Formula 1 teams are highly prized assets. The ever increasing popularity of the sport combined with the introduction of the cost cap in 2021, which places limits on the amount each squad can spend, has actually made the teams profitable for the first time. With limits also placed on the number of teams that are eligible to enter the championship, those lucky eleven with a licence to compete in the category have seen their valuations sky-rocketing in recent years. Indeed, a recent report from SportsPro suggests that the sale of shares in the Mercedes F1 team recently placed the overall value of the team at little under $6 billion.
However, it hasn't always been this way. In the past, owning an F1 team was either a vanity project or marketing exercise, with little or no hope of recovering any money invested. In total, 174 different constructors have entered at least one race of the Formula 1 World Championship since the sports inception in 1950. That leaves us with a long list of defunct F1 teams, some of which achieved considerable success prior to their demise.
We thought we'd take this lull in the on-track action during the summer break to take a look back at some of the old F1 teams that no longer exist but would considerably add to the spectacle if they were to be revived in the modern day. Let's kick off with a team whose whole identity revolved around its enigmatic founder.
1. Jordan Grand Prix
After achieving considerable success in the junior formula's, Eddie Jordan resolved to enter F1 with his eponymous team in 1991. Running a striking 7up livery after securing a last minute deal with the soft drinks manufacturer, Jordan made an immediate impression. Not only did the car look good, but it was fast too. In their first year, Jordan finished 5th in the constructors championship and could have won the Belgian Grand Prix had it not been for lead driver Andrea De Cesaris suffering an engine failure while running 2nd. At the same event, Jordan gave a young German named Michael Schumacher the chance to make his F1 debut.
This ability to spot and nurture young talent was to become a key trait of Jordan, with Eddie becoming famous for giving young stars their debut in the sport before later going on to sell their contract at significant fees to better funded rivals. Rubens Barrichello, Eddie Irvine, Ralf Schumacher, Takuma Sato and Timo Glock are just a few of the other future stars who made their debuts with Jordan over the next 13 seasons.
Despite always operating on a smaller budget than the likes of Ferrari and McLaren, Jordan consistently punched above their weight. This earned them a significant following among F1 fans who were keen to support this perennial underdog. However, it took the experience of former champion Damon Hill to bring the team their first Grand Prix victory when he led home team-mate Ralf Schumacher to a famous 1-2 at the rain soaked Belgian Grand Prix in 1998.
Another experienced hand, Heinz Harald Frentzen, took the baton from Hill in 1999, taking a further two wins as he became a dark horse for the championship, ultimately dropping out of contention with just one race still to run. That would turn out to be the peak of Jordan's existence, with poor reliability and dwindling sponsor revenue turning the team into nothing more than a bit player by the time Eddie sold the squad to the Midland Group in 2005. That didn't preclude the occasional miracle though, with Giancarlo Fisichella using a clever strategy to win the rain affected Brazilian Grand Prix in 2003.
Now owned by billionaire Lawrence Stroll and renamed the Aston Martin F1 team, the former Jordan squad are once again being considered the best bet outside the top four teams to mount a championship challenge over the next decade.
2. Hesketh Racing
Another eccentric who shared Eddie Jordan's quality of not taking life too seriously was Lord Alexander Fermor-Hesketh, a baron and British peer who took a liking to motorsport in the early 1970s. He used his family's wealth to create his own team in 1972, with Hesketh Racing going on to ruffle a few feathers with their flamboyant and UN-PC approach which put them at odds with the higher echelons of the sport.
This didn't stop them making a big impact though. With talented designer Harvey Posilthwaite and up and coming young driver James Hunt at the wheel, Hesketh established themselves as the underdog champion. The team peaked in 1975 when James Hunt took their one and only victory at the Dutch Grand Prix on the way to 4th in the constructors championship.
Hunt was snapped up by McLaren for 1976 and would duly win the championship at his first attempt for the more established team. Hesketh meanwhile slipped very quickly into the realms of the also-rans, failing to score a point in the following two seasons before its withdrawal midway through the 1978 season.
Despite only being in existence for six years, Hesketh made a lasting impression on the F1 fanbase with team affiliated memorabilia still proving to be exceptionally popular to this very day.
3. Minardi F1 Team
Someone has to finish last in the championship, and for a large chunk of their existence the team at the wrong end of the leaderboard was Minardi. Founded by Giancarlo Minardi in 1980, the Italian team entered F1 in 1985 despite having achieved little success in F2. On a shoestring budget and with limited facilities, the team endured and actually took its first points finish three years later courtesy of Pierluigi Martini who would go on to become a major figure head for the team, completing 108 of his 124 Grand Prixs for Minardi prior to his retirement from F1 in 1995.
Martini was the driver with whom Minardi achieved the majority of its very limited success, with the Italian using an excellent set of Pirelli qualifying tyres to line-up 2nd for the opening round of the 1990 F1 championship in Phoenix. This would go on to become a false dawn, but Martini did go on to score six points and take the team to 7th in the constructors championship in 1991 in the one year where the team had enough money to be able to afford a competitive Ferrari engine.
Minardi's lack of finances resulted in them becoming increasingly detached from the front runners over the subsequent seasons but somehow they managed to survive a further 14 years. This was thanks largely to the squad being purchased by Australian Paul Stoddard in 2001. Under his tenure Minardi became better known for giving promising young drivers the chance to enter the sport. Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber were two of his more illustrious hirings with Webber even going on to finish 5th on his debut race for the team on home soil in 2002. This came after the majority of the front runners had been eliminated in a first corner crash, but was still celebrated like a championship victory by Minardi and by its legion of adoring fans who still flock to the annual Minardi F1 celebration which is held at the Imola circuit in September each year.
