Preparing a car for a motorsport championship is an exceptionally difficult, expensive and precise task.
Every single little detail from the ratios of the motorsport gears to every single slight component needs to be perfect, as the difference between victory and last place is often exceptionally slight.
In Formula One, the pinnacle of open-wheel racing, this distinction is even more pronounced, given how many teams have come in believing they had money, technological innovation and management on their side, only to find out just how hard F1 really can be for the unprepared.
However, whilst many teams languish at the back of the grid relying on sponsorship support from drivers to get by, some teams have it even worse.
Life Racing Engines
Owned, operated by and named after founder Ernesto Vita, Life was a single-car team intended to showcase a novel W12 engine bought from Franco Rocchi, a former Ferrari engineer by quickly buying a chassis from an F1 team that never was and entering the F1 season.
The plan was to show off the new engine and hope that people would be interested in buying it for the following season, however, the car was hopelessly unreliable, dangerously slow and with a cockpit so dangerous that it was once described as an “interesting flowerpot”.
During the era of pre-qualifying, when only 30 cars would even make it to Saturday’s qualifying session, Life failed to qualify in all 14 races it attempted, at one point posting a lap time at Imola of over seven minutes.
Mastercard Lola
At one point Eric Broadley’s Formula One racing outfit was seen as so obviously destined for success that the cars appeared in the instruction manual for the Formula One ‘97 Playstation game, only for the project to turn out to be a complete disaster.
The issue was that sponsor Mastercard insisted that the team compete a year earlier than intended, which meant that the team’s plan to develop their own engine was scrapped, any potential testing time was scrapped and the car was cobbled together with bits intended for IndyCar racing.
Thanks to the “Delatraz Rule”, either car qualified for the Australian Grand Prix, and days before the next round in Brazil, the company had withdrawn from the championship.
