Rating the Teams of the Era 1999-2009: The Mid-Field

Grade: 5.89

Rank: 5

Best Result in Constructor’s World Championship: 1st (2009)*

Worst Result in Constructor’s World Championship: 11th (1999)

Title: The Fashionable Latecomer

Who would have thought? The team that has been beating its chest for nigh on a decade that they would take F1 world by storm have finally gone and done it. Somewhat ironically, the team arrived with minimal fanfare and was only known to be competing in 2009 barley a month before Melbourne. True to form then, the Brawn GP team of Honda heritage and BAR before that have finally turned up to the party. And my how the party has changed because of them.

Brawn GP’s current successes are a far cry from the disastrous first season the team endured as BAR in 1999. With former World Driver’s Champion Jaques Villeneuve being recruited by long-time chum Craig Pollock, the team was loudly proclaiming how it would be challenging for victories within a year. The reality, of course was the complete opposite. The team, with its controversial split livery failed to score a single world championship point that year, barley keeping touch with the Minardis. With this wake up call fresh in the teams mind, they made great strides in 2000, with Villeneuve and Ricardo Zonta putting in solid drives over the year to chase fellow Honda engine users Jordan hard and claim fifth place.

The team had mixed fortunes in 2001 with both Villeneuve and Zonta putting in some decent drives only to have one of many Honda engine failures seen that year. The team did start to show its potential though, taking its first podium and challenging for points more frequently. 2002 was a disaster however. The white cars had a reliability record that would make Williams’ FW30 blush and the team’s pace was noticeably lacking from the get go. A change to Britton Jenson Button saw the team’s fortunes start to turn around with BAR taking a well deserved fifth with some stellar drives from Englishman. All of this was despite Villeneuve’s increasing discontent and vocal slamming of the team through the media. This would prove pivotal at season’s end with the long-serving Craig Pollock and the aging Jaques dumped in favour of Japan’s Takuma Sato thanks to increasing influence in the team from Honda.

The changes in driver line-up and management (with David Richards now leading the team) saw the BAR squad blow both McLaren and Williams off the track to be on the podium at 14 out of 18 rounds of the season. This led to a strong second place finish with the only blight being the team couldn’t quite manage that elusive win despiter several opportunities.

Unfortunatley this momentum was not to last with the team returning to the bad old days of midfield running (finishing sixth) with Sato going close to ending up in a record number of accidents over the season, including that infamous clash with Michael Schumacher at Spa. Despite Honda taking over the team in full and ex-Ferrari speedster Rubens Barrichello joining for 2006 things didn’t start out promisingly. Top eight finishes were few and far between, but the Japanese squad seemed to get a second wind in the last half of the season taking its first win with Button and claiming a fast-finishing fourth.

The chest beating began in earnest at the start of 2007, with the team keen to capitalise on its momentum. Yet instead of challenging near the front, Honda and their ‘Earth Dreams’ paint scheme were found near the back weekend after weekend taking a disappointing eighth. 2008 was to prove the annus horribilus (even with Ross Brawn’s brains in the fold): Barrichello’s sole third place wasn’t enough to stop Honda finishing ninth and then declaring its exit from the sport.

But, just like the current state of the world’s finances, the only way was up. 2009 has been finally shown us what this team is capable of. Now known as Brawn GP, the car is dominating the championship with Jenson Button leading and Rubens Barrichello currently sitting first and second with very little in the way of competition.

And so, like that party guest that is running late, when they finally show, they show up in style.

* NOTE: Result has been obtained during the season currently in progress.

Grade: 5.89

Rank: 6 (Lost fifth on countback with Brawn GP / Honda / BAR)

Best Result in Constructor’s World Championship: 2nd (2007)

Worst Result in Constructor’s World Championship: 8th (1999-2000, 2005, 2009)*

Title: The Steady Improver

BMW Sauber (or just Sauber in its past life) is a team that has usually improved year on year. It has never made massive gains in a single leap like the Brawn’s or Red Bull’s of the world. Rather the team’s results from the past decade have all been through gut-splitting hard work with every race and every point adding a little bit more to the sum total. This trait personified is that of the hard working kid in the class: smart and savvy enough to get the job done but doesn’t have the flair and finesse of the Best in Class. This team’s steady rise through the field has been one of the key sub-plots of the era.

It all started out humbly enough with Anglo-Swiss Sauber (named so after team-owner Peter Sauber) putting in a number of workmanlike results in the late 90’s to justify the squads spot on the grid. 1999 was one such year. Pedro Diniz and the ageing Jean Alesi battled the back markers for most of the year, but the two did have some sturdy performances on the team’s way to eighth in the Constructor’s title. 2000 was a case of more of the same (again finishing eighth), with Mika Salo taking over from Alesi. Again, despite a lack of car pace, most of the team’s performances were reasonable.

It was the next season in 2001 when the team first showed that it was on the rise. Unknown rookie Kimi Raikkonen and the steady German Nick Heidfeld took the very solid Ferrari-engined car to fourth in the final standings by being around to pick up the pieces when a driver from the big teams got it wrong. 2002 saw the team drop back to sixth in what was a slight reality check. Although the team missed crucial points taking opportunities at the Austrian and Japanese Grands Prix (both instances where Filipe Massa’s over-exuberance saw him crash out while in a points paying position) the team’s mid-field rivals Renault (formally Benetton) had made remarkable improvement to take points away from the Swiss team.

With the rule changes of 2003 meaning points down to eighth, the Sauber team started to find it difficult to pick up enough points to leap-frog BAR for fifth, with the Honda backed team more consistent over the season. 2004 saw the team retain sixth place with the much matured Massa (fresh from one year’s testing duty at Ferrari) and the now-veteran Giancarlo Fisichella putting in some solid performances despite the car struggling on the quicker circuits.

