The content details the disastrous and short-lived history of the Life F1 Team, an Italian outfit in the 1990 Formula 1 season, highlighting its ambitious but ultimately failed attempt to compete with a unique W12 engine and a poorly developed chassis.
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Alright, we already know the introduction.
In the latest entry of "The Worst Teams in Formula 1" we spoke about Andrea Moda,
which started the 'wonderful' story of Scuderia Coloni.
These two Italian teams were the stars of some of the worst moments in the F1 Circus.
But they weren't the only to do something like that.
In fact, they had enough 'rivals' in their own country.
In our hashtag we asked you which team should be the next star of this mini-series and the result was unanimous.
Today we'll tell you the story of one of the worst teams in the 90's: Life F1 Team.
We're not leaving Italy even if we wanted to, because the next stars of the show are found again in the Italian Peninsula.
Enter Ernesto Vita, from the region of Modena. An Italian entrepreneur who wanted to be a driver.
His family stopped him but he loved motorsports so much that
he was able to make some valuable contacts in the racing world.
One of them was Franco Rocchi, from the Emilia-Romagna. He was one of the most successful engineers
in the history of the Scuderia Ferrari.
The man left the team in 1979 after being one of the
brilliant minds behind the engine that gave the Italian team 4 titles in the 70's.
After he ended a 30-year-long career with Ferrari due to heart-related problems,
he focused on his hobbies like painting. But also on his investigations on the W12 (not V12) engines.
The advantage these engines had was, in theory, being as compact as V8 engines and as powerful as V12's.
But they were a lot more complex and less reliable.
Rocchi was investigating further, because he had already started some projects with W engine configurations
but some regulation changes had prevented them from being relevant.
In the end, his investigations bore fruit: after a further change in the regulations,
the possibility of seeing a W12 engine in Formula 1 became a reality again.
So this would be the moment when Franco Rocchi and Ernesto Vita shared the idea and decided to form an alliance.
The name didn't take much effort, really. They took a dictionary, put "Vita" in English
and there came Life. So there we go, Life Racing Engines.
Throughout 1988, Life got down to work and in December from that year they finished their first W12 engine.
It was shorter and supposedly lighter than the other engines that used to race at the time,
so they tried to contact with some teams to provide their engines for 1989.
But there was a problem with many other engine suppliers.
Ferrari, Renault, Honda, Judd and Ford-Cosworth saw two new makers join the fray; Yamaha and Lamborghini,
which were far more eye-catching than Life.
Vita and Rocchi had a meeting then and had to decide how to proceed
since in 1989 they were not going to be in F1.
And they asked themselves... "How can we convince a team to use our engines?"
"Taking it to the track, let them see us racing"
"And if no team wants to use it, what do we do?"
"Well, we just make our own team, use our own engine and we join the championship"
And so the Life racing team was born.
To use an engine, they needed a chassis.
And since the team was short on budget, they bought the failed FIRST Racing project (Now with front suspension!).
This team had been founded by former driver Lamberto Leoni with Ricardo Divila as chief designer
with an eye to taking part in the 1989 season.
Divila is a solid designer but while building the car, he was offered a position with Ligier
and so the Brazilian had to hand over the project to another company to finish it.
The designers who worked on it were not bad either and in fact, they had experience with F1 teams.
But the result was terrible.
They created a monster.
Divila was scared of the result.
A suspicious steering column, a defective front suspension, problems with the gearbox,
parts that did not fit... when he saw the car, it must have been like a mad scientist being terrified of their creation.
In fact, he undertook legal action to remove his name from the project.
Of course, from within the team they went: "Nah, it's all good" and they managed to get
the car on track in Bologna but then came the FIA crash test, which tests the strength of the car in case of an accident.
And it went like this:
Okay, maybe not that much, but the thing is it didn't pass the test
and of course they were not allowed to race.
And just as they were thinking the investment would be in vain, don Ernesto Vita came out of nowhere:
VITA: I'll ofer 25 lire!
LEONI: Sold.
He probably didn't buy it for 25 lire but the thing is the chassis came to be owned by our man.
And from that moment onwards, magic flowed.
