Who had the best send off?

[The Chicane]

Which of these teams had the best final season in F1? (Excluding the actual race results)
These are the factors to consider when making your choice:
Best team atmosphere?
Best driver line up?
Best looking car?
Most emotional goodbye?
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Choices:
March F1 - Final season: 1992 - Final chassis: CG911B - Final drivers: Karl Wendlinger, Jan Lammers, Paul Belmondo and Emanuele Naspetti - Final GP: 1992 Australian GP
Brabham Racing - Final season: 1992 - Final chassis: BT60B - Final drivers: Eric van de Poele, Giovanna Amati and Damon Hill - Final GP: 1992 Hungarian GP
Team Lotus - Final season: 1994 - Final chassis: 109 - Final drivers: Pedro Lamy, Alex Zanardi, Johnny Herbert, Philippe Adams, Éric Bernard and Mika Salo - Final GP: 1994 Australian GP
Tyrrell Racing - Final season: 1998 - Final chassis: 026 - Final drivers: Ricardo Rosset and Toranosuke Takagi - Final GP: 1998 Japanese GP
Stewart GP - Final season: 1999 - Final chassis: SF3 - Final drivers: Rubens Barrichello and Johnny Herbert - Final GP: 1999 Japanese GP
Benetton - Final season: 2001 - Final chassis: B201 - Final drivers: Giancarlo Fisichella and Jenson Button - Final GP: 2001 Japanese GP
Prost GP - Final season: 2001 - Final chassis: AP04 - Final drivers: Jean Alesi, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Gastón Mazzacane, Luciano Burti and Tomáš Enge - Final GP: 2001 Japanese GP
Arrows GP - Final season: 2002 - Final chassis: A23 - Final drivers: Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Enrique Bernoldi - Final GP: 2002 German GP
Jordan GP - Final season: 2005 - Final chassis: EJ15B - Final drivers: Tiago Monteiro and Narain Karthikeyan - Final GP: 2005 Chinese GP
Minardi F1 - Final season: 2005 - Final chassis: PS05 - Final drivers: Patrick Friesacher, Robert Doornbos and Christijan Albers - Final GP: 2005 Chinese GP
Super Aguri - Final season: 2008 - Final chassis: SA08 - Final drivers: Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson - Final GP: 2008 Spanish GP
HRT F1 - Final season: 2012 - Final chassis: F112 - Final drivers: Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan - Final GP: 2012 Brazilian GP
Caterham F1 - Final season: 2014 - Final chassis: CT05 - Final drivers: Marcus Ericsson, Kamui Kobayashi, André Lotterer and Will Stevens. - Final GP: 2014 Abu Dhabi GP
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Who's your choice?

[Nessafox]

Out of that list theres not much discussion. Stewart ended their last year with their best year yet, and at the moment the future looked bright as they were about to become a top team under Fords guidance in that striking green livery. So everything in that year was about optimism, unlike most other teams. The only other team in this list that had a bit of optimism is Benetton, but that was more a 'i'm glad this is over' kind of optimism.

Best drivers would be Stewart or Benetton.
For best looking car, Prost wins it by a mile against all the others here.
Most emotional was defenitely Minardi, altough i image that for older people Lotus and Brabham were harder to deal with. Also Jordan had a big fandom by that point.

But uhm, why is Ligier not in this list?

[Bobby Doorknobs]

Out of that list theres not much discussion. Stewart ended their last year with their best year yet, and at the moment the future looked bright as they were about to become a top team under Fords guidance in that striking green livery. So everything in that year was about optimism, unlike most other teams. The only other team in this list that had a bit of optimism is Benetton, but that was more a 'i'm glad this is over' kind of optimism.

Best drivers would be Stewart or Benetton.
For best looking car, Prost wins it by a mile against all the others here.
Most emotional was defenitely Minardi, altough i image that for older people Lotus and Brabham were harder to deal with. Also Jordan had a big fandom by that point.

But uhm, why is Ligier not in this list?

Why is there need for a list in the first place? At first I thought it was just for teams that seemed to have been around forever like Lotus and Minardi, but seeing HRT and Super Aguri there made me wonder why a list was necessary. There were teams like Simtek and Onyx that showed promise only to fade away and leave us wondering what might have been. And yes, Ligier would be worthy of inclusion if such a list was needed.

