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The Paddock
2 0 0 0 t e a m s
22 + 23  |
 Lucky Strike BAR |
| Formula One record: [1-1-2000] |
| Starts |
16 |
| Poles |
0 |
| Wins |
0 |
| Constructors' titles |
none |
| Drivers' titles |
none |
| 1999 season: |
| 11th, no points (Jacques Villeneuve/Ricardo Zonta). |
Placings: seventh x1, eighth x3, ninth x2, 10th x1, 12th x1, 13th x1, 15th x1, retired x21, no start x1 |
| History: |
| 1999 |
Team established on carcass of Tyrrell team after takeover financed by British American Tobacco. |
| Prospects for the 2000 season: |
 BAR 02 car, powered by Honda V10. |
| The team are chastened after a disastrous debut season in which they promised much and delivered nothing. This time they have ditched the Supertec engines and teamed up with Honda. The package should bring significant improvements, notably more power from the Honda V10, and BAR have already completed more than 8,000 kilometres of pre-season testing -- equivalent to a full season of grands prix. This will be make or break season for Canadian 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve, who has said he will leave rather than experience another set of results like those of 1999. |
| Drivers: |
Jacques Villeneuve  |
| Aged 28, Canadian. |
| Races 65, wins 11, poles 13, points to date 180, 1997 - Formula One world champion with Williams |
| 1999 record |
BAR, unclassified - eighth x1, ninth x1, 10th x1, 15th x1, retired x12.
|
Jacques raced in the Italian Formula Three series from 1989 until 1991. He ranked 6th overall, despite not winning a single race.
He moved to the Japanese Formula Three in 1992, finishing runner up after winning three times
Moving to the North American Toyota Atlantic series, he won five times on tracks that he had never seen before.
He moved swiftly to Indy Car racing, and was rookie of the year in 1994. This same year saw him take second place in the Indianapolis 500 and the win at Road America, for the Forsythe team, ranking 6th overall for the season.
1995 saw him take the Indy title, as well as winning the Indianapolis 500.
Jacques made his Formula One debut with Williams in 1996, almost winning his first race, after qualifying in pole, but teammate Damon Hill took the victory.
His first victory came at the European Grand Prix, followed by wins in Britain, Hungary, and Portugal. He chased his teammate all the way to the final round of the season, but an accident saw Jacques out of the race, and Damon Hill drive on to take the title.
In 1997, he won three out of the first six races, then a further four wins, saw him one point behind Michael Schumacher at the final race in Jerez. Controversy surrounded this race, but Schumacher retired, and Jacques drove the ailing Williams over the line in third, but it was enough to clinch the title.
Losing the Renault engine for 1998, Williams never seemed to be able to match the speed of their competitors, and the highest place Jacques finished was third, for both Germany and Hungary. He finished 5th overall with 21 points.
1999 saw him as the number one driver for the revamped Tyrrell team, BAR, where he hoped to reaffirm his status as World Champion for a second year, but things didn't go as he had hoped, with the majority of the season seeing him retiring from race after race. A few good qualifying sessions didn't follow through to fruition and he finished the season pointless.
The year 2000 sees him remain with BAR and together with the added power of the Honda engines in the new season, he hopes to see victory once again.
[More] |
 Ricardo Zonta |
| Aged 23, Brasil. |
| Races 12, no wins, no poles, points to date 0 |
| 1999 record |
BAR, unclassified - eighth x1, ninth x1, 12th x1, 13th x1, retired x8, absent for four races due to injury. |
Ricardo won his first kart race in 1987 at the age of 11, and won his first championship in 1991, at age 15.
In 1993 he went to Formula Chevrolet and joined Formula Three in 1994 to became the South American and Brazilian champion in 1995 with 6 victories.
1996 saw Ricardo in F3000, with the Draco Engineering team of Italy coming fourth overall with two wins, one in Mugello and another in Estoril.
He joined the Super Nova team of Great Britain in 1997, and despite being disqualified in Silverstone, he won the Championship, with victories at the Nurburgring, Hockenheim and Mugello.
