S4 E10: BAR's dreadful debut season in 1999

Bring Back V10s - Classic F1 stories

The Race Media Ltd

Sports

4.9 • 734 Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2021

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

British American Racing arrived in F1 talking of fighting for wins and championships... then it finished bottom of the standings with no points in its first season. So how did a team with a huge budget, a star driver and a famous technical partner get it so wrong?Edd Straw and Sam Smith join host Glenn Freeman to look back on the entire story of BAR's miserable first season, starting with the team's controversial attempt to race with two separate liveries for its cars, which resulted in an immediate falling out with the FIA. With insight from technical guru Adrian Reynard, we delve into why the car was so unreliable, the politics behind the scenes that threatened to tear the team apart, why its massive budget still wasn't big enough, landing Honda engines for 2000, how its mechanics earned respect after both cars were destroyed in qualifying at Spa, more internal politics, how boss Craig Pollock tried to incentivise team members to help the team score just a single point, and the fallout that occurred in the boardroom when that mission failed.

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1:07.4	British American racing was supposed to be an instant Formula One super team.
1:11.6	It had huge backing from British American tobacco, was built from scratch around none other than Jacques Villeneuve,
1:18.6	who left Williams one year after winning the championship to become the focal point of this new team.
1:24.6	But BAR's first season was a disaster. It failed to score any points,
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