My old friend Matt and I were returning home from White Hart Lane, where we had witnessed a rather lacklustre defeat of Portsmouth by Tottenham Hotspur, when we got to talking about the confusing and chequered history of Grand Prix teams.
As we threaded our way between the potholes, we began to consider the grid for the Australian Grand Prix. Starting with the front row, we realised that Red Bull Racing is just one of many teams that have been born out of a widespread metamorphosis that has swept the paddock in the last 30 years.
For those of you who, like us, do not have encyclopaedic memories here’s a brief synopsis of how some of our contemporary Formula 1 teams have come to be in existence. It is a remarkable tapestry of wheeling and dealing.
Red Bull Racing began life as Stewart Grand Prix when canny former World Champion Jackie and his son Paul persuaded Ford to help them take their highly successful Paul Stewart Racing team to the highest level. After three seasons the Stewarts sold their team to Ford, which rebranded it as Jaguar Racing. Then, in 2004, the team was sold on again, this time to Red Bull magnate Dietrich Mateschitz.
Staying with Red Bull, the team we know today as Toro Rosso was founded by Giancarlo Minardi. Despite various cash injections from Italian supporters like Scuderia Italia and Fondmetal, the plucky Minardi team eventually went under and was bought by Australian entrepreneur Paul Stoddart. Renamed European Minardi, it struggled on until it too was sold to Red Bull, which branded its second team as Toro Rosso.
Moving on we come to Force India, a team that began life as Jordan Grand Prix back in 1991. Eddie kept it going through thick and thin until 2005 when he sold out to a Russian consortium known, strangely, as Midland. By the time of its first race the team had become, even more strangely, MF1 Racing. It wasn’t a huge success and was then sold to Dutch car manufacturer Spyker, which simply called it Spyker F1. It too ran out of road and was bought by Indian billionaire Vijay Mallya who, quite logically, called the team Force India. At last the old Jordan outfit was back in competitive hands.
Had you remembered that the new Mercedes team began life as Tyrrell? No, I thought not. In 1997 Ken Tyrrell sold his squad to the British American Tobacco company, and by 1999 the much-loved team was racing under the bland title of BAR, or British American Racing. Despite huge resources, BAR never lived up to its promise, and in 2005 it was sold to the Honda Motor Company, which poured in yet more cash while Honda F1 continued to struggle. Next, in a unique piece of F1 history, technical director Ross Brawn bought the team for £1 in a panic sale by Honda at the end of 2008. Renamed Brawn GP, unprecedented success came its way, so much so that at the end of the year Mercedes-Benz bought the team from Brawn and brought the Silver Arrows back to the paddock.
What about Renault? The French team started life as Toleman, coming into F1 on the back of success in F2. There was huge potential here but never enough resources. In 1985 the Italian clothing company Benetton became a major sponsor, buying the team outright in ’86 and racing as Benetton Formula. Then, in 2000, it in turn sold out to Renault, which returned to F1 as a fully-fledged manufacturer team.
Finally, Arrows and Prost, the ones that did not survive. Arrows, born out of an exodus from Shadow in 1977, is one of the enigmas of racing history. In 1991 it was taken over by the Japanese company Footwork and the cars became known, horribly, as Footworks. Five years later Tom Walkinshaw took a stake, but Arrows finally folded in 2002 after 382 races without a win. Prost GP is another sad story. This was the old Ligier team, taken over by Flavio Briatore and then sold on to Prost in 1997. By 2002 it was all over, and the former World Champion walked away from F1. A consortium known as Phoenix Finance tried to resurrect the team, but the phoenix never rose from the ashes, its entry rejected by the FIA with whom Prost had always had a turbulent relationship. Now, of course, Prost is back – as an FIA steward.
Funny old game, Grand Prix racing.
I wonder if all the young fans know that McLaren began with a young New Zealander who came to Europe many years ago and died too young like so many of his contemporaries? If you look closely at the McLaren logo it is the stylised version of a Kiwi.
Us young people are very ignorant these days.
Bruce McWho?
I suppose one could take the history of the present Mercedes GP team back a step further, to Matra International, which became Tyrrell when Ken started producing his own chasses.
Sauber-Mercedes/-Pertonas (Ferrari) > BMW (BMW-Sauber) > Sauber F1
*Petronas
Kenny –
Matra was always a Tyrell team, even though they had the backing of the Matra firm. It came from Ken Tyrell’s F2 exploits…. Without Ken Tyrell the Matra team would never be.
Hello Rich,
I did not mean to be condescending, and I apologise to you and the majority of young fans who do know about Bruce McLaren and the history. My point was that there may be some who think McLaren was invented by Ron Dennis (who I think has had an outstanding career being the driving force in the growth of all things McLaren).
And when I win the lottery, I will contact Ron and order a nice new orange McLaren road car.
Mario-
Matra didn’t need Ken Tyrrell. In 1968 they had their own factory F1 team which Tyrrell was not involved with. Tyrrell had DFVs but no chassis, so Matra supplied him with one, arranged financing from Elf, and called the team Matra International. Matra ran Jean-Pierre Beltoise in a Matra, and Matra International ran Jackie Stewart in a Matra-Ford. In 1970 Tyrrell ended his association (in F1) with Matra because they wanted him to run their new V12 engines, Instead, he ran March-Fords until his own chassis was ready.
