Forgotten F1 Friday: BAR 01

Much was expected from the new British American Racing outfit when it lined up on the grid in 1999 – its inaugural year in Formula 1 after purchasing the long-ailing Tyrrell team.

Developed with help from Reynard Motorsports and piloted by the talents of Jacques Villeneuve and Ricardo Zonta, punters tipped the Supertec V10-powered BAR 01 to be challenging the top teams from the very first race of the season. However the only thing this racing car seemed to challenge was the patience of the FIA.

You see the team in question wanted to run its BAR 01 in two liveries: Villeneuve's car in 'Lucky Strike' branding and Zonta's in '555.' Unfortunately at the time FIA regulations stipulated that both cars had to share the same basic livery – only minor differences such as the car number, driver's name and nationality flag would be tolerated.

To get around this issue BAR's graphic designers got creative and penned a unique love-it-or-hate-it solution where one side of the car was dedicated to 'Lucky Strike' and the other to '555.' The FIA approved and one of the quirkiest looking cars was finally allowed to turn its wheels in anger. What followed was a truly dismal season. Wracked by laughable reliability neither Villeneuve or Zonta finished a single race in the points. As such debutants BAR finished last in the constructors championship – beaten by smaller teams such as Minardi, Arrows and Sauber which were all operating on much leaner budgets.