For the motorsport enthusiast with money to play with like a child with Lego, a venture into Formula 1 can be a glamourous, high-octane seduction that can’t be resisted, like the cliché of a secretary removing her spectacles as she loosens her hair. The thought of success in a highly-competitive sport can make a prospective team owner’s irises change to dollar signs like a character in an old cartoon, but God forbid them to be under any illusions. Yes, the dream has been realised beyond all expectations for some – just ask the likes of Frank Williams – but there are two sides to a dime, and on the other side lies the possibility of failure. It’s likely that Marussia and Caterham, who have so gallantly made up the numbers on the grid for the last five seasons, will be the ghosts of Grand Prix past in 2015, and with that, they will join a number of unsuccessful ventures into the globe’s premier motor-racing spectacle, although they are competitive by comparison to some of these F1 disaster stories.
Life – 1990
Life, the brainchild (and English translation of his surname) of Italian Ernesto Vita, entered the 1990 F1 season with a radical W12 engine, designed by former Ferrari engineer Franco Rocchi, an idea he had whilst still working for the Scuderia back in the 1960s: an engine with three banks of four cylinders, making it taller than a regular V-banked engine. Vita bought the rights to the engine, and entered Formula 1 on his own after failing to find a willing business partner. The engine proved to be approximately 200 horsepower slower than most of the other cars on the field, and the chassis, at a hefty 530 kg, was the heaviest on the grid. The net result was that the car was roughly the same speed of a Formula 3 car. The team could afford one driver – Gary Brabham, son of 3-time champion Jack. At the second round in Brazil, Brabham’s car barely reached 400 yards. Unbeknown to him, the mechanics had gone on strike and hadn’t put oil in Brabham’s car. The Australian, realising that he was being paid to drive little more than an expensive soapbox, never returned. Italian veteran Bruno Giacomelli – who hadn’t raced in F1 for seven years – was signed to replace him. The team manfully continued, but failed to qualify at every attempt. Giacomelli admitted, that on fast circuits in particular, that he was petrified of another car ploughing into him from behind, such was the lack of speed in the engine. At round 13 in Portugal, the W12 was ditched in favour of a conventional Judd V8. The engine cover failed to fit over it and it subsequently flew off on Giacomelli’s first out-lap in practice. On reflection, the name Life was a complete irony, as there was very little life within the team, and even less life in the car.
Andrea Moda – 1992
Italian footwear designer Andrea Sassetti bought the moribund Coloni team in September 1991 and renamed it Andrea Moda, after his shoe company of the same name. Former Coloni drivers Alex Caffi and Enrico Bertaggia were signed-up to drive for them, but Sassetti’s team hit a snag as early as round 1 in South Africa, when the team failed to pay the $100,000 deposit for new entrants. The team arrived in Mexico for round 2 but both cars were still being developed and neither took to the track. The team arrived in Brazil with two new drivers – experienced Roberto Moreno and Perry McCarthy of Britain and Top Gear Stig fame. Caffi and Bertaggia, critical of the team’s preparations, were unceremoniously fired. Moreno managed to qualify once in Monaco, but retired. At the French Grand Prix, the team failed to participate after having their truck stuck in a blockade created by striking French truck drivers, whereas every other team had managed to get around them. After a series of embarrassing incidents, including sending McCarthy out on a dry track at Silverstone with wet tyres, the final straw for the team came in Belgium. After both cars – allowed to skip pre-qualifying after the withdrawal of the Brabham team – failed to qualify, Sassetti was arrested by Belgian police on suspicion of fraud involving alleged forged invoices. The FIA ruled Andrea Moda had brought Formula 1 into disrepute and were expelled from the sport. With most of Formula 1 either bereft of words or just too creased-up with laughter to speak of the team’s incompetence, it was McCarthy who most likely summed it up best: “Sassetti gave me, as a present, a pair of boots from his factory, but they were uncomfortable. From this, I should have understood my destiny”. From this, it was clear that, in the highly-competitive world of Formula 1, Sassetti really was the wrong kind of Schumacher.
