The Worst Cars In F1 History

F1 have been around since 1950 and produced since then quite a number of bad or flat out awful cars. After a quick research, we discovered that there have been 150 times when a team failed to score a single point in a season. That just tells you how many bad cars have been made in the sport.

We are going to list the 10 worst F1 cars ever. Before starting, since a lot of these cars failed to qualify for races most of the time, you need to know about the 107 % rule. Basically, this rule states that during the first phase of qualifying, if a driver fails to set a lap time at least within 107% of the fastest lap time he would then not be allowed to start the race without the permission of the race stewards. The aim of the rule is to set and keep a high standard in F1 racing by avoiding slow cars made by teams with no budget to enter races. It also serves as a safety measure as having a very slow car in a race could be dangerous.

Be warned that this article can be slightly ironical at times. So let’s start.

10 – Kojima KE007

The Kojima KE007 was not very successful but it had style. This car only participated in the 1976 Japanese Grand Prix as it was designed by Kojima Engineering, one of the few Japanese teams in F1 at the time. The car realized the 10th time during qualifying but was subject to a problem with its tyres making it dead last by the 25th lap. Kojima stopped racing in F1 after 1977 and repeated failures.

Fun fact: the fastest lap during the 1976 Japanese Grand Prix was attributed to the Kojima KE007. That time was officially set on a lap where the Kojima was overtaken by 3 cars… The Japanese officials, hurt by the last place of their homemade car, lied on the set fastest lap to save appearances.

9 – Lyncar 006

Meet the Lyncar 006. This car participated in 3 F1 seasons and only managed to qualify once. It obtained the 26th spot during that race and finished 17th of the 1975 British Grand Prix. During that race, the car had technical problems and its driver, John Nicholson, finished 5 laps behind Fittipaldi, the winner. After 3 seasons of very successful racing Lyncar withdrew from the F1 world.

8 – BRM P207

Used by British Racing Motors during the 1977 season, the P207 qualified only one time after trying to participate to 9 races. The car was then only used during the 1977 Brazilian Grand Prix where it broke on lap 1 due to overheating. The car was so slow that its qualifying time for the only race it participated in was 6 seconds behind the car just in front. After this magnificent display fo performance, a British journalist claimed that he was ashamed of being British. This infamous Brazilian Grand Prix was the last race of BRM in F1. Once a major team, BRM did not survive that humiliation.

7 – Kauhsen WK001

The Kauhsen WK001 was used by the Willi Kauhsen Racing Team during the 1979 season. A car this weirdly beautiful could have done better. Willi Kauhsen, the founder of the team, was so passionate about motorsports that he decided to start his own team. Some early designs errors forced the team to change the chassis several times. With their limited budget, they were never able to fully finish and produce a competitive car. During 1979, the team tried to qualify for 2 Grand Prix but failed to do so by realizing the slowest lap both times. After these failures, and a lack of funding the team closed and the WK001 is just remembered as a bad car with special aesthetics.

6 – Maki F101

The Maki F101 was used by the Maki Engineering Racing Team during the 74 season. The design was quite poor. The V8 Ford Cosworth engine equipping the car was subject to a lot of overheating hence the air intake above the cockpit. The design also did not allow for the rear wing to function properly. After 4 attempts to participate in a race, and four failures, the team withdrew from F1. The team’s designers went on to work with Kojima, another Japanese success.

5 – Eurobrun ER188B

EuroBrun Racing used this car in 1988. The car’s chassis was derived from an 84 Alfa 184. Which means that upon its release, the car was severely outdated. Everything about the car was old for its time: the engine was already used by Williams on the previous season, other crucial technical evolutions were also missing. The ER188B never managed to qualify during the 88 season. One time its engine even blew up during qualifying.

4 – Coloni C4

We discovered some bad cars before, but now we are going into another dimension: the plain catastrophic cars. Aesthetically, the Coloni C4 was decent. But that did not keep F1 fans to design this car as one of the worst ever made. During the 1991 season, the Scuderia Coloni only produced one chassis with the help of the students from the University of Perugia (and that tells a lot about the means they had). The car never actually qualified for a race, but worst than that: it never actually prequalified for the qualifications. At the end of the season, the team was sold to Andra Sassetti who founded the Andrea Moda Formula Team. Another success story…

3 – Andrea Moda S921

So, were where we? After the magnificent season of Colona in 1991, the team was bought by Italian businessman Andrea Sassetti. He tried first to participate in races with the old Coloni C4 cars. He did not know that the FIA imposed a new chassis for every new team that entered F1. He had then 3 weeks to redesign a car from scratch. The result: a shitty car obviously. During the Spanish Grand Prix in 1992, the engine broke after 18 meters in prequalifying. The car was so bad and the team so unprofessional that when Sassetti was arrested for fraud, the FIA seized the opportunity to ban the team from F1.

2 – Life L190

The L190 was used by Life Racing Engines over a single season in 1990. The chassis was an evolution of the First L189 which was already not a very successful car. The particularity of this car is that it was powered by a revolutionary Rocchi Life W35 engine which, as it turned out, was underpowered and very heavy resulting in the car being incredibly slow: it was 65 km/h (40 mp/h) slower than any other car of the grid on long straights. The car never qualified for a race and the team quit F1 before the end of the 90 season.

1 – Lola T97/30

Initially destined to be used during the 98 season, the car was used as early as 97 due to pressure from the team’s main sponsor: MasterCard. This resulted in a very hasty and poor design. The car was not tested on track or in any wind tunnel. After the 98 Australian Grand Prix were both cars failed to qualify, MasterCard left the project. Then the team directly quit F1.

The car was equipped with a poor and outdated engine, had a wrongly positioned gearbox and well, non-existent aerodynamics. The chassis of the Lola T97/30 was derived from the T93/30 which as its name shows, was designed in 1993. The car was outdated on every front. It remains for many as one of the worst if not the worst F1 car in history.