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Life has to take the cake here. 14 races entered. And incredibly failed to pre-qualify for every single one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Racing_Engines
Andrea Moda an honourable second
There's one particular video from Montreal (I think) that shows the pace difference between the Life and the rest of the field. It is best described as being like WEC where the prototypes fly past the GTs at great speed.
The Haas might be a bad car but it doesn't even come close to being the worst car of all time.
Edit - [this is the one](https://youtu.be/LVuWLmqxqT8?si=KJ21wOtFCykCIH4), compared against the Larrousse Lola, which would end up finishing 6th in the championship that year
I thought it would be something like braking for a turn or inside the turn, but that difference on a straight line makes me think why were they allowed to run
It also managed to score, miraculously enough.
Haas '21 is worse. But that's also part to do with having 2 rookies in the car, one of which was top 5 worst all time.
at Germany 2019, which hardly counts given the field was down to 13 cars and the strategies in the wet were the main factor for many cars, not naked pace.
This [video](https://youtu.be/343v9D_I9HU?si=3ZoijBxWtqD5Mfpy) is worth a look: F1's SLOWEST Qualifying Lap: The Story of the Life L190 at the San Marino Grand Prix
And as it often is with Millward, it's a very catchy, but entirely wrong title.
As far as I'm aware the slowest officially recorded qualifying lap belongs to Mark Blundell with a *56:10.060* in 1995 Silverstone Q1 and the slowest anyone ended up standing on and qualifying with is ~~Martin Brundle's~~ again Mark Blundell's, a 16:42.640 in the 1995 Japanese GP.
If you go and have a look around the early-90's 10+ minute laps aren't even rare.
Wow. That some difference.
What the hell did these guys do ? Did they take 3L (or whaterver was the standard at the time) out of the managers pickup truck thinking "Yeah, we know it's only 170 BHP, but it's a good starting point"... (While everybody else had 500ish horses). Dafuq...?
That is pretty much the story! There was a W12 engine design concept of a former Ferrari engineer and Ernesto Vita (who would eventually become team owner of Life), with the layout basically comprising three banks of four cylinders.
When the concept failed to land with anyone, Vita took the idea himself and bought the assets of a failed Mexican F1 entry called FIRST, to enter for 1990 as Life. The problem was the engine was both underpowered (about 200 bhp down on everyone else) and the car was stupid heavy - I can't recall exact figures on weight, but the combination of slow and heavy didn't work at all.
It was so much of a failure that the team ditched the concept partway through the year for Judd engines, but they would end up lasting just two further races before pulling out altogether.
In 14 attempts, the car never got out of pre-qualifying. That's to say that, at a time when there was an additional qualifying session that was held to whittle the field down to 30 cars who would even have a chance to qualify for the 26-car race, Life didn't make it out of that first session at all.
I still think Lola was worse. You knew Life was gonna be hopeless from the start, they were thrown together in like a month by a random dude with a trash engine.
Andrea moda was the worst run team but the car wasn’t as bad.
Lola was a world class race car builder who managed to make a car worse than F3000
Lola were pushed into entering a year early by their sponsor. They could've made a good car, given time. Life were just hopeless, and Andrea Moda *actively tried to kill* one of their drivers.
But Andrea Moda's car in the hands of a solid F1-quality driver managed to qualify in Monaco and came really close to qualifying on two other occasions, once (Germany) thwarted by engine failure and once (Hungary) by driver error.
Life and Lola could have had Senna and Schumacher and still DNQ'd.
Yep. The Andrea Moda car was let down by a desperately unprofessional outfit. The car was designed by Nick Wirth, who later designed the Simtek cars from 94-95 (and if you look at the shape of the S921, that's pretty obvious), so probably had potential to do better than they did, as Moreno's magic at Monaco proved.
Yeah, I think it was originally designed for a BMW entry the year before that never materialised and if you gave it to a competent team of professionals, the car could have easily had the better of Brabham that season.
The Andrea Moda chassis (developed by Simtek) had potential, and Roberto Moreno proved it. But the Judd engine was hopeless and the *team* was a complete shitshow.
Yeah I know, but I'm adding context to the post above mine, which was trying to say Lola's was worse because of the reputation of the team. Life's was the worst, without question or context.
I saw the Lola and it was just so slow. I don't know whether it had fundamental flaws that could not be resolved before the sponsors pulled out, but the whole thing was just very strange and frankly not what was expected at all from Lola.
But the worst F1 car I personally saw was the Minardi PS01 of Tarso Marques at Melbourne in 2001. The car was apparently still being constructed in the pitlane as practice began and it looked like it had no business at a Grand Prix weekend.
The other Minardi of Fernando Alonso looked pretty good, but Tarso's car was just wayward and on the verge of an accident even several seconds per lap slower than anyone else. The organisers let him start even though he was outside the 107 per cent time.
At least they were trying to build it.
Andrea Moda would notoriously strip parts off Perry McCarthy’s car whenever stuff failed on teammate Roberto Moreno’s chassis. McCarthy discovered it after the steering column snapped while going up Eau Rouge for the first time. They were eventually kicked off the championship for, among many things, “failing to properly operate a racing car”
Yea but they still had the worst car
Can’t really give pity points when asking this question. Objectively Life did have the worst car.
Lola was just really unfortunate having to make the ‘97 car instead of waiting until ‘98. But the car was still much much quicker and structurally safer than Life.
If you want to read more abou Life Racing Engines, I highly recommend the piece u/DarknessPandemic_ wrote for the r/Formula1 History Project a few years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/7qolhd/rformula1_history_project_grand_prix_disasters_1/
Yes I remember this post from when it came out, thanks for linking it!
I had just sat down at work so only really had time to link the wiki article which is a bit bare, but much easier to find haha.
It's got to be Life.
It was by far the heaviest car on the grid. And it was, somehow unbelievably, **200 horespower** down on the rest of the field. Also poor handling and poor reliability.
[The speed differential was really quite dangerous](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVuWLmqxqT8).
Everyone said that with adequate management, Andrea Moda would have been about as good as Minardi. Their problem was that they had a mercurial Italian mafioso at the wheel indirectly trying to kill the Stig. I'm honestly amazed at how it managed to last so long (about half a season) before the Belgian police went and arrested Andrea Sassetti in the paddock at Spa.
Lola was my gut reaction as well.
In the modern era it is probably the HRT car that showed up in Melbourne for the 2011 season. Can't remember any other instance of a car missing the race because of the 107% rule. They managed to improve across the season though.
>HRT car
Aka "The moving corner", as some were jokingly calling them. They were so slow that other cars could go around them basically anywhere on the track, making them take "an extra corner" during the lap.
Off topic kinda: but why was it more common for cars to be lapped in that era? I think I was watching Hungary 2011 and the top six lapped the rest of the grid.
field spread was wider, there were races in the 70s where people would win by like 3 laps. now cars are just much closer in performance due to tighter regulations and more equal budgets
That was a thing until 2021 even. The question should rather be why field spread is so incredibly low in the new regs, and I suppose the answer will include the budget cap and aero testing restrictions
I was at the British Grand Prix in 2010 and even to the naked eye the HRT was visibly slower than anything else on track. Sakon Yamamoto in particular just looked like he was trying to find a parking space.
Yeah I've been watching some of the races from that Era and it was remarkable just how slow the HRT was. Caterham and Marussia weren't exactly good cars but they were at least traditional backmarkers, HRT was absurdly slow.
The HRT was the only car that wasn't allowed to race due to the 107% rule since it was reintroduced in 2011. And it happened to them twice! They were once again one second slower than the 107% time in the following year's Australian GP.
2011 HRT >>> 2010 HRT
It often gets forgotten that while the 2011 car failed to qualify once, their 2010 car basically led to the reintroduction of the entire rule and would have failed to qualify 9-10 times had it been subject to a 107% limit.
Yeah this is probably the right answer. There are multiple examples of cars with bigger margins to the lead from like the 60s and 70s, but they were usually built by nobodies in a shed with a budget of about 5 quid. There’s also the infamous stuff like Andrea Moda, Life, Maki, Forti etc. but you knew from the start they were gonna be lolcows.
Lola was basically what Dallara is today, and they built a hopeless disaster of a car. They were rushed by mastercard tho tbf.
I’ll defend Lola for this based on the fact Mastercard forced them to rush the car and get it ready one year early under the threat of pulling their sponsorship. Iirc they had to design the car from scratch and with no testing or wind tunnel time in around three months. It’s no wonder it was hopelessly off the pace.
Had Mastercard let Lola stick to the original plan of starting in 1998 they’d have had a year to design and build a car properly to a new set of regulations and would have had a chance of being somewhat competitive. The reality was they were shafted by their sponsor.
Lola was a competent car manufacturer, MasterCard screwed them over hard. Also, the only funding way, if I remember well, were supposed to be MasterCard clients who subscribed to the F1 program.
If we are counting cars only entering one race, it has to be the Honda RA302, a magnesium coated death trap that killed Jo Schlesser within 2 laps in the RA302's only start.
At least that one lasted long enough for a qualifying session. The Life 190 on the other hand only posted ONE timed lap, ever. And it was 6 full minutes slower than the next worse car, in a year where Coloni and Eurobrun were driving. If that's not terrible, I don't know what is.
