Formula 1 Teams' Most Spectacular Falls from Grace

A skim through the Formula One history books tells us that for any given team, successful seasons are a little bit like buses.

It seems like an age waiting for the first to arrive, then another one, two, three or even four more come along immediately afterwards. Teams like Ferrari, the first incarnation of Mercedes, Cooper, Lotus, Brabham, McLaren and Williams all enjoyed winning runs that lasted for two or more years.

Some teams had more than one period of success, and some runs went on longer than others—but none of them lasted forever.

Red Bull, drivers' and constructors' champions for four seasons from 2010 to 2013, are only the latest in a long line of teams to find out that no matter how good you are, eventually, someone else will become better.

Mercedes, dominant champions of the last two seasons, will discover the same in due course.

No matter how good their engine, car, drivers or personnel, Mercedes will sooner or later fall off the top of the pile. It probably won't happen in 2016, but there are no guarantees in any sport—least of all in F1.

For those fans who would welcome a change in the pecking order and are seeking a little bit of hope to cling on to, here are five stories from the last 40 years of teams that were dominant in the constructors' championship one year but spectacularly failed to defend it the next.

Ferrari: Champions in 1979, 10th in 1980

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Gilles Villeneuve in the 1979 Ferrari.

Until Michael Schumacher won his first world championship with Ferrari in 2000, the 1979 season held a special and ever-growing significance for fans of the team. It was the last time a Ferrari driver had won the drivers' championship.

Jody Scheckter completed his turnaround from crash-prone kid to polished racer by winning his first and only world title, while team-mate Gilles Villeneuve completed a Ferrari one-two in the drivers' standings.

Needless to say, Ferrari were constructors' champions, with 113 points to the 75 scored by second-placed Williams. Hopes were high for F1's oldest and most-successful team heading into the 1980 season—but everything went horribly wrong.

The Ferrari 312T had served the team well, in various guises, since 1975; it won four constructors' championships in five years, brought three drivers' titles to Maranello and won a total of 27 grands prix.

But as the ground-effect era got into full swing and aerodynamic performance became increasingly important, the venerable old car finally showed its age. The 312T5, propelled by a powerful but bulky flat-12 engine, was no match for the more modern, refined cars of the competition.

The excellent ground effects on the Williams, Ligier, Brabham and Renault cars saw the four teams monopolise the top step of the podium. Alan Jones won the drivers' crown and Williams took their first-ever constructors' championship with 120 points.

Over at Ferrari, reigning world champion Scheckter scored just two points and retired at the end of the year. Even Villeneuve, one of the quickest drivers of all time, only managed six points.

It's hard to make McLaren's 2015 look good, but 1980 at Ferrari just about does the job.

Williams: Champions in 1987, 7th in 1988

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Nigel Mansell leads Nelson Piquet in 1987.

Williams rose to prominence toward the end of the 1979 season and went on to win the constructors' championship in 1980 and 1981—in large part due to the engineering brilliance of Patrick Head.

They went off the boil a little after that but returned to the top in 1986. A year later, Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell finished first and second in the 1987 drivers' championship. Williams were constructors' champions for the fourth time, scoring 137 points to their nearest rival's 76.

But a perfect storm was brewing on the horizon. Honda had decided to take their world-beating V6 turbo engines to McLaren, where two-time world champion Alain Prost was to be joined by rising star Ayrton Senna.

The turbo engines were being phased out at the end of 1988, and Williams were unable to acquire a competitive replacement for the Hondas they were losing. The FW12 was therefore powered by a naturally aspirated Judd V8.

This in itself might not have been too bad; though the powerful turbocharged McLarens dominated the season, winning 15 of the 16 races, most of the grid had V8s. But the Williams had other issues, mostly relating to its active suspension—a relatively new technology at the time, and one the team were unable to master.

The system was eventually consigned to the rubbish dump (for a couple of seasons) and Mansell scored a pair of second-place finishes, but poor reliability meant those were his only points finishes of the year.

Williams went from world champions in 1987 to seventh in 1988, and they weren't even the top naturally aspirated team. Benetton were third with their Ford V8, while March—in sixth—were the top Judd-powered squad.

But it's hard to keep a top team down...

Williams: Champions in 1997, 3rd in 1998

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Jacques Villeneuve of Williams in 1997.

It says much for the quality of the Williams team that they're back in this list just a decade after their last fall from the top. After the disaster of 1988, they embarked on what would become a very special relationship with a new engine supplier—Renault.

