Arrows Grand Prix International

Arrows

Surname	Arrows Grand Prix International
Companies	Arrows Grand Prix Int. Ltd
Company headquarters	Leafield ( GB )
Team boss	Jackie Oliver (1978–1995) Tom Walkinshaw (1996–2002)
statistics
First Grand Prix	Brazil 1978
Last Grand Prix	Germany 2002
Race driven	382
Constructors' championship	0 - best result: 5th ( 1988 )
Drivers World Championship	0 - best result: 8th ( 1988 )
Race wins	0
Pole positions	1
Fastest laps	0
Points	167

Arrows Grand Prix International was a British Formula 1 team based in Leafield , England , which took part in 382 Grand Prix races between 1978 and 2002 . This is a record among the racing teams that have never won a race, but also among all those who have never won a world title. Between 1991 and 1996 the team operated under the name Footwork Grand Prix International .

The name Arrows was inspired by the first letters of the founders Franco A mbrosio , Alan R ees , Jackie O liver , Dave W ass and Tony S outhgate , none of which were on board when the racing team went bankrupt in 2002. The former premises of Arrows in Leafield were used between 2005 and 2008 by the Super Aguri team, which later also failed for financial reasons .

history

Foundation and first successes

Riccardo Patrese next to the Arrows A1

Arrows A2 ( Jochen Mass )

Early Arrows logo

Rees, Oliver, Wass and Southgate left the Formula 1 racing team Shadow in 1977 to set up their own team together with the Italian financier Ambrosio - Arrows. When the first FA1 model was presented for the 1978 season , it came to a head: The car looked very similar to the 1978 Shadow. The designer Southgate had simply taken his plans away and considered them his intellectual property. British courts upheld Plaintiff Shadow and Arrows had to build a new chassis, the A1, within 52 days. The debut season brought in eleven World Championship points and a second place in the Swedish Grand Prix . However, since the results were solely due to the young Italian driver Riccardo Patrese , the second driver Rolf Stommelen was replaced by his German compatriot Jochen Mass at the end of the year . In 1979 the team could not improve and only scored five points. In the second half of the season, however, the team caused a stir with the unusually shaped A2. In this vehicle, the rear end, including the motor, which is inclined slightly forwards around the transverse axis, was designed to be pulled upwards in order to generate more downforce over the vehicle floor. The disadvantage of this design, however, was the increased center of gravity, which adversely affected the driving behavior and therefore did not result in better results.

In 1980 Patrese achieved second place again at the Grand Prix of the USA West in Long Beach and the team found themselves in seventh place out of 15 constructors at the end of the season. At the start of the 1981 season , Long Beach again proved to be a good place: Patrese achieved the only pole position in the history of the Arrows team in qualifying. After 24 of 80 laps, however, he had to retire while in the lead due to a technical defect. At the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola , Patrese was second on the podium again before leaving the team for Brabham .

Tobacco millions and BMW power

Eddie Cheever in an Arrows A10 with Megatron lettering, 2008 at the Goodwood Festival of Speed

After two moderate years in 1982 and 1983 , the tobacco company RJ Reynolds became the main sponsor of the Barclay brand in 1984 . An engine contract with BMW also made expectations soar. But there were no better results. A solid 1985 season with a total of 14 points and a second place again in Imola by Thierry Boutsen and Gerhard Berger contrasted with a miserable 1986 season in which Christian Danner scored the only World Cup point in Austria . The Arrows mostly suffered from reliability, which regularly hindered better results. It couldn't be because of the BMW turbo engines, which were considered the most powerful in the field and with which Nelson Piquet had become world champion in a Brabham in 1983. At the end of 1986, however, BMW announced its withdrawal from Formula 1 as an engine supplier. Arrows was thus initially without engines.

For 1987 , the US insurance company United States Fidelity & Guaranty (USF & G) became the main sponsor and financed the maintenance and race preparation of the previous year's BMW engines under the name Megatron . Suddenly the Arrows racing cars became more reliable and the 1988 season became the most successful in team history - even though there was no victory that year. Derek Warwick and Eddie Cheever scored a total of 23 championship points and catapulted Arrows into the top four Formula 1 constructors for the first time. However, the team was unable to maintain this level. In 1989 Cheever was third again on the podium in his home race in Phoenix and Warwick lost a safe second place in the rain of Canada due to electrical damage, but with only seventh place in the constructors' standings, things went down noticeably.

