Before discussing the "Never-Was" teams of the '80s, we need to look at similar teams that originated in the '70s. Don Nichols was already running sports cars in the Can-Am series before entering Shadow in F1 in 1973. In spite of having some good drivers and design talent, the effort never really took off, topping out at 6th in the standings in 1975 and winning its only Grand Prix, with Alan Jones driving, in 1977. The following year, most of Nichols' talent left to form the Arrows team, and Shadow began its slide to oblivion. Meanwhile, Morris Nunn had started the Ensign F1 team, also in 1973, but this always seemed a shoestring effort, never even reaching the podium, with a highest season placing of 10th in 1977 with Clay Regazzoni driving. Clay was headed for a 4th place finish at Long Beach in 1980 when his brake pedal broke, leading to his career-ending crash. Marc Surer finally got the team a 4th place in 1981, but the following season was pointless and Nunn saw greener pastures in IndyCar. The common factor for both these teams is where their assets wound up. Teddy Yip of Hong Kong had started Theodore in 1977, running customer cars for two years but sitting out 1979. After the 1980 season had started, Yip acquired Shadow and ran the cars as Theodore Shadows for a few races, but pulled the plug after no results were forthcoming. He ran his own chassis the following 2 years with little success and then acquired Ensign for 1983. After scoring only 1 point, Yip called it quits, though he had some success sponsoring cars at the Indy 500 for several years, as well as fielding successful cars in the Macau GP. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Wilson Fittipaldi started his own F1 team in 1975, taking the name of its primary sponsor. He staged a coup in 1976 by persuading brother Emerson to quit a good seat at McLaren and join the family team, which effectively ruined the rest of Emmo's F1 career. The best season finish was 7th in 1978, which also brought its best race finish, a 2nd-place in Brazil. Meanwhile, Canadian Walter Wolf had started his own team in 1977 after an unsuccessful partnering with Frank Williams in 1976. The first season was very successful, with 3 race wins and a 4th-place season placing, but the ground-effects cars of the following two seasons were disappointing, and Wolf sold his team to the Fittipaldis for 1980, just as the brothers had lost their name sponsor. The Fittipaldis had a passable year in 1980 using, basically, the Wolf equipment, but Emerson decided to retire at the end of the year - to reappear years later for a successful IndyCar career. And after scoring only 1 point over the next 2 seasons, Wilson folded the team. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
The owner of ATS wheels, Gunter Schmid, decided to enter F1 in 1977 to promote his products. He started with Penske's leftover cars but entered his own chassis from 1978 onwards. The team kept trying until 1984, but the best race finish was 5th on several occasions, and the best season placing was 11th, and Schmid eventually quit after losing an engine deal with BMW. But he reappeared in 1988 representing a new wheel manufacturer, Rial. He tried again for two seasons, with a best race finish of 4th each year (a minor improvement), but after neither car qualified in the last ten races of the 1989 season, Schmid quit F1 for good. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
One final holdover, of sorts, from the '70s was RAM Racing, started in 1976 by Mike Ralph and John Macdonald, with the name coming from their initials. However, they did not really become a "constructor" until 1983. In 1976, 1977 and 1980 they ran Brabham, March and Williams chassis with no fewer than 15 (!) different drivers, never finishing higher than 9th. When March decided to re-enter F1 in 1981 after a three-year hiatus, they contracted with RAM to run the team, but again were unsuccessful, running six different drivers in two years and never finishing higher than 7th, even with Rothmans sponsorship. March then decided to concentrate on their successful IndyCar program, which actually used a chassis very similar to the F1 car. In 1983-1985 RAM ran their own cars (though the 1983 car was really a re-badged March), but in spite of sponsorship from Skoal the last two years, scored no points, and when the sponsorship dried up at the end of '85, that was the end of RAM. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Gunter Schmid was arguably the most hated team owner in F1. ATS had very talented designers, engineers, drivers and team managers (including my brother). Not only was Schmid a nasty individual with a horrible abusive temper, but his micromanagement of every aspect of the team led to constant personnel turnover. For instance, although ATS street wheels were excellent products, the wheels ATS manufactured for its F1 team were vastly inferior to the wheels from the manufacturer used by every one of the other F1 teams, and broke under heavy load. Even after wheels broke in 3 of the first 6 races in one season Schmid still refused to equip the ATS car with wheels from the other manufacturer. As this obstinacy had the potential to seriously endanger a driver's life and greatly affected team morale, my brother quit mid-season as did several managers before and after him. ATS had a revolving door for its managers, engineers, drivers, etc.