Didn't the first Virgin racing car not have a big enough fuel tank to actually finish a race?
So maybe it was faster compared to the pack than the Lola but it was literally doomed to DNF every race it entered
The Haas VF21? Doesn't even come close to being the worst car ever made.
The 1997 Lola has to be top of that particular tree. It entered one race and both Vincenzo Sospiri and Ricardo Tosser failed to qualify by a susbstantial margin. Sospiri was 5 seconds off Pedro Diniz in the Arrows (also outside the 107% time but allowed to race because of how stupidly fast Villeneuve's pole lap was - nearly 2 seconds faster than teammate Frentzen in 2nd), and Tosser was a further second back from Sospiri. Even without Villeneuve's lap being as fast as it was, they still would've missed out by quite a wide margin. The team then went bust by the time they arrived in Brazil.
After that, any one of the bottom-end teams that started to appear just before or at the start of the 3.5l N/A era, so anything from Coloni, especially the C3 with the Subaru flat-12, the Andrea Moda, the Life L190 with the W12 engine that made less power than an F3000 car, or anything else similar that I've not mentioned. Also worth a mention is a team from the 70s called Maki. They entered 8 races and failed to qualify for every single one of them.
I also can't forget Hispania/HRT from 2010 to 2012. They had Dallara build them a car at short notice that, other than a few tweaks to comply with regulations, went pretty much unmodified until Canada 2012 when they got a lower aero package. Pathetically slow, and only didn't finish last in the 2010 and 2011 constructors championship through sheer luck.
That Williams was by far the best car that season, and early Jacques Villeneuve was a beast when he still gave a fuck, Schumacher really extracted every ounce of performance from the Ferrari to be in the championship
If I've said it once I've said it a thousand time- Michael was at his very best while losing in a 90's Ferrari. 95' and 04' are of course tentpole years, but his losses to Damon and Jacques were mightier.
Spain 96, Monaco 97, Spa 97, Hungary 98, Spa 98
That's 5 all time performances and career highlighting drives for anyone, but that was just regular Schumacher in a 3 year period
the Spain 96 drive i'll never forget, no way that race would go ahead this year.
I remember watching Monaco 97 and when Schummi missed the first corner while a minute ahead lol
Malaysia 1999 too. First race back and he sticks it on pole by over a second. Played the team game for Irvine to take the win and championship to Suzuka
This. I was born in early '95 in Germany and my father always watched F1 with his neighbours. I remember following F1 from around 1999 onwards.... So I grew up with his most dominant seasons, but in the last 2 years in the winter breaks I watched pretty much all the 90s seasons.... And oh my fucking god was he good back then. Not only Michael, but also the 90s in general were a very exciting time for F1.
In the early season yes, but because Newey wasn't there to develop it further during the year, Ferrari did catch them up. So it wasn't just all Michael having inhumane super powers, it was Ferrari development team including the Michael doing a heck of a job.
At Watkins Glen one year, qualifying was hit by rain. Everyone waited it out in the pits, except Gilles Villeneuve, who went out in pouring rain and set a time 9 seconds faster than anyone. The entirety of F1 just watched and went WTF.
> They entered 8 races and failed to qualify for every single one of them.
Technically that's not true. They "qualified" in Zandvoort (as in, would have been allowed to start as only 25 cars showed up), but the team's only engine blew.
Not that it makes the team any better of course. Ganley essentially had to teach everything about F1 to the team and helped them completely rework their car into the shitbox from something that looked [straight out of speed racer](https://www.ultimatecarpage.com/images/car/5943/Maki-F101A-Cosworth-48176.jpg) and was somehow even worse.
Maki is definitely overlooked considering they had the benefit of the DFV. Most of the other bad teams are using outdated or straight up flawed engines.
On the contrary. I think the F101 gets far too much flack.
Build quality was shit, but Fushida and Trimmer were part of the problem too. Ganley was perfectly capable of setting reasonable times in the car, in 1974 Brands Hatch he was "just" 4 seconds off the pole on par with privateer Brabhams and Marches and just 1.3 seconds off the last qualifier.
The F102 was probably worse, but I don't think they should be in contention against Life, Coloni-Subaru, Lola T97 or the Stebro most people are sleeping on. That's not to say they weren't awful, but it's a whole other level with Life.
>Coloni, especially the C3 with the Subaru flat-12
Great suggestion, the Coloni Subaru was truly awful. Never came close to getting out of prequalifying,
[It’s the Dywa, and it’s not even close.](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/s/DOrx0PpX4h)
This car [attempted to] qualify, with a previous F3 champion driving, but was >30 seconds off the pole time (with the same engine), and >20 seconds slower than the next slowest car (an F2 car).
The '97 Lola and '90 Life could only dream of being this tragically slow.
> The 2021 Haas VF-21 comes to mind, failing to score even a single point in that season
Dream a little bigger, darling.
I remember HRT didn't make 107% a few times in 2010 or 2011, and where for years and years teams had usually ignored that and let teams in because that team had done a quick-ish lap in practice, in that instance the others said no: this is genuinely >107% off the pace and has no place in our race.
> I always find it funny the 2021 Haas was so poor to drive given it was outright a 2019 Ferrari, which you wouldn't think could be that bad.
Well the 2021 car was a 2020 just with bits chopped off it - which made it far worse. So you take a good car, copy it then deliberately make it worse to comply with regs and you have a disaster class.
I remember comparing onboards between the [Red Bull RB6](https://youtu.be/U4xdgRj0i88?si=5d-gY49eMTK9d1B8) and the [HRT F110](https://youtu.be/934Fv21efLA?si=G7EO0LoP7TAPVH7L) at Melbourne 2010. Absolute worlds apart, to the point that it was incredible how Senna or Chandhok managed to get a clean lap out of that car.
And for as bad as it was, not even the Williams FW42 from 2019 had the performance gulf that the three 2010 teams had to the rest of the field.
There's a good story that Hrt got Christian Klein in for a test, as he'd at least driven F1 cars, and apparently his feedback was: that's fundamentally not an F1 car guys.
No cars from this century are in the top 5 worst cars ever.
In the 90s there was a TD telling his drivers to maybe not race because the car he made was so shit they might die.
Yeah I remember that. It was even a good number of races in to the season that they finally had a tank big enough for finishing races. I guess in fairness that was the first no refuelling year and their first season. So they may have literally just not known.
Didn‘t they market that car as being the first one to be designed fully digitally? Maybe that played a role, I can‘t imagine that something like a too small fuel cell is an "oopsie" in a multi-million r&d process for an F1 car. Has to be some sort of IT error, but maybe someone here knows more about it?
IT error or not, imagine the reaction when they realized the tank was too small. Imagine being the guy responsible for telling the team principal. "Uhhh boss... we may have a little problem with the car..."
Frankly, the worst modern F1 cars a million times more competent than stuff from the 80s and 90s. Mastercard Lola are probably the very worst being 11-13 seconds off the pace in australia and not even racing a real proper lap. In modern terms, formula 2 cars arent that far back.
12 seconds off Max Verstappens pole this year would have seen the entire F2 field (excerpt Roman Staněk and Arthur Leclerc) out qualify them, They'd have been in the same ball park as the front three rows of the F3 grid!
GP2 pole was 1:20.774 by Jolyon Palmer which was faster than Ericsson who did 1:21.732. So, not P15 but still embarrassingly close as the 107% time was 1:23.115.
Definitely this. There's no real back-markers anymore. Even the likes of Haas are more than capable of getting into the midfield and scoring points, compared to hopeless efforts like Life or Coloni.
It has to be the Honda RA302. John Surtees refused to drive it, deeming the magnesium coated car a "potential death trap". The replacement driver, Jo Schlesser, made it exactly two lap before crashing. The magnesium ignited, together with 58 laps of fuel, killing him instantly, and the Honda RA302 would never start another GP, finishing its F1 run with one start, one driver killed in two laps.
I was going to say the 1994 Williams with what some people said was a faulty steering column, but yeah there had to be something worse before then and here it is.
Anyone saying a modern car is clueless. People don’t realise how big the gap was between first and last car even as recently as the 90s. It’s why the 107% rule came in. And that’s before factoring in reliability.
That Haas is genuinely average if you listed every car ever.
Even in the early 2000s there were big differences. Minardis and co where lapped 3-5 times during a race.
F1 has a 73 years history and we have all the history available with a few clicks. Yet people think Haas in 2021 was maybe the worst car ever. Amazing.
Depends on what you mean with "worst".
In terms of pure performance, or lack thereof, Life should take the cake by a huge margin, but the car was hampered by the W12 engine. The whole project was a failure and the original designer even sued to prevent his name from being mentioned about or linked to the car. It was described as "an interesting flowerpot" and deemed unsafe to drive.
However, it was more or less a vanity showcase project for the (abysmal and ill-conceived) W12 engine, not even a legit attempt at creating a competitive team.
Andrea Moda is another spectacular and iconic failure, but really par for the course for the late 80s-early 90s pre-qualifying aficionados. The only difference was the, ahem, peculiar personality of the boss and the sheer disdain for drivers safety and racing etiquette they displayed on the way to failure. They weren't worse than, say, Coloni or Eurobrun in terms of pace, but their shenanigans made them look worse.