After making a few quick fixes weeks before the start of the season, the newly dubbed F190
managed to pass the Crash Test and became eligible to be raced in the 1990 F1 season.
The driver the team chose to race with... that, was Gary Brabham,
son of the three-time world champion, Jack Brabham.
The 29-year-old Australian driver had just won the British F3000 championship and so when he saw an offer from an F1 team
with former Ferrari employees, he didn't think twice and signed.
And he signed despite Divila insisting on the fact that the car was not safe and
even less if it was supposed to go above 220km/h.
It takes a special type of bravery to go forward even when the designer tells you not to do it but, oh well.
After some testing at Vallelunga and Monza, a grand total of 6 people including Brabham himself
travelled to the first event of the season,
the United States Grand Prix.
- The new Life team made their debut today in the championship by taking part in pre-qualifying.
As our viewers know, this is the session where new teams fight with the slowest and... and...
hey, there was supposed to be a Life here, right?
It's just I've been waiting half an hour here and...
oh there it goes. I'll go on.
The Life team made their debut in the championship...
bloody hell, this looks like the first slow-motion camera in history.
Commentators may have been this surprised with the debut of Life.
On Friday, at 8am, Gary took the car out at the street circuit of Phoenix and he clocked a time
of 2 minutes and 7 seconds, finishing 35 seconds behind the fastest driver in pre-qualifying.
It completed 4 laps and ended up coming back with an engine problem.
What was the problem with the W12?
Well, it was an awful engine.
Remember the supposed advantage of being compact and lighter than a V12 but just as powerful?
Kind of like: "As light as a motorcycle, as powerful as a truck"?
Well, it was the other way around. As 'Light' as a truck and as powerful as a moped.
The engine weighed an excess of 200 kg and because of reliability concerns, the power oscillated between 360 and 475 hp.
Yeah, less than a F3000 engine.
In theory it should have been an engine capable of 650 hp but if they pushed it, it broke.
And the car design was not helping, since the car had been originally designed for another engine
and this brought some issues with the air intake, among other things.
Two weeks later they arrived at Brazil for the second GP of the year but this time
they didn't manage to complete a single lap.
In fact, they didn't even manage to start it.
In a preemptive hommage to Perry McCarthy and Andrea Moda,
Gary Brabham took the track and stopped after 400 metres because of an issue with the push rod.
The Australian driver criticised the team for being unable to replace it in one whole hour.
The problem was that Life was not exactly swimming in spare parts.
Beyond the 5 people and driver, the team had only one chassis and two engines.
So as soon as troubles arised with any accident or engine issue, they ran out of spares.
So they could not take risks with the engines or chassis since their weekend was likely to end within 1 minute.
After the second GP, Brabham threatened to leave the team, demanding to stop using their own engines and switch to Judd.
And since they were obviously not going to drop their own powerplant, the Australian left
and he earned himself a round of applause and the consolation prize.
From then on, the team tried to find a driver to take his place but that proved to be a difficult task
because the car performance was so bad nobody wanted to drive it.
Vita wanted to sign Franco Scapini, a driver from F3000, but the FIA rejected his Superlicense due to lack of experience.
They contacted German driver Bernd Schneider and even invited him to their HQ but the answer was a resounding: "Ew, no".
In the meantime, chief designer and technical director Gianni Marelli left the team and a rumour started to
go around, saying Goodyear did not want to give them their tires.
Mr. Bernie Ecclestone, seeing how badly things were turning, decided to meet Ernessto Vita.
He basically asked the Italian to surrender and apologise for the damage done.
But Vita went on to say no because they would receive money from some sponsors and everything was going to change...
which of course was as fake as a three dollar bill.
But the team persevered and they actually managed to get out of a pretty dicey situation.
First, they found a driver in Bruno Giacomelli, test driver for Leyton House and a man who Vita knew well from the past.
And then, they found sponsorship. A Soviet company called Pilowski
which promised 20 million dollar and exotic materials such as titanium and carbon fiber partsmateriales
since they worked in the aerospatial industry.
From now on, Life would have an important Soviet component.
