March / Leyton House……the Adrian Newey influence…….

March Engineering was a Formula One team established in 1969 by Max Mosley, Robin Herd, Alan Rees and Graham Coaker – their mission to establish a Grand Prix team and supply cars to other teams.

They won races in the 1970’s, produced cars which competed in Formula One, Two, Three and Can-Am. Raced by amongst others Ronnie Peterson, Niki Lauda and many more they became known for building solid racing cars ideal for privately run teams, but rarely championship winning machinery.

The team continued to have cars on the Formula One grid until the early 1980’s (although they were successful on Formula Two / Formula 3000) but between 1983 and 1986 they were not raced at the highest level of motorsport.

All this changed in 1987 as the team, now sponsored by Leyton House, emerged back into Formula One initially with a one car team driven by Ivan Capelli. In the first race of the season the team raced a hybrid chassis, based on their Formula 3000 car, before using the 871 car for the remainder of the season.

With their turquoise colours the team made a colourful impression in their first season, even if the results were relatively poor. Six race finishes, a six place and therefore point scoring finish at Monaco the season highlight, but over the summer of 1987 Adrian Newey joined the team having previously worked on March’s Indycar project, and for a short period of time for the Haas Lola F1 team.

Newey brought a very aerodynamically driven design philosophy to the team and his first creation, the 881 Judd powered car was almost revolutionary amongst its competitors. In the last season of turbo powered cars, the normally aspirated March 881 was the only non-turbo car to lead a race, over the course of the season the team scored 22 points (the highest by the March team since 1971!) and Newey had literally moved the goalposts of F1 design.

Almost every other team took his design lead for their 1989 cars, a season which wasn’t quite as successful for March and Newey, but a promotion to the teams Technical Director led to the 1990 car, the CG901 which has more than a passing resemblance to his future design the Williams FW14. Initial results were poor, and Newey was fired from the team, but the chassis again Judd powered was leading the French Grand Prix until a misfire allowed Alain Prost to take the lead three laps from the flag.

Both drivers initially struggled with the Newey designed cars where aerodynamic design compromised the space within the chassis for the drivers! On smooth fast slowing tracks the cars performed incredibly well, especially when you consider their Judd engines were short on horsepower compared to the Honda, Ferrari and Renault powered opposition.

A lack of front running engine, alongside financial pressures in the early 1990’s saw the team dip from this small run of front running form to become a team needing to bring in drivers with a cheque to keep the team going. From a brief height of leading the 1990 French Grand Prix the team slipped, via a slight renaissance with Karl Wendlinger on board , to a team driven by a series of pay-drivers in 1992 which resulted in the team withdrawing from the sport.

1 point in 1991 and 3 points scored in their final season was a sad end, especially as their former designer went on to major F1 success with Williams, McLaren and Red Bull, but for a few seasons the sight of the turquoise cars brought more than simply a new colour scheme to the sport, and for many fans they are a great loss to the sport. Where could they have been with Newey designing cars powered by a works Renault engine for example ?

Tenuous as it might sound the car destined to be raced by the team in 1992 came to life as the Lotus 107 (through designer Chris Murphy who left March and joined Lotus) so maybe the March / Leyton House story continued driven by Mika Hakkinen and Johnny Herbert ?

Tenuous family tree style Formula One links might be the subject of a future blog, but for now I’m keen to acknowledge another bright spark in the Formula One world which brought joy to many fans over a short period of the late 1980’s / early 1990’s and fundamentally changed the shape of Formula One design forever.