Rial Racing

Rial

Surname	Rial
Companies	RIAL
Company headquarters	Fußgönheim
Team boss	Günther Schmid
statistics
First Grand Prix	Brazil 1988
Last Grand Prix	Australia 1989
Race driven	20th
Constructors' championship	0
Drivers World Championship	0
Race wins	0
Pole positions	0
Fastest laps	0
Points	6th

Rial Racing was a Formula 1 team from the German company Rial Leichtmetallfelgen GmbH ( RIAL ) from Fußgönheim , which took part in the Formula 1 World Championship in 1988 and 1989. The team leader at that time was Günther Schmid , who had already been team leader at ATS Racing a few years earlier .

The basics of motorsport involvement

Until the 1980s, Rial was not active in motorsport himself. That changed when Günter Schmid took over the company in early 1987. Schmid had exchanged his 50% stake in ATS for all Rial stakes. A few months after taking over the Rial company, Schmid decided to get involved in formula racing again.

For him, the Rial project was a revival of the concept that ATS had started to promote the sale of rims through motorsport. In any case, Rial's motorsport involvement was also successful in this respect: At the end of the first Formula 1 season, Schmid declared that rim sales had increased by more than 50% in the course of 1988. The (re) entry into Formula 1 was ultimately made possible by the fact that FISA wanted to severely restrict the cost-intensive turbo engines for the 1988 Formula 1 season and ban them entirely from 1989 . With this in mind, there was widespread expectation that Formula 1 racing could be financially viable again for independent applicants. Accordingly, numerous racing teams active in smaller classes dared to climb into Formula 1 in the late 1980s. Among them were AGS , Coloni and Onyx , for example . Rial differed from them in that the company could not look back on a motorsport history, so that the racing team was a new establishment.

In terms of organization, Schmid ran the racing stable with little effort. The motorsport team did not have its own factory, but resided in the production hall of the rim manufacturer, in which a small area had been reserved and separated with partitions. The personnel structure also corresponded to the level of a private team. In the course of the two-year commitment, rarely more than two dozen employees worked for the Formula 1 team, and the team rarely had more than ten members on the racetracks.

Of central importance was the Austrian engineer Gustav Brunner , who had previously worked for ATS and whom Schmid was able to poach from Scuderia Ferrari for his new project . In the second half of 1987, Brunner designed the car for the new team, which should prove to be a valuable construction. Brunner's commitment was the main reason why the experienced Italian racing driver Andrea de Cesaris was engaged by Rial for the debut season in 1988 .

The 1988 season

The car

In 1988 Rial competed in Formula 1 with the Rial ARC1 designed by Brunner . The blue-painted car was a structurally uncomplicated, very compact car that unmistakably bore the features of the Ferrari F1 / 87 , also designed by Brunner . Therefore the car was called "the blue Ferrari" early on. The small size of the car was largely due to a very small petrol tank that only held 189 liters and thus had the lowest volume of all Formula 1 vehicles of this year. Brunner had calculated this amount of gasoline as the maximum consumption of the car and in the interests of compactness dispensed with safety reserves. In practice, this should prove risky at a time when refueling was not allowed; the car ran out of fuel in several races, such as the Canadian Grand Prix , in which de Cesaris was fifth before running out of gas on the final lap. The car was powered by a conventional Ford naturally aspirated engine, which - like most of the other teams' Ford engines - was tuned by Mader in Switzerland.

In the course of the season three chassis were built, which technically hardly differed from each other. Overall, there was little development work. The modifications mostly related to details such as the position of the oil cooler, which was viewed as illegal at the opening race and was changed several times over the course of the season.

The individual chassis competed at the following Grand Prix:

• Chassis # 1: Brazil, San Marino, Monaco, France and Great Britain.
• Chassis # 2: Mexico, Montréal, USA (Detroit), Hungary and Belgium
• Chassis No. 3: Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Japan, Australia.

