HRT: Should it be on the Reject List?

[CaptainGetz12]

Well Hispania Racing Team has folded before the 2013 season even began with the team not scoring a single point for its 3 year lifetime in F1. Thats the first time that came and went under the post-2003 points system and not score any points.

I know that F1Rejects guidelines only allow teams that raced under the pre-2003 system to be allowed on the reject list, but to me we havent had a team that had a truely awful status in the near decade under the new points system. All of the other teams that were formed after 2003 that could be reject worthy are either still active ("Old Lotus"-Caterham) or are sucessors and/or predecessors to more sucessful teams (Arrows => Super Aguri, Jordan => Midland => Spyker => Force India).

I dont know how flexible the rulings regarding how an F1 team can be declared rejectful after 2003, but I believe that the collapse of the unsucessful HRT is a good time to look over the system and see if HRT should be added to the list of reject teams as well as for having any future reject teams under the current points system.

[Nuppiz]

It is entirely possible to include teams and drivers from other points scoring systems than the 1991-2003 one. In these cases the amount of points doesn't matter, but instead the equivalent amount of positions reached. As the teams' limit is six points under that system, here's what positions a team can score and still be considered a reject:

• one second place
• one third place, plus either one fifth place OR two sixth places
• two fourth places
• one fourth place, plus either one fifth place and two sixth places OR three sixth places
• three fifth places, OR two fifth places and two sixth places, OR one fifth place and four sixth places
• six sixth places

[dinizintheoven]

Teams changing identity is always a thorny issue: Fondmetal have a profile here, Osella don't, and are a possibly disputed case (one 4th, one 5th, and another 5th that wasn't eligible for points - Jo Gartner at Monza 1984 - if he had been, that'd push Osella out of reject contention under the original system) - but I always saw the two teams as two sides of the same coin. As for the Jordan-to-FI continuum, Jordan fairly obviously aren't rejects (since Mexico 1991), and neither are Force India (since Italy 2009), but Midland and Spyker certainly are (and Midland get extra reject points for being bought and "run" by a man with so little interest in the team and F1 itself he may as well have not existed).

Wikipedia considers Campos-Hispania-HRT to be all the same incarnation of one team, and no doubt about it, they're well worthy of a full profile here. However, it considers Caterham and Marussia to be separate entities from their previous incarnations as Fernandes-"Lotus" and Virgin, even though there's a compelling argument that both teams are competing in their fourth season now and not their second; "Caterham F1 Team", and "Team Lotus" and "Lotus Racing" before it, are all trading names of 1Malaysia Formula One Team, whereas "Marussia F1 Team", "Marussia Virgin Racing" and "Virgin Racing" are/were all trading names of Manor Grand Prix Racing Ltd.

For profiling purposes, I'd say if either of the two backmarker teams we still have left were to go under before achieving the criteria needed to escape eligibility for it, their profile should stretch back as far as the beginning of the 2010 season - and, by the same argument, if the miraculous results did ever happen, then they've escaped completely - even the utterly rejectful 2010-11 seasons as "Lotus" and "Virgin" can't be included.

Super Aguri, of course, are still waiting for their profile after five years, so I doubt there's much of a hurry to get HRT's done - especially with the potential for Scorpion Racing to rise as a true successor team as a footnote to HRT's existence, and that really will count as a separate entity.

[eytl]

Unfortunately, the amount of spare time I have is inversely proportional to the time that teams and drivers will have to wait to get profiled.

But as a matter of principle, yes teams from 2003 onwards can be eligible - Nuppiz is correct, it's just a matter of converting to the pre-2003 points systems.

And dinizintheoven, yeah our general principle is, if the team has changed owners and names, we'll count it as a separate team, hence Fondmetal and Osella are different, Andrea Moda and Coloni are different, Midland and Spyker are different. But teams that change names without changing owners, or change owners without changing names, are counted as the one team. The Lotus/Caterham and Virgin/Marussia examples are good ones. It also explains why Onyx and Monteverdi are counted as one, because Peter Monteverdi already owned the team when it was still called Onyx, he only changed the name of the team for their last few races.

I should add that Osella hasn't got a profile yet simply because of time and appetite to detail their long history, but as you point out, there's an eligibility question-mark anyway.

One team I've been mulling over is whether Venturi Larrousse in 1992 should be treated as different from the Larrousse-Lola efforts from 1987-91 and the Larrousse efforts of 1993-94. Forix is normally a good guide and they have Venturi as a separate team. But I've tended to regard it all as being part of the one history.

[AndreaModa]

What's fundamental is the name of the constructor. If that changes, then essentially for regulation purposes, the FIA classify them as a new team. That would be fairly straightforward to follow I suppose, but creates problems with Larousse for example as you've said Enoch.

[dr-baker]

So as an aside, would this mean that Footwork and Arrows were one entity or two?

[FullMetalJack]

One team I've been mulling over is whether Venturi Larrousse in 1992 should be treated as different from the Larrousse-Lola efforts from 1987-91 and the Larrousse efforts of 1993-94. Forix is normally a good guide and they have Venturi as a separate team. But I've tended to regard it all as being part of the one history.