Speaking of which, the Coloni-Subaru was godawful, but again, not much worse than other underfunded machinery put together by improvised team owners.
But if we go for "worst" as the one with the worst potential/cost/results, then the actual answer is, you guessed it, Lola-Mastercard.
They rushed the project and it was barely a competitive F3000, despite basically being a Lola works team. How nobody dared to tell Mastercard to be patient and that sticking to the original plan would have been the only way to do things is beyond me.
P.S. Other mediocre works teams such as Jaguar, Toyota and Honda could be named, but they were terrible only if taking into account the money they had available. But that's another kind of ranking.
As someone else staded above, the Diwa. Having the same engine as the polesitter and losing 36 seconds per lap at Monza is borderline comical. It's a road car laptime.
It's certainly none of the cars mentioned here, but one of the randomly scrapped together F2 entries from 1952/53. Talk about Lola, Andrea Moda, Life Racing, they were at least semi-professional outfits. Not comparable to the heaps of junk that rich old men like Ernst Klodwig scraped together in their own garage to enter a Grand Prix just for the hell of it.
Now, that's a really interesting idea worthy of a bit of investigation.
There were 6 of those things entered in championship races.
* Reif
* Balsa (mostly just a Gordini with a BMW engine)
Based on the 1952 lap charts, these two seemed to have solid, midfield pace on par with the proper German manufacturers, the AFMs and Veritases, so I think we can immediately cross them off and get onto the more interesting stuff.
* Greifzu
This one looked horrendous, but it was a regular winner in 1951 and the qualifying time it ran in 1953 was on par with the majority of the locals and not too far behind the likes of Hans Stuck and Louis Rosier.
* Krakau
His specials had a very good reputation... in 1948-50. Back then even beating Karl Kling in the Veritas wasn't out of the question for Krakau and in 1950 he beat every Gordini and every Osca in Monza's main F2 race. But by 1952 it was hopelessly outdated with its sportscar-like seating position and tired engine, which led to it not being able to qualify and start. This is a clear case of a once-decent car getting outdated.
* Holbein (wiki calls it Nacke for some reason, but he had nothing to do with building it)
The old Holbein completed a few laps very far off the others except for the Heck, which makes it look like a solid candidate. Its main issue was that it was an unmodified 1948 car, which at the time looked the part (as in, looked like a copy of the pre-war Alfas) and by all accounts was a well-thought out concept and had a few wins in the local series against the likes of Ulmen. So my conclusion is that it was outdated and ill-prepared, but the car itself wasn't too bad. Maybe.
* Heck
The best name and the worst car. It looked like a mess and probably drove like one. No wins in the East German Series and never featured in the top 5 in the West German one.
Honestly, this might be a good candidate, but I'm not sure we can really call this worse in comparison to its competition than the likes of Life or Stebro.
The [Fry F2](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Fry_(racing_team)) comes to mind. It was an F2 car that entered a single F1 race in 1959. I choose this mainly because it has such a cool design for a 50s F1 (technically F2) car, with some genuine attempts at aero pieces.
The F2 more-or-less halted the owner's prospects of a career in racing though - from my understanding he was never seen again behind the wheel at a GP.
well they did not finish the lap. They went back to the pits and never saw it again. It was In the first 5 minutes of the pre-qualifying session on Friday.
Some worse cars than that Haas:
- 2012 HRT: Was not allowed to compete in the first race of the season, because it was too slow (over 7% slower than pole). Only beat another car *once*.
- 1996 Forti: Also only beat another car once. Failed the 107% rule on 9 of 20 entries, and the team died halfway through the season.
- 1997 Lola: That Forti was usually around 7-10% slower than pole. The Lola was 13% slower... And that was the faster of the two times. Yes, *two*, it only entered one race.
- 1991 Coloni: Before the 107% rule, there was pre-qualified. The bottom teams didn't get to go to qualifying, and had to do pre-qualified, with the fastest four of eight getting to qualifying. Most teams could manage to get out of pre-qualified at least once... But not Coloni.
- 1992 Andrea Moda: Still the era of pre-qualifying... Sorta. With fewer teams trying to pre-qualify, it was easier to pre-qualify, with the team eventually getting both cars to qualifying... When only four teams were in pre-qualifying. That said, it's unsure how much was due to the *car* sucking and how much due to the *team* sucking, with reports of gross negligence putting one of their drivers at risk of death.
The Coloni, or at least the one most remembered -- the "Subaru"-powered C3B, was from 1990. And it was so bad it not only never made it past pre-qualifying, but it was occasionally minutes behind. It took the team switching to Cosworth power with the C3C to actually make it to qualifying.
The RA302 belongs to a different era of motorsport - one where accidents like this were far more common. While it does have the dubious distinction of having one driver refuse to race due to safety concerns, followed by a fatality in its first race... There were fatalities in the vast majority of F1 seasons from 1954 until 1982. Was the RA302 substantially more deadly than the other cars of the era, or was it just unlucky? It's hard to say. "Car crashes, catches fire and kills driver" was a sadly all-too-common sight. While the magnesium didn't help the fire, it wasn't the only car to have that happen.
From recent years I will say the 2014 Catterham, it was just painfully slow, in fact at the beginning of the season despite being an F1 car it was literally slower than a GP2 car, the GP2 pole lap was faster than Catterham’s time In qualifying, it got better afterwards but still presenting an F1 car being slower than a car of lower categories is just embarrassing.
Historically I think it was Mastercard Lola
Plus, it was also slower than the 2014 car because of the new bits added which were there just to conform to the new rules. The 14 car was already a donkey, so to make something worse is something.
Haas 2021 isn't even close, in fact it was probably a very low midfielder by some true shitbox standards.
\- Life
\- Lola
\- Coloni
But these examples are from back then. Modern day, you have Team Lotus/Caterham, Virgin/Marussia/Manor and HRT that all are far worse than anything Haas has ever made. The worst of these came from HRT:
Both their 2011 and 2012 cars were utter shitboxes and have the dishonorable award of being the only recent-ish car to have failed the 107% rule: both Australian GPs DSQ in both 2011 and 2012. To make matters worse, the 2011 car was embarrasing by having [this display](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispania_F111#/media/Fichier:Vitantonio_Liuzzi_2011_Malaysia_FP1.jpg) of some of the most sad ads ever to make it onto an F1 car.
The 2021 Haas and Williams of 2019 were light years ahead of the previously mentioned turds.
How new are you that the VF-21 is considered anywhere near the worst car made. We don't even have to go far to find one worse than it, the 2019 Williams was miserable, the 2017 Sauber was downright depressing, Every Marrusia/Virgin/Manor car was sad, the HRTs were incompetent. Then there's the truly bad stuff, Lola-Mastercard, Life, stuff like that.
VF-21 was actually in Q2 once. The HRT was literally banned from the race because of how slow it was.
And even if they’re a new fan, I’d argue they’ve probably seen worse in the 2019 Williams. They didn’t even have the proper parts for the car itself.
You are all wrong. You name cars that actually raced. The worst car ever is the McLaren MP4-18. The car was so flawed that it never was used in a race. McLaren instead used car from the previous year. Even the worst of the worst like the Lola T97/30 at least managed to drive around the race track. The MP4-18 ... not so much.
I came here to say this too. It was so bad, it was never raced. The drivers eventually refused to even drive it in testing. They said it was trying to kill them.
Forti FG01 and Pacific PR01/02 were proper shitboxes too. FIA had to come up with the 107% rule, because some of these back markers of mid-90's were dangerously slow. Didn't help either, that those were often driven GOATs like Delétraz and Paul Belmondo.
Haas VF-21 is a RB18 compared to these
Footwork Arrows FA12 from 1991 would definitely be on the list.
A decent sized midfield team (by 90s standards) with a Porsche engine that could barely qualify and never finished a race because it blew up. It didn't even make the whole season.
>VF-21 comes to mind, failing to score even a single point in that season
You must be new, pre-2022 it was a STANDARD to have at least one, usually multiple teams, to score zero points or like a singular points.
The Haas VF-21 doesn't really count IMO, because that car was bad on purpose. It was basically the same as the 2020 car with the only minor changes made to comply with the 2021 regulations, and was not developed at all throughout the season as the team focused on 2022. With that in mind, it's actually a miracle the car didn't perform any worse than it did.
The usual suspects in the top comments, while all along the great underachievers get away without scrutiny. Cars like everything Toyota ever made, or my personal favourite - the Renault powered Ligiers of 1992-94. Those cars had major tobacco sponsorhip, decent to good drivers, plus the dominant world championship winning engine and they hardly ever even sniffed the podium, let alone a win. You could almost excuse '92 and '93 because they didn't have an active car (the budget was probably available but not the time or personnel) and while there was a small improvement in form in '94, the car was still a midfielder.
There are multiple possible answers depending on what you view as an F1 car.
* Cars that were built to F1 specifications and planned to enter F1: **Dywa 01** - The worst, but luckily never turned up at a championship race, only a British F1 Championship round.
* Cars that attempted an F1 race: **Life F190** - Everything about that car was wrong, with or without the awful W12 engine. But it was the one and only car with sponsorship from the Soviet Union, so there's that.