Also, some of these teams didn't really have much of a send-off to begin with, with a lot of teams hoping to take part in the following season. March, for example, actually showed up for the first race of 1993 with a CG911C and Lammers and Gounon as drivers, only to not take part because they had no engines. In fact, of the teams listed, March, Brabham, Prost, Arrows, Super Aguri, HRT and Caterham were all hoping to continue competing only to fail because of going bankrupt either during or after the season, abruptly withdrawing from the championship without getting the chance of a proper farewell.

[FullMetalJack]

If we scale send off down to last race, the outright winners would have to be Larrousse. They went out in style.

http://b.f1-facts.com/ul/a/2023

[DemocalypseNow]

Given teams are essentially never would up voluntarily, it's hard to find a case of a heart-warming goodbye from a departing team. As mentioned earlier, Stewart GP is about as close as it gets, given they had started from zero, had just completed the most successful season of their existence and were essentially "upgrading" from privateer status to a big boy factory team. Of course, in hindsight that change was a complete failure, but at the time it sounded like a positive development. It took 13 years, but in the end a completely different iteration of the team went on to be world champions.

If the question were in regards to drivers, I'm sure we'd have plenty of options to pick from. But for teams it's an almost impossible task. Given most team closures involve crippling job losses and financial ruin for some stakeholders, it's rarely a celebratory occasion. Minardi does well in amongst it all, in that despite that we're all sad we had to say goodbye to a group of legendary garagistas, the team bought up by a huge company to act as a feeder team, they at least managed to keep going, and the people at Faenza still working.

Most goodbyes from teams are sad ones, and so it feels like a little bit of a fool's errand to collate a list of best farewells from teams no longer with us.

[James1978]

Brawn??

[dr-baker]

Brawn??

Yes!

[Nessafox]

I think a good example of ending on a positive note is Penske. 1976 was their breaktrough series with their first win, and they would probably have been compeitive in the future. They just decided to that racing in the US was more important and more profitable than combining it with a European campaign and quit when they were still competitive with absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.
Perhaps we can add Maserati in that list too, but i don't know the story behind them quitting.

[Bobby Doorknobs]

Perhaps we can add Maserati in that list too, but i don't know the story behind them quitting.

Financial difficulties, pretty much.

[yannicksamlad]

Of the teams on the list: Minardi. Emotional, at least for me, as it seemed they were the last of a certain cohort of small but persistent teams. The PS05 was beautiful, and I liked Albers.
But not sure about team morale..and cohesion.
Arrows was just sad, saving engine mileage to save running and ending mid season always seems worse.
But in a way the worst are the ones where its all surrounded by uncertainty; Prost, Larousse..will they be rescued, will they turn up? And then they don't.

[AndreaModa]

Of the teams on the list: Minardi. Emotional, at least for me, as it seemed they were the last of a certain cohort of small but persistent teams. The PS05 was beautiful, and I liked Albers.
But not sure about team morale..and cohesion.
Arrows was just sad, saving engine mileage to save running and ending mid season always seems worse.
But in a way the worst are the ones where its all surrounded by uncertainty; Prost, Larousse..will they be rescued, will they turn up? And then they don't.

Pretty sure if you search for user Faustus' old posts, you'll find some anecdotes of those last dying moments at Arrows.

[Faustus]

Of the teams on the list: Minardi. Emotional, at least for me, as it seemed they were the last of a certain cohort of small but persistent teams. The PS05 was beautiful, and I liked Albers.
But not sure about team morale..and cohesion.
Arrows was just sad, saving engine mileage to save running and ending mid season always seems worse.
But in a way the worst are the ones where its all surrounded by uncertainty; Prost, Larousse..will they be rescued, will they turn up? And then they don't.

Pretty sure if you search for user Faustus' old posts, you'll find some anecdotes of those last dying moments at Arrows.

That last race weekend in Germany was an awkward one. Packing up the cars on sunday evening was strange. Everyone was quiet and we didn't really know if we would have a job on Monday when we got back to the factory. Very frustrating as well, because we clearly had a competitive car and we were again quicker than the target opposition (Jaguar). I came back to the UK with the truckies and the transporters and they were very downbeat, because all of them had been through it before with other teams.
It wouldn't have taken that much money for us to have been able to continue until the end of the season. I was paid on time right up until the end and so were most of the suppliers, apart from Cosworth. Tom Walkinshaw kept constantly trying to put deals together and came very very close with Red Bull. The deal with the Cal Smith was a smokescreen for another deal, not the Red Bull deal. Craig Pollock could have done it but didn't want to pay very much for the team, but he had a buyer lined up. No idea who.

[Izzyeviel]

Was it Jaguar who had the inflatable donkey? Very apt.

My vote though goes to Alfa Romeo. The ultimate in omnishambles.

