F1's most dogged underdogs

A plucky F1 story which almost didn’t begin when Mercedes shelved its original plans with Sauber in the early 1990s, but Peter Sauber got the team together with financial assistance from Mercedes in 1993. Having impressed in its rookie F1 season Sauber picked up factory Mercedes backing and rebranding but only matching its rookie year results wasn’t enough as the German manufacturer withdrew after one year. That hole was duly filled by Red Bull and Ford engines before securing a deal with Ferrari and setting up its own Petronas engineering department which reaped rewards in 2001 with the signing of Kimi Raikkonen as the team finished fourth. After a tricky 2005 with no more Red Bull money, Sauber signed a deal to become the factory BMW entry between 2006-2009, sparking the team’s most successful era highlighted by Kubica’s maiden pole position in the 2008 Bahrain GP and a maiden win in the same year at Montreal. But after a disappointing 2009 and regulations switch, BMW pulled the plug and Sauber reverted back to customer Ferrari engines in 2010. Since then financial worries and the need for paid drivers has seen Sauber fall down the F1 pecking order with the ultimately low of a point less campaign in 2014. Last July Sauber were purchased by Swiss investment firm Longbow Finance as it aims to fire itself back up the grid in 2017.

After championship success at International F3 level, Eddie Jordan’s iconic team made the move up to F1 in 1991. A solid rookie campaign, highlighted in history by Michael Schumacher’s one-off race and F1 debut, saw Jordan finish fifth in the teams’ championship but success came at a cost and had to switch to Yamaha engines a year later which dropped them to the back of the grid. Stability and popularity followed with a Hart engine deal plus the signing of Eddie Irvine and Rubens Barrichello. Serial mid-pack contenders, 1995 was highlighted by a double podium in Canada before its eye-catching switch to a yellow livery a year later. Another switch of engine suppliers, this time from Peugeot to Mugen Honda, struggled initially but points finishes began to flourish crowned by the famous 1998 Belgian Grand Prix where Damon Hill won, with team-mate Ralf Schumacher second, in the pouring rain when only six cars finished. With Schumacher swapping places with Heinz-Harald Frentzen in 1999 the team enjoyed its best-ever campaign with the German winning in France and Italy and the team finishing third overall only behind the mighty Ferrari and McLaren squads. After a change to factory Honda engines in 2001 a direct battle with BAR sparked to gain Japanese manufacturer support which Jordan ultimately lost despite outperforming its rival. A final move to Ford engines saw Jordan slip back down the grid, despite an opportunistic win for Giancarlo Fisichella in Brazil, and as financial difficulty engulfed the team it was sold to the Midland Group in 2005.

Famed for their playboy style, arriving at races in Rolls-Royce cars and giving James Hunt his F1 debut, Lord Hesketh’s squad moved into F1 in 1973 reportedly because it was only marginally more expensive than F2 when it came to damage costs. The key appointment of Harvey Postlethwaite saw vast gains with its March chassis and turned a handful of rostrums into a maiden F1 win in the Netherlands for Hunt in 1975 – holding off Ferrari’s Niki Lauda. After Lord Hesketh pulled the plug on the self-funded team and Hunt went to McLaren in 1976 it ultimately wound up the team’s success but the team name remained on the F1 grid for a further three years and stayed immensely popular.

21 years and not a single podium, pole position or trophy to speak of doesn’t sound like the successful underdog story but Giancarlo Minardi’s dream became a celebrated member of the F1 family. So much so that in 1995 when the team was struggling financially Bernie Ecclestone managed to convince Flavio Briatore to invest in Minardi. After a long stretch without a points finish in the late 1990s, Luca Badoer had been running in fourth until his gearbox failed with 13 laps to go at the 1999 European GP and he burst into tears at the trackside. Paul Stoddard purchased the team in 2001 and became a dubbed unofficial F1 leader aiming to bring running costs down for the grid while he also blocked a qualifying format change. Despite the lack of sporting success, Stoddard sold the team to Red Bull in September 2005 to rebrand and set up the Scuderia Toro Rosso squad but initially fans were devastated to lose the Minardi name from the sport.

Effectively a rebranded March team but backed by the Japanese real estate company, the team may not have a significant entry in the F1 annuals but certainly drew plenty of attention. An uncompetitive and unreliable car wrecked the start of its 1990 season until almost impossibly Ivan Capelli led a Leyton House 1-2 for a large part of the French Grand Prix before eventually having to settle for second place behind Alain Prost. That year team boss Ian Phillips contracted meningitis, team manager Henry Mandel resigned and a certain Adrian Newey was fired. A switch to Ilmore V10 engines failed to change the team’s fortunes and team owner Akira Akagi was arrested for his role in the Fuji Bank financial scandal. The team was swiftly sold and renamed March F1.

F1’s latest casualty after a new buyer fell through last week with its parent company in administration. Despite just seven years of existence the team had more than its fair share of joy and despair, from Jules Bianchi’s surprise ninth place in Monaco followed by his tragic accident in Suzuka and the team falling into administration the first time around. Reprised by Stephen Fitzpatrick a limping Manor in 2015 turned into a striding squad ahead of 2017 only to be cruelly denied 10th in the teams’ championship by Felipe Nasr’s P9 in Brazil. That miss and resulting lack of prize money saw new backers fail to materialise and a grim repeat of two years previous returned.

A nightmare start to life in F1 when its TG181 failed to qualify in all but two races in the 1981 season while unreliability plagued its second season despite substantial updates. But the team hung on in 1983 and with a bigger sponsorship backing found speed and consistency with Derek Warwick finishing in the points in the final four races to lift the team to ninth. With Warwick switched to the factory Renault squad, it opened the opportunity for a young Ayrton Senna who in just his sixth race narrowly missed out on victory in the rain at Monaco after the race was red-flagged with Senna closing in on Prost at a rapid race. Two further rostrums for Senna followed before swiftly departing to Lotus. Despite a quick car in 1985 the team failed to replicate the results without Senna but were taken over by Benetton before eventually becoming the factory Renault team we know today.

Initially set-up as a research company which worked with the FIA, Ligier and a number of IndyCar teams, Nick Wirth opted to enter a team into the 1994 season. Wirth had designed the team’s first car with active suspension mimicking Williams’ title winning cars but after it was outlawed by the FIA a hastily revised model was produced with Cosworth V8 engines and the eye-catching MTV Europe title sponsorship. Small in size but big in ambition, Simtek’s total workforce was 10% the size of Ferrari in its rookie season. However, its deficits proved too great as the team was uncompetitive but it paled into insignificance after Roland Ratzenberger tragically died in a crash during qualifying at the San Marino Grand Prix. Team-mate David Brabham opted to continue to race in order to lift the morale of the team and despite ending the year without a point, Wirth pushed the team on for a second season. But having wracked up £6 milllion worth of debt in 18 months and key sponsors linked to Hideki Noda heavily impacted by the Kobe earthquake just six races into 1995 the team opted for voluntary liquidation.