Markus Winkelhock led on his F1 debut last year, his only start to date

Markus Winkelhock recently told the German press that he doesn’t expect to get the chance to add to the single race start he made at the Nürburgring for Spyker last year.

Winkelhock famously led his debut race after a rain storm in the opening laps and a cunning early switch to wet-weather tyres.

But some poor drivers didn’t even get that far: in fact eight drivers in F1 history started a Grand Prix but didn’t comlete more than single lap. Here are the eight one lap wonders.

Josef Peters

1952 German Grand Prix, Nürburgring Nordschleife

Peters qualified 20th of the 32 entrant for the 1952 German Grand Prix, hiw home event, in a privately-entered BMW-powered Veritas. He failed to complete the first lap.

Ernst Loof

1953 German Grand Prix, Nürburgring Nordschleife

The German Grand Prix often attracted many one-off home entrants, and Loof, aged 46 at the time of his debut, was another of these. Loof, like Peters, drove a Veritas, and qualified 31st of 34 with a time of 12’16.8, two minutes and 18 seconds slower than pole sitter Ascari around the 22.81km track.

His fuel pump broke on the first lap and that was the end of his career in the top flight. Loof died of a brain tumour three years later.

Bob Said

1959 United States Grand Prix, Sebring

Only seven of the 19 drivers who started the 1959 title-decider at Sebring finished the race. Bob Said, who qualified 13th, was eliminated in an accident on the first lap of his home event. Said had previously won the non-championship 1953 Grand Prix of Rouen.

Bob passed away in 2002 aged 69, but son Boris now races in NASCAR.

Arthur Owen

1960 Italian Grand Prix, Monza

Londoner Owen entered his own Cooper-Climax in the Italian Grand Prix in 1960. Having qualified 11th of 16 he retired with suspension failure on the first lap. Owen went on to win the British Hill Climb Championship in 1962.

Massimo Natili

1961 British Grand Prix, Aintree

There was a big grid for the 1961 British Grand Prix and Natili, 28th, wasn’t even on the back row. Natili had previously entered the non-championship Syracuse and Naples Grands Prix. At Aintree he got no further than the first lap when his gearbox broke, and although he did make one return to F1, he failed to qualify, at Monza.

Graham McRae

1973 British Grand Prix, Silverstone

McRae was from Auckland, New Zealand, and not related to the Jimmy/Colin/Alastair rallying dynasty. His only race came in the British Grand Prix in 1973, which was famous for a huge crash at the end of lap one which eliminated several cars. McRae didn’t even make it to the crash however – his Iso-Marlboro’s throttle failing on the first tour.

McRae went on to enjoy success elsewhere, winning the Tasman series three times and five Formula 5000 championships.

Miguel Angel Guerra

1981 San Marino Grand Prix, Imola

Guerra started the 1981 season for Osella but failed to qualify for the first three rounds at Long Beach, Jacarepagua and Buenos Aires. He made a breakthrough of sorts in the San Marino round at Imola however, taking 22nd on the grid. But he crashed on the first lap, breaking a wrist and ankle and was replaced by Osella mainstay Piercarlo Ghinzani. Guerra still races in the Argentine Touring Car Championship.

Marco Apicella

1993 Italian Grand Prix, Monza

Apicella was hotly tipped to become an F1 driver while in Formula 3000 but his career lost momentum and he spent five seasons in the feeder series. In a bid to get noticed by the F1 fraternity he switched to the Japanese F3000 series.

However late in the 1993 season Eddie Jordan lost driver Thierry Boutsen to retirement and found himself needing a fill-in at short notice. Test driver Emanuele Naspetti hesitated, unsure if he had the funds to back up the switch, and Apicella pounced.

In testing at Monza Apicella impressed the team with his forthright assessment of the troublesome Jordan 193: “the wheelbase is too short.” He made an impression of team mate Rubens Barrichello too, who started paying rather more attention to his team mate’s lap times than he did when Boutsen was around.

But on race day Apicella was swiped by a rival at the first corner and was eliminated on the spot. At the next round Jordan turned up with Barrichello and Naspetti – the latter’s sponsors having paid up. They also brought a long-wheelbase car…

Apicella later tested the Dome F105 prototype Formula 1 car which never raced.

It’s full of interesting tales from teams that collapsed to cars that were just too radical to be made reliable.