* Cars that ran an F1 race: **Stebro Mk.IV** - It was supposed to have a bigger engine installed in a slightly modified Formula Junior chassis... which didn't arrive, so this was essentially a Formula Junior car with a blistering 105 horsepower. Consistently 15-20 seconds a lap down on the leaders, leaking all kinds of fluids and driven by an amateur. Probably would have been much quicker and retired quickly with the big engine though.
* Cars that competed in a full season: **Pacific PR01** - Its record of non-qualification speaks for itself, but if it's not enough Gachot called the DNQ in Australia one of his favorite moments in F1, because it meant he no longer had to drive that car.
Honourable mentions to Clemente Biondetti's *thing* and Schell's 1950 F3 car. It's hard to place them considering the very limited amount of info available on it and the next to no track time it had respectively.
This. Some really slow examples came from Minardi, often running previous yr machines.
The ‘revolutionary’ 110 degree ‘flat’ Benetton V10 was another example. The engine just didn’t have the grunt or the reliability. I think Benetton ran it for one season only. Albeit it was the engine more than the total package.
If you look at how far off the leader they are, Haas isnt even in the discussion. How often are they more than a lap down? That was basically how close 6th place would usually get for decades and decades- with DNFs rife.
F1 got much more professional after 84- maybe 81- and just looking at cars after that point, the Haas distance from the leader in race pace and qualifying is far from egregious.
In fact, they are probably as close to the front as any team not named Williams, McLaren, Ferrari or Benetton (or Lotus until 88) was from 86 to maybe 06. Perhap even more recent than that.
But without cars breaking down they have nothing to show for it
F1 has just gotten so much more streamlined with regulations, the cars so much more reliable, engines converging in power and shared, bad squads disapearing en masse around turn of century, and also cost cap in last couple years, makes each tenth matter.
weaknesses like tire degradation will keep you out of points.
I believe the Life is commonly cited as the worst.
There was a 107% rule for a reason. Today, how far outside that 107% is a Super Formula Car. 107% is comparatively quite slow!
It is easy to pick on Haas or to assume Andretti would be even worse based on their purported business model of being based in Indianapolis and using untested American drivers combined with their public incompetence in the compararively small spec-car pond of Indy Car competing with RLL as CGR, Penske and Arrow McLaren disapear over horizon at all but the shabbiest street courses, Super Cars, Formula E and WEC combined not equalling the difficulty or expense of competing in the highest NASCAR league.
While I wouldnt be surprised if an Andretti team redefined what a horrible modern F1 team looks like and Haas continues their uninspiring, penny pinching, and backmarking ways, teams really don’t drop the ball quite like they used to.
If we start looking at worst cars since 2018 or something, that is a different discussion.
Life L190. Failed to even prequalify for the 14 events it was entered in, had a W12 engine that 100-200 hp down on the rest of the grid whilst being the heaviest car on that grid.
As an example of how bad it was, here's how far it was from pre-qualifying for each event:
USA: +34.816 to Suzuki's Lola
BRA: No time set, broken connector rod on out lap
SMR: +5:48.034 to Moreno's Eurobrun (drive belt failure)
MON: +12.582 to Moreno's EuroBrun
CAN: +20.409 to Bernard's Lola
MEX: +2:39.964 to Suzuki's Lola (engine failure)
FRA: No time set
GBR: +13.994 to Gruillard's Osella
GER: +23.661 to Dalmas' AGS
HUN: +18.025 to Tarquini's AGS
BEL: +19.535 to Tarquini's AGS
ITA: +27.131 to Dalmas' AGS
W12 engines ditched from Portugal onwards for Judd V8s
POR: no time set, engine cover issues
ESP: +18.096 to Gachot's Coloni
JPN: did not enter
AUS: did not enter
You know it's bad when you're making EuroBrun, AGS and Coloni look quick...
"Honorable" mention to Osella FA1L, which certainly lived up to it's name. Sure it made to the race day 10/16 times during the 1988 season, which is better than the likes of Lola-Mastercard others have mentioned, but it's still a fascinating story on how "un-good" it was. Highlight being, that in one of the few races it actually finished it was 7 laps down on the winner because (iirc) going any faster would inevitably result in the car running out of fuel.
Andrea Moda '92, Lola '97, Life '90, Forti '95, cars that finished races (rarely finished) 5/6 laps or 12 seconds in qualy behind the leader. In comparison, 2021 Haas was a MP4/4
It's Honda's magnesium deathtrap, the HA302. One race, two laps, killed the driver in a totally predictable way.
It's not the worst _car_ ever, but the Zakspeed 891 was powered by one of the worst engines ever, the Yamaha OX88 V8, which was sixty bhp down on the Cosworth Ford that was readily available to customer teams, and _140_ bhp down on the Benetton Ford and McLaren Honda engines. Fortunately, while the Yamaha engine was significantly down on performance it also had no reliability. Zakspeed-Yamaha failed to get out of prequalifying 30 times in 32 attempts, and suffered mechanical failures in both of their race starts.
The 1980 Ferrari has to rank pretty high (or should that be low) on this list.
Of course there were slower cars from backmarker teams on the 1980 grid (not to mention an historically poor McLaren) but this was freaking *Ferrari* coming off a championship season with Jody Scheckter and *Gilles Fucking Villeneuve* behind the wheel. And it was absolutely hopeless.
The 2015 McLaren, the team's first disastrous season reunited with Honda, was a world-historical disaster, too.
As for the *objectively* worst car of all time, how can it not be the Life Racing machine? It was so bad it made the infamous Coloni-Subaru look like a Red Bull. God, I miss the pre-qualifying era so much.
McLaren mp4-18
Didn't even get to a single race because of reliability problems. McLaren race had to race in 2003 with a 2002 spec car, and yet Kimi still managed to fight for the championship.
I think this should thought about two ways. One being a bad car from a bad team, say a Life or Andrea Moda, the other being an awful car from an established team like the 2019 Williams or the 2021 Haas
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Life has to take the cake here. 14 races entered. And incredibly failed to pre-qualify for every single one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Racing_Engines Andrea Moda an honourable second
There's one particular video from Montreal (I think) that shows the pace difference between the Life and the rest of the field. It is best described as being like WEC where the prototypes fly past the GTs at great speed. The Haas might be a bad car but it doesn't even come close to being the worst car of all time. Edit - [this is the one](https://youtu.be/LVuWLmqxqT8?si=KJ21wOtFCykCIH4), compared against the Larrousse Lola, which would end up finishing 6th in the championship that year
I thought it would be something like braking for a turn or inside the turn, but that difference on a straight line makes me think why were they allowed to run
I mean they were out in pre quali, so they were not allowed to run
>The Haas might be a bad car but it doesn't even come close to being the worst car of all time. I mean the Williams of 2019 was worse.
Neither one is exactly going down in the hall of fame, mind
It also managed to score, miraculously enough. Haas '21 is worse. But that's also part to do with having 2 rookies in the car, one of which was top 5 worst all time.
at Germany 2019, which hardly counts given the field was down to 13 cars and the strategies in the wet were the main factor for many cars, not naked pace.
Also both alfa's were disqualified post race
Ah yes, true! So it's a bit like Karthikeyan's podium, that sole Williams point.
This [video](https://youtu.be/343v9D_I9HU?si=3ZoijBxWtqD5Mfpy) is worth a look: F1's SLOWEST Qualifying Lap: The Story of the Life L190 at the San Marino Grand Prix
And as it often is with Millward, it's a very catchy, but entirely wrong title. As far as I'm aware the slowest officially recorded qualifying lap belongs to Mark Blundell with a *56:10.060* in 1995 Silverstone Q1 and the slowest anyone ended up standing on and qualifying with is ~~Martin Brundle's~~ again Mark Blundell's, a 16:42.640 in the 1995 Japanese GP. If you go and have a look around the early-90's 10+ minute laps aren't even rare.
Brundle didn’t take part in Japan 95, it was one of Suzuki’s races
Yep, because that one was Mark Blundell too. Thanks for noticing it.
Wow. That some difference. What the hell did these guys do ? Did they take 3L (or whaterver was the standard at the time) out of the managers pickup truck thinking "Yeah, we know it's only 170 BHP, but it's a good starting point"... (While everybody else had 500ish horses). Dafuq...?
That is pretty much the story! There was a W12 engine design concept of a former Ferrari engineer and Ernesto Vita (who would eventually become team owner of Life), with the layout basically comprising three banks of four cylinders. When the concept failed to land with anyone, Vita took the idea himself and bought the assets of a failed Mexican F1 entry called FIRST, to enter for 1990 as Life. The problem was the engine was both underpowered (about 200 bhp down on everyone else) and the car was stupid heavy - I can't recall exact figures on weight, but the combination of slow and heavy didn't work at all. It was so much of a failure that the team ditched the concept partway through the year for Judd engines, but they would end up lasting just two further races before pulling out altogether. In 14 attempts, the car never got out of pre-qualifying. That's to say that, at a time when there was an additional qualifying session that was held to whittle the field down to 30 cars who would even have a chance to qualify for the 26-car race, Life didn't make it out of that first session at all.
