Our eight favourite F1 backmarkers

8. Marussia

Starting with a team that, sadly, will always be remembered for one of the more tragic moments in F1 history. The story of the Marussia (and subsequently Manor) team is centred wholly around one man – Jules Bianchi.

The team itself had zero success in its early years as one of the three new teams that joined F1 in 2010. It began life as Richard Branson’s Virgin Racing, and in this early guise finished at the very bottom of the constructors’ championship, behind fellow newcomers Lotus and Hispania.

But while the other two members of F1’s class of 2010 diminished under the shadow of financial struggle, the Virgin Racing team became Marussia, and had acquired the services of a Ferrari Academy driver Bianchi. The team remained glued to the back of the field with an uncompetitive car, but this charismatic and immensely talented Frenchman touted as the future of Ferrari and a likely contender for the F1 world championship in the near future was a focal point that fans were drawn to.

By 2014, Marussia was competing regularly with the likes of Sauber and Caterham, and it felt as though the team had earned its place on the F1 grid as a small but feisty and tenacious entity, led by the obvious talent of Bianchi. A talent that brought the team its first points in F1 at the 2014 Monaco Grand Prix, when the Frenchman finished 9^th ahead of Kevin Magnussen’s McLaren and Kimi Räikkönen’s Ferrari. It was a wonderful moment for the team and the sport and proved the popularity of Marussia among fans.

7. Zakspeed

Speaking of small teams that tried their absolute best to belong in Formula 1, the famous Zakspeed outfit had achieved great success with Ford in German touring cars during the 1970s prior to its foray into single-seaters and seemed determined to become a global titan of motorsport.

With title sponsorship from West, the brand made famous by McLaren in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, the team clearly had money to spend as it went about designing and building its own chassis and engine, a feat only matched by Ferrari at that time. If ever a team was clear in its ambition to succeed on its own, it was Zakspeed.

Unfortunately, that desire was not matched by any performance to shout about. The Zakspeed F1 effort was not helped by a delayed debut for the team’s first car, which was designed and built for 1984 regulations, but never saw the track until 1985, by which time the established grid had already taken steps ahead.

Such was the rapid rate of progress in F1 at that time that Zakspeed never really caught up after that, but 1987 was by far and away the team’s peak. At the hands of Martin Brundle and 1985 International Formula 3000 champion Christian Danner, the team managed a series of top-ten finishes, topped off by a points-scoring fifth place for Brundle at San Marino.

Those would be the only points for Zakspeed, and in the two seasons that followed a lack of resources began to rear its head. A struggle to qualify in 1988 quickly turned into a fight to even pre-qualify in 1989. Zakspeed finally wrapped up its F1 efforts at the end of ’89 after just two visits to the grid in its final season, and that was the end of another plucky pretender that many of us grew to love.

6. Toleman

This was one of those rare occasions where a small team acts as the first step on a drivers’ path to greatness. Schumacher started at Jordan. Alonso at Minardi. But in 1984, a young Brazilian called Ayrton Senna first stepped into the F1 paddock as a Toleman driver.

Prior to Senna’s arrival in ’84, the Toleman team had made a minimal impact on the F1 scene. Its first season in 1981 saw a Toleman car make it to the grid on just two occasions, but there was progress in 1982 as the team became a more consistent presence on race day. That progress continued in 1983 as Toleman was a consistent top-ten finisher in the hands of Derek Warwick and Bruno Giacomelli. Warwick even took four consecutive points finishes at the end of the season, just missing out on the podium on two occasions.

Here was a team that had hauled itself from the doldrums and was beginning to catch the attention of the bigger names in the sport. But that was nothing compared to what would happen next.

Ayrton Senna had won everything he had entered during the early 1980s, and he was, without doubt, the hot topic of motorsport at that time. While Williams, McLaren and Brabham could only offer him a testing role for ’84, Toleman took advantage and offered him an entry to Formula 1. The team was rewarded with one of the best rookie seasons ever, as Senna so nearly won in Monaco before taking a further two podiums, massively outperforming his teammates at every event he raced at.

