In celebration of the truly rubbish

cider_and_toast

Exulted Lord High Moderator of the Apex
Staff Member
Valued Member
Since its humble beginnings at the turn of the last century Grand Prix racing has had its share of heroes both in the form of designers who have pushed the engineering envelope, drivers who are brave enough to find out where these limits are and, to some extent, the cars themselves. It doesn't always follow that the team with the best driver, or the quickest car or the most cash always produced the greatest results. Sometimes a little team with a great designer and luck on their side could punch way above their weight.

Then on the other hand come those, and there are many, for whom the definition of "to succeed" is the action carried out by a parrot with no beak.

It is to these teams that this thread is in honor of.

I want you, my fellow clippers to compile your most rubbish team of all time.

There are however, a couple of rules, just to make things a bit more challenging. Right now, every single person reading this is probably got the name Yuji Ide on the tips of their keyboard fingers followed by Life, Andrea Moda or Mastercard Lola. So, here's the thing, your worst team must contain, a car, two drivers and an engine. The engine could not have been used in the back of the car and the drivers should not have driven in the team with each other or the car (but they could have had the engine). On top of that, I only want drivers, teams and engines that have managed to complete a full season. (though that could have been without qualifying and missing one or two races is acceptable). We all know teams like Life were truly awful but they had no money and were stuffed from the start. To celebrate rubbish we need to look at the teams who at least had enough cash to race for a full season, the should have done betters, the may have done better in a different car etc.

So, I'll start then. My first driver would be Lewi......... Only Joking LOL

I'll have to think about it first.
 
Ferrari 312 T5 - what a dog of a car to give Jody Scheckter to defend his title
Alfa Romeo 415T straight 4 Turbo - so bad even Alfa had to find an excuse to avoid supplying the engine to Ligier in 1987. Step in Rene Arnoux and his big mouth, Alfa very happy
Ricardo Zunino - so bad Brabham sacked him half way through the 1980 season for Hector Rebaque
Slim Borgudd - not too bad in truck racing though

Think I've broken the rules with the first post...
 
For the car it has to be the Honda RA107. I don't know how they did it but Honda managed to go from the 86 point scoring, race winning, podium placing, 4th in the constructors RA106 and produce that pile of rubbish. To make matters unforgivably worse, they went all tree huggy and had that earth car design. No, no and thrice no.

To power that monstrosity I have gone for the Peugeot A6 in the back of the 1994 McLaren. Returning to a full works deal after a year with customer Fords should have been a good thing however, seldom has an engine been more like a kettle and less like an engine than that.

Drivers:

1) Dave Walker (Lotus 1972): 1971, won both UK formula 3 titles winning 25 out of the 32 races in the series. 1972 Disqualified from his first race of the season and only finished in the top 10 once, in 9th place. His team mate meanwhile won 5 races and the world championship.

2) Kazuki Nakajima - He came, he saw, he didn't do a lot, his team mate did all the work. He left. Was he worth a Toyota engine?
 
By the way, Rosset's contribution to the crash at Spa in 1998 is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Tuero worked it out...
 
Ferrari F92A driven by Ivan Capelli in 1992. Come the Mexican GP he was 20th in the grid, worst Ferrari qualifying in years. his teammate Jean Alesi was 10th and yet not the best qualified car with a Ferrari engine. That would be Pierluigi Martini in a Dallara. in comparisson the Ferrari 314T is a sublime machina. How could Alesi get 2 3rd places is beyond me.
 
Car: 2007 Honda (what a joke that thing was, the livery made it worse)
Engine: Porsche (from the 1991 Arrows)
Number 1 driver: Nelson Piquet! Yes, the 3 time world champion. Why? Because he won only because of mechanical failures or crashes of his rivals, for example in 1987. Mansell was way faster but lost wheel nuts, engines and finally crashed. My reasons extend further but are too hard to explain here. Piquet was not a driver I would call a "wheelman". Not to mention he was terrible when the chips were down. His Canada '91 "win" sums up his career.
Number 2 driver: Ralf Schumacher. Yeah.
Reserve driver: Luca Badoer - always one to be relied upon to not score a point
 
The team managment is taken from Onyx's clumsy efforts, where the drivers, the car, and the designers were close to reasonable, but with team managment prefering to bicker.