Footwork entry and takeover

Footwork logo

Footwork FA12B Ford from 1991 in the box

At the end of 1989 USF & G got out as a sponsor, the Japanese Footwork group of the entrepreneur Wataru Ohashi took over and immediately acquired shares in the racing team. From then on, Ohashi steered the economic fortunes of the racing team, Jackie Oliver kept the sporting direction. Due to the upheaval, there were initially no countable results. But Ohashi had big plans for the 1991 season : he signed an exclusive contract for engine deliveries with the sports car manufacturer Porsche, which was determined to return to Grand Prix racing . The German company, however, the mid-1980s with its turbo engine was still dominated Formula 1, miscalculated when building his twelve-cylinder normally aspirated engine : The engine was lacking significantly in performance and with his obesity he wore even to handling problems at Footwork FA12 at . Even the non-qualification of both drivers at the Brazilian Grand Prix at the beginning of the season was sobering. After no improvement, Porsche withdrew from the world championship without any points in the middle of the season. For the rest of the season, Footwork relied on Ford-Cosworth units, but still missed out on points. For 1992 the team hired the Japanese Aguri Suzuki as a driver alongside Michele Alboreto and thus came up with Mugen engines based on the successful Honda engines in previous years . Slowly, Footwork recovered from the depression and scored six points. In late 1993 - after another disappointing season - the Footwork sponsoring millions dried up, but Ohashi remained a partner in the team.

Footwork FA15 Ford from 1994

For 1994, Jackie Oliver's team thought about building a simple car around a Ford customer engine in view of the small budget. At the season opener in Brazil , Gianni Morbidelli made people sit up and take notice with sixth place on the grid, but fell out - as so often - with a technical defect. In the second race in Japan , Christian Fittipaldi almost made it onto the podium in fourth. From then on, the team could no longer keep up with the development pace of the opponents and fell behind over the course of the season. For 1995 , Footwork hired Taki Inoue, a driver who had less talent than more dollars - money that the racing team urgently needed to survive. In the course of the season, the fast Morbidelli was also replaced by paid driver Massimiliano Papis . However, Morbidelli returned to the footwork cockpit for the season finale and was promptly third in Adelaide . For 1996 , the driver carousel continued to turn: with sponsor Philips in the back, the Dutch hopeful Jos Verstappen hired , who had after all been German Formula 3 champion in 1993. But despite reliable Hart customer engines, hardly any countable results were possible - Verstappen only scored a single point for the team. In order to prevent the team from being relegated to the bottom of the grid, British motorsport entrepreneur Tom Walkinshaw joined his TWR group, which had steered the Ligier team in 1995 and 1996 .

Entry of TWR and start number 1

Damon Hill in the Arrows A18 Yamaha, 1997

Walkinshaw focused on preparing for the 1997 season from the start of his work with the British team . After the previous team owners had completely withdrawn, he initially sought to rename the team to Arrows. Then he drove off engine supplier Yamaha from competitor Tyrrell to secure factory support. Next he succeeded in hiring designer guru John Barnard , who made a name for himself in the 1980s with the invention of the monocoque made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic . He also took driver Pedro Diniz from Ligier with him to direct the money from his wealthy sponsors into the arrows coffers. When it became known in the summer of 1996 that the prospective world champion Damon Hill would no longer receive a new contract with the Williams team, Walkinshaw took it and convinced Hill with high salary promises to bring the starting number one to Leafield. Last but not least, Walkinshaw relied on the tires of the Formula 1 newcomer Bridgestone for 1997 and hoped that in some races he would gain a competitive advantage over cars with Goodyear tires. Despite all efforts, Arrows started in 1997 where the team had been in previous years: in the back of the field. Even world champion Hill was initially unable to perform miracles, even seemed to be rather frustrated about the lack of competitiveness and, above all, reliability of his car. It was not until his home Grand Prix at Silverstone that he made it into the points in sixth place. The climax of the overall rather disappointing season was the race in Hungary : Hill was already in top form in qualifying due to the enormous heat, in which the Bridgestone tires had an advantage over the Goodyear tires, and had catapulted his Arrows to third on the grid . During the race, he initially stayed inconspicuously in the background before attacking leading Michael Schumacher in the Ferrari on lap 11 and taking the lead. To the amazement of the audience, the Briton even extended his lead and only gave it up briefly during a refueling stop. When Hill turned into the penultimate of 77 laps to be driven and was still leading by almost 40 seconds, everyone already believed in the sensation. But the hydraulics thwarted the whole team, which was about to get ready to cheer. Hill was still able to cross the finish line, but was overtaken by Jacques Villeneuve in the Williams on the last lap . For the fifth and final time, an Arrows vehicle was waved off second in an F1 Grand Prix.

