S1 E8: The backmarker madness of F1's pre-qualifying era

Bring Back V10s - Classic F1 stories

The Race Media Ltd

Sports

4.9 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2020

⏱️ 63 minutes

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Summary

At the start of our Bring Back V10s era in 1989, Formula 1 had as many as 39 cars turning up trying to get onto a 26-car grid for a grand prix. After an initial pre-qualifying elimination process was introduced for the first practice session in 1988, a formalised session was added to race weekends for the following season, to narrow the field down to 30 contenders before free practice even started. Edd Straw and Matt Beer join Glenn Freeman to look back at a crazy time for F1 backmarkers. What was the crazy initial pitch for pre-qualifying that got rejected? Why did some teams that were clearly quick enough to qualify for races still have to go through the ignominy of the Friday morning session? Who were the worst teams to try their luck at getting into F1? Which driver completed a full season without ever getting through pre-qualifying? Which team's engine supplier once timed the lifespan of its engine from fire-up to failure at four seconds? Why did so many no-hoper teams try to get into F1 at this stage? What were the best results scored by teams who came through pre-qualifying? Who were the drivers who produced the best stats in pre-qualifying sessions? Who never made it onto an F1 grid in their careers despite appearing in pre-qualifying? How did Jordan turn pre-qualifying into an advantage on its way to finishing fifth in its first season? Were there really teams with works engine deals competing in these sessions? Was the shambolic Andrea Moda team of 1992 the final straw for F1? How did F1 go about raising the barrier to entry in the years that followed, creating the 'closed shop' championship we have today? Coloni, Life, EuroBrun and many more minnow teams from this era all get their moment in the limelight in this episode.

HAVE YOUR SAY: Get your questions in for our season finale. Ask us anything about F1 from 1989-2005 using #BringBackV10s @wearetherace

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Formula One used to have so many cars trying to make it onto the grid for a Grand Prix,
0:11.0	that it had to come out of a system that sent the worst of them home before Friday practice had even begun.
0:17.0	On this episode of Bring Back V10s, brought to you by the race, we're looking back at Formula One's colourful pre-qualifying era from 1989 to 1992.
0:26.1	We'll explain why it happened and tell some of the more bizarre stories from that period and look at the wider reasons behind a period when F1 was very different to how it is today.
0:36.4	We're only a couple of weeks away from our series finale
0:39.0	where we'll be answering your questions on anything to do with F1
0:42.5	from 1989 to 2005.
0:45.2	So make sure you get your questions into at We Are the Race on social media
0:48.7	using the hashtag Bring Back V10s.
0:51.4	We've had a lot of questions in already,
0:53.1	but we're going to do whatever we can to get through all of them very, very soon. I'm Glenn Freeman, and joining me for this look back at a weird and wonderful time in the history of Formula One backmarkers are Matt Beer and inevitably Ed Straw. So Matt, before Ed Hoover's up an entire episode's worth of memories in his first answer,
1:11.9	what's the first thing that comes to mind for you when you think of pre-qualifying in F1?
1:16.8	Discovering that there could be a Formula One team as useless as life was.
1:21.2	I came across pre-qualifying.
1:23.3	I got into F1 properly in the early 90s just after this had finished,
1:26.7	then bought every second-hand book on the subject in the world. And learning that the life W12 even happened a mere two years earlier was quite shocking for me and my teens. Yeah, I think there's going to be a lot of that in this episode, those kind of how did this actually happen? How did these teams turn up at Grand Prix and expect, or sometimes even it onto the grid. So Ed, try and keep
1:47.2	it short, which is probably the biggest challenge you've ever had. As I know, we're firmly in
1:52.0	edge draw territory here, F1 backmarkers and some of the worst F1 back markers as well. So if you can
1:58.4	briefly sum up this period and what it means to you.
2:01.7	Well, pre-qualifying, it's wonderful because it's a microcosm of F1 in that area.
2:05.7	You've got heroic failures, these improbable feats of driving, embarrassing shambles, comedy catastrophe,
2:11.2	spectacularly misguided projects, some of the worst Grand Prix cars ever made,
	...

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