The Worst Formula 1 Car Ever Made

so back in 1989 the weird and Wacky World of Formula 1 was undergoing a little bit of a change after having used Tu charge V6 engines for the last few years it was now decided that turbos were the devil's work and that 3.5 L naturally aspirated engines were the way to go V8s v10s whatever you wanted well whatever you can make work up to 12 cylinders anyway and so long as you had air plugs handy this was the best news that any Die Hard of the world could possibly wish for for teams and manufacturers this was also welcomed with open arms I mean what could possibly go wrong well you're all here now so you know that these rule changes brought about the birth of a truly horrific creature so how when why who which somewhere in the hills of Italy Franco rochi was happily enjoying retirement painting canvases and eating his slippers it was a far cry from what he had done for a career designing and building some of the greatest engines that Ferrari had ever made at least right before they blew themselves up but he was happy here it seemed that nothing not even Ani Ferrari himself could lure this man away from retirement but I guess there is some truth to the saying every man has his price and what better to exploit that than an eccentric Italian businessman enter Ernesto Vita a man whose silver tongue is so compelling he could sell salt to a slug V rocked up to R's house with a simple proposal so uh Formula 1 have these new regulations uh I hear you have designs for the W12 engine and you know all these teams are going to want such an engine how's about coming out the retirement and turning them designs into reality could be quite lucrative you know to which rochi with his years of wisdom and experience knowledge about the pitfalls that come with business replied yeah fck it why not and so with rochi Shanghai into service Mr V's plan was simple produce ri's W12 engines sell them to teams up and down the Formula 1 padic and re the profits because of course if there is one thing that embodies the ethos of speed and reliability it's an experimental engine that's been designed by a retired painter produced in Italy and financed by a businessman who's more used to selling counterfeit Armani jackets out of a container in Naples yeah needless to say no one in Formula 1 land was interested in buying these engines and so by the end of 1989 Visa was left with a bunch of engines no buyers and a lot of debt a logical Choice perhaps would be to liquidate all that he had and go back to whatever it was before he did all of this instead he decided you know what if they ain't going to buy him and they're just sitting there then I'll just set up my own team and run them and there logic so he bought a factory near Mona and bought a whole bunch of computers and Dinos to help speed up development of the engines of course those engines were going to need a car to be put in and they didn't have a car right now but as luck would have it there was a Formula One team that was looking to sell their own and so VA purchased the f189 chassis from First racing is this the first time you've ever heard of them well that's okay because there is a reason why no one has ever heard of them but it was a starting point and with former Ferrari engineer Giani morali brought in to Spruce the car up and make the W2 engine fit in it the car would be ready for the 1990 Formula 1 season the chassis now called the l190 and the team's name being a literal English translation of V's name life the irony that was about to follow so the first round was in Phoenix Arizona for Life Racing's first 4ay into Formula 1 they were going to have to pre-qualify with the rest of the peasants nine drivers would go in but only four would come out from the outset things did not look all that promising first off yeah the car was technically ready to race but just a couple of months ago when it was bought from that first racing team we talked about it had failed compulsory crash test set by the Fia what's more the car's designer Ricard deila described it as nothing more than an interesting flower pot which might be the least inflammatory slander that I've ever heard in my life but I to each's own and he hated his creation so much that he went so far as to take legal action to make sure that his name was never connected to this car again which is why he's been mentioned here live and In Living Color on this video so congrats Barbara stri and not bad enough that its own designer had to owned it finding a competent enough driver to Pilot this thing was going to be tricky anyone reputable was either already taken or not stupid enough to drive this death trap because of the low side pods and cockpit made out of tracing paper you would have to be one desperate dude to put yourself into this thing the team's test driver Franco scapini was denied an FIA super license which back in the 1990s I didn't even think was possible but eventually they did find someone to drive the car for that first pre-qualifying session in Arizona signing that driver to a 2-year deal problem was that driver was Gary braam if you don't know why that's a terrible Dreadful awful thing let Google become your worst nightmare in order for the life to get into the race Ron would have needed to set a 133.33 1 or better but he wouldn't do that in fact he wouldn't get anywhere near it after a sum total of four laps thanks to the electronics going native and setting themselves on fire he set a time of 20747 nearly 35 seconds Off the Mark what makes this worse was that this wasn't some Mickey Mouse result that was actually how slow it was so what the hell's going on well it was the heaviest car in the field it was unable to call itself even when it was turned off and also there was the very reason why these geers were here in the first place the engine it was rochi's lifelong dream I think to produce a W12 engine that had all the power in the world whilst also being about the size of a V8 engine