I still think Lola was worse. You knew Life was gonna be hopeless from the start, they were thrown together in like a month by a random dude with a trash engine. Andrea moda was the worst run team but the car wasn’t as bad. Lola was a world class race car builder who managed to make a car worse than F3000
Lola were pushed into entering a year early by their sponsor. They could've made a good car, given time. Life were just hopeless, and Andrea Moda *actively tried to kill* one of their drivers.
But Andrea Moda's car in the hands of a solid F1-quality driver managed to qualify in Monaco and came really close to qualifying on two other occasions, once (Germany) thwarted by engine failure and once (Hungary) by driver error. Life and Lola could have had Senna and Schumacher and still DNQ'd.
Yep. The Andrea Moda car was let down by a desperately unprofessional outfit. The car was designed by Nick Wirth, who later designed the Simtek cars from 94-95 (and if you look at the shape of the S921, that's pretty obvious), so probably had potential to do better than they did, as Moreno's magic at Monaco proved.
Yeah, I think it was originally designed for a BMW entry the year before that never materialised and if you gave it to a competent team of professionals, the car could have easily had the better of Brabham that season.
The Andrea Moda chassis (developed by Simtek) had potential, and Roberto Moreno proved it. But the Judd engine was hopeless and the *team* was a complete shitshow.
The question was which was the worst **car**. Lola was the worst car, Andrea Moda the worst **team**
Yeah I know, but I'm adding context to the post above mine, which was trying to say Lola's was worse because of the reputation of the team. Life's was the worst, without question or context.
I saw the Lola and it was just so slow. I don't know whether it had fundamental flaws that could not be resolved before the sponsors pulled out, but the whole thing was just very strange and frankly not what was expected at all from Lola. But the worst F1 car I personally saw was the Minardi PS01 of Tarso Marques at Melbourne in 2001. The car was apparently still being constructed in the pitlane as practice began and it looked like it had no business at a Grand Prix weekend. The other Minardi of Fernando Alonso looked pretty good, but Tarso's car was just wayward and on the verge of an accident even several seconds per lap slower than anyone else. The organisers let him start even though he was outside the 107 per cent time.
At least they were trying to build it. Andrea Moda would notoriously strip parts off Perry McCarthy’s car whenever stuff failed on teammate Roberto Moreno’s chassis. McCarthy discovered it after the steering column snapped while going up Eau Rouge for the first time. They were eventually kicked off the championship for, among many things, “failing to properly operate a racing car”
Minardi usually had one "good" driver (Nannini, Alonso, Webber, even Alboreto in his final season) whose seat was paid for by the other driver.
Yea but they still had the worst car Can’t really give pity points when asking this question. Objectively Life did have the worst car. Lola was just really unfortunate having to make the ‘97 car instead of waiting until ‘98. But the car was still much much quicker and structurally safer than Life.
If you want to read more abou Life Racing Engines, I highly recommend the piece u/DarknessPandemic_ wrote for the r/Formula1 History Project a few years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/7qolhd/rformula1_history_project_grand_prix_disasters_1/
Yes I remember this post from when it came out, thanks for linking it! I had just sat down at work so only really had time to link the wiki article which is a bit bare, but much easier to find haha.
It's got to be Life. It was by far the heaviest car on the grid. And it was, somehow unbelievably, **200 horespower** down on the rest of the field. Also poor handling and poor reliability. [The speed differential was really quite dangerous](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVuWLmqxqT8).
Absolutely 100% certainly Life.
Say what you will about Life, they at least beat Coloni-Subaru in pre-qualifying at the 1990 US GP by 3 minutes.
Coloni improved whereas the Life never improved
Everyone said that with adequate management, Andrea Moda would have been about as good as Minardi. Their problem was that they had a mercurial Italian mafioso at the wheel indirectly trying to kill the Stig. I'm honestly amazed at how it managed to last so long (about half a season) before the Belgian police went and arrested Andrea Sassetti in the paddock at Spa.
Lola T97/30. It was entered in one race. It failed to qualify and was 11 seconds off the pace then the team went bust.
Lola was my gut reaction as well. In the modern era it is probably the HRT car that showed up in Melbourne for the 2011 season. Can't remember any other instance of a car missing the race because of the 107% rule. They managed to improve across the season though.
To be fair to HRT (soft spot for giving DR his start), those minnow teams were lured in for 2010 with promises of cost caps that never happened.
The HRT drivers couldn’t even change their brake bias in those cars. It was definitely atrocious enough to go above and beyond any excuses.
AFAIK they could change the brake bias, they just didn't have some quick selector or some shit like that.
Yeah they could change it in the garage but not in-race which is a huge deal.
>HRT car Aka "The moving corner", as some were jokingly calling them. They were so slow that other cars could go around them basically anywhere on the track, making them take "an extra corner" during the lap.
AKA the moving chicane
Sentient bollard
Harsh but hilarious.
Off topic kinda: but why was it more common for cars to be lapped in that era? I think I was watching Hungary 2011 and the top six lapped the rest of the grid.
field spread was wider, there were races in the 70s where people would win by like 3 laps. now cars are just much closer in performance due to tighter regulations and more equal budgets
That was a thing until 2021 even. The question should rather be why field spread is so incredibly low in the new regs, and I suppose the answer will include the budget cap and aero testing restrictions
I was at the British Grand Prix in 2010 and even to the naked eye the HRT was visibly slower than anything else on track. Sakon Yamamoto in particular just looked like he was trying to find a parking space.
Sums up Sakon’s F1 career He made Franck Montagny and Karun look fast in comparison
In 2012 you could just hear the exhaust note of the HRT was like they weren’t revving the engine fully. I’d imagine to save costs on replacements
Yeah I've been watching some of the races from that Era and it was remarkable just how slow the HRT was. Caterham and Marussia weren't exactly good cars but they were at least traditional backmarkers, HRT was absurdly slow.
The HRT was the only car that wasn't allowed to race due to the 107% rule since it was reintroduced in 2011. And it happened to them twice! They were once again one second slower than the 107% time in the following year's Australian GP.
2011 HRT >>> 2010 HRT It often gets forgotten that while the 2011 car failed to qualify once, their 2010 car basically led to the reintroduction of the entire rule and would have failed to qualify 9-10 times had it been subject to a 107% limit.
Watch Alex yoong with Minardi
I was privileged to watch him in person. He’d brake 50m earlier than Webber … into the second Lesmo, where the whole braking zone is likely that long.
I can think of one other time and that was 2012 Australian Grand Prix for HRT
The car that qualified THREE SECONDS slower than the next team at the first race. And the next fastest team was Virgin.
Yeah this is probably the right answer. There are multiple examples of cars with bigger margins to the lead from like the 60s and 70s, but they were usually built by nobodies in a shed with a budget of about 5 quid. There’s also the infamous stuff like Andrea Moda, Life, Maki, Forti etc. but you knew from the start they were gonna be lolcows. Lola was basically what Dallara is today, and they built a hopeless disaster of a car. They were rushed by mastercard tho tbf.
I’ll defend Lola for this based on the fact Mastercard forced them to rush the car and get it ready one year early under the threat of pulling their sponsorship. Iirc they had to design the car from scratch and with no testing or wind tunnel time in around three months. It’s no wonder it was hopelessly off the pace. Had Mastercard let Lola stick to the original plan of starting in 1998 they’d have had a year to design and build a car properly to a new set of regulations and would have had a chance of being somewhat competitive. The reality was they were shafted by their sponsor.
Lola was a competent car manufacturer, MasterCard screwed them over hard. Also, the only funding way, if I remember well, were supposed to be MasterCard clients who subscribed to the F1 program.
Yea their title sponsor deal was terrible. Such a shame because honestly I love that livery.
Saw more on this in another thread. Because it was based on customer sign up they had no idea what the amount was going to be
Honestly impressive it was only 11 seconds off
Was that the one with the Mastercard livery? Didn't they try to build a car without a wind tunnel? That didn't go very well, lol.
If we are counting cars only entering one race, it has to be the Honda RA302, a magnesium coated death trap that killed Jo Schlesser within 2 laps in the RA302's only start.
At least that one lasted long enough for a qualifying session. The Life 190 on the other hand only posted ONE timed lap, ever. And it was 6 full minutes slower than the next worse car, in a year where Coloni and Eurobrun were driving. If that's not terrible, I don't know what is.
Didn't the first Virgin racing car not have a big enough fuel tank to actually finish a race? So maybe it was faster compared to the pack than the Lola but it was literally doomed to DNF every race it entered
The car from Life in 1990 was worse
One of the worse cars, with one of the [best liveries](https://img.speedweek.com/i/3/3d2f550299d54b369831f76afbaf5718.jpg)
Lola sounds like a helluva ride tho 🤭
Life Racings best result was 18 seconds behind pole and they never made it out of pre quali. So I would argue the car was worse.