[Dj_bereta]

Was it Jaguar who had the inflatable donkey? Very apt.

My vote though goes to Alfa Romeo. The ultimate in omnishambles.

Well, Jaguar could be placed in the worst send off. Not was the worst season, but the team mate crash in the last race was shameful.

[Boomstick]

My vote though goes to Alfa Romeo. The ultimate in omnishambles.

Yep, sadly this one takes the cake for worst send off, a car maker of that pedigree?

You gotta feel sorry for them tho, sort of checkmated with their engine concepts not one, but twice (The V8 and the I4) in the same era and being muchly behind the 8-ball with their fuel injection systems, Up until Monaco they were still running the old continuous style mechanical system with a stepper motor when most of the competitive people had a real mulitpoint digital system of some sorts was just sad.

A double mechanical DNF send off. Eek.

[mario]

My vote though goes to Alfa Romeo. The ultimate in omnishambles.

Yep, sadly this one takes the cake for worst send off, a car maker of that pedigree?

You gotta feel sorry for them tho, sort of checkmated with their engine concepts not one, but twice (The V8 and the I4) in the same era and being muchly behind the 8-ball with their fuel injection systems, Up until Monaco they were still running the old continuous style mechanical system with a stepper motor when most of the competitive people had a real mulitpoint digital system of some sorts was just sad.

A double mechanical DNF send off. Eek.

You could also add that, to add insult to injury, Mahle were stealing information from Alfa Romeo's turbo V8 in order to help TAG-Porsche deal with mechanical issues (the TAG-Porsche initially had major issues with oil leaking into the combustion chamber until Mahle passed on information about how Alfa Romeo and Ferrari had solved that problem). It's bad enough when you have self inflicted problems, but worse still when your own suppliers are effectively stabbing you in the back by engaging in industrial espionage.

[Boomstick]

My vote though goes to Alfa Romeo. The ultimate in omnishambles.

Yep, sadly this one takes the cake for worst send off, a car maker of that pedigree?

You gotta feel sorry for them tho, sort of checkmated with their engine concepts not one, but twice (The V8 and the I4) in the same era and being muchly behind the 8-ball with their fuel injection systems, Up until Monaco they were still running the old continuous style mechanical system with a stepper motor when most of the competitive people had a real mulitpoint digital system of some sorts was just sad.

A double mechanical DNF send off. Eek.

You could also add that, to add insult to injury, Mahle were stealing information from Alfa Romeo's turbo V8 in order to help TAG-Porsche deal with mechanical issues (the TAG-Porsche initially had major issues with oil leaking into the combustion chamber until Mahle passed on information about how Alfa Romeo and Ferrari had solved that problem). It's bad enough when you have self inflicted problems, but worse still when your own suppliers are effectively stabbing you in the back by engaging in industrial espionage.

Yeah I heard that one as well. Pretty sad. And given the relationship that Enzo had with ex employees, and his behind the scenes "deals" it wouldn't supprise me if Alfa's pistons got stolen from Mahle, not Ferrari's?

However the chassis wasn't that good, neither was the aerodynamics

A wonderful all round reject car....like most Alfa's

I do wonder tho what the effect of Chitti leaving in 1984 and forming Motori Moderni had on the development of the engine?

To be honest I don't think even if he had stayed there would have been too much of an improvement. Looking at his v6 it still used a continuous fuel system, and the lack of a decent DCFO (Deceleration fuel cut off) was always going to cause issues --> I don't think electronics where his thing.

With a real digital system (Honda and Tag, being the "works" unit) it was always going to be a better bet, no matter what the hardware attached to it is.

[AdrianBelmonte_]

Caterham, because of Will Stevens

[AdrianSutil]

Mianrdi was the most emotional because of how much they achieved with a tiny budget, and the drivers they brought into the sport: Martini, Fittipaldi, Alonso, Webber, Fisichella, Nicolas Kiesa...

Jaguar was pretty terrible, as in terrible team all round.

Brawn, not so much I don't think.

Arrows, Caterham, HRT, Prost all ended due to months of financial difficulties, so I think nobody was really surprised when they hit the wall.

Tyrrell was sad, purely because of HOW it ended. Ken himself walking out a year early because BAR (who were now in control) installed Riccardo Rosset as one of the drivers. And we all know how that ended up...

Super Aguri was sad, even though financial problems halted their season,. I think they were everyone's second team during the end of 2007. And anyone with half a F1 brain will remember Sato's priceless move asround the outside of Alonso in Canada.