My favourite era. I remember the Ram cars as being exceptionally pretty but woefully slow. In Montreal, the ‘84 RAM cars were starting to lose the pack after lap 1. Although the cars qualified better in ‘85, it was obvious they’d require a full helping of divine intervention to gain any points throughout the year. Poor Manfred Winkelhock. He did a capable job in the ATS and deserved at minimum a point or two with the BMW turbo. ATS hired novice Gerhard Berger towards the end of their final season, and he finished sixth in only his second F1 race, proving the car (and driver) had potential. ATS were never awarded a point however, as a one car team, any additional car they ran at a race was not able to score points. After being crushed by his teammate in qualifying in his first F1 outing, Berger found his legs and was over a second quicker than Winkelhock in his second effort and Manfred was gone from the team thereafter. He raced for RAM the following year until his tragic accident at Mosport in WSC. When De Cesaris was with Rial, he was back to his tricks and gained many positions by starting half tank at many races. Naturally the Rial was a rocket ship off the grid at least, and AdC’s gamble eventually paid dividends. While Danner scored a worthy fourth the following season, there were so many teams in F1 at the time, the three points achieved in ‘89 weren’t enough to keep them in the top ten to receive Bernie money. Rial and their long suffering compatriots at Zakspeed were done.
A total of 12 teams decided to try F1 racing in the '80s. Of those, only 2 remain today, under different names. Of the 10 others, none lasted beyond 1994, none ever won a race, and few even made podiums. Here's the sordid tale, with the teams listed chronologically from their first F1 race. A number of these teams had been successful in lesser formulae. Such was the case with Enzo Osella, who had done okay in F2 and entered F1 in 1980 with his driver, Eddie Cheever. After finishing only one race all year, Cheever left for greener pastures. Osella would remain in F1 through the 1990 season, never finishing higher than 4th in a race or 12th in the championship, and finishing pointless in 9 of its 11 seasons. The team was sold to sponsor Fondmetal, who had two more pointless seasons. Ted Toleman also had a successful F2 program and moved up to F1 in 1981, but the car failed to qualify until the 13th race of the year and scored no points; 1982 was no better. In 1983 there was some improvement and points were scored in the last 4 races. The big deal in 1984 was signing rookie Ayrton Senna, who finished 2nd in a wet Monaco and might have won if the race had not been stopped early. But Senna left for Lotus after the season and Toleman was left without a tire contract at the start of 1985. New sponsor Benetton solved that problem, and even though 1985 was another failed year, Benetton bought the team at year's end and began a climb to championship level; it survives today as the current iteration of Renault. But that is beyond the scope of this post. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Spirit was started as an F2 team running a Honda-powered car successfully in 1982. Honda had a new turbo engine for F1 and wanted to enter quietly, so Spirit was tabbed to run the engine in 1983, though it was not ready until mid-season, and didn't finish higher than 7th the rest of the way. For 1984, Honda took the engine to Williams, and Spirit ran Hart turbos without success. Early in 1985 the team was sold to Toleman (with Benetton's help) and that was that. Giancarlo Minardi had also raced successfully in F2 in the early '80s and decided to go F1 racing in 1985. The team did not score a point until Detroit 1988 (I saw the team at the airport the next day and they were celebrating as if they had won!) and kept plugging away for years with a multitude of different drivers (many who would later achieve success with other teams) and engines, but never finishing higher than 4th in a race or 7th in the championship. In 2001, Minardi sold out to Paul Stoddart, who continued running the team under the same name; in 2006, Stoddart sold the team to Red Bull, who renamed it Toro Rosso, the name under which it still operates today. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login Not sure if I missed this one but remember Hector Rebaque and his team?
There is a Haas team today, but it's not the first. Carl Haas, the American importer for Lola cars, put together a package for 1985 that looked hard to beat: a good chassis (partially designed by Ross Brawn), built by a company he had set up called FORCE (Formula One Race Car Engineering), a new turbo V-6 from Ford, a strong sponsor in Beatrice Foods (who was also sponsoring his Newman-Haas IndyCar team), an experienced driver in Alan Jones (to be joined later by Patrick Tambay) and a good manager in Teddy Mayer. The car was badged as a Lola, even though Lola Cars in the U.K. had nothing to do with it; it was just a way for Haas to promote his product. Unfortunately, this all never worked right. First, the car and engine were both late; after waiting half a season, they finally went racing with Hart engines, but scored no points in 4 starts. In early 1986, a change in management at Beatrice resulted in a cancellation of the sponsorship deal, though the Beatrice name continued to be shown on the cars in smaller type. The new engine finally showed up for the third race, but there were bugs to be worked out and the cars did not earn points until Austria and Italy, allowing Haas to finish 8th in the Constructor's championship. With no new sponsor in sight, Haas decided to close the team and concentrate on his IndyCar effort. Benetton inherited the Ford engine for 1987 and would be the de facto Ford factory team through 1993. Gerard Larrousse had been a successful rally and sports car driver, having won both Sebring and Le Mans, and decided to enter F1 in 1987 with cars genuinely build by Lola in the U.K. Larrousse used Lolas for five years, alternating between Ford V-8 and Lamborghini V-12 engines; with the latter the cars certainly sounded good, though the engines tended to be unreliable. The high point came in 1990, when Aguri Suzuki finished 3rd in his home G.P. and the team finished 6th in the championship. From 1992 to 1994 the team used their own chassis, but little success was attained and, failing to get needed funding, Larrousse folded the team. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Hector reached an agreement to run the Lotus 78 (shown above) in 1978 after the team had switched to the type 79, and actually scored a point in the German GP. The following year he ran the Lotus 79 and then a car he commissioned called the HR100, which still resembled the 79. But he closed the team at year's end and in 1980 became Brabham's second driver. Image Unavailable, Please Login
