Teams that never entered F1

landogeorgelewis1

Champion Elect
Yesterday got me thinking about 1 team that was rumored to be entering F1 but never did.

That team in general were Dave Richards Pro-drive. Why did their never enter F1? Was there a reason for them not entering?

Plus can you think of any other, who put an entry into coming to F1 but didn't enter?
 
I believe the original plan was to enter a customer car, which was subsequently ruled out, I am sure one of the more knowledgeable memmbers would know. When there was the new round of entries in 2009/10 I thought pro drive were planning to enter as Aston martin, but were unsuccessful.
 
There are a large number of teams that announced plans for F1 - some who even got as far as preparing a race chassis, but never quite got there.

In the mid-90s Dome ran a F1 programme, with the intention of running Mugen Honda engines. It was a beautiful car, but never raced
dome_f105_1996.jpg


Similarly, in the late '90s, Honda built up a works test team to consider a full-blown works effort, and spent a year pounding round the tracks, but after the death of Harvey Postlethwaite, the programme was discontinued. This car was more of a successor to the Tyrrell team than the BARs ever were...

_45269746_hh_1999.jpg


In fact, in the mid '90s, there were a huge number of teams considering entering F1 - these included DAMs, Durango, TOMS, Humpus, Trebron, Il Barone Rampante.....

But, it wasn't just the 1990s that had ridiculous F1 efforts - in the 1960s, Cosworth developed an F1 car...

cosworth.jpg
 
Prodrive were to enter as Prodrive F1 in 2008 running McLaren Chassis and Mercedes engines, and had been granted entry by the FIA until a legal appeal from Williams that customer cars were against the Concorde agreement. Super Aguri and Toro Rosso had already had complaints against them in 2007 for running barely modified customer cars (from Honda and Red Bull). The new Concorde agreement was signed on similar terms to the previous one (outlawing customer cars) and Dave Richards then tried to buy Honda at the end of 2008 but was beaten to it by Ross Brawn.
 
The two that always intrigued me were Subaru and Lamborghini. Both built engines for the 3.5 Formula 1, Lambo on their own, Subaru with Motori Moderni. It always seemed probable to me that, if their engines had proven viable, a team entry would have been the next logical step.
 
(That one was almost as good as Ferrari's 2 seater... Which they were going to run in races... But since the drivers were just offset, it would allow them to finish 1st and 2nd in races....

7obcpc
 
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