I've always counted it all as Larrousse and as one team from 1987-1994.

So as an aside, would this mean that Footwork and Arrows were one entity or two?

Probably separate, but neither of them would be eligible for a profile anyway. Even if Footwork deserve one just for that horrendous 1991 season alone.

[Aerospeed]

I usually go with what Wikipedia says. So Larrousse and the Venturi team is all in one entry (in that case, perhaps a Reject Centrale article on the downfall of Larrousse would suffice), Virgin and Marussia are seperate and Lotus (2010) and Clatterham are seperate.

[Yannick]

The FIA counts Venturi Larrousse as separate from Larrousse Lola just as much as it counts BMS Scuderia Italia Dallara as separate from BMS Scuderia Italia Lola. Yet, they are the same teams, and it's teams which get profiled on this very website here, not constructors.

Yet, the issue of team lineage is one difficult subject. Take for example, the Ligier-to-Prost transition. The team was the same, just the owner and the name are different. Yet you have to draw the line somewhere, and I guess this might be it.

Toleman-to-Benetton is also a clear distinction in which the team is the same but the owner is not. Here, it's more clear than in the Prost case because the Benetton sponsorship was on the Alfa the year before the Toleman buyout.

But I must talk a little more about Benetton here. The Benetton-to-Renault transition is a rather questionable divide. Are they really a different team? Or is Renault the comeback of the pre-98, pre-ProDrive era Benetton team?

Yet, Renault ran as Lotus Renault even when GenII Capital owned them, so the transition to Lotus F1 Team was much more smoothly so you could safely say that the 2000s era Renault are the same team as the current Lotus F1 Team. Things will get more interesting when they sell the name rights to the team again because Lotus does not pay them for it anymore.
Luckily for F1 Rejects, this team is not eligible for a profile so it doesn't matter that much, which versions of the team are the same and which ones are not.

The same can be said of the first version of Williams from the 70s which showed up as Iso Marlb*r* on entry lists, then as Wolf-Williams and then as Walter Wolf Racing: Not eligible for a profile.

It's different with Midland/Spyker but that's really the most difficult case of the transitional teams which might or might not be eligible. Jordan was owned in their final season by Alex Shnaider and run by Colin Kolles. After that, they changed the name to an anonymous MF-1. Not much later, they turned to Spyker MF-1 by ways of their title sponsor and another season later, they were renamed as Spkyer. So the Jordan lineage continues up to Spyker which was owned by the Mol group from the Netherlands. One might want to think the non-eligible Force 1ndia is a different team, but despite being generally identified with VJ Mallya, the Mols still have a partial ownership stake in the team, and Colin Kolles was their team boss for several seasons. So there is the continuation, in kind of the same fashion as the Benetton-to-Renault-to-GenII Capital Racing transition. Yet, this website would miss out on many a great story if MF-1 and Spyker were not eligible, so I guess it's only fair to their owners to bend the rules on team lineage a little here and honour this version of the team's eligibility on merit.

Or how do you perceive these matters, eytl?

[mytolemanisonfire]

Do RAM and Theodore qualify as separate teams? Or are they just offshoots of March and Ensign respectively?

On an unrelated note, I think Spirit would be an interesting profile too, as it was the first appearance of the Honda V6 Turbo.

[good_Ralf]

To make a long story short: Yes

[Sunshine_Baby_[IT]]

I suppose that HRT could be considered the same team from 2010 to 2012, even if the name originally was Hispania Racing and later HRT.

[Rocks with Salt]

I know I'm bumping this thread back up, but my idea for a Reject profile for HRT would be slightly different, seeing as how they were around when the F1Rejects Forum was around. In addition to a profile, I think HRT should have their own online guest book for members of the forum to leave their own comments, well-wishes, memories, etc. After all, we talked about them at great length when they were around, so why not preserve what we said as part of the profile? It's one of the few teams we can all say we actually remember being around, so let's put it good use!

"May we never forget 'This Could Be YOU' and Vitantonio Liuzzi's fleeting 8th place in Italy, 2011. You will be missed." ~Rocks with Salt

[Nessafox]

If you do it for HRT, so we'll have to do for Super Aguri! (less so for Midland and Spyker, we didn't really care about them, besides, they were Super Aguri's arch rivals!)

[dinizintheoven]

And, of course, it's the right time to have a profile of Super Aguri, with them coming back to our attention at least via Formula E. If it could be written in time for the first Formula E race, it'd be perfect.

As I know someone who's been to Japan and interacted heavily with Japanese people in Japanese, I might be able to help with the early years - indirectly. Remember, they were a Formula Nippon team since 1996 at least, and a lot of the interesting background information will only be available in Japanese.

[Yannick]

And, of course, it's the right time to have a profile of Super Aguri, with them coming back to our attention at least via Formula E. If it could be written in time for the first Formula E race, it'd be perfect.

As I know someone who's been to Japan and interacted heavily with Japanese people in Japanese, I might be able to help with the early years - indirectly. Remember, they were a Formula Nippon team since 1996 at least, and a lot of the interesting background information will only be available in Japanese.

That's a good point. I can safely say that we here on this board LOVE SuperAguri!