After the positive 1994 season, which ended with 5 points and tenth place in the Constructors' Championship, the Board of Directors of the Faenza-based team, led by Giancarlo Minardi, decided to raise the bar by prioritizing a more powerful engine that could offer greater guarantees for a step forward in performance. The choice fell on the Mugen-Honda, with the Japanese company becoming available after ending its collaboration with Lotus, due to the historic British team's closure. After all preliminary agreements had been made with the Japanese engine manufacturer and with the engine for the new M195 already defined in detail, Mugen-Honda announced that its engines would instead go to Ligier, owned by Flavio Briatore. The Italian manager had taken over the French team with the aim of using the V10 Renault engine, which had powered the French cars in 1994, on his Benetton B195. As a result, Ligier found itself without an engine for the 1995 season, and Briatore reached a last-minute agreement with Mugen-Honda, effectively snatching the Japanese engine from the Faenza team.
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| MINARDI M195, Pierluigi Martini Imola, San Marino GP 1995 |
Giancarlo Minardi began a lengthy legal action against Briatore and his team, which concluded only at the British Grand Prix on July 9, when the court ruled that the deal between Minardi and Mugen-Honda had "reached a point of mutual agreement such that it was reasonable to expect the contract would indeed be finalized." At the time also managing Cosworth, Flavio Briatore had Minardi’s equipment seized during the French Grand Prix due to the Faenza team's outstanding debt to Cosworth for the supply of HB engines in 1993. The matter was resolved out of court, with Minardi’s debts cancelled and Briatore agreeing to pay $1 million in compensation to the Faenza team for the loss of the Mugen-Honda engines.
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| MINARDI M195, Luca Badoer Montecarlo, Monaco GP 1995 |
Meanwhile, work continued on the Minardi M195 single-seater, still under the direction of technical chief Aldo Costa, assisted by designer Mauro Gennaro and aerodynamicist Mariano Alperin. However, the Italian team was forced to fall back on the only customer engine available on the market: the affordable but low-performance 2994 cc Ford-Cosworth ED V8. Costa’s design for the M195 featured a high-nose layout, Minardi’s first car with such a configuration, but with an unusual stepped front wing in the center, shaped to mimic the floor profile. This solution was gradually abandoned between the Spanish and Monaco Grands Prix, in favor of a more traditional front wing design. Another unconventional feature was the sidepod design, with radiator air intakes mimicking those of the Benetton B195, positioned on the outer edge of the sidepods. Most notably, the hot air exited from the top of the sidepods, a solution reminiscent of the early 1980s McLaren MP4s, but this too was dropped from the French Grand Prix onward.
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| MINARDI M195, Luca Badoer Hungaroring, Hungarian GP 1995 |
On the driver front, the most important news of 1995 was Michele Alboreto’s retirement from Formula 1. He had begun his professional career in 1981 racing a Formula 2 Minardi and had won at Misano. The team brought in Italian driver Luca Badoer to join fellow countryman Pierluigi Martini, who later gave up his seat to Portuguese driver Pedro Lamy starting with the Hungarian Grand Prix. After a rather difficult start to the season, due to the need to adapt the M195 mid-development to the smaller and less powerful Ford-Cosworth engine, the season progressed quickly and the M195 regained a fair level of competitiveness starting from the Monaco Grand Prix, where Martini achieved an excellent seventh place, repeated three races later in Great Britain. Badoer, for his part, twice secured eighth place, in Canada and Hungary, and consistently saw the checkered flag, demonstrating the M195's good reliability.
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| MINARDI M195, Pedro Lamy Estoril, Portuguese GP 1995 |
Lamy took over Martini's car from the Hungarian Grand Prix and confirmed the car’s reliability with a series of midfield finishes. When it seemed the season would end without any points, on November 12 in Adelaide, during the final race of the year, the Portuguese driver secured sixth place. This was an excellent result, considering he had started from 21st on the grid, and it brought Minardi a single championship point, securing tenth place in the Constructors' standings. On November 25 and 26, end-of-season tests were held at Ferrari’s private Fiorano track with the M195, where several young drivers were evaluated, including Italian Giancarlo Fisichella, who would make his Formula 1 debut with Minardi on March 10, 1996, in Melbourne.
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