1998 he was with the AMG Mercedes-Benz team in the FIA Grand Touring Championship. Together with teammate Klaus Ludwig, he clinched the GT1 Championship title in Laguna Seca with 77 points, finishing ahead of the AMG Mercedes-Benz's first team of Schneider-Webber who had 69 points.
The 99 season saw his debut in Formula One with British American Racing, (BAR) partnering Jacques Villenueve. The season that followed did little to help his self-esteem. He was injured early in the season, forced to sit on the sidelines and watch as substitute driver, Mika Salo, gave the team it's first finish. He finished his first season in Formula One without points but with the new Honda engine expected for the 2000 season, here's hoping he will have some well deserved success.
[More] |
| BAR in 2000: |
If there is one team on the Albert Park grid that has more to prove than any other, it is British American Racing. Launched last year on a tidal wave of hubris and an avalanche of hype, BAR, far from taking the sport by storm, turned out to be the dud team of the year. So poor was the performance and reliability of its cars that they failed to finish with monotonous regularity and BAR, despite its high expectations, finished the season without managing to secure a single point.
For a team that boasted Jacques Villeneuve, the spiky French Canadian who was world champion in 1997 in a Williams, that was clearly unacceptable.
Team chiefs admitted by the end of the season - after much-publicised reports of internal tension - that they had underestimated the size of the task involved in entering Formula One. Winning races takes more than rhetoric and ambition, and even BAR's huge sponsorship budget could not help it produce cars that were effective on the track.
The team sticks with the same driver line-up this year, with Villeneuve as team leader and Brazilian Ricardo Zonta as his number two.
But the big difference is that instead of the less-than-spectacular Supertec engine, the BAR cars will be driven by Honda powerplants, with BAR essentially becoming the Japanese car giant's factory team.
It is a welcome return to the sport for Honda, which dominated F1 in the late 1980s when it teamed up with McLaren, winning a series of world championships with Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.
Having achieved all it could, the Japanese car company switched its considerable motor sport budget and resources to the United States Champ Car category, where again it didn't take long to come to the fore, winning several championships (including last year's with Colombian rookie Juan Montoya successful in Ganassi Racing's Honda-powered Reynard).
It was that very same Adrian Reynard, also a BAR co-director, who, perhaps not surprisingly, predicted an upturn in the team's performance this year as its members would reap more than the usual benefit from a season's experience. "We purposely pursued a policy of hiring young talent during the team's start-up phase," he said. "These were not necessarily individuals with previous Formula One or motor sport experience, but we felt it important to make a significant investment in such people.''
The BAR team, in its earliest incarnation as Tyrrell, has a long and storied history. Founded in 1960 by Ken Tyrrell, it scored 33 victories and won world drivers' championships through Jackie Stewart in 1969, 1970 and 1971. It also won the constructors' title in 1971.
Part of the team's problem last year was the mounting tensions and internal squabbling that affected performance and morale. This should be resolved following the announcement in January that one of the founders, Craig Pollock, had quit as president to concentrate on being the team director.
"I'm more than happy to give up the title of BAR president because there was an inevitable conflict of interest between my two assignments," Pollock said.
The president of Imperial Tobacco in Canada, Don Brown, was named as honorary president of the team, with Rick Gorne as development director and Reynard technical director.
Pollock, Reynard and Gorne were the three founders of the BAR team: Pollock was Villeneuve's manager, and has a close relationship with him. At one point last year the driver threatened to quit if Pollock, a Scotsman, had been made to carry the can for BAR's awful year.
So keen is it to seize every opportunity to wring improvement from the car this year that the team added an extra day to its testing schedule in Kyalami, South Africa, in mid February.
And, with the Honda powerplant behind them, Ricardo Zonta is optimistic that the reliablity problems that plagued the squad last season are a thing of the past.
"The engine is showing a lot of potential, I think we can challenge Jaguar and Jordan in the second group of teams behind Ferrari and McLaren,'' he said.
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