What went wrong with British American Racing (BAR)?

[Fortitude]

BAR Honda pit crew laughing at Jacques Villeneuve

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz6jzJ1skNA&fea...

When Tyrell finally packed up and was taken over by British American Racing (BAR), I recall watching the TV and listening to Jacques Villeneuve's Manager, Craig Pollock publicly deride the Tyrell team and by default its previous achievements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Pollock

"Immediately a controversial figure, Pollock made numerous claims about how successful his team would be. His high hopes proved to be unfounded however with a disastrous debut in 1999."

I even heard the claim that at the team headquaters, the toilet seats were made out of carbon fibre!!!

What went wrong with British American Racing (BAR)?

Do any of the pit crew who were laughing at Jacques Villeneuve on this message board? Perhaps they can give us an insight into what actually went on.

The team were ceratinly not under funded. Where did all the money go?

[Teppic]

Fortitude said:

The team were ceratinly not under funded. Where did all the money go?

Well, a lot of the money went on Jacques Villeneuve's salary. That's why he was eventually replaced with (the much much cheaper) Takuma Sato.

Edited by Teppic on Monday 16th February 20:46

[kevin ritson]

Seems to me that they started off with a lot of money, bought then quickly discarded Tyrrell (they fell out with Ken pretty quickly from what I recall and wrote off the '98 campaign just to keep the entry), took some of the top people from other teams but it took them a long time to gel. The car was designed by Reynard but how much of that relied on Reynard's expertise of racing cars and how much of Formula 1 expertise? The early cars seemed to follow a similar philosophy that didn't really work.

Craig Pollock didn't seem to be the right man to lead the operation, then when David Richards took over it started to gel, they got a driver that he believed in and who was motivated but then he signed for Williams...was this influenced by politics? Richards left and Nick Fry took over...another Pollock?

A case of too much too soon?

[german tony]

Pollock was a mere English teacher, Villeneuve's as it happens. He knew nothing about running an F1 team & it showed. Dave Richards got it going the right way but was replaced by a man who knew nothing about running an F1 team.

Still at least Pollock & Fry are in good company, Max couldn't run an F1 team either & look at the kind of girls he can afford these days.

[skwdenyer]

german tony said:

Pollock was a mere English teacher, Villeneuve's as it happens. He knew nothing about running an F1 team & it showed. Dave Richards got it going the right way but was replaced by a man who knew nothing about running an F1 team.

Still at least Pollock & Fry are in good company, Max couldn't run an F1 team either & look at the kind of girls he can afford these days.

Pollock may have known nothing about running an F1 team, but let us not forget that this "mere English teacher" managed to persuade BAT to invest hundreds of millions of pounds into what wasn't - prior to the funding - even a startup. For that, if for nothing else, the guy deserves some considerable respect.

[williamp]

more erspect?

Do you not remember the BAR book from eyar 1?

It was out-and-out properganda, telling everyone how they were going to win races in year 1, and Pollock was photoshopped with some angel wings behind him....

The whole organisation seemed to be an overinflated ego trip for the very few (and only the cheque writers would not see this).

[belleair302]

BAR's problems started with the senior management who spent money faster than they earned it. Craig Pollock has a mobile phone bill over over £150,000 a year! Too many business class flights and 5-star hotel rooms for employees and not enough development on small improvements to make the cars quicker each season.

Their recruitment strategy was weak, their sponsorship programme was a joke in the paddock and the politics between engine suppliers and chasis designers was daft.

One huge waste of money bank rolled by huge ego and a man within BAR who was totally F1 mad, but sold a poor platform.

[Fortitude]

belleair302 said:

BAR's problems started with the senior management who spent money faster than they earned it. Craig Pollock has a mobile phone bill over over £150,000 a year! Too many business class flights and 5-star hotel rooms for employees and not enough development on small improvements to make the cars quicker each season.

Their recruitment strategy was weak, their sponsorship programme was a joke in the paddock and the politics between engine suppliers and chasis designers was daft.

One huge waste of money bank rolled by huge ego and a man within BAR who was totally F1 mad, but sold a poor platform.

