“I was second in the grid, I was the leader of the race, ahead of Gerhard Berger so I was really, really competitive. Unfortunately I had a puncture, and I couldn't finish the race.”
However, he really made his mark with second in a soaking wet Belgian GP at Spa, behind only World Championship challenger
Michael Schumacher. At the end of the season he moved to Benetton, as had been previously agreed with Jordan when the Anglo-Irish team had signed him at the start of the year.
Giancarlo has mixed feelings about the '98 season: “It was good, but it wasn't as I expected. Sometimes we were quite competitive, sometimes we were in the middle of the grid. In fact it was like that for a few years, 1999, 2000 and 2001. In 1998 I had a second in Monaco and a few other podiums. Austria that year was a big day. Qualifying was in wet conditions, and pole was a great result.”
Giancarlo stayed with Benetton for the 1999 season, which brought some promising results. At the Nurburgring in 1999 he led the race, however again lost the chance to score his first win when he went off the road: “I was really quick with the grooved tyres in a damp situation, then I lost the headrest, and I lost control of the car and spun in the quick chicane. It was an opportunity to win easily, for sure.”
He continued to score podiums the following year in 2000, but the year after a radical
Renault engine design proved troublesome.
“At the beginning of the season we were fighting with Minardi! Then we made a big step forward in the middle of the year. I was third in Belgium, it was a great race, and we were getting better and better through the season.” He finished the championship in 6th position and stayed with Benetton for one more season before deciding to return to Jordan in 2002 for what turned out to be a two-year stay. It was a largely frustrating time: “Unfortunately it was the wrong moment! The team was going down at that period, and we were struggling with the budget. It was a difficult season, apart from 2003 in Brazil, which was both an amazing and a difficult race.”