Creeping end

Arrows A21 Supertec from 2000

At the end of the season, Hill left the team after only one year for Jordan and Yamaha also said goodbye - as did many sponsors. Diniz, however, stayed on board. In the 1998 Formula 1 World Championship , Arrows used a newly designed ten-cylinder engine from Brian Hart, which was used under the name Arrows. The team contributed financially to the development costs. The now completely black racing cars continued to follow, in Monaco with a strategic masterpiece, the Finn Mika Salo achieved fourth place . Since the funds were becoming increasingly scarce due to the lack of financially strong sponsors, Walkinshaw hired two drivers for the first time in 1999 , both of whom had to bring money with them. The Spaniard Pedro de la Rosa had the mineral oil company Repsol in his back, Toranosuke Takagi some Japanese sponsors. While de la Rosa indicated his talent and also got a contract for the 2000 season , Takagi was soon retired and replaced by ex-Arrows pilot Verstappen. The somewhat consolidated team fund allowed the purchase of Supertec engines for 2000 - former Renault units that were further developed by a French supplier company. Former Sauber designer Sergio Rinland created a solid car with the Arrows A21, with which Verstappen and de la Rosa regularly drove in the front midfield. Again, however, the lack of reliability prevented better results.

The Arrows A20 from the 1999 season at the Historacing Festival Lédenon 2012

In 2001 the team switched to former Peugeot engines, which were also serviced and prepared for racing by a supplier company called Asiatech . De la Rosa had to leave Arrows in favor of the Brazilian Enrique Bernoldi, who is endowed with Red Bull millions . In the course of the season, the engines proved to be too cumbersome and therefore not competitive; only a single World Cup point by Verstappen in Austria was the result. At the beginning of the 2002 season , Arrows was already struggling to survive. Motors were leased from Cosworth , and the Grand Prix winner Heinz-Harald Frentzen , who was on the road due to the bankruptcy of the Prost team, was hired as the driver, who wanted to recommend himself again for higher tasks in this way. Bernoldi and Red Bull stayed on board. In Spain and Monaco , Frentzen achieved better results with sixth place than the car actually allowed. However, there was no money for further development. After main sponsor Orange stopped paying in the middle of the season, Frentzen and Bernoldi deliberately missed qualifying in France due to a lack of funds for the race. After the German GP in Hockenheim it was finally over.

Both Arrows A23 Cosworth during training for the French GP 2002

Further development

In autumn 2002 the Bremen-based company German Grand Prix Racing took over the majority stake in Arrows and registered the team for the 2003 season. However, after further financial difficulties, the FIA did not accept the report. As a result, bankruptcy proceedings were opened against Arrows.

In the summer of 2003, Minardi's team boss Paul Stoddart bought five Arrows A23 chassis that had been used by Frentzen and Bernoldi in the 2002 season. Minardi slightly reworked an Arrows chassis and named the car Minardi PS04 . The car was tested in the contemporary Minardi livery in the fall of 2003, and at the end of the year there were considerations to contest the 2004 season with the PS04. Ultimately, however, Minardi abandoned this plan. In the winter of 2005/2006 Stoddart sold three A23 chassis to the former Japanese Formula 1 driver Aguri Suzuki , who after a few modifications in the first races of 2006 with his own Super Aguri F1 team under the name SA05 in the Formula 1 World Cup began. The SA06 , which was introduced later that year, also used the monocoque of the Arrows A23. But even Suzuki had to give up in May 2008 after around two and a half years. In July 2008, the German entrepreneur Franz Hilmer (Formtech GmbH) acquired the bankruptcy estate including the factory in Leafield.