now I'm not an engineer so I couldn't tell you exactly what his grandm plan was but what I can say is this in race specification the Honda V10 engine used by McLaren at the time could churn out about 710 horsepower whereas the life W12 could only must 375 horsepower which is fine in a motorized pencil sharpener not so much in a Formula 1 car that already had enough problems as it was at the next round in Brazil the engine produced even less power when it blew itself apart before even completing eting a lap of qualifying after this dearle Gary Bram never raced in Formula 1 again and for that we ought to owe this car and its engine our thanks by this time other Personnel began leaving the team of their own accord on mass I mean who could blame them when you turn up with virtually no spear parts and a car that can't even match lap times of Formula 3 Cars what exactly is the end goal here they were laughed at ridiculed no one wanted to be with them no one wanted to sponsor them and no one wanted to drive for them no one except for Bruno Jacki to a lot of people this was a shock Jack melli was a reputable driver his Drive in Las Vegas a few years ago made him the greatest driver to have ever been a living organism but here when even the Steven SE girls of motor racing wouldn't even touch it he would dare stand up to the task and he hadn't even driven in Formula 1 since 1983 what givs well he said he was interested in the W12 engine designed by rochi liar and in general he just wanted to help the team out give them the benefit of his years of experience and expertise I mean there was that and Mr Vita did promise him tens of thousands of dollars per race so yeah money talks but there might have been something genuine about that he probably did want to see the team get better to improve and improve they did in his first pre-qualifying event at emo jaak melli wasn't 35 seconds slower than the cut off time the Gap was 5 minutes and 47 seconds the culprit a a drive belt for the water and oil pump had run away meaning Jack and melli never went beyond third gear no really as the season went on the car was unacceptably slow never getting within 10 seconds of qualifying for a race Jac Melly lived in constant fear that someone was going to run into the back of him such was the lack of pace in this thing and it definitely wasn't helped by the complete lack of funding for the team while the likes and McLaren had a budget of around about 25 million to play with Mr Vita funded his team to the tune of €50,000 and whatever he to find stuffed under the couch he needed to find more money for the team and eventually he did but there was something wrong with it wasn't [Music] there yes the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse but there was still copious amounts of money just yearning to be dumped into Landfield bound Italian hugs of Medal and even 30 years later that was still the case Petersburg industrial company's chairman Mikel Paskowski was himself a racing Enthusiast and when seeing life's funding problems in Formula 1 he went to Mr Vita and asked how much money you guys got uh um 50,000 well how does 10 to 15 million sound to you of course who could possibly turn that down even if it does mean slapping the red banner on your car even if it does mean selling your soul to the devil even if it does mean that once again it was all fugazi the millions never transpired the company only ever giving life F1 enough money to buy engine that would not self-detonate of course this meant ditching the W12 engine that had caused all the fuss in the first place even rochi had to admit that his darling creation was nothing more than a problem child from the very moment that it became a sentient being now the team had acquired a good reliable engine in the form of a Jud V8 which as it turns out was also kind of broken from the moment they bought it they legally threatened the Laton house team they bought it from who in turn threw up their hands and said all right all right well fix it chill the out the team had no spare parts a car that couldn't qualify if it was the only one racing and almost no one on the payroll in fact even those on the payroll weren't really being paid that much at all Jac Melly was promised a lot of money per race but guess how much he actually got paid by season's end I'll give you just a couple of seconds to guess take your time no you guessed it yet by now other teams in the paddock viewed them as a joke so much so that the big little man of Formula 1 himself Bernie Eon a man normally all about uniting the teams all together as one big happy family back then went to anur deita and essentially said you might want to give this up mate of course they didn't now we there to fight anyway in just two weeks they had rebuilt the car and fit the Jud V8 into it hoping for a better result in Portugal but the Looney Tunes weren't over yet thanks to that new engine the engine cover didn't fit properly and halfway through the session it just flew away and threw them out of the weekend at the next round at Spain it still wound up 18 seconds slower than the qualifying cutoff time and even with a totally different engine it still made the same blow upy effects that the W2 did eventually the writing was on the walls the life F1 team didn't bother turning up for the last two rounds in Japan and Australia the team just abruptly ending operations and Mr Vita Fading Into Obscurity in all its time the l190 never even got close to qualifying and never even got close to the next slowest car ahead of them it was undeniably the worst Formula 1 car ever made and so the moral of the story is that life sucks anyways thank you all for watching [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Josh Revell

Views: 128,263

Keywords: f1, formula 1, life f1, worst f1 car, worst formula 1 car, worst f1 car ever, life f1 team, life l190

Id: kfbbSVFBj5U

Length: 11min 20sec (680 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2024