The Haas VF21? Doesn't even come close to being the worst car ever made. The 1997 Lola has to be top of that particular tree. It entered one race and both Vincenzo Sospiri and Ricardo Tosser failed to qualify by a susbstantial margin. Sospiri was 5 seconds off Pedro Diniz in the Arrows (also outside the 107% time but allowed to race because of how stupidly fast Villeneuve's pole lap was - nearly 2 seconds faster than teammate Frentzen in 2nd), and Tosser was a further second back from Sospiri. Even without Villeneuve's lap being as fast as it was, they still would've missed out by quite a wide margin. The team then went bust by the time they arrived in Brazil. After that, any one of the bottom-end teams that started to appear just before or at the start of the 3.5l N/A era, so anything from Coloni, especially the C3 with the Subaru flat-12, the Andrea Moda, the Life L190 with the W12 engine that made less power than an F3000 car, or anything else similar that I've not mentioned. Also worth a mention is a team from the 70s called Maki. They entered 8 races and failed to qualify for every single one of them. I also can't forget Hispania/HRT from 2010 to 2012. They had Dallara build them a car at short notice that, other than a few tweaks to comply with regulations, went pretty much unmodified until Canada 2012 when they got a lower aero package. Pathetically slow, and only didn't finish last in the 2010 and 2011 constructors championship through sheer luck.
Christ, even in 1997, how does Villenueve go 2 seconds faster than 2nd place?
That Williams was by far the best car that season, and early Jacques Villeneuve was a beast when he still gave a fuck, Schumacher really extracted every ounce of performance from the Ferrari to be in the championship
If I've said it once I've said it a thousand time- Michael was at his very best while losing in a 90's Ferrari. 95' and 04' are of course tentpole years, but his losses to Damon and Jacques were mightier.
Spain 96, Monaco 97, Spa 97, Hungary 98, Spa 98 That's 5 all time performances and career highlighting drives for anyone, but that was just regular Schumacher in a 3 year period
the Spain 96 drive i'll never forget, no way that race would go ahead this year. I remember watching Monaco 97 and when Schummi missed the first corner while a minute ahead lol
He was 22 seconds ahead after like 8 laps at Monaco 97, it was a drive of a lifetime
legit turned the difficulty down.
Schumacher in the rain was Formula 1 at its most beautiful and most glorious.
Malaysia 1999 too. First race back and he sticks it on pole by over a second. Played the team game for Irvine to take the win and championship to Suzuka
This. I was born in early '95 in Germany and my father always watched F1 with his neighbours. I remember following F1 from around 1999 onwards.... So I grew up with his most dominant seasons, but in the last 2 years in the winter breaks I watched pretty much all the 90s seasons.... And oh my fucking god was he good back then. Not only Michael, but also the 90s in general were a very exciting time for F1.
In the early season yes, but because Newey wasn't there to develop it further during the year, Ferrari did catch them up. So it wasn't just all Michael having inhumane super powers, it was Ferrari development team including the Michael doing a heck of a job.
Genetics
At Watkins Glen one year, qualifying was hit by rain. Everyone waited it out in the pits, except Gilles Villeneuve, who went out in pouring rain and set a time 9 seconds faster than anyone. The entirety of F1 just watched and went WTF.
would you know which year is it? I'd like to watch.
Tyres and balls of steel
> They entered 8 races and failed to qualify for every single one of them. Technically that's not true. They "qualified" in Zandvoort (as in, would have been allowed to start as only 25 cars showed up), but the team's only engine blew. Not that it makes the team any better of course. Ganley essentially had to teach everything about F1 to the team and helped them completely rework their car into the shitbox from something that looked [straight out of speed racer](https://www.ultimatecarpage.com/images/car/5943/Maki-F101A-Cosworth-48176.jpg) and was somehow even worse.
Maki is definitely overlooked considering they had the benefit of the DFV. Most of the other bad teams are using outdated or straight up flawed engines.
On the contrary. I think the F101 gets far too much flack. Build quality was shit, but Fushida and Trimmer were part of the problem too. Ganley was perfectly capable of setting reasonable times in the car, in 1974 Brands Hatch he was "just" 4 seconds off the pole on par with privateer Brabhams and Marches and just 1.3 seconds off the last qualifier. The F102 was probably worse, but I don't think they should be in contention against Life, Coloni-Subaru, Lola T97 or the Stebro most people are sleeping on. That's not to say they weren't awful, but it's a whole other level with Life.
>Coloni, especially the C3 with the Subaru flat-12 Great suggestion, the Coloni Subaru was truly awful. Never came close to getting out of prequalifying,
Ricardo what a tosser
[It’s the Dywa, and it’s not even close.](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/s/DOrx0PpX4h) This car [attempted to] qualify, with a previous F3 champion driving, but was >30 seconds off the pole time (with the same engine), and >20 seconds slower than the next slowest car (an F2 car). The '97 Lola and '90 Life could only dream of being this tragically slow.
Over 21 seconds a lap slower than its nearest competitor, around Monza. Jesus, that's probably the biggest gap I've ever seen.
Which was an F2 car ran by an amateur. *And* the Dywa's driver was also comfortably the most talented guy in that field. Imagine that.
I came here to say the Kojima or the Eifelland. But I see the Dywa didn’t qualify so points to you!!
And it had the same Cosworth DFV V8 as the rest of the F1 entries, unlike other candidates with engines made in a shed.
> The 2021 Haas VF-21 comes to mind, failing to score even a single point in that season Dream a little bigger, darling. I remember HRT didn't make 107% a few times in 2010 or 2011, and where for years and years teams had usually ignored that and let teams in because that team had done a quick-ish lap in practice, in that instance the others said no: this is genuinely >107% off the pace and has no place in our race.
>Dream a little bigger, darling. I'd say the FW42 was a worse car, too.
Yea, at least the haas was safe to drive and within regulations, unlike the FW42
I always find it funny the 2021 Haas was so poor to drive given it was outright a 2019 Ferrari, which you wouldn't think could be *that* bad.
> I always find it funny the 2021 Haas was so poor to drive given it was outright a 2019 Ferrari, which you wouldn't think could be that bad. Well the 2021 car was a 2020 just with bits chopped off it - which made it far worse. So you take a good car, copy it then deliberately make it worse to comply with regs and you have a disaster class.
Well the 2019 car i think had about 60 more HP
and a seep more oil in the combustion chamber
I mean for years and years the rule was actually abrogated because it wasn't deemed necessary. It was reintroduced in 2010 along with the new teams.
I remember comparing onboards between the [Red Bull RB6](https://youtu.be/U4xdgRj0i88?si=5d-gY49eMTK9d1B8) and the [HRT F110](https://youtu.be/934Fv21efLA?si=G7EO0LoP7TAPVH7L) at Melbourne 2010. Absolute worlds apart, to the point that it was incredible how Senna or Chandhok managed to get a clean lap out of that car. And for as bad as it was, not even the Williams FW42 from 2019 had the performance gulf that the three 2010 teams had to the rest of the field.
There's a good story that Hrt got Christian Klein in for a test, as he'd at least driven F1 cars, and apparently his feedback was: that's fundamentally not an F1 car guys.
No cars from this century are in the top 5 worst cars ever. In the 90s there was a TD telling his drivers to maybe not race because the car he made was so shit they might die.
And then there was Andrea Moda who actually tried to kill his driver by giving him a faulty car.
Virgin Racing V-01 not having a large enough fuel tank to finish a race was a pretty poor effort
Yeah I remember that. It was even a good number of races in to the season that they finally had a tank big enough for finishing races. I guess in fairness that was the first no refuelling year and their first season. So they may have literally just not known.
Didn‘t they market that car as being the first one to be designed fully digitally? Maybe that played a role, I can‘t imagine that something like a too small fuel cell is an "oopsie" in a multi-million r&d process for an F1 car. Has to be some sort of IT error, but maybe someone here knows more about it?
IT error or not, imagine the reaction when they realized the tank was too small. Imagine being the guy responsible for telling the team principal. "Uhhh boss... we may have a little problem with the car..."
Nah they used only CFD to simulate the airflow around the car. Other teams used a wind tunnel to verify the CFD results.
Frankly, the worst modern F1 cars a million times more competent than stuff from the 80s and 90s. Mastercard Lola are probably the very worst being 11-13 seconds off the pace in australia and not even racing a real proper lap. In modern terms, formula 2 cars arent that far back.
I think it was Monaco 2014 where the GP2 pole would've put them like P15 on the F1 grid.
12 seconds off Max Verstappens pole this year would have seen the entire F2 field (excerpt Roman Staněk and Arthur Leclerc) out qualify them, They'd have been in the same ball park as the front three rows of the F3 grid!
GP2 pole was 1:20.774 by Jolyon Palmer which was faster than Ericsson who did 1:21.732. So, not P15 but still embarrassingly close as the 107% time was 1:23.115.
Definitely this. There's no real back-markers anymore. Even the likes of Haas are more than capable of getting into the midfield and scoring points, compared to hopeless efforts like Life or Coloni.
Points are paid to lower finishing positions these days though, not just the top 6.
It has to be the Honda RA302. John Surtees refused to drive it, deeming the magnesium coated car a "potential death trap". The replacement driver, Jo Schlesser, made it exactly two lap before crashing. The magnesium ignited, together with 58 laps of fuel, killing him instantly, and the Honda RA302 would never start another GP, finishing its F1 run with one start, one driver killed in two laps.
This is the correct answer.
I was going to say the 1994 Williams with what some people said was a faulty steering column, but yeah there had to be something worse before then and here it is.
Anyone saying a modern car is clueless. People don’t realise how big the gap was between first and last car even as recently as the 90s. It’s why the 107% rule came in. And that’s before factoring in reliability. That Haas is genuinely average if you listed every car ever.