In 1992, the combination of a great engine from Renault, Adrian Newey's design genius and an active suspension system that actually worked saw Williams and Nigel Mansell complete a crushing drivers' and constructors' championship double.

Mansell departed, but the team's success continued, and in the next five seasons, they won the drivers' championship three times and the constructors' title on four occasions. In 1997, Jacques Villeneuve was drivers' champion and Williams won their ninth constructors' crown.

But all runs of dominance eventually come to an end, and 1998 was the year the tide finally turned.

Renault withdrew from F1 at the end of 1997 and Mecachrome took over the French manufacturer's engine supply. Williams continued to use the engines but were now paying customers and didn't have full works support.

Meanwhile, a massive shift in the regulations forced all the teams to make big design changes—and Newey had left Williams to join McLaren. The FW20 was not a poor car, but it didn't stand a chance against the brilliant MP4-18 and Ferrari's F300.

Having scored 123 points in 1997, Williams managed just 38 in 1998—118 fewer than new champions McLaren and just four more than perennial midfielders Jordan.

They haven't won a title since.

Ferrari: Champions in 2004, 3rd in 2005

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Michael Schumacher winning the 2004 British Grand Prix.

Ferrari spent the early years of the 2000s doing something very similar to what Williams did in the mid-1990s, but with one small difference.

Between 2000 and 2004, they didn't let anyone else have even a sniff of glory—Michael Schumacher won five world championships and the team won five constructors' titles.

The final season of the five-year "redwash" was 2004, when Schumacher won his seventh and last world championship with a display of single-driver dominance never before witnessed in the sport. The German won 12 of the first 13 races, only missing out on Monaco—where he was taken out while leading.

Schumacher switched off a little after securing the title, but Ferrari still ended the year with 262 points, which was a record under the old "10 points for a win" scoring system; second-placed BAR-Honda, who didn't win a single race, scored 119. But when 2005 rolled around, it quickly became clear Ferrari were no longer on top of the pile.

The rules governing tyre usage had changed over the winter, with routine pit stops for fresh rubber banned for the season ahead. Michelin, supplier to Renault, McLaren and the other competitive teams, produced a great tyre capable of lasting a full race distance.

Bridgestone, supplier to Ferrari and backmarkers Minardi and Jordan, didn't quite do as well.

Fernando Alonso of Renault and Kimi Raikkonen of McLaren dominated the season, winning 14 of the 19 races between them. Their team-mates took victory in four of the remaining five grands prix, and Ferrari won just once—at the farcical United States Grand Prix, at which all the Michelin-shod teams were forced to withdraw.

That one-off, gifted result and Schumacher's brilliance meant Ferrari kept it respectable by finishing third in the championship, but they scored 162 points fewer than they had in 2004 and achieved just nine podiums.

But they didn't stay down for long.

The Old Guard: 1st to 4th in 2008, Also-Rans in 2009

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Ferrari quickly recovered from their 2004 blip and were back at the front in 2008. The Scuderia edged out McLaren to win the constructors' title, but the British team still had plenty to celebrate as Lewis Hamilton took the drivers' crown.

BMW-Sauber tasted the victory champagne after Robert Kubica's victory in Canada, while Renault—though not as competitive as they had been a few seasons earlier—won two races on their way to finishing fourth.

The top four in 2008 had been the dominant names for the last 11 years. Ferrari had won eight constructors' titles, Renault two and McLaren one, while BMW, first as a partner of Williams and then of Sauber, had won 11 grands prix.

In the same period, the rest of the field—that is, every team to have competed between 1998 and 2008—had won just seven races between them. The last of these was the 2008 Italian Grand Prix, where Sebastian Vettel won for Toro Rosso, Red Bull's sister team.

It was a hint of things to come.

Sweeping regulation changes for 2009 caught the established order napping. Newcomers Brawn—the former Honda team—stole a march on the competition with their innovative "double diffuser," and the only team to truly give them a challenge over the course of the season was Red Bull.

The old guard was swept aside and the new boys took their places at the front. Brawn won the title with 172 points—more than the totals of third-placed McLaren, fourth-placed Ferrari and eighth-placed Renault put together.

BMW left at the end of the year after finishing sixth, and Renault sold a majority stake in their team to Genii Capital.

McLaren and Ferrari exist to race, so they went nowhere—but neither has won a championship since.