Looks fast, but looks can be deceiving

The 1992 Formula One season saw Nigel Mansell dominate the championship in the Williams-Renault FW14B, beating his teammate Riccardo Patrese and the rest of his competitors in his tyre tracks. Nine wins from 16 races, fourteen pole positions, eight fastest laps......effortless......

Clearly the car, a highly developed piece of Formula One weaponry was significantly faster than any car opposing teams could develop, and the car still looks quick even when standing still. Over the years there have been a number of cars developed which have the appearance of being super quick whilst sat in the garage; Renaults RE30 from the early 1980's, pretty much any JPS logo'd Lotus, the 1991 Jordan .....I'm sure the list is long, and everyone will have their favourites to add.

However there are some cars which only look quick, usually for a whole host of reasons, and its fair to say that as a fan of the Formula One underdog there are a number of cars from the late 1980's and early 1990's, in a time when cars from different teams still just about looked different from one another, that had the looks which their performance didn't match.

Whilst Tyrrell started the trend to raise the nose of the Formula One car with their 018 and 019 models, driven quickly by a certain young Jean Alesi in 1989 and 1990 , especially around the streets of Phoenix Arizona, other manufacturers followed the trend; notably Benetton and Jordan in 1991 with their own take on creating a clean full width front wing to maximise downforce.

1992 saw yet more teams raise their noses, so to speak, and at the back of the grid creating F1 history no team looks to create was Andrea Moda. Formed from the ashes of the Coloni team, they bought a chassis design previously pencilled for BMW in 1990/1 (and whilst details are sketchy to say the least clearly BMW didn't appear in Formula One at the time), then ran an infamously dreadful attempt to compete.....in the same year that Mansell was cruising to his championship, Andrea Moda were literally bringing the sport close to disrepute!

However slow the cars were, and the reasons behind this are too many to mention, and are also documented extensively on the world wide web, in my opinion the design of the car looked incredible. No raised nose, but a curved high nose (which looked great in black).....which almost became the chassis for Bravo F1 of 1993 (another team that nearly appeared in F1), an evolution of which did arrive in 1994 as the Simtek F1 team. In 1992 black or 1994 purple the lines of the cars look, to me at least, fast standing still.

Clearly finances, management, engine choices, engineering, drivers and the million or so other factors that need to be brought together didn't allow Andrea Moda or Simtek to be front running teams (although designer Nick Wirth has a record of designing or being involved in a number of front running cars and teams over the subsequent years) both teams and their respective cars look fast if nothing else. Clearly looks alone don't make a Formula One car fast.

1992 saw Andrea Moda, Brabham (a previous world championship winning team!) and Fondmetal teams disappear from the grid, and like a great many teams since the championship began in 1950 getting a car to the grid is a significant achievement; winning the championship, especially in the style that Nigel Mansell and Williams did that season shows that there is a huge difference between joining the grid and beating the grid. Both feel like signficant achievements, but the record books tend to tell the story of those drivers and teams that win.