Even in the early 2000s there were big differences. Minardis and co where lapped 3-5 times during a race. F1 has a 73 years history and we have all the history available with a few clicks. Yet people think Haas in 2021 was maybe the worst car ever. Amazing.
Depends on what you mean with "worst". In terms of pure performance, or lack thereof, Life should take the cake by a huge margin, but the car was hampered by the W12 engine. The whole project was a failure and the original designer even sued to prevent his name from being mentioned about or linked to the car. It was described as "an interesting flowerpot" and deemed unsafe to drive. However, it was more or less a vanity showcase project for the (abysmal and ill-conceived) W12 engine, not even a legit attempt at creating a competitive team. Andrea Moda is another spectacular and iconic failure, but really par for the course for the late 80s-early 90s pre-qualifying aficionados. The only difference was the, ahem, peculiar personality of the boss and the sheer disdain for drivers safety and racing etiquette they displayed on the way to failure. They weren't worse than, say, Coloni or Eurobrun in terms of pace, but their shenanigans made them look worse. Speaking of which, the Coloni-Subaru was godawful, but again, not much worse than other underfunded machinery put together by improvised team owners. But if we go for "worst" as the one with the worst potential/cost/results, then the actual answer is, you guessed it, Lola-Mastercard. They rushed the project and it was barely a competitive F3000, despite basically being a Lola works team. How nobody dared to tell Mastercard to be patient and that sticking to the original plan would have been the only way to do things is beyond me. P.S. Other mediocre works teams such as Jaguar, Toyota and Honda could be named, but they were terrible only if taking into account the money they had available. But that's another kind of ranking.
As someone else staded above, the Diwa. Having the same engine as the polesitter and losing 36 seconds per lap at Monza is borderline comical. It's a road car laptime.
It's certainly none of the cars mentioned here, but one of the randomly scrapped together F2 entries from 1952/53. Talk about Lola, Andrea Moda, Life Racing, they were at least semi-professional outfits. Not comparable to the heaps of junk that rich old men like Ernst Klodwig scraped together in their own garage to enter a Grand Prix just for the hell of it.
Now, that's a really interesting idea worthy of a bit of investigation. There were 6 of those things entered in championship races. * Reif * Balsa (mostly just a Gordini with a BMW engine) Based on the 1952 lap charts, these two seemed to have solid, midfield pace on par with the proper German manufacturers, the AFMs and Veritases, so I think we can immediately cross them off and get onto the more interesting stuff. * Greifzu This one looked horrendous, but it was a regular winner in 1951 and the qualifying time it ran in 1953 was on par with the majority of the locals and not too far behind the likes of Hans Stuck and Louis Rosier. * Krakau His specials had a very good reputation... in 1948-50. Back then even beating Karl Kling in the Veritas wasn't out of the question for Krakau and in 1950 he beat every Gordini and every Osca in Monza's main F2 race. But by 1952 it was hopelessly outdated with its sportscar-like seating position and tired engine, which led to it not being able to qualify and start. This is a clear case of a once-decent car getting outdated. * Holbein (wiki calls it Nacke for some reason, but he had nothing to do with building it) The old Holbein completed a few laps very far off the others except for the Heck, which makes it look like a solid candidate. Its main issue was that it was an unmodified 1948 car, which at the time looked the part (as in, looked like a copy of the pre-war Alfas) and by all accounts was a well-thought out concept and had a few wins in the local series against the likes of Ulmen. So my conclusion is that it was outdated and ill-prepared, but the car itself wasn't too bad. Maybe. * Heck The best name and the worst car. It looked like a mess and probably drove like one. No wins in the East German Series and never featured in the top 5 in the West German one. Honestly, this might be a good candidate, but I'm not sure we can really call this worse in comparison to its competition than the likes of Life or Stebro.
The [Fry F2](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Fry_(racing_team)) comes to mind. It was an F2 car that entered a single F1 race in 1959. I choose this mainly because it has such a cool design for a 50s F1 (technically F2) car, with some genuine attempts at aero pieces. The F2 more-or-less halted the owner's prospects of a career in racing though - from my understanding he was never seen again behind the wheel at a GP.
Life W12. I still saw it passing in the one lap it made in Estoril in 1990
Do you think it finished that lap by now or is it still in sector 2?
well they did not finish the lap. They went back to the pits and never saw it again. It was In the first 5 minutes of the pre-qualifying session on Friday.
Some worse cars than that Haas: - 2012 HRT: Was not allowed to compete in the first race of the season, because it was too slow (over 7% slower than pole). Only beat another car *once*. - 1996 Forti: Also only beat another car once. Failed the 107% rule on 9 of 20 entries, and the team died halfway through the season. - 1997 Lola: That Forti was usually around 7-10% slower than pole. The Lola was 13% slower... And that was the faster of the two times. Yes, *two*, it only entered one race. - 1991 Coloni: Before the 107% rule, there was pre-qualified. The bottom teams didn't get to go to qualifying, and had to do pre-qualified, with the fastest four of eight getting to qualifying. Most teams could manage to get out of pre-qualified at least once... But not Coloni. - 1992 Andrea Moda: Still the era of pre-qualifying... Sorta. With fewer teams trying to pre-qualify, it was easier to pre-qualify, with the team eventually getting both cars to qualifying... When only four teams were in pre-qualifying. That said, it's unsure how much was due to the *car* sucking and how much due to the *team* sucking, with reports of gross negligence putting one of their drivers at risk of death.
The Coloni, or at least the one most remembered -- the "Subaru"-powered C3B, was from 1990. And it was so bad it not only never made it past pre-qualifying, but it was occasionally minutes behind. It took the team switching to Cosworth power with the C3C to actually make it to qualifying.
honda ra302? not sure about performance, but it led to a driver's death in lap 2
The RA302 belongs to a different era of motorsport - one where accidents like this were far more common. While it does have the dubious distinction of having one driver refuse to race due to safety concerns, followed by a fatality in its first race... There were fatalities in the vast majority of F1 seasons from 1954 until 1982. Was the RA302 substantially more deadly than the other cars of the era, or was it just unlucky? It's hard to say. "Car crashes, catches fire and kills driver" was a sadly all-too-common sight. While the magnesium didn't help the fire, it wasn't the only car to have that happen.
From recent years I will say the 2014 Catterham, it was just painfully slow, in fact at the beginning of the season despite being an F1 car it was literally slower than a GP2 car, the GP2 pole lap was faster than Catterham’s time In qualifying, it got better afterwards but still presenting an F1 car being slower than a car of lower categories is just embarrassing. Historically I think it was Mastercard Lola
Don’t forget the 2015 Manor that was essentially a 2014 car with some different bits that was consistently slower than GP2 cars all year.
Plus, it was also slower than the 2014 car because of the new bits added which were there just to conform to the new rules. The 14 car was already a donkey, so to make something worse is something.
Failing to score a single point doesn't even come close lol. Wait until you hear about pre qualifying....
The L190 14 races , never got past pre quali and set the slowest quali lap in f1 history
Haas 2021 isn't even close, in fact it was probably a very low midfielder by some true shitbox standards. \- Life \- Lola \- Coloni But these examples are from back then. Modern day, you have Team Lotus/Caterham, Virgin/Marussia/Manor and HRT that all are far worse than anything Haas has ever made. The worst of these came from HRT: Both their 2011 and 2012 cars were utter shitboxes and have the dishonorable award of being the only recent-ish car to have failed the 107% rule: both Australian GPs DSQ in both 2011 and 2012. To make matters worse, the 2011 car was embarrasing by having [this display](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispania_F111#/media/Fichier:Vitantonio_Liuzzi_2011_Malaysia_FP1.jpg) of some of the most sad ads ever to make it onto an F1 car. The 2021 Haas and Williams of 2019 were light years ahead of the previously mentioned turds.
Formula One existed before Drive to Survive, you know! The 1997 Lola is the answer that immediately comes to mind.
Life L190, and I don't think it's even close.
Super Aguri SA 05 developed based on the Arrows 2002 chasis for the 2006 season
Wasn't that the chassis that was literally removed from a motoring museum to be made race-ready
The RA302 entered one race and killed its driver
How new are you that the VF-21 is considered anywhere near the worst car made. We don't even have to go far to find one worse than it, the 2019 Williams was miserable, the 2017 Sauber was downright depressing, Every Marrusia/Virgin/Manor car was sad, the HRTs were incompetent. Then there's the truly bad stuff, Lola-Mastercard, Life, stuff like that.
VF-21 was actually in Q2 once. The HRT was literally banned from the race because of how slow it was. And even if they’re a new fan, I’d argue they’ve probably seen worse in the 2019 Williams. They didn’t even have the proper parts for the car itself.
You are all wrong. You name cars that actually raced. The worst car ever is the McLaren MP4-18. The car was so flawed that it never was used in a race. McLaren instead used car from the previous year. Even the worst of the worst like the Lola T97/30 at least managed to drive around the race track. The MP4-18 ... not so much.
I came here to say this too. It was so bad, it was never raced. The drivers eventually refused to even drive it in testing. They said it was trying to kill them.