Here’s four of the most interested F1 cars that were ready to race yet never made the grid.

McLaren-Mercedes MP4/18, 2003

McLaren’s MP4/18 (pictured above) is one of the most celebrated recent cases of a car that never raced.

Desperate to close the gap to Ferrari in 2003, the team elected to start the year using a development of their 2002 car, dubbed MP4/17D, and charge designer Adrian Newey with creating a radical successor, the MP4/18, which they hoped would leap them ahead of Ferrari.

Newey produced a car that drew breaths of astonishment for its radical aerodynamics. The frontal area of the nose section was especially narrow and caused the car to be dubbed ‘anteater’.

But it had more serious problems as the side impact structure failed the FIA’s crash tests. It also suffered some unplanned crash tests as both test driver Alexander Wurz (pictured) and racer Kimi Raikkonen suffered enormous shunts in the MP4/18.

Reliability was also a problem with the narrow side pods impeding heat rejection from the 3.0 litre V10 engine.

If all these problems weren’t enough to dissuade McLaren from racing the MP4/18, the continued success of the interim car banged the final nail in the coffin. Raikkonen was challenging Michael Schumacher for the championship, and that was not to be risked on a wholly unproven car.

But the MP4/18 heavily influenced the next generation of McLarens. That began inauspiciously with the disastrous MP4/19, but a revised ‘B’ version of the car turned the team’s fortunes around and won a race in 2004.

Lola-Ford T97/30, 1997

Lola had made F1 entries on earlier occasions but their 1997 bid may have killed off any desire to return again. Early in the 1990s the chassis builder created the T95/30, built to 1995 specifications, which intriguingly had no airbox on its engine.

The team slated a return for 1997 and created the T97/30, which was wholly conventional in its appearance. The team made it to the first race but then discovered just how shockingly slow the car was: In qualifying, Vincenzo Sospiri qualified at 1’40.972 – 11.6s slower than Jacques Villeneuve’s pole position time.

Under the 1997 rules this meant that neither car failed to qualify, as all drivers had to lap with 107% of the pole position time.

The team packed up for the next round at Brazil, but then came the news that the anticipated backing from Mastercard had fallen through and there was no money left.

Thus the T97/30 never raced. But if it had, it should probably have competed in F3000 instead – and even then it probably wouldn’t have won.

DAMS GD-01, 1995

The DAMS team’s F1 project in the mid-1990s was an optimistic attempt to bring a new French team into F1 at the time when the two remaining French outfits – Ligier and Larrousse – were struggling.

The GD-01 suffered from the same uncertainty in the F1 regulations around 1994 and 1995 that gave Lola headaches with their T94/30. It was a very conservative car with ample cooling, unadventurous aerodynamics and an off-the-shelf Cosworth V8 engine.

Over the winter of 1994/5 Larrousse found itself in trouble and a tie-up with DAMS was mooted to allow Larrousse to use its cars. But the two outfits failed to agree terms which was the death knell for both their F1 ambitions – Larrousse was gone and DAMS never made it into F1, but it remains a competitive force in GP2 and A1 Grand Prix.

Dome F105, 1996

After Honda withdrew from its role as an engine supplier in 1992 speculation grew that it would shortly return as a full-time entry. Various prototype Honda F1 cars were run in the early 1990s (which are also featured in “Unraced”) but those projects were canned.

In 1996 Dome (pronounced ‘Doh-mu’) began testing its own F1 car and, as it featured a Mugen-Honda engine, suspicions were aroused that this would be Honda’s return to F1. Suspicions was rife – Japanese tyre manufacturer Bridgestone was preparing to enter the sport in 1997 and Goodyear were concerned about giving Dome their tyres in case Bridgestone got their hands on them.

One-time F1 racer Marco Apicella and Shinji Nakano (who would make his F1 debut in 1997) tested the F105 in 1996. But late that year their only car caught fire while testing at Suzuka. Although the driver escaped as there were no marshals nearby the F105 was destroyed.

Lacking the budget to build replacement, Dome’s hopes of racing were crushed. Another unraced F1 car was consigned to the history books.

“Unraced” is published by Veloce. Don’t miss our review of the book this Sunday. See here for details on how to stay up-to-date with the latest from F1 Fanatic.

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