Simtek – 1994
Originally a consultancy company headed by Nick Wirth and Max Mosley, Simtek, after five years being clients for the FIA, Ligier and a number of Formula 3000 and IndyCar teams, decided to enter F1 solo, after two aborted entries into the sport with BMW and the Spanish Bravo Grand Prix project. Wirth headed the project alone (Mosley sold his share in the company to Wirth in 1992 after being elected president of the FIA), and found a shareholder in Jack Brabham, whose other son, David, was signed as a driver, along with another rookie – Roland Ratzenburger of Austria. The team also found major financial backing, gaining MTV Europe as a lead sponsor, but despite this, the operation was comparatively a small one, employing a number of staff that was 90% less than that of Ferrari. Brabham finished at the season-opener in Brazil, and Ratzenburger finished the second round in Aida, but on both occasions they were last of the remaining running cars. At round 3 in San Marino, tragedy struck as Ratzenburger was killed on his final qualifying lap. Brabham decided to race on, and Ratzenburger was replaced for the Spanish Grand Prix by Andrea Montermini, who almost immediately suffered a broken toe and a cracked heel in a heavy shunt in practice. With Brabham continuing, and with Jean-Marc Gounon, Domenico Schiattarella and Taki Inoue sharing the second seat, the team qualified for the remaining races but scored no points. Schiattarella stayed on for 1995, and was partnered by Jos Verstappen, after Brabham decided to race in touring cars. After the fifth round in Monaco, the team never returned after an unnamed financial backer pulled out at the last minute, and the team, and the company as a whole, went into liquidation.
Pacific – 1994
Keith Wiggins’s Pacific team had been successful in every other category of motor racing it had entered, and had proved regularly competitive in Formula 3000 with drivers including JJ Lehto, Eddie Irvine and David Coulthard. Wiggins’s initial plan was to enter in 1993 with a chassis designed by Formula 3000 constructor Reynard Racing, although the entry was abandoned when Reynard’s Rory Byrne left with his design team to join Benetton, and the company sold the design to Ligier. The Reynard design team that was left working for Pacific had little research to work with, and the car that was produced spent hardly any time in wind tunnel tests and were run with a comparatively slow Ilmor V10. Paul Belmondo and Bertrand Gachot, both who had previously raced in Formula 1, were signed as drivers. The lack of preparation led to a disastrous season in which neither car finished a single race, and failed to qualify for all races from the French Grand Prix onwards.
For 1995, Pacific continued in F1 and merged with the moribund Team Lotus. They ran with Cosworth V8s with a number of new sponsorship deals. Andrea Montermini replaced Belmondo, and Gachot continued, but withdrew after eight races, retiring from all but one. He was replaced by pay-drivers Giovanni Lavaggi and Jean-Denis Deletraz, neither of whom completed a race between them, leaving Gachot to return for the final three races. The highest finishes for the team in that season were two 8th places, for Montermini in Germany and Gachot in Australia. With the struggle of running a team in the highest Formula obvious, Wiggins and Pacific decided against entry for 1996 and returned to Formula 3000.
Lola – 1997
Eric Broadley founded Lola in 1958, and the Huntingdon-based company became a successful and much-used manufacturer for teams in many forms of motor racing, producing Formula 1 cars as early as 1964, for Reg Parnell. After being commissioned by many entrants, including the Embassy Hill team in 1975 for Graham Hill – who won the 1966 Indy 500 in a Lola-built car – and with Carl Haas and Teddy Meyer in 1985 and 86. Their last foray into Formula 1 was with the Scuderia Italia team in 1993, which was an unmitigated disaster. Tired of producing cars for other teams, Broadley announced an intention to enter a works car as early as 1994, but were unable to until 1997. Lola’s initial plan was to enter the 1998 season, but pressure from title sponsor MasterCard caused a debut a season ahead of schedule, thus beginning a plan to be at the front of the field in four years. With Vincenzo Sospiri and Ricardo Rosset signed to drive, they arrived in Australia with the hope of finishing higher than some of the other backmarkers, however being fitted with underpowered Cosworth V8 and a complete lack of wind tunnel testing, the car was no faster than any Lola F3000 entrant, and subsequently failed to qualify. Sospiri was the faster of both drivers in practice, however still set a time some 5 seconds slower than the slowest qualifying time, and approximately 11 seconds slower than the front-runners. The team arrived in Brazil, but by that time, MasterCard pulled out and Broadley’s dream of a works team ended disastrously. The venture resulted in a £3million debt and Lola went into receivership. Broadley sold the company in 1999.
These are of course just a selection of disastrous F1 entries, and in some cases, disastrous in different ways, and it is also just a small number of unsuccessful teams in the history of Grand Prix racing, with dishonourable mentions for the aforementioned Coloni, who qualified for only 17% of races entered in the five seasons it was in F1; EuroBrun, who suffered a string of DNQs and a finish no higher than 11th in the three seasons it took part in; and Forti, a mid-90s entrant who were the embarrassment of the paddock, even making Pacific look fast.
If you’re rich, enjoy your motor racing, have stumbled across this article in between counting your fortune, and are dreaming of putting it towards an entry into Formula 1, my advice would be simply this: it might just be worth your while to have a deep think about it first, otherwise that dream may turn into a living nightmare.
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