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 Aston Martin.
Aston Martin became involved with motorsport in the early ‘50s, entering sports cars. With much success for the company in sports car racing, the company hoped to have the same success in Formula One, which was the most advanced level of open-wheel racing.
Ted Cutting designed the DBR4 for the company. The chassis was heavily based off of the company’s successful sports car chassis, the DBS3. The design was completed and testing began in 1957, but the car didn’t actually race in Formula One until two years later.
Aston Martin revealed the car and entered it into the non-championship BRDC International Trophy event at Silverstone where is showed a good competitive future. The car made its Formula One debut at the Dutch Grand Prix with Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby behind the wheels. However, both drivers were the first to retire from the race with engine issues.
Car development was delayed, causing the team to miss the French Grand Prix. When the cars returned to action at the British Grand Prix, there was a big performance improvement, as the cars qualified second and sixth on the grid. Shelby fell out of the event in the closing laps because of a mechanical failure, but that didn’t stop Salvadori from getting the outfit a sixth place finish.
The strong qualifying performance was not repeated at the Portuguese Grand Prix, with both cars starting at the rear. However, both cars completed the racing distance, an accomplishment that the team was not able to replicate in the future races.
The team again entered into the BRDC International Trophy event 1960, but the performance had not been as good as the year before. Work was not yet completed on the team’s new DBR5 chassis, so Roy Salvadori was entered into the Dutch Grand Prix using the DBR4 chassis from the season before. However, a financial dispute with the event organizers prevented the team from starting the race.
The tighter and lighter DBR5 chassis was ready in time for the British Grand Prix in which Roy Salvadori and Maurice Trintignant were entered. Salvadori retired from the event with a mechanical failure and Trintignant wasn’t able to yield an impressive race result.
Work on the next season’s chassis was scrapped and the team abandoned Formula One to focus on their more successful sports car campaigns.
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.