2005 was to be the unfortunate and almost inevitable decline most of the teams on the grid. The sport was now in a phase in which to be anything but manufacturer backed was a near death sentence, and a dwindling money supply saw the car for the 2005 season being a far cry from the teams in the mid-field and eighth was all the team could muster. Seeing his team sliding backwards and with fellow privateers Minardi and Jordan suffering more and more as the season went on, Peter Sauber made the fateful decision to sell his team to BMW.

The German auto-giant whose dissatisfaction with their Williams partnership was to prove a god-send for the Sauber operation (with the Sauber name being maintained thanks to an agreement with BMW allowing Peter Sauber to remain as a adviser). A big budget and decent drivers (Nick Heidfeld and Jaques Villeneuve) was to be just the shot in the arm that was needed: The team took fifth in the final standings with two podiums and unearthed a talent in Robert Kubica mid-season (replacing the underperforming Villeneuve). The team set its standards higher in 2007, aiming to make the podium regularly and achieved this with flying colours with Heidfeld and Kubica being regular challengers to the top three, finishing in second thanks to McLaren’s disqualification. In 2008, nothing less than a race win would suffice. And a win they would achieve in Canada with Kubica and Heidfeld taking the team’s first one-two finish. The squad would finish a close third overall, challenging for both championships the whole way through the season.

Unfortunately 2009 has proven to be a disaster for BMW Sauber thusfar. Despite the team boldly aiming for championship glory, the new rules haven’t favoured the Hinwil based team well. However, only a fool would underestimate them. They may be eighth now, but a big budget, good drivers and this team’s track record of being the big year-on-year improver on the grid means that team and a late-season blitzkrieg is still possible.

* NOTE: Result has been obtained during the season currently in progress.

Grade: 6.17

Rank: 7

Best Result in Constructor’s World Championship: 3rd (2009)*

Worst Result in Constructor’s World Championship: 10th (2002)

Title: The Waking Giant

The tale of Toyota is one of a team that has suffered a great number of disappointments. These disappointments have come about not because the team didn’t have the resources at its disposal to compete at the top: Quite the opposite in fact. The disappointment has come from the fact that after their debut in 2002, despite their parent company throwing all of the money at them in the world, the team still has not recorded a maiden F1 win. But the theme of modern times has been change. And despite all of their past failures, the team with biggest auto company in the world financing them are waking up and competing. The ground is rumbling and the noise is deafening. Finally it appears that the giant is waking.

The fact that Japanese rival Honda was leaping in to the Formula One fold (again) in early stages of the past decade was incentive enough for Toyota to finally try and prove to the world that it was a serious threat in the world of racing. It had dominated Rally and sportscar racing at various stages and the thinking was that if they could do it then, they could certainly so it now with F1. Thus, moves were made to create an F1 team from scratch and spend the entire 2001 season testing and preparing to take the world by storm in 2002. And with veteran Mika Salo and newcomer Allan McNish at the wheel, this team really was to be considered a serious threat on paper.

As 2002 rolloed around, the reality proved to be quite different. Despite a point on debut in Australia (thanks to Melbourne’s legendary attrition rate), Toyota scored only on more point for the entire season, finishing tenth behind Minardi on countback. These hardly inspiring results saw the suits in Japan throw even more money at the team for 2003. EAlong with ex-CART champion Christiano Da Matta and veteran Oliver Panis joined the fold and scored few results of note throughout the year (although they did lead briefly at Silverstone) to take home a meagre eighth place. 2004 was an unfortunate case of more of the same, with the team being even less convincing than the year before, struggling on occasion to overhaul the embarrassingly slow Jordans and Minardis.

Lingering at the bottom of the grid was far from satisfactory to the financiers in Japan, and change was demanded for 2005. Notable designer Mike Gascoygne and the highly rated Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli were recruited to turn this very slowing moving ship around. Success was almost immediate, with Trulli and Schumacher taking several podiums throughout the year and qualifying well at nearly all races. Also of note, was the start of the phenomenon known as the Trulli Train. With Jarno qualifying so well so often, the weaker race pace of the TF105 saw a queue of cars unable to pass on most weekends. This proved to be a useful tool in achieving a notable fourth place overall. Not unreasonably, Toyota expected much from 2006, with race wins considered likely. This proved to impossible with the car suffering from poor reliability and a nasty knack for being difficult to set up on the newer Herman Tilke designed circuits that have steadily taken over from 2004. Sixth was not the result that was expected.

Biterly disappointed with this result, 2007 was set to be the return to form the world demanded. Yet again however, Toyota expended a lot of energy getting nowhere fast. The car, although slightly more reliable than the 2006 model, was simply slow, spending most of the season battling with engine customers Williams (losing out to take sixth again). With talk rife that Toyota were fed-up with making up the numbers, that pay-masters in Tokyo began to wield the axe on both technical staff and driver alike. The ever-demanding Ralf Schumacher was dumped for 2008 and GP2 champion Timo Glock was brought in to right the mess. With the dead-weight cleaned out the results in 2008 started to arrive from about mid-season on. The team got better as the year went on and achieved a fighting fifth place to the relief of most.

It is on the back of 2008’s late-season momentum that it is only now Toyota have come to the party in earnest. The 2009 car with its controversial diffuser has been quick out of the box. Highlights include a one-two qualifying performance in Bahrain, and challenging for podiums at most races (the disastrous Monaco event aside). Although they are still chasing that elusive first win, it appears that finally after years and years of underachievement , the grid’s richest team is awake and hungry for success.

* NOTE: Result has been obtained during the season currently in progress.