As was to be expected after such a shockwave of a year, Senna left Toleman for Lotus as he sought to become a world champion, and 1985 turned out to be the team’s final year in the sport. It was as though it was meant to be. Toleman, if nothing else, existed to provide an entry into F1 for one of the world’s greatest-ever drivers.

5. Forti

There are legendary debuts for future champions here, more a personal favourite of mine thanks mostly to the bright yellow livery that caught my attention as a kid. Forti was another outfit that had experienced some success in the junior formulae before making the giant leap into F1. Preparations were underway as early as 1991 for an F1 entry, with sponsorships and a contract with wealthy Brazilian driver Pedro Diniz ensuring the team would be financially stable. The team also employed the services of former grand prix winner René Arnoux to act as a consultant for the project.

It wasn’t until 1995 that the team actually arrived in the paddock with its striking yellow cars featuring that evocative Parmalat sponsorship. It didn’t take long for everyone to realise that Forti was going to struggle. At the first race in Brazil, Diniz finished tenth, but last of the finishers, seven laps behind the leader. At round two in Agentina, Diniz and Moreno reached the chequered flag, but they were both nine laps behind the leader. At round three in San Marino, both drivers finished again, seven laps behind the leader.

By all accounts, Forti were quickly becoming something of a joke among the paddock, and fans were rightly wondering what on earth this team was doing in F1. But despite all of the struggles and the poor performance, I still just can’t help but feel an affinity with that livery. There’s also something to be said for cheering on the underdog, however ironic those cheers might be.

Forti saw out the rest of the ’95 season, becoming responsible, together with the likes of Pacific and Simtek, for the introduction of the 107% rule, which was basically there to stop ridiculously slow cars from turning up. Forti did stop turning up halfway through 1996, as financial troubles loomed even after a takeover attempt by Shannon Racing.

4. Arrows

At the time of its eventual liquidation mid-way through the 2002 season, Arrows was one of the longest-running teams in F1. It was formed in 1977 by Franco Ambrosio, Alan Rees, Jackie Oliver, Dave Wass and Tony Southgate, who had all previously been part of the Shadow team. It even began racing in 1988 with a clone of the Shadow DN9 car, a move that was eventually declared illegal.

Despite all of the initial bartering, the Arrows team settled in well in F1 and took a quite remarkable podium finish at its seventh attempt at the Swedish Grand Prix, courtesy of the team’s young and upcoming driver Ricardo Patrese.

And that was just the start of the Arrows story. Over the next two decades, the team would consistently punch above its weight, taking podiums and points finishes whenever the opportunity arose. Arrows’ best season was 1988 when the team finished fifth in the constructors’ championship.

However the relative success of the ‘80s eventually dried up as the 1990s arrived, and Arrows became a perennial rear-end runner. A disastrous season in 1991 set the tone for the rest of the team’s lifespan, but it wasn’t all doom and gloom, there were occasional points finishes and another podium in 1995.

And then, in quite an extraordinary twist, 1996 world champion Damon Hill found himself without a drive for 1997, and his only option was to turn to Arrows. And this connection brought about one of the most exciting, yet ultimately heart-breaking moments in F1 history. Hill brilliantly led for the majority of the Hungarian Grand Prix, driving away from the field with genuine pace. His win looked assured, but for a hydraulic issue that tore the soul out of me as I watched on. He eventually finished in second place, but it cemented the place of Arrows in the history books.

Hill left at the end of the year and Arrows’ downfall continued as it had done for the previous decade. The team eventually succumbed to financial turmoil in 2002.

3. Williams

Contentious? Possibly. The trouble is Williams has been something an anchor being dragged around at the back of the F1 field since 2018. It was all looking so promising, too, back at the very beginning of the hybrid era when Williams’s acquisition of Mercedes power looked like a master stroke as the team took successive third place finishes in the constructors’ championship. It was the kind of form we hadn’t seen from Williams since the BMW days at the turn of the century.

