When F1 champions started their own teams - Part 2

Emerson Fittipaldi / Fittipaldi Automotive

In 1973, Emerson Fittipaldi and his elder brother Wilson Fittipaldi decided to start their own eponymous Formula 1 team. By October, Richard Divila, a long standing collaborator of Fittipaldi brothers, started with the layout of their first car, FD01. The elder of the two brothers secured a major deal with sugar giant Copersucar, after which the the car was named. He also drove for the team during their debut season in 1975, while Emerson continued to race with McLaren, having just won his second title. However, the season brought little success and the only Brazilian team in the history of Formula 1 failed to score a single point in its debut season.

When the season came to a close, two-time Formula 1 world champion Emerson Fittipaldi dropped a bombshell by announcing that he was leaving a successful team like McLaren to join his family outfit Fittipaldi Automotive.

“I am aware that I will virtually have no chance of winning the world title next season,” Fittipaldi said after his quitting McLaren. “It will be a very difficult beginning, but I am very enthusiastic and I am certain that with everybody’s effort we will have the first positive results in the second half of next year. I think that in the medium term of one or two years Brazil will have one of the best Formula One teams in the world.”

Emerson qualified the FD04 in fifth at the season opener in Brazil, but on Sunday, he only went backwards, finishing in 13th place by the time the chequered flag was waved. Two races later, the Brazilian took his car to a sixth place result in Long Beach, securing the team’s first ever points. With two further sixth place finishes, Fittipaldi finished 11th in the Constructors’ standings with a total of three points. During the season, Ingo Hoffmann drove the second car on three occasion, but qualified for the race only once.

The team continued with the FD04 till the middle of the 1977 season, in which Emerson scored two fourth places in the first two races of the season in Argentina and Brazil. The F5 made its debut mid-way during the season in Belgium where it retired due to an electric problem. The car was developed by Ensign engineer Dave Baldwin, but the British designer left the team before the car was raced, leaving the development duties to Giacomo Caliri who had previously worked as Ferrari’s head of aerodynamic studies. Fittipaldi took a fourth place finish in his new yellow F5 at the Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort to take the team’s points tally to 11 points.

For the 1978 season, Caliri brought a heavily revised version of the F5, know as the F5A, with the car helping in securing the team’s best season in its eight-year history. This included Fittipaldi Automotive’s first podium finish – at the 1978 Brazilian Grand Prix – in front of the team’s home crowd. Apart from the P2 result, Fittipaldi finished in the points on five more occasions to register the team in seventh place in the Constructors’ standings with a cumulative tally of 17 points.

1979 turned out to be a major failure for the Brazilian team with new design head Ralph Bellamy failing to produce a car that could compete in the era of ground effects. Ironically, the Australian engineer had previously worked alongside Colin Chapman, Peter Wright and Martin Ogilvie in designing Lotus 78 – the first car to feature ground effects technology.

At the end of the season, sponsorship from state-owned Copersucar dried up and chief designer Bellamy headed to Indycar. In such a troubled situation, Fittipaldi bought Wolf Racing and merged its assets with his own team. The team expanded to two cars with future world champion Keke Rosberg joining Emerson Fittipaldi in the F7 – an upgraded version of the previous year’s Wolf.

Suddenly, things started to return on track and both the drivers scored a podium each with Rosberg and Fittipaldi taking third at Buenos Aires and Long Beach respectively. Furthermore, Harvey Postlethwaite and Adrian Newey (he served as the chief aerodynamicist) completed the work on the F8 by the British Grand Prix, and a few races later, Rosberg drove it to a fine fifth place result at the Italian Grand Prix in San Marino.

However, at the end of the year, Emerson decided to retire from the sport after being continuously outpaced by his Finnish teammate, Keke Rosberg. (Note: Keke’s son Nico Rosberg has dual nationality of Finland and Germany but he races under the German flag in Formula 1). He was replaced by Chico Serra – a young Brazilian driver who made his way into the pinnacle of motorsport after winning the British Formula 3 championship in 1979.

Sponsorship from Brazilian brewery company Skol, who joined hands with them only in the previous year, also came to an end, initiating a daunting period for the team. The 1981 season was marked by constant retirements and DNFs with a total of just five classified finishes. The Fittipaldi outfit failed to score a single point that season, though Rosberg did manage a fourth place result at the non-championship race in Kyalami, albeit a lap down from the leader.

In the 1982 season, Fittipaldi returned to a single car after Rosberg left for Williams, where he took his maiden world title. Serra continued to race with a revised version of their 1981 car, the F8, and scored a single point at the Belgium Grand Prix in Zolder. The returning Divila and former (and future) McLaren engineer Tim Wright designed the F9, to be raced for the second half of the season – but things failed to improve.

After another disastrous season, Fittipaldi hunted for sponsorship to keep the company solvent. But despite his best efforts, he was forced to shut shop.