When Rebaque's Brabham failed early in the 1980 Long Beach G.P., he parked the car in the escape road by the Queen's hairpin. When the brake pedal in Regazzoni's Ensign failed, he sideswiped the parked Brabham on his way to his career-ending crash into the tire wall at the end of the escape road. It's believed that he did that on purpose to try and slow his car down any way that he could. I was sitting in the grandstand on the ramp up above and heard both impacts, but couldn't really see anything, looking obliquely through the chain-link fence. Later in the season, at Watkins Glen, I took this photo of a unique "echelon formation" during Saturday practice in the boot; I believe this is designated turn 6. Villeneuve is in the hapless Ferrari 312 T5, Marc Surer is in the ATS and Rebaque is in the Brabham. This is scanned from a slide so the quality is not great. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Erich Zakowski had been a successful entrant in touring cars and sports cars, even having developed his own turbo engine, when he elected to enter F1 under his Zakspeed label in 1985. For four years, his cars only finished in the points once, a 5th place by Martin Brundle at San Marino in 1987. For 1989, with turbos now banned, he used the Yamaha V-8 engine, and that was a real disaster: Bernd Schneider only qualified twice in 16 races, and Aguri Suzuki never qualified at all! Zakowski gave up and returned to touring cars the following year. AGS (Automobiles Gonfaronnaises Sportives) was a very small team based in the French town of Gonfaron, and had achieved a bit of success in both F2 and F3000 when they showed up late in the 1986 season with a modified F3000 car and 7 (!) employees. The team raced full time through late 1991 and actually scored a couple of 6th places, but changed hands several times, and gave up after a pointless 1991. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Why is it that guys named "Enzo" think that they can compete in F1? Enzo Coloni was a successful F3 entrant when he decided to try F1. After appearing in a couple of races in 1986, the team raced full time from 1987 to 1991, actually using a Subaru flat-12 engine for the first half of 1990, but never being able to qualify with it. In those five years, the highest race finish was 8th, meaning that no points were scored. For 1992 the F1 team was sold and was raced as Andrea Moda in 9 races, but only qualified once. Coloni returned to the lesser formulae and continued to enter until 2015. Walter Brun had been a successful sports car entrant, usually running Porsches, when he entered F1 racing in 1988 as Eurobrun, in conjunction with Euroracing, the team that had run Alfa Romeo's abortive F1 effort for several years. From 1988 to 1990, the best race finish was 11th in its "best" year, 1988. In '89 the team failed to qualify in any round; in 1990 they only qualified twice, and at season's end, Brun called it quits. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Brixia Motor Sport was a team involved in rallying and touring car racing in the mid '80s. In 1988 they decided to enter F1 as BMS Scuderia Italia, running a Dallara chassis and Ford engines. Unless some of the hapless teams described above, they usually qualified and had some decent race finishes, including 3rd places in both 1989 and 1991, finishing 8th in the season standings both years. They ran Judd engines in '91 and Ferrari V-12s in '92, and switched to Lola chassis (again with Ferrari power) in '93. But their best finish in '93 was 7th, so they quit F1 and went touring car and GT racing, as well as a few years running Ferrari 333 SP's, and are still active in some form today. Onyx had been a successful team running Marches in F2 and F3000 for a number of years before deciding to enter F1 in 1989 with their own car. The team had several changes in ownership and personality conflicts that stifled success. They had a few good races, with Stefan Johansson taking 3rd in Portugal and finishing 10th in the season standings. But in 1990 the wheels came off the cart and the team quit after 10 races in the season. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login And that's all of them - the teams that we may have forgotten because most didn't accomplish anything worth remembering! Get yourself a copy of "Formula 1 Car by Car 1980-1989" and you'll see a lot more of them!
This is a photo that I took of Hector on the starting grid of the 1979 Argentine GP, his second F1 race. When he was just 15 years old Hector learned to drive formula cars at our driving school, after which we pulled a few strings and somehow managed to enter him in some FF races despite his being ineligible for a racing (or even a street) license due to his age. He was incredibly quick and was either on or near the FF lap record at each venue after just a few practice laps. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Needed to have your trigger finger ready and be there for every practice to be a good car spotter in those days. Never knew if the second car from the minnows would make a full lap or be seen again race weekend. Let alone a rare appearance of the Life. .
Jim I used to watch from the boot as well, will try to locate some of my photos from there. Do you remember Bud Man?