For you to know that Craig Pollock's phone bill was over £150,000 reveals a knowledge of the 'inner sanctum' of BAR.

Some questions;

[1] What particular small improvements in development were they missing to make the cars quicker each season? How and why did this become known?

[2] What in particular was weak about their recruitment strategy? Was it jobs for the boys?

[3] Why was their sponsorship programme a joke in the paddock? What were the paddock saying about them? Why did they know this?

[4] What particular daft politics were going on, between engine suppliers and chassis designers?

[german tony]

It must also be said that if British American Tobacco had known anything about F1 they wouldn't have given their cash to a man with little or no experience in managing a team.

Better men than Pollock have failed to do this, Prost springs to mind.

[HiRich]

Fortitude said:

"Immediately a controversial figure, Pollock made numerous claims about how successful his team would be. His high hopes proved to be unfounded however with a disastrous debut in 1999."

Untrue. Adrian Reynard made the infamous "Win the first race claim" at the press launch, not Pollock. Pollock was... not happy. Pollock made bold claims about the structure and management, but never about performance of the team.

Fortitude said:

I even heard the claim that at the team headquaters, the toilet seats were made out of carbon fibre!!!

Partly true. Some were made, partly to test the autoclave, partly for fun. If you think carbon fibre toilet seats are a problem, go take a tinkle at McLaren Paragon.

Fortitude said:

What went wrong with British American Racing (BAR)?

There were many problems at various levels. One of the biggest issues was that Adrian Reynard and Rick Gorne saw BAR as final realisation of Reynard Grand Prix Racing (after several false starts). There were many dark rumours, perhaps libellous, but it was clear that the directors were not working in the same direction. A lot of the inital energy was wasted on politics.

Craig Pollock put together BAR with Tom Mosler of BAT. This relationship was good (at the start), and the thinking behind the team was very good. However, there were problems at both BAR and BAT with understanding how to execute the programme globally. In some respects there was too much money at the start. Some was misspent, and as they created a fully fledged, fully equipped Formula 1 organisation in barely a year, there was no chance to learn how to manage that organisation.

The buying out of Tyrrell didn't go down well (although look at Bernie Ecclestone's views on this at the time, they paint a very different picture). BAR then set about recruiting staff from all the other teams, paying top dollar. This got up the noses of the other team principals. They got up to tricks, both planting stories and looking for ways to trip up the team.

The handling of Tyrrell in 1998 was a bad mistake. Pollock later acknowledged this. Politically bad (for F1, for the team, and for the staff who weren't transferred), the remaining staff performed very poorly (unsurprisingly, given what they had to work with), which cost the team money and benefits. Come January 1999 there were a lot of people in the sport with the knives out, and they quickly found opportunities to use them - not just PR but rule changes and other actions.

The first car was actually quite fleet, but had some critical flaws, most noticeably a fragile gearbox. Performance out of the box was very good (check the times), but car breakages cost results and stymied development.

Politics continued to wear away. Villeneuve had his own role to play in this. At the circuit he hardly made it an enjoyable place to work. Away from the track, he played (badly) a political game he had little chance of winning.
Too much effort went into the politics. Effort was diverted away from making the organisation and specific functions work efficiently. Team members were confused about what they had to do, were frustrated in achieving ther goals, and had to work with people they didn't like. So they started to leave.
By the time the boil was finally lanced, the damage was done. The arrival of Honda just added to the political problems (remember the marriage was made after the death of Harvey Postlethwaite, who was leading Honda to their own works team, so some Honda staff had their own agenda and way of working). Worse, the boil-lancing wasn't complete, and the situation got worse (if at a slower rate) until Dave Richards was brought in. And I'll leave you to decide whether that was actually successful.

In all this, Craig Pollock gets very bad press. He was an honourable man, and had most of the skills to build the team he wanted - certainly the management skills to get the organisation working. He was from a similar mould as Ron Dennis and Martin Whitmarsh (the former of which had good things to say) and might have flourished in a McLaren environment. He was a manager, not an engineer and not a politician. On the engineering side, Pollock found himself without the trusted lieutenant Dennis has. And Pollock was completely unprepared for the political undermining, both inside and out. An MBA isn't much use when you're in a tank of piranhas.

