F1'S WORST DEBUT SEASON? The Story of the British American Racing 1999 Season

Fun fact:
The FIA, who denied BAR to use two different liveries, had Max Mosley as a president. Back in the 1970s this Max Mosley entered his March cars with up to four different liveries in one race!

The last time before BAR in 1999 that a Team used two different liveries was Lotus in round 1 and 2 of the 1994 season.

I remember Michael Schumacher running different color (white) wheels 94ish to his team mates black wheels was that rule changed.

Jacques’ 11 DNF’s to start the season led to one of my favorite Murray Walker quotes.

1999. The last year before Millenium. Everything went absolutely crazy! That 555 was with BAR & Honda to 04 in China session at least and if not in 05 but in 06 it was back? Anyway their best eason without doubt was the 04 season. Shame Villeneuve couldnt be there anymore. I wonder what Jacques would have done with that car but Button was also al lready up in his game.

This is like when Clarkson & May did that DVD finding the worst car, when they started looking for bad cars by companies that should’ve known better.

Craig Bollock, more like

I think what makes BAR's first season so bad was the fact they were bragging about how they would be fighting for race wins right away, yet Villeneuve failed to finish for the first 11 races that season, admittedly some of those dnf's were his fault, but still a bad debut season

Let’s not forget Jacques also wanted to succeed where is father failed, i.e. create his own F1 team.

Jacques should have tried to stay at Williams. I would never forget him breaking down at Imola in 1999!

at least they eventually won a race. What about Toyota that despite having the backing of the best selling brand in the world failed so bad (but at least they defeated Honda at Indy)

Going from Tyrell > BAR > Honda > Brawn > Mercedes is quite the glowup

Fun fact Aidan because I know You're a details man - Internet capable Palmtop computers did exist then

YES! Andretti should buy Haas. Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.

My favorite livery of all time

It didn’t help that they hired a motor bike aero designer to design the car

Asking "Why?" Without slapping head.... Unsub

Before you even said where the reference was from, I respect the Simon Miller saying. Although it was missing the headslap.

The 97 and 98 mondeo btcc cars on reynards cv should've set alarm bells ringing as they were dog shit cars

Wasn’t it Adrian Reynard who claimed they’d win their first race?

Salo getting the best result of the year for the team, as a substitute must have been a bit of yikes for them.

Great livery response to FIA regs but didn't look right. Terrible team, shows that money isn't everything.

Loved the split livery myself. At least the car stood out. Just watched that Zonta accident. Wow, how lucky was he? Flat out up the hill, flipped on hitting the gravel and no halo in those days so he was mega lucky, smashed into the barrier and was left with just a shell of a car as there were no tethers on the wheels either and somehow ended the right way up!! Up there amongst the worst I have seen but still walked away from it.......................... Just!!!

BAR was a team with a lot of hipe around it. But i think the Toyota factory car was worse. A real financial power house in Toyota and very bad decisions. Don't forget USF1 and i think there was a MASTERCARD LOLLA team that did not make the grid.

Those Spa crashes, Zonta rolls his as well but before he hits the wall. Zonta won that one, no question. Even Jock Clear said so.

The car wasn't that bad. They came in the time F1 began to be really complex for begginers. And the engine was unreliable. They could have finished in front of Prost if they were a bit luckier.

we need the story of Vitaly Petrov the first russian to reach f1 and without having a karting experience and the first russian to reach the podium in f1 !

awesome video

Niether pollock or Reynard claimed that bar would win their first race, it was a journalist who was interviewing Reynard who pointed out Reynard's chassis had always won on their debut and asked if the f1 chassis to which Reynard joked 'hopefully'. So its a bit of an urban myth

I remember JV was asked to "tidy up" his appearance (or something like that) Ron Dennis would have had a full-on melt down over JV 😂

I still remember it like yesterday. The dual liveried cars at launch, promises of a debut race win, ex-champion as lead driver and lots of money.

Please do an episode of Wesley Graves and Lewis Hamilton.

If you search something like "1999 BAR test car" you can see the blue/silver/yellow livery in action

I have to disagree. Really they performed as expected. They bought a back marker team, not McLaren or something. 2 year old engines. Only top 6 scored points, reliability was shaky up and down the grid in general. At times JV was fairly quick in 99. The real reason they stand out is because of all the pre-season bravado. If they'd have been less arrogant... Toyota had arguably an ever bigger budget, and whilst they did score 2 points in 2002 they were terrible as well. BAR was a dumb name though, no one was a "BAR fan" surely. That 99 livery, whether on its own or zipped together was AWESOME. I had a scale model of the 99 JV car!

Remember it, all the hype in the magazine's all over the place. JV & HIS New Team. Yet, it was our JB who got the first's.

What was the worst debut season of a team that went on to much greater things?

In 1993 Ligier ran 1 car in a different livery too. You should check it out because its amazing (IMHO)

One amusing thing you missed was the hype around Reynard's history. In every category they'd ever entered up to F1, they'd always won on their debut in a new category; Formula Ford 1600, Formula Ford 2000, Formula Three (1985), Formula Atlantic, Formula 3000 (1988) and CART (1994). There was serious talk about whether they could do it in F1...yeah right :D

I worked with them that year as a supplier (fibre networks in the motorhome & at the track) & the amount of money they wasted was stupendous. There is also the funny story of their state of the art motorhome that had an extending roof to allow them a double decker work space compared to everyone else's single deck. They pissed everyone off so much that at one race, Monza I think, their allotted paddock slot was under a bridge so they couldn't extend the roof causing them loads of grief that weekend.

Don’t care what anyone says, I love that livery

John Players/Gold Leaf is Imperial Tobacco not BAT

They ran with the slogan "A Tradition of Excellence". That is some Donald Trump levels of big headedness there.

I heard, I think on Bring Back V10s, that the Supertec engines vibrated a lot and Williams and Benetton had a year to figure out the frequency they should avoid so their components didn’t get shaken apart.

I did not expect a random Simon Millar/Whatculture reference in one of your vids

Toyota debut beats it by far

BAR rolls "Worst Debut Season in F1 History," asked to leave racing.

Do a video on Wesley Graves its a really interesting story and id love to see it.

It is a shame they couldn't run both liveries. The 555 one is a bit of a motorsport classic, and the I think the lucky strike one was cool (I think I may be in a minority)

BAR certainly under delivered during that first season, especially with the poor reliability.

But as you pointed out, if the modern points system has been in place they’d have scored a handful of points over the season, which by today’s standards would be seen as amazing for a new team.

I remember a crazy rumor at the time that Pollock was out to form a "super team" with Villeneuve teamed with, of all people, Jeff Gordon. I don't think this was ever remotely serious and probably something just to grab headlines in the US, but if there was ever any truth to it, Gordon and his management team proved to be much cannier in making their career decisions than Jacques Villeneuve. Gordon always was vocal about his love for Formula 1--as a fan. Maybe at some point in his early development, as a teenager, if he had been introduced to Formula cars and gone through the training ladder, he could have been a star in F1, but that was never going to happen on any planet called Earth, and by the late 90s, he was in his late 20's and not dumb enough to think he could make such a radical career switch.