The course of the season

The team called Rial Racing entered the 1988 season with only one driver. In addition to Rial, EuroBrun Racing and BMS Scuderia Italia (BMS-Dallara) also got involved in Formula 1 for the first time in 1988 , and Coloni was basically a new team, although it had already participated in two Formula 1 races in 1987. These four applicants were initially subject to pre-qualification in 1988. This hurdle shouldn't be a problem for Rial; Andrea de Cesaris was able to qualify for every race.

In the opening race in Brazil, Andrea de Cesaris easily managed the pre-qualification as well as the actual qualification. He reached 14th place on the grid and was able to leave behind not only the new competitors but also established teams like Tyrrell and Ligier . In the race, Andrea de Cesaris was sixth after 21 laps, which he defended with commitment. However, he retired after 53 laps due to a machine failure.

In the following race, de Cesaris was able to qualify as 16th. However, there were problems with the wishbone, which was recognized as a safety risk. Thereupon the team de Cesaris let drive one lap in the race, so that the entitlement to entry fee was fulfilled, before he was brought into the pits to be on the safe side and the mission ended.

De Cesaris achieved an outstanding result at the US Grand Prix in Detroit. Despite the defective clutch, he crossed the finish line fourth. It was the first finish of a Rial, and the three World Championship points achieved thereby ensured that Rial was no longer subject to pre-qualification in the second half of the 1988 season.

From the summer of 1988, the team's difficulties increased. The team was weakened by the departure of Brunner, who had been poached by the German competitor Zakspeed before the German Grand Prix . The biggest problem, however, was the fact that Schmid did not fill the position of Brunner, so that the team worked without a technical director in the second half of the 1988 season. Not least because of this, there was no further development of the car, and clear weaknesses were not or only superficially repaired. As a result, the number of technical defects in the car increased, which had a direct impact on its performance and the results. At the Hungarian Grand Prix, the team was slowed down by a broken half-wave, and at the Italian Grand Prix, a surprising hole appeared in the underbody that could not be adequately repaired. Andrea de Cesaris increasingly lost confidence in the team. This was also noticeable in the results. De Cesaris told the Italian press that the car was a "hovel" that "keeps driving me into mistakes". In the second half of the season, the team reached only two finishings, namely 13th place at the German Grand Prix and eighth place at the Australian Grand Prix. Thus, in 1988, World Championship points were only achieved in Detroit, but there were three, so that Rial finished the constructors' championship in ninth place. This not only made Rial the best team of all debutants, it was also the best placement by a German team in a quarter of a century (in 1963, Porsche finished seventh in the constructors' championship).

1989

the initial situation

The 1989 season was one of the most difficult in Formula 1 history. Onyx Grand Prix was another new entrant to the existing teams , and Brabham returned to Formula 1 after a sabbatical year . With the exception of EuroBrun Racing , all teams fielded two cars. In total, 20 teams and 39 cars took part in the world championship more than ever before. For Rial - as for many other small teams - the new season meant a significant financial burden. Günter Schmid claimed that he had a budget of DM 5 million for the 1989 season, just like the year before. As far as that was true, it wasn't much, but it wasn't hopelessly little either; Of central importance, however, was that these funds - unlike in the previous year - now had to be sufficient to run two cars.

There were no technical innovations for the 1989 season at Rial. Although the team presented a car with the name ARC 2; In fact, this model was not a new development, but a simple revision of Gustav Brunner's car from last year. The most important change was that the car was a good five centimeters longer than the ARC 1. The space gained was used for the tank, whose volume could grow to 205 liters. This ensured that the car could survive a racing distance under regular conditions. The changes were based on the work of Stefan Fober, Bob Bell and Martin Godrich, who worked in Gustav Brunner's position at the Rial plant in the winter of 1988/89. A Cosworth DFR eight-cylinder prepared by Mader was again used as the engine . So Rial used the same engine as the competing teams AGS, Arrows , Coloni, Ligier, Minardi , Onyx, Osella , BMS Scuderia Italia and Tyrrell.

For 1989, Rial deliberately presented itself as a (initially) purely German team. Christian Danner , who had driven for Arrows, Osella and Zakspeed in previous years, as well as Formula 1 debutant Volker Weidler , was signed up as driver .

