Grand Prix Rejects

When I originally mentioned a "more elegant age" I did indeed mean liveries and car design. Anyone who tries to tell me that the horrific vomit piles that modern F1 cars currently are with their dong noses, insane angles and horrible colourschemes hold a candle to the cars of 89 is wasting...

Also very fond of these 1989 cars as liveries and car shapes: RIAL ARC2 http://richardsf1.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/image213.png Eurobrun ER189 http://oneimagef1.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/8933foiteker189judhun01.jpg Coloni C3 https://oneimagef1.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/8932bertaggiac3cossp...

And poor Simona de Silvestro is really struggling for speed, isn't she (even compared to Alesi)? I almost wonder whether she has some sort of defect with her car. She does - it's the "Lotus" badged Judd bolted into the car that produces about as much power and torque as a 1986 Lada Niva. ...

All things considered I think the CTS is one of my favourite racing series ever. Saw it at Watkins Glen last year and the sheer size of the field (80+ at times) and the amazing variety of cars makes for lots of fun viewing. This series doesn't get the attention it deserves. 80+ entries but no publi...

now does the production-based Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge here in america count? it's a Grand-Am feeder but it is pretty much turbo-charged compacts versus muscle cars (much like the BTCC used to be) every car has a stock appearance, stock fenders, bumpers, etc. the engines are basically ...

I like Dave Newsham, he impressed me last year with some gutsy drives. I actually "raced" (in that I was in the same races with him but he was muuuuuch faster than me) Dave back in his days in the Scottish Legends Championship - I know a lot of people write him off as a pay-driver but he'...

What a great read. The team profiles were always my favourite bit of F1R - MOAR... MOAR!!!

Faustus wrote:The similarities between the Shannon Group and Group Lotus are uncanny, arent they?

Pretty similar, yeah. Biggest difference I'd say is that Group Lotus just didn't have as much funding as they said they did whereas Shannon said they had lots of funding and actually had none at all, lol.

Can't believe I wrote this stuff over 2 years ago! I've moved half way round the world and got married since then, lol. Anyway, a wander around the image searching properties of teh interwubz has brought up a couple of interesting pics to add to this thread. F3000 pics are still impossible to come b...

Man, I miss those days of F1 so much. No way can the Lotus, Virgin, US Farce1 etc teams of today come close to that level of amateur appeal. USF1 surpass that, really. Good poitn. Though I'd say they'll just fade into the list of other terrible efforts to make it to the F1 grid without ever actuall...

The whole US Farce1 thing has always had an air of pie in the sky about it. No shots of any development of the car, an office that looks less impressive than the fake "Top Gear Production Office" shed, the fact that Windsor is a swaggering idiot, the fact that it was going to have "tw...

MikeH, that photo is a great find and your research is superb. Yours is certainly one of the best posts I've read in this forum. I wish I could contribute with some photos, because I'm sure I've got some in the many motorsport magazines that I have from that time. Unfortunately, they're all in Port...

Glad that some enjoyment has been gleaned from this - I was rapt when I first read that forum thread. Can you imagine McLaren or Ferrari leaving a door open at the factory for months at time? Man, I miss those days of F1 so much. No way can the Lotus, Virgin, US Farce1 etc teams of today come close ...

This may be old information, but for anyone who hasn't seen it - this is a very good insight into some of the incredible things that went on behind the scenes in the short life of Pacific GP:

http://forums.autosport.com/index.php?showtopic=107837

Pretty much any reject team that ran between 1988 and 1996. :p That was such a classic age of F1 for privateers, underachievers, fraudsters and criminals in F1 team ownership! I've always had a soft spot for what Pacific tried to achieve with so little, but I'm a Forti man foremost - especially this...

Looks bloody dangerous too - imagine side on t-bone impacts...

I remember that at one point in 1996, the Shannon Group was 'sponsoring' cars in the German, Italian and French Formula 3 championships. The odd thing is, that according to the driver of one of the cars in the German championship (Manuel Giao, a decent Portuguese driver, now racing in the Open GT),...

Nice research MikeH, we should probably use that info to update our Forti profile ... sometime in the next decade at our current speed! heh, cool. Was at a loose end for an afternoon and after a serious amount of link hopping and searching managed to find what's there - which isn't much! I've alway...

I'm going to the GT1 World Championship at Silverstone this year. I'm going to make it my mission to get my picture taken with Deletraz.

The Brabham situation towards the end was an interesting one - though the most bizarre thing about it was easily the hideous colour-scheme. Any ideas why they went with this?

Good info - I had no idea Moda showed up at Monza.

I went karting once in Belgium at an online racing league get-together. I was pretty slow but as we were running in teams of two drivers and I was paired with my then girlfriend (who had never driven anything in her life and was petrified) we ended up last more laps behind the leaders than I can rem...

And the car that started the Life debacle- the First F189 http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/7207/1988gabrieletarquinifircd3.jpg That's a pretty sharp livery given how garish and hideous most "block o' colour" colourschemes on everything in the world were in the late 80s and early 90s.

De Rouvre wasn't a major criminal by any means, though it seems he he was too determined to run at the highest level of motorsport and paid the price: http://www.grandprix.com/gpe/cref-dercyr.html

One of the best was probably celebrated nutter and self proclaimed "anarchist" Jean-Pierre Van Rossem - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Pierre_Van_Rossem

He's obviously warming up his tyres, because he was going so slow that he couldn't get any heat into them . Prolly not too far off the actual truth! I'm reminded of Richard Hammond continually spinning the F1 Renault cos he was so slow he couldn't ever get any heat in the tyres. Either that or cram...

I'll start by apologising if this ends up being a rehash of info already available here but I've been at a loose end today and wanted to share the results of some sleuthing I've been up to via the medium of Google. As a huge fan of Forti Corse (Pacific, Simtek and so on) back in the day, the details...