Numbers and dates

Statistics in Formula 1

season	Surname	chassis	engine	tires	No.	driver	Points	rank
Arrows
1978	Warsteiner Arrows Racing Team	FA1 A1	Ford - Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G		Riccardo Patrese Rolf Stommelen	11	10.
1979	Warsteiner Arrows Racing Team	A1 A2	Ford - Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G		Riccardo Patrese Jochen Mass	5	9.
1980	Warsteiner Arrows Racing Team	A3	Ford - Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G		Riccardo Patrese Jochen Mass Mike Thackwell Manfred Winkelhock	11	7th
1981	Ragno Arrows Beta Racing Team	A3	Ford - Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	M P		Riccardo Patrese Siegfried Stohr Jacques Villeneuve Sr.	10	8th.
1982	Arrows Racing Team	A4 A5	Ford - Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	P		Brian Henton Marc Surer Mauro Baldi	5	10.
1983	Arrows Racing Team	A6	Ford - Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G		Marc Surer Chico Serra Alan Jones Thierry Boutsen	4th	10.
1984	Barclay Nordica Arrows	A6 A7	Ford - Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8 BMW M12 / 13 1.5 L4t	G		Thierry Boutsen Marc Surer	3 3	10th 11th
1985	Barclay Arrows BMW	A8	BMW M12 / 13 1.5 L4t	G		Gerhard Berger Thierry Boutsen	14th	8th.
1986	Barclay Arrows BMW	A8 A9	BMW M12 / 13 1.5 L4t	G		Marc Surer Christian Danner Thierry Boutsen	1	10.
1987	USF & G Arrows Megatron	A10	Megatron M12 / 13 1.5 L4t	G		Derek Warwick Eddie Cheever	11	6th
1988	USF & G Arrows Megatron	A10B	Megatron M12 / 13 1.5 L4t	G		Derek Warwick Eddie Cheever	23	5.
1989	Arrows Grand Prix International	A11	Ford - Cosworth DFR 3.5 V8	G		Derek Warwick Martin Donnelly Eddie Cheever	13	7th
1990	Footwork Arrows Racing	A11 A11B	Ford - Cosworth DFR 3.5 V8	G		Michele Alboreto Bernd Schneider Alex Caffi	2	9.
Footwork
1991	Footwork Grand Prix International	A11C FA12 FA12C	Porsche 3512 3.5 V12 Ford - Cosworth DFR 3.5 V8	G		Alex Caffi Stefan Johansson Michele Alboreto	0 0	NC NC
1992	Footwork Mugen Honda	FA13	Mugen-Honda MF-351H 3.5 V10	G		Michele Alboreto Aguri Suzuki	6th	7th
1993	Footwork Mugen Honda	FA13B FA14	Mugen-Honda MF-351HB 3.5 V10	G		Derek Warwick Aguri Suzuki	4th	9.
1994	Footwork Ford	FA15	Ford HBE7 / 8 3.5 V8	G		Christian Fittipaldi Gianni Morbidelli	9	9.
1995	Footwork Hart	FA16	Hart 830 3.0 V8	G		Gianni Morbidelli Max Papis Taki Inoue	5	8th.
1996	Footwork Hart	FA17	Hart 830 3.0 V8	G		Ricardo Rosset Jos Verstappen	1	9.
Arrows
1997	Danka Arrows Yamaha	A18	Yamaha OX11A 3.0 V10	B.		Damon Hill Pedro Diniz	9	8th.
1998	Danka Zepter Arrows	A19	Arrows T2-F1 3.0 V10	B.		Pedro Diniz Mika Salo	6th	7th
1999	Repsol Arrows	A20	Arrows T2-F1 3.0 V10	B.		Pedro de la Rosa Toranosuke Takagi	1	9.
2000	Arrows F1 team	A21	Supertec FB02 3.0 V10	B.		Pedro de la Rosa Jos Verstappen	7th	7th
2001	Orange Arrows Asiatech	A22	Asiatech 001 3.0 V10	B.		Jos Verstappen Enrique Bernoldi	1	10.
2002	Orange Arrows	A23	Cosworth CR-3 3.0 V10	B.		Heinz-Harald Frentzen Enrique Bernoldi	2	11.

Overview of all Arrows pilots in Formula 1

Order by Grand Prix starts for Arrows / Footwork

Derek Warwick 1987–1989, 1993 (63 GP, 31 points)  Riccardo Patrese 1978–1981 (57 GP, 30 points)  Thierry Boutsen 1983–1986 (57 GP, 16 points)  Jos Verstappen 1996, 2000-2001 (50 GP, 7 points)  Marc Surer 1982–1984, 1986 (47 GP, 8 points)  Eddie Cheever 1987–1989 (46 GP, 20 points)  Michele Alboreto 1990–1992 (38 GP, 6 points)  Pedro Diniz 1997–1998 (33 GP, 5 points)  Pedro de la Rosa 1999-2000 (33 GP, 3 points)  Aguri Suzuki 1992-1993 (30 GP, -)  Enrique Bernoldi 2001-2002 (28 GP, -)  Gianni Morbidelli 1994–1995 (26 GP, 8 points)  Jochen Mass 1979–1980 (24 GP, 7 points)  Damon Hill 1997 (16 GP, 7 points)  Christian Fittipaldi 1994 (16 GP, 6 points)  Gerhard Berger 1985 (16 GP, 3 points)

Mika Salo 1998 (16 GP, 3 points)  Taki Inoue 1995 (16 GP, -)  Ricardo Rosset 1996 (16 GP, -)  Toranosuke Takagi 1999 (16 GP, -)  Alex Caffi 1990–1991 (13 GP, 2 points)  Mauro Baldi 1982 (11 GP, 2 points)  Heinz-Harald Frentzen 2002 (11 GP, 2 points)  Christian Danner 1986 (10 GP, 1 point)  Siegfried Stohr 1981 (9 GP, -)  Rolf Stommelen 1978 (9 GP, -)  Massimiliano Papis 1995 (7 GP, -)  Chico Serra 1983 (4 GP, -)  Brian Henton 1982 (1 GP, -)  Stefan Johansson 1991 (1 GP, -)  Alan Jones 1983 (1 GP, -)  Bernd Schneider 1990 (1 GP, -)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Noir Trawniczek: Mass: "The bomber was not thought through to the end!" In: motorsport-total.com . August 13, 2007 ( motorsport-total.com [accessed March 22, 2020]).

Web links

Commons : Arrows  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• F1 stats from the Arrows team