This is good news. We seems to have stimulated another small debate and we have some nice reaction from those of you whose memories are clearly in better shape than mine.
Yes, I could have gone into the Sauber saga but, frankly, it’s all rather dull. I thought that, for no particular reason, the whole BMW thing in Formula One was just rather bland and unexciting. I expected more of such a great company and of a manufacturer which produces some superb road cars.
Ferrari, McLaren and Williams are the only teams, I believe, that have remained unaffected by the otherwise widespread metamorphosis. OK, Ferrari began as Enzo running Alfa Romeos and McLaren began with Bruce, but they remain almost entirely intact, as does Williams of course which has somehow hung on to its independence. And let us hope it always does, at least while Frank and Patrick have the energy, because its independence is just a part of its charm and appeal as a proper Grand Prix team.
I’m off to the British Touring Car Championship now to report from the opening rounds at Thruxton. Shame there won’t be any Minis, Cortinas and Galaxies. But times change.
RW
Rob-
At some point close your eyes and imagine the engine noises are coming from a Cortina rounding a bend on two wheels…you may even be able to imagine the driver’s blue and white helmet…
Have fun. The only racing I get to see is my son leaving me in his dust at our local kart track…
Great article, Rob – one of those “pub discussion” sort of things that are always so much fun.
In that spirit (i.e. just a bit of fun, folks!), you could say that even Ferrari and Williams haven’t been totally set apart from the old name game over the years, although you’re right to point out, Rob, that there has been a consistent thread running through their respective histories.
As a team, Scuderia Ferrari has always been Scuderia Ferrari, of that there is no doubt (assuming we’ll leave aside the famous tale of Enzo entering as the North American Racing Team at the end of ’64, because of course that was a wholly different story…), but the cars it has entered have not always been Ferraris. After buying the D50s when Lancia pulled out, Maranello ran them as Lancia-Ferraris in ’56/’57.
As for Frank, well, there’s quite an interesting progression there. Let’s disregard the fact that he ran his cars under various names in the early days (Politoys, Iso-Marlboro…), because at the end of the day the constant fact was that the team was still really Frank Williams Racing Cars. But don’t forget that Walter Wolf first of all entered into partnership with Frank (hence the Wolf-Williamses of ’76 – and *they* were really re-badged Heskeths) and then bought him out completely, with the Wolf marque winning on its GP debut in ’77 in exactly the same way as the Brawn marque did last year (i.e. out of a pre-existent team). A couple of years after that, Frank’s old factory in Reading was sold on again and its products became Fittipaldis, but by then of course Frank had started afresh and the reborn Williams marque itself was entering its first championship year. And it’s true that this second operation, Williams Grand Prix Engineering, has never been in hands other than those of Frank and Patrick. But I hope you’ll devour the tidbits I’ve offered in the spirit of fun that’s meant!
Another thing you could mention is that all three of this year’s new teams underwent a change of name before they even turned a wheel!
We’ve said welcome back to the Lotus name and welcome aboard to Virgin and Hispania (or HRT if you want to be more bland – although I always thought that stood for Hormone Replacement Therapy), but if things had followed their original course in each instance, we’d be saying hello to Litespeed, Manor and Campos Meta.
Yes, Rob, a funny old game indeed!
I once read that Senna had played a considerable part in Toleman’s demise and buy-out by Benetton, in vetoing another competetive driver as team-mate, damaging relationships with tyre-supplier Pirelli and leaving the team without much chance in securing a principal sponsor by secretly jumping ship to Lotus, and this was done as a deliberate act of revenge against Toleman by Senna, angry at his perceived ill-treatment by the team.
Is there any weight behind this? If so, it’s ironic that Benetton should be the team to cause him so much concern in his last few races at Williams.
what about colour schemes associated to teams, the black and gold of Lotus, the orange and white of McLaren. My Father’s company supplied day-glo orange to McLaren in the mid 70′s when they first brought the idea from the States. They painted the transporter in orange too and decided without checking to varnish it over the top. The varnish reacted with the paint and the whole lot turned brown!
Does anyone remember the yellow (or gold?) and white Marlboro Lights McLaren at th 1986 Portugal GP? Good looking car…they should have used it more often.
OK. Two things.
1. Matra supplied cars to Ken Tyrrell who ran them. In 1970 when they wanted him to run their V12 engines too, he said no so bought a March before he brought out his own car at the end of the year.
2. BAR bought Tyrrell’s entry and ran the team for one final season as Tyrrell. The BAR team that raced the following year was a completely new entity run from a different base with few (if any?) of the same personnel. One has to think whether they might have been better off refinancing Tyrrell and building from there but that was never part of ‘the grand plan’. Ho Ho.
50% of Spyker F1 was bought by Mallya,the other half by Jan and Michiel Mol.who already had been stakeholders in this Dutch F1 adventure.