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 Simtek.
Simtek was a motorsport research and design company that was created in 1989. The company had many clients including the FIA, the F1 team Ligier, teams from Formula 3000 and teams from IndyCar. Having been hired to design Formula One cars for various scrapped projects in the early ‘90s, Simtek made the decision to create their own team for the 1994 season.
Jack Brabham was a shareholder of the team, meaning that his son David would be the team’s first driver. Various names were thrown around for the second seat on the team. Andrea de Cesaris, Gel de Ferran and Jean-Marc Gounon were among those names, but the team eventually decided upon rookie driver Roland Ratzenberger.
Simtek hired just 35 employees to work for the team, the lowest staff count on the grid at the time. The car was heavier than the competitors’ cars and its Cosworth engine was underpowered. The suspension system had to be designed twice because the original design featured the active suspension system, which was banned prior to the 1994 season. The team was able to gain MTV as a title sponsor.
The season opener in Brazil was not good for Ratzenberger, as he failed to qualify. Brabham narrowly made it onto the back of the grid. He finished in P12, the last of the running cars. Both cars qualified for the Pacific Grand Prix, although Brabham only ran a few laps before retiring because of a technical issue. Ratzenberger finished the race in P11, again the last of the running cars.
With pressure to qualify for the San Marino Grand Prix, both drivers were eager to make it to the grid. Ratzenberger’s out-lap had not going ideally, running off of the track. Despite the off, Ratzenberger continued for a flying lap. When reaching speeds of over 300km/h, the front wing, which had been slightly damaged during the out-lap, failed and caused Ratzenberger to lose control of the car. Ratzenberger was killed after the car hit a wall with severe speeds. The traditional course of action would have been for both cars to have been withdrawn from the race, but Brabham made the decision to race the following day. The Australian didn’t complete the race after spinning off of the circuit.
Brabham ran the sole car at the following race in Monaco. He qualified in front of other cars, unlike the times before. However, another mechanical failure prevented him from finishing. With a second chassis ready to go in Spain, the team hired Andrea Montermini to drive alongside Brabham. However, the Italian racing driver crashed heavily during practice, leaving the car and himself damaged. Brabham finished in P10.
After another single entry in Canada, the team had the chassis repaired for the French Grand Prix. Jean-Marc Gounon was given the drive and gave Simtek their highest finish in front of his home crowd. The British Grand Prix was the only race in which both cars finished, but the following race in Germany was also the team’s first double retirement. The cars qualified for all of the remaining rounds in the season.
Domenico Schiattarella bought Gounon’s seat for the European Grand Prix, while Taki Inoue bought the seat at his home Grand Prix in Japan. Inoue crashed only three laps into the race. Schiattarella returned for the final round of the championship, but neither car finished the race.
Despite the poor showing in the first season, Simtek resumed their Formula One programme the following season. Rather than providing money to the team, MTV gave the team commercial slots on the MTV channel, which was then given by the team to other sponsors. Brabham left the team to pursue a position in the British Touring Cars Championship.
He was replaced by Jos Verstappen and Schiattarella kept the other seat. Hideki Noda had also paid a deposit to the team, guaranteeing him Schiattarella’s seat for the second half of the season. The drivers suffered mechanical failures in the first three rounds of the season, with a single finish by Schiattarella in Argentina.
However, poor performance was the least of Simtek’s problems. The team had collected quite a large amount of debt during its existence and when a large sponsor left the team, it but the team over the edge. The team skipped the Canadian Grand Prix while it frantically searched for a new sponsor. The existing sponsors on the team had agreed to increase their funding if a new sponsor were found.
No new sponsor was found and an earthquake left Noda’s financial backers without the money to fund his drive. Simtek withdrew from the season, auctioning off its assets to pay creditors. The motorsport research and design portion of the team also declared bankruptcy as a result of the debt.
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.