[Rude-boy]

Thanks for what seems to be a very concise explanation of the whole situation.

IMHO though this was one of the main problems of the first season:-

HiRich said:

Fortitude said:

"Immediately a controversial figure, Pollock made numerous claims about how successful his team would be. His high hopes proved to be unfounded however with a disastrous debut in 1999."

Untrue. Adrian Reynard made the infamous "Win the first race claim" at the press launch, not Pollock.

I was at ASI for the launch of the new car and so on and everyone was making much of the Reynard record of his cars wining the first time out in every championship he had turned his hand to. The press effectively handed him their desired sound bite on a plate and he didn't see it coming fast enough. Many I know were saying how great it would be if they could do it, the press was saying they were saying they would do it.

How was this one of the main problems? It showed just how out of their depth the top men were and gave the piranhas the first scent of their blood. I'll wager more than a few existing teams were gazing longingly at the BAR pot of gold and wondering how best to steer it their way...

Edited by Rude-boy on Tuesday 17th February 14:03

[HiRich]

Rude-boy said:

I was at ASI for the launch of the new car and so on and everyone was making much of the Reynard record of his cars wining the first time out in every championship he had turned his hand to. The press effectively handed him their desired sound bite on a plate and he didn't see it coming fast enough. Many I know were saying how great it would be if they could do it, the press was saying they were saying they would do it.

How was this one of the main problems? It showed just how out of their depth the top men were and gave the piranhas the first scent of their blood. I'll wager more than a few existing teams were gazing longingly at the BAR pot of gold and wondering how best to steer it their way...

I was also at ASI, awaiting arrival of the (display) chassis from the press launch at Bracknell. I was looking out for all the PR staff to get a debrief so we could answer the public's questions on the stand the next day. With every arrival it was the same two phrases opening the conversation:
"You won't believe what Adrian said"
"You won't believe what Craig said backstage"
Adrian wasn't wrong to make the comment (there's no point turning up if you aren't planning to win), but the way it was said was very naive, and allowed its intent to be misreported and misrepresented.

And it was the first real sign that there were two hands on the tiller.

[Rude-boy]

HiRich said:

With every arrival it was the same two phrases opening the conversation:
"You won't believe what Adrian said"
"You won't believe what Craig said backstage"

I'll bet that made you feel warm all over to hear as you muttered FFS under your breath

[anonymous-user]

I worked at BAR for a few years, but just missed the Wild West first year in 1999.
It wasn't that bad on the whole and I'd like to point out that the second year was actually pretty successful i.e joint 4th with Bennetton on 20 points (back when you had to finish in the top 6 to get a point). JV was 7th in the drivers with 17 points (even though he is a tosser). There are and have been much worse F1 teams than this one.

There was a lot of potential in this team, I'd say it was Honda who messed it up, not Pollock or Reynard or any other individual. Their engine was way off the pace right from the start, making those early results even more impressive. While BMW were churning out well over 900 hp, this donkey was struggling to break the 700 barrier.

[Fortitude]

[quote=HiRich
I was looking out for all the PR staff to get a debrief so we could answer the public's questions on the stand the next day.quote]

You make some very interesting observations. Were you involved with the engineering of the car or one of the support team on race day? You certainly know quite a lot and thank you for posting.

[HiRich]

No I was on the outside, marketing & 'special projects' for BAT (including a photoshoot with a young Suzi Perry). But I knew a lot of the people involved at BAT and BAR and got to see some of the things going on. As is clear, I believe Pollock got a lot of undeserved bad press, but the guy I met was one of the more professionally-minded in the whole organisation (also, his taste in totty was top drawer). He made mistakes both politically and in a business sense, but many others were worse.

[Fortitude]

If the BAR team were oggling Suzi Perry, no wonder they didn't get time to sort out these problems!!

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=Suzi...

What other totty was being used to help 'engineer' the car?