4. Benetton Formula 1
"There is nothing new under the sun" as the famous saying goes, and this is certainly true in Grand Prix motor racing. A great example of this is the success of Red Bull in F1 which mimics much of what happened when the Benetton clothing brand purchased the Toleman team at the end of 1985. Toleman had achieved some success over the previous 5 seasons due in part to its decision to hire rookie Ayrton Senna for 1984, a season in which the future three times World Champion took three remarkable podiums. The technical team was also filled with future stars and all that was lacking was investment.
Despite being dismissed by the established teams as being nothing more than a "colourful jumper manufacturer", Benetton plugged Toleman's financial gap and the results were almost immediate with Gerhard Berger winning their first race in Mexico in 1986. The next win took slightly longer, taking a further three years but throughout this period the teams overall competitiveness and reliability improved to the point that they became persistent top 4 finishers in the championship. The decision to place Benetton salesman Flavio Briatore as team principal paid dividends against the odds and the recruitment of former World Champion Nelson Piquet for 1990 gave the team extra confidence and a solid guiding hand.
While Jordan gave Schumacher his Grand Prix debut, it was Benetton who ruthlessly stole the German from under the Irishman's nose, offering Schumacher a long term contract and a car that was good enough to win races. This proved to be a watershed moment, with Schumacher forming a famous bond with the technical team of Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne. By 1994, Benetton were the team to beat. Over the next two seasons Schumacher would take two drivers championships and seal the constructors title for the team in 1995 as well.
However, Benetton couldn't match the ever increasing budgets of the teams owned by car manufacturers and Schumacher was duly lost to Ferrari for 1996. Berger returned to the team to take their final victory at the German Grand Prix in 1997 before the team was sold to Renault for 2002.
Four years later, Red Bull would enter the sport by buying the underfunded Jaguar team and was immediately dismissed by the established teams as nothing more than a "soft drinks manufacturer". Five years later, Red Bull took their first championship with another young German called Sebastian Vettel. The parallels are spooky and a reminder that you can't afford to underestimate anyone in the competitive sport of Formula 1.
5. Andrea Moda
The fifth and final old F1 team to make it onto our list is quite a controversial one having widely been dubbed the worst F1 team in history. Italian shoe designer Andrea Sassetti had been inspired by the success of Benetton and decided to give it a go for himself to expand the reach of his brand onto a global stage. However, he had painfully little knowledge of the sport and massively underestimated the challenge in front of him.
Founded ahead of the 1992 season, Andrea Moda used a chassis which had originally been created for a proposed BMW F1 team. When plans for that fell through, designer Nick Wirth instead sold the rights for the design to Sassetti and two chassis were built up ahead of the start of the season. Results were abysmal with Andrera Moda failing to qualify for its first three Grand Prix. It was to become a familiar story, with the team reportedly started using mechanics it had hired from a local garage instead of experienced F1 personnel by the time they arrived in Monaco in May.
The one asset the team did have was its lead driver Roberto Moreno who had previously driven for Benetton and scored a podium with the team at the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix. Moreno was determined to make it onto the grid in Monaco and went rogue, using his good relationship with personnel in other teams to acquire bits of rivals cars in a desperate bid to improve the performance of his woeful Andrea Moda. This included a small supply of what was dubbed "rocket fuel" from ELF which was being used by the class leading Williams team. Somehow, Moreno just managed to make it onto the grid in 26th place. Even before the race started Moreno knew that his Judd engine was nearing the end of its life and the team couldn't afford another one. He duly retired on lap 11, satisfied that even making it onto the grid in the first place had been a miracle.
Andrea Moda struggled on for another four races until things came to a head at the notoriously fast and dangerous Spa circuit in Belgium. Low on parts, the team sent out second driver Perry McCarthy with a broken steering component. Unaware of this, McCarthy duly attempted to qualify and was lucky not to become involved in a serious accident. Things got worse for the team when Sassetti was later arrested for allegedly forging invoices as the team's situation became increasingly desperate. This would prove to be their final weekend in F1.
While we aren't endorsing the behaviour of Sassetti and his team, stories of the desperate underdog doing everything possible to succeed in the sport is something that we are missing from the current day of ultra professional racing organisations who would easily dominate any other category they entered due to their incredible expertise, experience and budget. The fact that a book and TV documentary have subsequently been created around the story of this woeful team says quite a lot about how these stories resonate with fans around the world.
See The Modern Day F1 Teams in Action.
While we have lost some incredibly endearing and lovable classic F1 teams over the years, the 11 squads that now remain on the grid simply have to be admired for their brilliance. These cars are at the very cutting edge of the automotive industry, with the teams developing technology and systems that will go on to influence your own road going vehicle in the future.
You can see these hugely impressive F1 teams of the 21st century in action when you book a tailor made F1 tour with Elegant Resorts. We'll get you the best seats in the house, with paddock club access, accommodation at the best hotels near the circuit and we'll even organise the flights and airport transfers so you can focus on simply soaking up the action.
Get in touch with our Luxury Travel Specialists today and start the process of planning your very own tailor made F1 holiday with Elegant Resorts.