The course of the season

The 1989 season was difficult. Overall, Christian Danner was the more successful driver. In addition to his committed driving style, one has to take into account that given the three World Championship points scored in 1988 for the first half of the 1989 season, his car was exempt from the pre-qualification requirement so that he could fight for qualification immediately. Volker Weidler, on the other hand, had to undergo pre-qualification right from the start. It should be an insurmountable obstacle for Weidler: Weidler never managed to survive the pre-qualification at the first eight Grand Prix of the season. When Weidler's car was also exempted from the pre-qualification requirement for the second half of the season, Weidler failed to qualify for the German and Hungarian Grand Prix. All in all, Weidler did not succeed in any of his 10 attempts to participate in a Formula 1 race. He was fired at the Belgian Grand Prix . Volker Weidler did not get another chance in Formula 1.

Even Christian Danner had with the ARC 2 some effort. In the first half of the season he missed qualification four times (at the Grand Prix of San Marino, Monaco, France and Great Britain). The best qualifying result was 17th place on the grid in the season opener in Brazil. He didn't finish there, but despite a gearbox defect, he was classified 14th and last on lap 56. Danner finished the Mexican Grand Prix in 12th place, two laps behind. At the subsequent US Grand Prix in Phoenix, the sensation of the previous year was repeated: the driver and the car impressively documented their potential. Danner started last and had fought his way up to 10th place by lap 36. Then he profited from the failures of Nelson Piquet (on Lotus ), Alex Caffi (BMS Scuderia Italia), Gerhard Berger (Scuderia Ferrari) and Andrea de Cesaris (also Scuderia Italia), so that Danner on the 70th lap Fourth was. Despite defective exhausts, he held this position until the end and thus secured three valuable world championship points for Rial. They ensured that not only Danner but also Weidler's car was exempt from pre-qualification in the second half of the season. In the following race, Danner crossed the finish line again (eighth and last); this result should, however, represent the last finish of a rial and at the same time the last race participation of a rial in a Grand Prix. In the subsequent races, both drivers regularly missed qualifying. As the season progressed, the times in qualifying got worse and worse; Recently, they were repeatedly only at the level of the vehicles from AGS or Coloni, which are generally classified as non-competitive. At the last events, the qualifying times of the Rial would not even have been enough to pass the pre-qualification.

In the late summer of 1989 there were some restructuring of the team. From a technical perspective, the Belgian engineer Christian Vanderpleyn joined the team at short notice , who had worked at AGS from 1960 to 1988 and then at Coloni for a year. Vanderpleyn designed a new underbody, which, however, did not help to significantly increase the car's performance. After the unsuccessful Hungarian Grand Prix, Volker Weidler was replaced on the driver's side; Pierre-Henri Raphanel , who had come from Coloni with Christian Vanderpleyn, was hired in his place . Christian Danner stayed with Rial until the Portuguese Grand Prix, after which Günter Schmid released him too. As a reason for this, the team boss gave irregularities in the payment of sponsorship money; Christian Danner countered this. In Danner's place at the Spanish Grand Prix drove the Swiss Gregor Foitek , who had been active at EuroBrun Racing in the first half of the season before he was replaced there by Oscar Larrauri . Foitek was the slowest driver in qualifying with a gap of nine seconds on the later pole time. All the pilots in the pre-qualification showed faster times than him. For the two overseas races, Foitek was replaced by Belgian Bertrand Gachot , who had previously been dismissed at Onyx. He couldn't do anything either. Both Rials were the slowest qualifying cars in Japan and Australia.

Problem analysis

Christian Danner explained the team's unsuccessfulness in an interview with the Swiss specialist magazine motorsport aktuell at the beginning of 1990 mainly with a lack of structured work. The car had a number of defects. Engine failures occurred again and again when there was less than 100 liters of petrol in the tank during qualifying training or during a race. Instead of checking the petrol pump suggested by Danner, the team management limited itself to sending the cars with half-full tanks - i.e. more than 100 liters of petrol - to qualify. The company Aero-Construct, which manufactured the monocoque for Rial, was also held responsible for the monocoque's ability to twist. However, there were different views on the necessary loads, which in September 1989 led to a rift between Rial and Aero-Construct. In addition, there were no considerations to subsequently stiffen the chassis.

