Footwork & Porsche……things don’t always go as planned…..

In the late 1980’s the Arrows Formula One team produced some excellent race cars; pedalled by Derek Warwick and Eddie Cheever the team were at the sharper end of the grid than many of their rivals including two podiums for Eddie, and 8th, 10th, 11th and 12th places in the drivers championship over the two seasons.

Derek in particular had an opportunity to win a couple of races , Brazil and Canada in 1989 which only bad luck prevented him from achieving.

Porsche meanwhile had achieved three drivers titles, two constructors titles and 25 wins in their partnership with McLaren (supported financially by TAG) between 1984 and 1986, alongside a phenomenal record at Le Mans scoring 7 consecutive race wins with their 956 and 962 models.

On paper at least the announcement that Arrows / Footwork and Porsche would be partnering up for the 1991 season was a positive one, both parties signing a four year deal to work together in Formula One.

Team founder Jackie Oliver sold his shares to investor Wataru Ohashi, but remained as Team Principal as the Japanese businessman renamed the team Footwork. Now to be known as Footwork-Porsche the engines for the cars were created by Porsche engineer Hans Mezger who had worked on the flat 12 engines in the legendary 917 cars in the 1970’s.

The engine was late in being ready due to a number of issues, but there was a more fundamental problem. The weight of the unit was some 50 kilos heavier than the Ferrari V12 and 30 kilos heavier than the Honda V12 engine. The weight was sufficient an issue that the team needed to modify the FA12 chassis it was intended to be fitted into, so hasty modifications to the previous seasons A11 car (the A11C) were needed to ensure the team were able to race at the season opening race in the USA.

Combined with a heavy engine, power output was also less than its rivals Honda and Ferrari, and the modified A11C cars of Michele Alboreto and Alex Caffi really struggled around the streets of Phoenix in qualifying. Only Michele got into the race in 25th position retiring at around half distance.

The next race in Brazil saw both cars fail to make the grid – in two races the 1991 season was a major step backwards in terms of competitiveness compared with the previous two seasons. Even the arrival of the 1991 car, the FA12 didn’t show a marked improvement as the drivers struggled once again at the San Marino race neither driver managing to qualify.

Three races later and the team had managed to qualify four times, but by this time the relationship had simply come to an end. Footwork developed a modified chassis to be powered by a Ford DFR engine, and this revised car was used from the French Grand Prix onwards.

The relationship was more formally ended at the Japanese Grand Prix in October; the season stats for the Footwork – Porsche partnership make terrible reading. In 12 possible starts the drivers couldn’t qualify 8 times, and the 4 races that they started all led to race retirements.

Whilst it is easy to be an armchair critic, especially 30 years later, clearly the partnership failed for a number of reasons. What feels more important is the massive impact this had on the respective parties; Footwork (who later reverted to their Arrows name) lost a huge amount of momentum, and it could be argued that the team never fully recovered.

Infamously the team holds the record of the most races entered without a win; some 382 starts to be exact, and with the exception of some notable drives by Derek Warwick (in his second spell with the team), Damon Hill, Mika Salo, Jos Verstappen and Heinz-Harold Frentzen the team made very little impact for the remainder of their time in F1.

One pole position, nine podiums and a total of 164 points are all significant achievements over the course of the Arrows /Footwork journey, but could they have achieved more? The period from 1992 to 1995 in particular saw really good cars being produced on relatively small budgets, but their main rivals all took steps further up the grid over this period.

Porsche meanwhile has never returned to Formula One, and maybe the sport is poorer for this being the case ? They have returned to sportscars and been successful at Le Mans and around the world, but there must be a small sense of regret even now that they couldn’t build on a rich vein of form in the mid-1980’s.

Sometimes the potential F1 marriage of teams and engine suppliers just doesn’t get realised, and Footwork and Porsche is typical of these type of situations, proving that there are many factors that need to come together to lead to results.

Maybe its most telling that the swap from Porsche power to an engine who’s heritage dated back to 1967 actually improved their competitiveness shows just how poor the situation had become.