The car is Coloni's miserable C4, failing to pre-qualifying 15 times out of 15, despite diabolical opposition in the form of Footwork, Modena, AGS, and some of the other clowns who turned up for the 1991 season.

The BRM P75 H16 has to be my engine choice, weighing over a quarter of a tonne, and producing only around 400 horsepower (roughly standard for the era, and someway short of the alleged 600hp) the heap of junk succeded only in breaking, and retiring the BRM's and Lotus's that were unlucky enough to be ladened with it. The fact that it one a race is largely thanks to the remarkeable Lotus 43 chassis, and its driver, Jim Clark.

The team leader needs to be a veteran, and who better than Piercarlo Ghinzani, whose 111 entries saw him score points once at the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix, where he finished ahead of multiple race entrant Corrado Fabi, and some guy in a pedal car.

And with the hope of some maple syrup sponsorship, he'll race alongside Al Pease, whose short career, saw him be lapped 43 times in one year, and be disqualified for being too slow and chopping up Jackie Stewart (as he frequently tried to lap him).
 
Car: Aston Martin

Engine: Should be the Subaru of 1990 or Porsche of 1991, but both were used for only half a season as they were so bad.
I'll go for Maserati's atttempt for the 1.5l formula of the early 60's.

Drivers following a theme: Lucien Bianchi and Jan Magnussen
 
I have to say that I was tempted to designate the Lotus 63 as the car. It was so rubbish that neither Graham Hill nor Jochen Rindt could make the thing work. I would say it was Chapman's worst effort.
 
Colin Chapman did have some dark moments, usually after he had produced an exceptional race car. My F1 knowledge doesn't extend back as far as the Lotus 63 but I do recall the type 76 which the follow up to the all conquering type 72 which only took part in 7 races. Then after the type 79 he went too far with the Lotus 80 and this only managed 3 races. We could probably fill and entire thread with rubbish Lotus cars and another with machines which rewrote the design rules of F1 cars
 
The 76 was supposed to be a lighter, faster version of the 72 but ended up heavier and slower. It introduced the semi-automatic gearbox to F1 having the clutch operated by a button on the gear stick. Ronnie Peterson was so fed up with it he asked Chapman to "get the old cars out" which Chapman did and Peterson went on to win the 74 Monaco GP. Poor Jacky Icyx thought he was joining a world beating team.

The 80 suffered from having too much downforce that could not be controlled effectively. The side skirts were curved in an S shape (an early coke bottle form that we now know and love) and as a result if the car bounced over a curb the skirt would get stuck up in the box. A number of teams tried to run whole body ground effect aero dynamics as well as Lotus and they found that the cars centre of gravity would shift forwards and backward randomly as the car bounced (they called it porpoising).

I wouldn't count any of the gas turbined / 4 wheeled drive Loti as that was a dead end flight of fancy mainly aimed at transferring what seemed to be the ideal combination for an Indy win into an F1 winning car.

The 77 was absolute dog toffee until it was taken in hand by a guy called Len Terry who worked as an engineering consultant and who revised the suspension system to make it work. It was supposed to be a car that could be adjusted in a number of ways to make it suit any track. This included being able to make major adjustments such as to the wheel base.

The 88 and 88B has been documented elsewhere on this site but aside from the fact it was an interesting design solution the major problem was that it didn't work apart from the fact that which ever way you looked at it, by the time the 88B came out, it was very illegal.

Chapman was hardly involved but the 92 and 93T were god awful to the point that new designer Gerard Ducarouge designed a car in just 6 weeks (the 94T) that was faster and more reliable.

I suppose after that we have to go to the mega slow, Judd powered 101, the mega slow and downright dangerous Lotus 102 and the mega, mega slow Lotus 109. The only half decent car in that period was the 107 but the lack of funding meant that they ran that car far too long.

Most of Chapman's epic fails were really in the world of Sports cars. The type 30 and type 40 were especially crap. I think it was Ritchie Ginther who describe the type 30 as having the chassis stiffness of a wet rag.
 
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How about Osella? What a dreadful outfit that was. So many terrible cars to choose from.

Chassis - Osella FA1M (Failed to pre-qualify 20 times in 1989)
Engine - Lamborghini V12
Driver #1 - Karun Chandhok (I'll never forget him kicking off the 2011 season in Oz with a spin)
Driver #2 - Roberto Guerrero

I can't imagine this combination ever scoring a point.
 
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