In addition to the organizational deficiencies, the fact that Rial again used Goodyear tires in 1989 did not help. In 1989, Pirelli , a second tire manufacturer, was represented in Formula 1 for the first time, primarily equipping the small Italian Formula 1 teams and the Brabham team that had returned to Formula 1. Pirelli had special qualifying tires ready for most of its customers, which only lasted one or two laps, but which in this narrow window were clearly superior to the competition from Goodyear, so that there were surprising qualifying results, especially in the course of the second half of the season Cars from Minardi or Osella could sometimes be found in the "Top Ten". With classic Goodyear tires, Rial had a technical disadvantage that the team was unable to compensate through consistent technical development.

The outlook for 1990

For several weeks after the end of the season it was not clear how the team would go on.

What is certain is that Christian Vanderpleyn was working on a number of drafts for a new car, the ARC3, in parallel to his work on the ARC2. According to former Rial employees, these drafts were already quite detailed. In fact, these plans were not implemented at Rial. Some of the features of these designs are said to have been found in the AGS JH26 , a car that Christian Vanderpleyn developed during a brief last guest appearance at AGS in the spring of 1991, which was ultimately not realized either , according to reports in specialist magazines .

In November and December 1989 Schmid withdrew from the public and from the racing team, leaving the team as well as sponsors and business partners in the dark about further developments. At the end of January 1990, he then declared Rial's official withdrawal from Formula 1.

In 1992 the name Rial reappeared in Formula 1, as a short-term sponsor of the March Engineering team .

Numbers and dates

Statistics in Formula 1

season	Team name	chassis	engine	tires	Grand Prix	Victories	Second	Third	Poles	nice Round	Points	World Cup rank
1988	Rial Racing	Rial ARC1	Ford Cosworth DFZ 3.5 V8	G	16	-	-	-	-	-	3	9.
1989	Rial Racing	Rial ARC2	Ford Cosworth DFR 3.5 V8	G	4th	-	-	-	-	-	3	13.
total	20th	-	-	-	-	-	6th

All Rial Racing drivers in Formula 1

Surname	Years	Grand Prix	Points	Victories	Second	Third	Poles	nice Round	best WM-Pos.
Andrea de Cesaris	1988	16	3	-	-	-	-	-	15th ( 1988 )
Christian Danner	1989	4th	3	-	-	-	-	-	22. ( 1989 )
Volker Weidler	1989	- 1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Pierre-Henri Raphanel	1989	- 1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Bertrand Gachot	1989	- 1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Gregor Foitek	1989	- 1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

¹ The driver could not qualify for any race.

Results in Formula 1

season	chassis	driver	No.	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	10	11	12	13	14th	15th	16	Points	rank
1988	ARC1																			3	9.
A. de Cesaris	22nd	DNF	DNF	DNF	DNF	9	4th	10	DNF	13	DNF	DNF	DNF	DNF	DNF	DNF	8th
1989	ARC2																			3	13.
C. Danner	38	14th	DNQ	DNQ	12	4th	8th	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ
G. Foitek														DNQ
B. Gachot															DNQ	DNQ
V. Weidler	23	DNPQ	DNPQ	DNPQ	DNPQ	DNPQ	DNPQ	DNPQ	DNPQ	EX	DNQ
P. Raphanel											DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	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

• David Hodges : “Racing cars from A – Z after 1945”, 1st edition Stuttgart (Motorbuch Verlag) 1993
• Adriano Cimarosti : The Century of Racing. 1st edition, Stuttgart 1997.
• Autocourse , Formula 1 1988/89 yearbook, Richmond / Surrey 1988 (engl.)
• "With us you are in the last row - the misery of the Germans in Formula 1", in: auto motor und sport 22/1989, p. 312 ff.

Web links

Commons : Rial Racing  - Collection of images, videos and audio files