Mapfre-Williams

Mapfre-Williams

Surname	Mapfre-Williams
Companies	Mapfre-Williams
Company headquarters
Team boss	Emilio Zapico
statistics
First Grand Prix	Spain 1976
Last Grand Prix	Spain 1976
Race driven	1 (0 starts)
Constructors' championship	0
Drivers World Championship	0
Race wins	0
Pole positions	0
Fastest laps	0
Points	0

Mapfre-Williams was a Formula 1 team that was only entered for one race. It appeared at the Spanish Grand Prix in 1976 and failed to qualify there. The team was initiated by the Spanish racing driver Emilio Zapico , and it was organized by Frank Williams . The main sponsor was the Spanish insurance group Mapfre .

background

Emilio Zapico primarily took part in touring and sports car races in the early 1970s . There were no stakes in monoposto sport until 1976. Only a private contact with Frank Williams at the beginning of 1976 brought Zapico into Formula 1.

Frank Williams and his team, Frank Williams Racing Cars, had been involved in the Formula 1 World Championship since 1969 , but had only achieved few successes. The team had been in financial distress since the early 1970s, which worsened in 1975 . At the end of the year, Williams sold his team to the Canadian-Austrian entrepreneur Walter Wolf , who provided it well financially and tried to make it competitive with purchased cars from Hesketh . Wolf bought three 1975 Hesketh 308Cs and started using them in 1976 under the name Williams FW05 without significant changes . Frank Williams remained employed as Wolf's deputy in the team, but was dissatisfied with his role as "dogsbody" ("girl for everything") and, above all, the loss of his independence. When Wolf changed the name of the team from Williams to Walter Wolf Racing in April 1976 , a dispute broke out between the old and the new owner.

Frank Williams used Zapico's interest in Formula 1 to give Walter Wolf personal freedom. He provided Zapico with a Williams FW04 for the Spanish Grand Prix, which took place at the Circuito del Jarama in May 1976 , which had been driven by Jacques Laffite the previous year and has not been used by the team since the beginning of the current season. Zapico reported the car to the Mapfre-Williams team, named after its financier , which was formally independent, but organizationally did not exist. The mechanics of the Wolf team, who, under Frank Williams' direction, prepared Walter Wolf's FW05 for the factory drivers Jacky Ickx and Michel Leclère in Jarama , also worked on Zapico's FW04. Frank Williams, however, avoided disclosing this connection to Walter Wolf.

Racing use

Emilio Zapico's Williams FW04 technically corresponded to the development status of 1975. The car had not undergone any development work for the race in Spain. As was common in the mid-1970s, the drive was an eight-cylinder naturally aspirated Cosworth engine (type DFV). Unlike the black Wolf factory cars, Zapico's car in Spain was painted dark blue. In addition to the Mapfre advertising stickers, the car featured stickers from racing equipment manufacturers Goodyear (tires), Duckhams (engine oil) and Ferodo (brakes).

Zapico competed in all training runs for the Spanish Grand Prix in the Williams FW04. His best lap time was 1:22:22 minutes. He was 3.7 seconds above the pole time of James Hunt in the McLaren M23 and 0.7 seconds above the time of Larry Perkins , who finished 24th and last on the grid in the Boro . His gap to Michel Leclère, the slower of the two Wolf works drivers, was one second. Zapico was not allowed to run. He never competed in a Formula 1 race again. The Mapfre-Williams team was also not reported again.

Race results

driver	Start number	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	10	11	12	13	14th	15th	16	Points	rank
Automobile World Championship 1976																		0	-
E. Zapico	25th				DNQ

Legend
colour	abbreviation	meaning
gold	-	victory
silver	-	2nd place
bronze	-	3rd place
green	-	Placement in the points
blue	-	Classified outside the point ranks
violet	DNF	Race not finished (did not finish)
	NC	not classified
red	DNQ	did not qualify
	DNPQ	failed in pre-qualification (did not pre-qualify)
black	DSQ	disqualified
White	DNS	not at the start (did not start)
	WD	withdrawn
Light Blue	PO	only participated in the training (practiced only)
	TD	Friday test driver
without	DNP	did not participate in the training (did not practice)
	INJ	injured or sick
	EX	excluded
	DNA	did not arrive
	C.	Race canceled
		no participation in the World Cup
other	P / bold	Pole position
	SR / italic	Fastest race lap
	*	not at the finish, but counted due to the distance covered
	()	Streak results
	underlined	Leader in the overall standings

literature

• Adriano Cimarosti: The Century of Racing . Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-613-01848-9
• Maurice Hamilton: Frank Williams. The inside story of the man behind the Williams Renault . London (Macmillan) 1998. ISBN 0-333-71716-3 .
• David Hodges: Racing Cars from A to Z after 1945 . 1st edition Stuttgart (Motorbuch Verlag) 1994, ISBN 3-613-01477-7
• David Hodges: AZ of Grand Prix Cars 1906–2000 , 1st edition London 2001, ISBN 1-86126-339-2 (English)

Web links

• Mapfre-Williams team statistics
• Illustration of Emilio Zapico in the FW04 of the Mapfre-Williams team at the 1976 Spanish Grand Prix

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Overview of Emilio Zapico's motorsport assignments on the website www.racingsportscars.com (accessed on October 13, 2013).
2. ↑ Maurice Hamilton: Frank Williams. The inside story of the man behind the Williams Renault, p. 58.
3. ^ "Frank's way of breaking out of his unhappy partnership with Wolf": Zapico's biography on the website www.f1rejects.com (accessed on October 13, 2013).
4. ↑ Model history of the Williams FW04 on the website www.oldracingcars.com (accessed on October 13, 2013).