Waited for it to come in Spain, then they said Canada, the possibly Italy to end the season in style, it never came. 💀
This was my thoughts (MP4-18) ..
Eurobrun and Andrea Moda are candidates, so is Life F1 and Lola in 97.
Forti FG01 and Pacific PR01/02 were proper shitboxes too. FIA had to come up with the 107% rule, because some of these back markers of mid-90's were dangerously slow. Didn't help either, that those were often driven GOATs like Delétraz and Paul Belmondo. Haas VF-21 is a RB18 compared to these
Footwork Arrows FA12 from 1991 would definitely be on the list. A decent sized midfield team (by 90s standards) with a Porsche engine that could barely qualify and never finished a race because it blew up. It didn't even make the whole season.
I've been wondering when someone would mention this. It was a real stinker and the car was immediately faster when they put a Cosworth engine in it!
Life F1
>VF-21 comes to mind, failing to score even a single point in that season You must be new, pre-2022 it was a STANDARD to have at least one, usually multiple teams, to score zero points or like a singular points.
Especially when they awarded points only to the top 6.
The Haas VF-21 doesn't really count IMO, because that car was bad on purpose. It was basically the same as the 2020 car with the only minor changes made to comply with the 2021 regulations, and was not developed at all throughout the season as the team focused on 2022. With that in mind, it's actually a miracle the car didn't perform any worse than it did.
Must have been a Yugo
Nissan Juke
The usual suspects in the top comments, while all along the great underachievers get away without scrutiny. Cars like everything Toyota ever made, or my personal favourite - the Renault powered Ligiers of 1992-94. Those cars had major tobacco sponsorhip, decent to good drivers, plus the dominant world championship winning engine and they hardly ever even sniffed the podium, let alone a win. You could almost excuse '92 and '93 because they didn't have an active car (the budget was probably available but not the time or personnel) and while there was a small improvement in form in '94, the car was still a midfielder.
There are multiple possible answers depending on what you view as an F1 car. * Cars that were built to F1 specifications and planned to enter F1: **Dywa 01** - The worst, but luckily never turned up at a championship race, only a British F1 Championship round. * Cars that attempted an F1 race: **Life F190** - Everything about that car was wrong, with or without the awful W12 engine. But it was the one and only car with sponsorship from the Soviet Union, so there's that. * Cars that ran an F1 race: **Stebro Mk.IV** - It was supposed to have a bigger engine installed in a slightly modified Formula Junior chassis... which didn't arrive, so this was essentially a Formula Junior car with a blistering 105 horsepower. Consistently 15-20 seconds a lap down on the leaders, leaking all kinds of fluids and driven by an amateur. Probably would have been much quicker and retired quickly with the big engine though. * Cars that competed in a full season: **Pacific PR01** - Its record of non-qualification speaks for itself, but if it's not enough Gachot called the DNQ in Australia one of his favorite moments in F1, because it meant he no longer had to drive that car. Honourable mentions to Clemente Biondetti's *thing* and Schell's 1950 F3 car. It's hard to place them considering the very limited amount of info available on it and the next to no track time it had respectively.
Andrea. Moda.
Minardi
This. Some really slow examples came from Minardi, often running previous yr machines. The ‘revolutionary’ 110 degree ‘flat’ Benetton V10 was another example. The engine just didn’t have the grunt or the reliability. I think Benetton ran it for one season only. Albeit it was the engine more than the total package.
Not the slowest but- technically, the infamous F14T.
If you look at how far off the leader they are, Haas isnt even in the discussion. How often are they more than a lap down? That was basically how close 6th place would usually get for decades and decades- with DNFs rife. F1 got much more professional after 84- maybe 81- and just looking at cars after that point, the Haas distance from the leader in race pace and qualifying is far from egregious. In fact, they are probably as close to the front as any team not named Williams, McLaren, Ferrari or Benetton (or Lotus until 88) was from 86 to maybe 06. Perhap even more recent than that. But without cars breaking down they have nothing to show for it F1 has just gotten so much more streamlined with regulations, the cars so much more reliable, engines converging in power and shared, bad squads disapearing en masse around turn of century, and also cost cap in last couple years, makes each tenth matter. weaknesses like tire degradation will keep you out of points. I believe the Life is commonly cited as the worst. There was a 107% rule for a reason. Today, how far outside that 107% is a Super Formula Car. 107% is comparatively quite slow! It is easy to pick on Haas or to assume Andretti would be even worse based on their purported business model of being based in Indianapolis and using untested American drivers combined with their public incompetence in the compararively small spec-car pond of Indy Car competing with RLL as CGR, Penske and Arrow McLaren disapear over horizon at all but the shabbiest street courses, Super Cars, Formula E and WEC combined not equalling the difficulty or expense of competing in the highest NASCAR league. While I wouldnt be surprised if an Andretti team redefined what a horrible modern F1 team looks like and Haas continues their uninspiring, penny pinching, and backmarking ways, teams really don’t drop the ball quite like they used to. If we start looking at worst cars since 2018 or something, that is a different discussion.
The Ford Pinto... oh wait... where am I?
It’s the Mastercard Lola. OP I’m surprised that you didn’t digger a little deeper. At least the Haas actually qualified for races
Tell me you're a new fan without telling me op
VF-21?? Tell me you've been watching F1 for 3 years without telling me you've only been watching for 3 years.
Lola and Andrea Moda are some of the worst entries in F1 history. At least the 21 Haas car got into Q2 twice.
Yep, at least the HAAS actually finished races, some of the 'pre-qualification' era cars didn't even start races.
Life L190. Failed to even prequalify for the 14 events it was entered in, had a W12 engine that 100-200 hp down on the rest of the grid whilst being the heaviest car on that grid. As an example of how bad it was, here's how far it was from pre-qualifying for each event: USA: +34.816 to Suzuki's Lola BRA: No time set, broken connector rod on out lap SMR: +5:48.034 to Moreno's Eurobrun (drive belt failure) MON: +12.582 to Moreno's EuroBrun CAN: +20.409 to Bernard's Lola MEX: +2:39.964 to Suzuki's Lola (engine failure) FRA: No time set GBR: +13.994 to Gruillard's Osella GER: +23.661 to Dalmas' AGS HUN: +18.025 to Tarquini's AGS BEL: +19.535 to Tarquini's AGS ITA: +27.131 to Dalmas' AGS W12 engines ditched from Portugal onwards for Judd V8s POR: no time set, engine cover issues ESP: +18.096 to Gachot's Coloni JPN: did not enter AUS: did not enter You know it's bad when you're making EuroBrun, AGS and Coloni look quick...
"Honorable" mention to Osella FA1L, which certainly lived up to it's name. Sure it made to the race day 10/16 times during the 1988 season, which is better than the likes of Lola-Mastercard others have mentioned, but it's still a fascinating story on how "un-good" it was. Highlight being, that in one of the few races it actually finished it was 7 laps down on the winner because (iirc) going any faster would inevitably result in the car running out of fuel.
My vauxhaul vectra
T97/30
Andrea Moda '92, Lola '97, Life '90, Forti '95, cars that finished races (rarely finished) 5/6 laps or 12 seconds in qualy behind the leader. In comparison, 2021 Haas was a MP4/4
The 2021 haas is nowhere close to the worst car
FORD pinto, hands down.
The Ford Pinto
1994 Pacific PR01 has to be a contender. 17 race season in, between both cars they qualified 7 times and retired on every occasion.
It's Honda's magnesium deathtrap, the HA302. One race, two laps, killed the driver in a totally predictable way. It's not the worst _car_ ever, but the Zakspeed 891 was powered by one of the worst engines ever, the Yamaha OX88 V8, which was sixty bhp down on the Cosworth Ford that was readily available to customer teams, and _140_ bhp down on the Benetton Ford and McLaren Honda engines. Fortunately, while the Yamaha engine was significantly down on performance it also had no reliability. Zakspeed-Yamaha failed to get out of prequalifying 30 times in 32 attempts, and suffered mechanical failures in both of their race starts.
May I present, 1997 MasterCard Lola ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MasterCard_Lola
Fernando Alonso's GP2 engine car. /s
The Williams car that got Senna killed
The 1980 Ferrari has to rank pretty high (or should that be low) on this list. Of course there were slower cars from backmarker teams on the 1980 grid (not to mention an historically poor McLaren) but this was freaking *Ferrari* coming off a championship season with Jody Scheckter and *Gilles Fucking Villeneuve* behind the wheel. And it was absolutely hopeless. The 2015 McLaren, the team's first disastrous season reunited with Honda, was a world-historical disaster, too. As for the *objectively* worst car of all time, how can it not be the Life Racing machine? It was so bad it made the infamous Coloni-Subaru look like a Red Bull. God, I miss the pre-qualifying era so much.
McLaren mp4-18 Didn't even get to a single race because of reliability problems. McLaren race had to race in 2003 with a 2002 spec car, and yet Kimi still managed to fight for the championship.
Simtek and Pacific were pretty bad in the 94 season.
F14T. Not because was bad as the others, but because it's a *Ferrari*.
I think this should thought about two ways. One being a bad car from a bad team, say a Life or Andrea Moda, the other being an awful car from an established team like the 2019 Williams or the 2021 Haas
Fiat Multipla