make an enemy. Because, to tell one father, "Don't spend any more money because your son is not good enough" is the same as making one enemy. I made this mistake two times, and I don't want to make this mistake any more times!
Campos' greatest protege, Fernando Alonso driving for Campos' team in Formula Nissan in 1999.
• Obviously you helped a lot with Fernando getting into Formula One with your old team Minardi. And there was a period where Telefonica were maybe looking to buy Minardi. Were you ever part of the attempt to buy Minardi?

Well, one of the worst things that I did in my life was not to buy Minardi when it was offered to me for, I think, 600,000 euros. [laughs] Because at that moment I didn't have the possibility to find that money. When some people tried to convince Telefonica to buy Minardi, they were not the right people and I was very happy when I saw that Telefonica said "No", because they were not the right people and if that sale happened then it would have been a big mistake. I was completely out of that, I did not push in the opposite direction, but I was not in with those people because I understood that they were not the right people.
• Your team in GP2 has been building and building, and this year you're having a fantastic year. You got your first win with Giorgio Pantano at Magny-Cours, and you always seem to be up at the top now. But of course you changed the team's name this year to 'Campos Grand Prix'. Is that a hint that you would like to be in Formula One, one day?

Well, this is my first dream when I first started, to one day have a Spanish team in Formula One. But, you know, for me alone to be in GP2 is, I think, the best that I can do. To develop the team also to win races and to fight for the championship was the best thing I could do alone.

Now, with Alejandro Agag, my partner, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And maybe we can do a lot of things together. You never know, now Formula One is close. You know, if we have an opportunity I'm sure we will study it to see if it is in our best interests. We will see, you never know.
• You drove the GP2 car at a test one time. It's probably been a long time before that since you were in a racing car. What was it like? How was the car compared to everything you had driven before?

It was the car of my dreams, because to have all the gears on the steering wheel, all the power for turning the corners ... the brake pedal is nice, the accelerator is electronically functioned. And, you know, it doesn't ask too much of the body, of your physical condition. For me, this is a dream! And then, also, when you put your helmet on, in my time the vibrations meant you saw double or triple for the person ahead, but now it's not a problem, you can see perfectly. And you can relax all the time. This is very important for the driver because the driver can have much blood going into the brain, they can think clearly and this is very important.
• One last question. You've had a very long and varied career in motor racing, what's been the lowest point in all of your career, and what's been the best point?

Of course when I decided to finish my career in Formula One, this was the low. And maybe, when Fernando won in Hungary in 2003, this and when Giorgio won in France, but when Fernando won in Hungary it was a very nice moment.
Click here to read Adrian's Full Biography on our site!


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