The brutal reality of the situation at Williams has become abundantly clear in the years that have followed, though. And it essentially boils down to a lack of funding. While the Mercedes powertrain remained dominant, the Williams car fell off a cliff in terms of performance and by the end of 2018 the team sat rock bottom in the constructors’ championship.

In 2018 and 2019, Williams scored a single point combined over the two seasons, languishing a long way behind even the midfield, barely a shadow of the team that won so much in the 1980s and ‘90s. Even now, it feels odd to even consider Williams as a backmarker, but after five years as the bottom team in F1, there’s a whole generation of new fans that have arrived since the introduction of Drive to Survive that have only ever seen the team as exactly that.

It felt for a while as though the team would soon be lost completely. Late arrivals to testing harked back to the days of struggling minnows such as Forti or HRT, the kind of thing you would expect from an inexperienced newcomer that had greatly underestimated the challenge of F1. Fortunately those dire straights seem to have subsided, and Williams has at least regrouped on a more stable foundation under new ownership. We’re still waiting to see any real improvement in performance, though.

Regardless of its current state however, we will always see Williams as one of the founding members of modern F1. With a list of world championship-winning alumni that includes Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill, Keke Rosberg, Alan Jones, Nelson Piquet and Jacques Villeneuve, the Williams team will always be associated with the very greatest that the sport has ever seen. Maybe one day this great name will return to the top.

2. Super Aguri

When Super Aguri turned up on the grid in 2006 there was an instant feeling of energy and enthusiasm about the team. Founded by Japanese F1 stalwart Aguri Suzuki, with engines supplied by Honda, and Takuma Sato and Yuji Ide as its drivers, this was a Japanese team through and through, and the F1 world was ready.

The team’s status as a fan favourite was almost instant, even if the results on the track were less than optimal. Ide lasted just four races before he had his super licence revoked, and Sato struggled to extract any speed from the car.

Super Aguri finished last in the standings in its first season, with no points having gone through four drivers all told. None of that really mattered though, it was just great to be able to soak up the positivity of this fledgling team.

And that made it all the sweeter when things eventually began to look up for Super Aguri. Anthony Davidson came on board for 2007, and the team started well. So well that Takuma Sato – it had to be Taku – took the team's first points finish at the Spanish Grand Prix, and you can imagine how the celebrations went. That result was backed up by more points in Canada and suddenly things were looking up. The entire paddock and F1 fandom were thrilled for Super Aguri, and we only wish the team could have continued in the sport for longer than it did.

Eventually, it was the old chestnut of financial struggles that saw the team doomed to history. Super Aguri lasted only four rounds of the 2008 season before the doors were closed for good following a failed takeover.

1. Minardi

Ah, the ultimate F1 minnow. F1’s perennial strugglers first entered the paddock in 1985, running just a single car for Pierluigi Martini, a driver who would become somewhat synonymous with Minardi for its first decade in the sport.

Minardi’s initial seasons were plagued with abysmal reliability. The team saw the chequered flag on just nine occasions over its first 48 races, and just once with two cars, at the Mexican Grand Prix in 1986. But still, Minardi kept plugging away,  showcasing all of the great Italian tenacity and vigour you’d expect.

The team eventually scored a point in 1988, and six more in 1989, achieving an all-time high of seven points in 1993, which it only matched on one more occasion, its final season in 2005.

I’m not even quite sure what it is that has put Minardi at the top of this list. There are no extraordinary stories to speak of, no heart-braking falls at the final hurdle. Just a consistent and unrelenting presence at the back of the field. And you can’t help but adore the team for that. The team did of course provide debuts for the likes of Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber. The latter scored points on his debut at his home Australian Grand Prix in 2002 – I guess that was quite a special moment. There were also some pretty spectacular liveries – that luminous yellow Telefonica livery was quite something.

But ultimately, Minardi became, and will always be the definitive F1 backmarker. Even as the likes of Tyrrell, Arrows and Forti fell by the wayside, Minardi kept on going, kept on fighting, until eventually it was bought by Red Bull, to become what we now know as the Toro Rosso team.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.