Boost or bust for F1’s smaller teams?

29 June 1995

“The answer to Ligier’s prayers?” asked Autosport magazine this week in 1995. Legendary motorsport team boss Tom Walkinshaw had joined as the team’s engineering director for the campaign and had high hopes.

The Ligier JS41S of Martin Brundle and Olivier Panis had just had their most competitive showing so far in the Canadian Grand Prix, and Walkinshaw was confident of reorganising the team and lifting them towards the front, as he had helped do at Benetton.

“Ligier is not very different to how Benetton was when we first went in there,” said Walkinshaw, who was also – among other things – masterminding the Volvo programme in the British Touring Car Championship at the time. “It’s fairly disjointed, with not a lot of processes and controls.”

Walkinshaw talked of the new people and systems he was putting in place, and believed the team was capable of battling at the front: “I don’t see any reason why Ligier can’t be up there fighting for a world championship within three years.”

Ligier would finish an encouraging fifth in the 1995 constructors’ championship, and an inspired Panis won the 1996 Monaco GP, then the team was bought by Alain Prost ahead of the 1997 season. Prost Grand Prix vanished from F1 after 2001.

The survival of F1’s smaller teams was also very much on the news agenda in June 1995, with the confirmation that cars would need to qualify within 107% of the pole position time the following season.

“The new law stands to be another nail in the coffin of the struggling minnows at the back of the F1 grid – more specifically, those without a works engine deal,” said Autosport.

A little more than a year later and Simtek, Pacific and Forti would be gone.