On top of that, Ernesto Vita managed to sell 67% of the team to an industrialist,
so he was able to get quite a bit of money that was put to good use for the future.
Despite that, the team continued to be terrible and when they made it to San Marino, they proved it.
Giacomelli saw the water pump broke down and the oil pump fail and he could only complete a lap
in 7 minutes and 16 seconds. Bad time better than no time!
But then came Monaco and the miracle happened.
*Incoming joke from the previous Worst F1 Teams video*
Historically, Monaco has allowed good drivers on poor machines to shine and so this was the team's opportunity.
Giacomelli was finally able to complete a few laps without car trouble and for the first time in the whole season,
he managed to get past pre-qualifying...
wait, no, these lines are from Andrea Moda.
*Paper rustling*
Pardon me.
Life?
Wow, no way.
How was that thing ever going to qualify?
Giacomelli did manage to do some laps without engine issues but the car was terrible
so they finished 14 seconds behind the fastest car in pre-qualifying.
Oh, and the engine did break in the end.
After that, Vita remembered the words of his former driver, begging him to switch engines, and said: "Hey, maybe he was right"
so he started looking for Judd engines. In the meantime, more of the usual chaos for Life.
In Canada, they finished last as Peter Wyss came on board as new technical director of a boat that was sinking like the Titanic.
In Mexico, they had a time of 4 minutes and 7 seconds while the faster drivers in pre-qualifying were around 1:25.
Aaaaand the engine broke, too.
In France, they didn't even go to the track because the engine broke again.
And then more of the same in Great Britain, 15 seconds adrift...
and a broken engine.
For the German Grand Prix, the team finally gave up and resolved to get a Judd engine as soon as possible
but it wasn't after the Italian Grand Prix three races later, when they finally got it.
Up until that point they had to continue with the W12 and, well, it was the same really.
Life arrived at the Autodromo de Estoril in Portugal with their shiny new Judd engine that had been bought through some dodgy business.
After much work, they managed to mount the engine on the car but when it was time to go on track, they realised the engine cover did not fit.
They placed it somehow and sent the car out. And during the installation lap,
the car accelerated and the engine cover...
yep, flied away.
And since they only had one, they had to rush to bring it back, creatin the chance for this legendary picture.
The engine cover definitely didn't fit but if they didn't take part in pre-qualifying, there was a real risk of a 200.000 dollar fine.
So it was then, that Life starred in the best showing in the whole history of Formula 1.
The only thing they needed was taking part in the session, meaning exiting the pit-lane.
They saw the pit-lane and main straight were on a slope... and they had the best idea ever.
Indeed, they pushed the car down and making use of the slope, Giacomelli actually reached the track
and ran a few metres without using the engine.
That way, they were able to say they had technically taken part in the session.
Crisis averted and some laughs were had.
After a test in Italy before heading for the Spanish Grand Prix, they managed to adapt the engine cover.
But in Jerez, despite the Judd engine, things didn't improve.
They were last again, more than 20 seconds behind the fastest pre-qualifying driver.
Finally, after 14 agonising GP's, Ernesto Vita started thinking that maybe, just maybe they were not ready for Formula 1.
And since the last two races (Japan and Australia) were far away and would have cost a lot, they decided not to attend the events.
They knew they couldn't perform well, they accepted the 400.000 dollar fine and Life's history in F1 finished then and there.
Ernesto Vita announced plans to continue in 1991 with more money, more employees... but nobody wanted to go on.
Giacomelli left, the Soviet sponsors never paid and also left and finally Vita realised his dream was impossible.
So at the end of the year, he decided to close shop.
Life, just like Coloni, was a project that started out of sheer passion. They wanted to show the fruit of their labour.
The team had good people with lots of knowledge about engines and F1 in general. But succeeding in Formula 1 is never easy.
Add to that the many irresponsible actions they took and the result was this:
the widely considered as the worst team in the history of Formula 1.
The team that will star in the fourth episode of this series will be Lambo / Modena Team from 1991.
You can continue to suggest other teams for the fifth episode under the hashtag #EfeunoLife.
And I hope this time around it'll come sooner.
That was all for today! If you liked the video, give a like and leave a comment. Cheers!
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