Campaign to add Osella as reject team

[crazydude1992]

132 GP's
5 points
This DEFINATELY qualifies them as a reject team, and theyve been the Minardi of their time, that makes them rather special...

[rffp]

In another forum, I once said that they are THE REJECT TEAM of all time. No team was able to go for 6 consecutive seasons without a point, not even Andrea Moda or Life!

[DonTirri]

In another forum, I once said that they are THE REJECT TEAM of all time. No other reject-team was able to go for 10 consecutive seasons

fixed it for you

[shinji]

The thing with Osella is that they weren't embarrassingly, stand-out, eye-poppingly bad. They were just bad.

As a result, I think they don't deserve reject status. The Ghinzani profile pretty much has it all anyone. He certainly hung around.

[rffp]

Osella scored 2 points with Ghinzani in 1984 (Dallas), plus they had a 5th place in the Italian GP with Jo Gartner that was ineligible for points since it was their 2nd car. Then from 1985 to 1990 they went pointless, so it adds up to 6 consecutive seasons.

They were bad. Despite some promise of speed in 1989 with Nicola Larini, they were always no-hopers. Unlike Minardi, their drivers never turned out to be anything in F-1. Minardi had as drivers Nannini, Fisichella, Trulli and Alonso who became GP winners. The best drivers that Osella had, in terms of points performance, were Eddie Cheever, Jean-Pierre Jarier and Nicola Larini, all of them never won. Osella was known for no reliability at all, besides frequently they were more than 6 seconds off-pace. Generally, they would field a geriatric car and anemic engine. In the 1988 Mexican GP, the turbo-engined cars were clearly ahead of the aspirated ones due to the altitude of Mexico City. Even the Zakspeeds managed decent grid positions, but Osella managed a DNQ with their Osella engines. That was their low!

[Yannick]

Of course, an Osella profile would be a very nice addition to the site. There are so many who could be profiled, besides all the podcasts to record and current races to review. So let's give the site's authors the time they need.

[Irisado]

132 GP's
theyve been the Minardi of their time, that makes them rather special...

A slight problem with this statement is that Osella and Minardi actually competed against each other from 1985-1990 inclusive, so I don't think you can compare the two in this way, since Minardi made notable progress from 1988 onwards, while Osella stayed relatively still.

Osella never really produced a new chassis, and this was part of their problem. They had the FA1 in 1980, and ended up with the FA1M-K (I think, but I may be wrong on the last letter) in 1990, so they basically just used to update the chassis every year, so that it would fit with the new regulations, or accommodate an engine change. In addition, it's worth noting that funds were so tight that during the winter of 1984/85 I believe that they did absolutely no testing at all! They also didn't test very much in any case, due to their lack of funds. All of these factors go some way to explaining why the reliability was so bad, but the Alfa Romeo engines didn't help in that regard, so I actually think they did well to score any finishes at all, let alone points.

It should also be pointed out that the 1982 car performed respectably in Jarier's hands, Ghinzani was a solid performer for the team for many years, and Larini worked wonders with the 1989 car, so it wasn't all doom and gloom.

They are definitely worthy of a reject profile in my opinion though, as Gartner's fifth place in the 1984 Italian Grand Prix was ineligible. The irony was that Ghinzani was running fifth until he ran out of fuel on the last lap and dropped to seventh, so had the race been a lap shorter, Osella would have escaped reject status! Those Alfa Romeo engines were as thirsty as they were unreliable.....Carlo Chitti has a lot to answer for .

If their profile is to be written, I would join it to the existing Fondmetal profile, since apart from a change of team boss and factory, Fondmetal were, effectively the same team. You only need look at the reliability record to confirm that (quite how the Fondmetal managed to lunch so many Cosworth engines in 1991 and 1992 relative to other teams remains something of a mystery to me, but that's a debate for another thread).