Top 3 historic partnerships in F1 that failed miserably

F1 has always caught the intrigue of many car manufacturers from around the globe. Many have made it to the sport, tried their hand at competing, and succeeded — take Mercedes, for example. There are others that failed spectacularly as well, like Toyota. The Japanese manufacturer brought in a ridiculous budget to F1 only to fail at mounting even a successful championship run in its time in the sport from 2002 to 2009.

There is, however, another route that is sometimes employed by these giants where they enter the sport as a partner to the already relevant and competitive constructors on the F1 grid. This is something that Renault has been doing for a long time and was quite successful with Red Bull, as the duo won four consecutive championships from 2010 to 2013.

Throughout history, however, there have been partnerships where two giants of the automotive and F1 world have joined hands but the result has been disastrous. In this piece, let's take a look at some of these historic partnerships that promised so much but failed miserably in the end.

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Ranking the top 3 disastrous alliances in F1

#3 McLaren-Peugeot (1994)

McLaren was a dominant force in the 1980s and 1990s. It enjoyed some of its most bullish phases during its partnership with Honda from 1988 to 1992. Once Honda decided to move on from F1, however, McLaren was left in troubled waters as it did not have a competitive enough engine supplier. Peugeot was one of the earlier teams that took the initiative and signed up with McLaren as an engine supplier in 1994.

The French company, after its success in sportscar racing, wanted to extend its domination to other categories of motorsports. The partnership, however, turned out to be disastrous. McLaren, the front-running team at the time, could not win a single race throughout the season and the engine suffered from poor reliability. There were as many as 17 DNFs in a season with 16 races and the poor engine performance forced McLaren to end ties with Peugeot and join hands with Mercedes in 1995.

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#2 Williams-BMW (2000-05)

This was supposed to be a match made in heaven. Williams, a team that had dominated F1 throughout the 1990s, was teaming with an automobile giant like BMW. The partnership that lasted 6 years, however, could not even come close to the kind of results that they hoped for.

BMW's engines were the class of the field but Williams was a team in decline at the time and could not produce a worthy title contender. To add to this, the partnership was formed when the Ferrari juggernaut was at its peak and didn't give other teams much of a chance. 17 pole positions and 10 wins over 6 years was a disappointing output for a partnership that was supposed to yield titles.

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#3 McLaren-Honda (2015-17)

One partnership that is probably fresh in the minds of every fan is the disaster that was the McLaren-Honda partnership. After a successful run for the alliance in the late 1980s and early 1990s, their reunion caught a lot of hype around the paddock.

Japanese excellence combined with McLaren, which was still a pretty good team at the time, meant nostalgia was running high. All hopes and dreams, however, came crashing down once the McLaren-Honda started its first run on the track. An under-developed and rushed engine, combined with the size-zero packaging demanded by McLaren, meant that the engine could not last even a single race distance.

Even though some progress was made over the years, the partnership never reached the lofty heights of championship contention. Finally, after three years of suffering, McLaren moved on from Honda, bringing to an end a partnership that turned out to be the biggest failure in the history of F1.