Under New Management – Part I: Renault & Mercedes

Of the nine 'established' teams currently in Formula One, just three – Ferrari, McLaren and Williams – have retained their original guises from when they first entered the championship. The rest have all undergone one or more identity changes over the years, so allow me to give you a brief history of how some of them began, and how they have evolved since in another two-part series.

Renault (aka Toleman, Benetton)

Laying aside the completely separate Renault works effort that operated from 1977 to 1985, the modern Renault team began life as Toleman back in 1981. To begin with, the team was rather uncompetitive, qualifying just twice out of 24 attempts in their debut season with an all-British line-up of Derek Warwick and Brian Henton. The team wouldn't score its first points until 1983, courtesy of Warwick, and the following year signed up the rookie Ayrton Senna who came painstakingly close to taking a shock win at that year's Monaco Grand Prix. The Brazilian finished second behind future rival Alain Prost in torrential conditions after the race was halted prematurely, and racked up two more podiums later in the season to finish a rather respectable ninth in the championship. Although Senna departed for Lotus for 1985, his performances attracted sponsorship from the Benetton clothing company, which purchased the team one year later and renamed it 'Benetton Formula'.

With a far healthier budget in place, Gerhard Berger took the team's first win at the 1986 Mexican Grand Prix, and regular podium finishes thereafter allowed Benetton to become part of the 'top four' along with the three teams mentioned at the start of this blog. The Enstone-based outfit took its next step up the grid when it poached Michael Schumacher from the Jordan team in 1991 after one highly impressive race for the Irish squad. Schumacher won one race in each of the next two seasons, and clinched his and Benetton's first title in 1994 after a close and controversial battle with Williams driver Damon Hill. Schumacher defended his title with consummate ease in 1995, but when the German decided to jump ship to Ferrari, Benetton began to slowly sink down the grid. Berger returned to the team after stints with Ferrari and McLaren to take the team's final win at the 1997 German Grand Prix, but matters got worse when engine suppliers Renault withdrew from the sport at the end of the year, leaving Benetton to run re-badged 'Playlife' units for the next three seasons. Despite some excellent performances from Giancarlo Fisichella, the team found itself unable to keep pace with several of its rivals, and in March 2000 the team was sold to Renault who subsequently took over the ailing team in time for the start of the 2002 season.

Mercedes (aka Tyrrell, BAR, Honda, Brawn GP)

Motorsport aficionados will no doubt know that Mercedes competed in F1 in 1954-5, but the roots of the modern-day team can only be traced back to 1968. That year, Tyrrell Racing emerged on the F1 scene for the first time, and it may have won the drivers' title in its debut season had its star driver Jackie Stewart not injured himself in an F2 race which prevented him from contesting two races that year. As it was, the Scot would go on to take three titles for Tyrrell in 1969, 1971 and 1973, the first with a Matra chassis and the others with the team's own design. Stewart retired after sealing his third championship after the unfortunate death of his teammate Francois Cevert, but the team remained a force throughout most of the 1970s, with further race wins being racked up by Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler. However, as the turbo era dawned, Tyrrell's competitiveness began to wane: 1980 was the team's first year in which it failed to score a podium. Michele Alboreto took two unlikely wins in 1982-3, but these couldn't disguise the long-term decline of the once-great team. In 1984, Tyrrell was the final team running a non-turbo engine, and had some strong results from debutants Martin Brundle and Stefan Bellof erased after the outfit was retrospectively disqualified from all that season's races for having illegally used lead compounds in its fuel. The team struggled on during the remainder of the 1980s with relatively little funding, but enjoyed a brief resurgence when turbo engines were banned for the 1989 season, as Alboreto, Jean Alesi and Stefano Modena took four podiums between them during the 1989-91 period. This revival would prove temporary however; rapidly escalating costs of competition, which in turn led to many small teams falling by the wayside, meant that by the late 90s Tyrrell had become regulars at the very rear of the grid. With founder Ken Tyrrell's health deteriorating, the team was sold to tobacco giant British American Tobacco in 1998, renaming the team British American Racing for 1999.

A bespoke new factory was constructed in Brackley, respected designer Adrian Reynard was recruited to design the new team's first car, and 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve was lured away from Williams to lead the driving strength. With one of the largest budgets on the grid, the team set itself the target of winning its first race, but instead 1999 would prove a baptism of fire: the car, whilst not hopelessly off the pace, was horrendously unreliable, with Villeneuve retiring from the first eleven successive races and the team being the only one to fail to score any points. 2000 saw a modest improvement as the team beat more fancied runners to come fifth in the constructors table, but their performance stagnated during the next few seasons. Villeneuve was sacked at the end of 2003 after being upstaged by teammate Jenson Button, and the following season the team enjoyed by far their best season in 2004 – Button scored ten podiums en route to third in the drivers' championship behind the all-conquering Ferraris, and new partner Takuma Sato also put in some eye-catching performances to give BAR second in the constructors' championship too. Alas, this new-found success was short-lived, as a torrid 2005 saw the team plummet to sixth in the standings. Having already purchased 45% of the team at the end of 2004, engine-suppliers Honda purchased the remaining 55% owned by BAT upon the completion of the 2005 season.

Now known as Honda Racing, the team's performances improved in 2006 as Jenson Button took an overdue first win of his career at the Hungaroring en route to sixth in the drivers' standings, with new teammate Rubens Barrichello's seventh place consolidating Honda's position as 'best of the rest' behind Renault, Ferrari and McLaren. Nevertheless, things took a drastic turn for the worse in 2007: at the first race of the season, Button and Barrichello's Hondas lined up in 14^th and 16^th place respectively, whilst the Honda 'B-Team' Super Aguri, who were using a modified 2006 Honda chassis, qualified their cars 10^th and 11^th. That set the tone for an utterly disastrous year, as their cars, now adorned in the dreadful 'earth' livery, were embarrassingly slow all year. Button managed just six points, while Barrichello was unable to score any at all for the first time in his 14-year F1 career. 2008 wasn't much better, with Barrichello's superb third place in treacherous conditions at Silverstone failing to mask another appalling season in which the beleaguered Japanese manufacturer came second-to-last in the standings, beating only Force India. In the wake of the global financial crisis, Honda decided to put its team up for sale, which after much speculation was eventually purchased by team principal Ross Brawn in early 2009.

Ironically, just as Honda decided to pull the plug, they were in the process of creating what would transpire to be the dominant car of the first half of the 2009 season. Brawn retained Honda drivers Button and Barrichello, and both were immediately on the pace in pre-season testing at the wheel of the renamed 'Brawn GP' cars. At the first race in Melbourne, Button and Barrichello locked out the front row and went on to finish one-two in the race, Brawn GP becoming the first team since Wolf in 1977 to win at its first attempt. Button stamped his authority on the championship by winning six of the seven opening races, and held on to take the title in spite of a late challenge from Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull. For all the team's success though, it was clear that it would need a buyer who could guarantee its financial future. That buyer arrived at the end of the year in the form of Daimler, parent company of Mercedes-Benz, who along with Aabar Investments purchased a controlling 75% stake in the team and rebranded it 'Mercedes GP' for the upcoming 2010 season.

Next week will be the European Grand Prix at the Valencia Street Circuit, which hopefully will also be transformed from procession to thriller as per Monaco thanks to the new rules. After that, make sure you come back here for the second 'Under New Management' post, where you'll be able to discover the origins of Force India and Red Bull.