It’s that time of the week again: time for us to look at the past teams that made an exit from the sport of Formula One, having scored no points. This week, we remember Life.
Life was an Italian-based Formula One team that made it into the sport for the 1990 season. Named after the owner Ernesto Vita, whose last name means “Life” in Italian, the team was created to market the company’s W12 engine.
The team contracted Gary Brabham, the son of Jack Brabham, to drive the car. However, things turned bitter quite early on after the ignition failed only 3 laps into the pre-qualifying. Having no spare ignition, the team was forced to abandon the weekend. The early troubles repeated in Brazil, as a connecting rod ended pre-qualifying on the first lap for the team. Disgusted with the shape of the team, Brabham quit. He was in line for a seat on the Brabham team, but he lost the seat to his brother David due to confusion over his Life contract. He never entered in another Formula One race.
The team hired Bruno Giacomelli, a former driver who had raced in the sport from 1977 to 1983. His first entry with the team in San Marino was not very successful and he didn’t qualify. He later said that he was scared that he would be struck from a car behind due to the extreme speed difference.
The car’s extreme reliability issues prevented the car from pre-qualifying for any races. The British Grand Prix was the team’s best performance, but even then the car was many seconds off of the pace and the slowest in pre-qualifying. Speed traps in Germany revealed that the car was over 60km/h slower than the other cars and that the engine was producing roughly half of the horsepower of the Honda engine fitted to the McLaren car.
After the Italian Grand Prix, the team decided to ditch their engine and purchase a Judd engine. However, the team discovered when they arrived in Portugal that the engine did not actually fit into the car. The team made attempted to redesign the bodywork, but the engine cover flew off on the team’s out lap during pre-qualifying.
The Spanish Grand Prix showed the car was still over 20 seconds slower in pre-qualifying. After the Spanish weekend, the team withdrew from the season, having failed to pre-qualify for a single event in the 1990 season.
Points are a difficult thing to obtain in Formula One. In this weekly series, we will look back the past teams who gave it their all, but fell short.
Points are a difficult thing to obtain in Formula One. In this weekly series, we will look back the past teams who gave it their all, but fell short.
