The Arrows FA1's legal difficulties stemmed from its resemblance to the Shadow DN9, itself designed by Tony Southgate — who had subsequently moved to Arrows. Shadow brought a copyright action, and the High Court agreed the FA1 was substantially derived from the DN9.
Anticipating they would lose the case, Arrows began designing a replacement car while the court proceedings were still underway. The team designed and built the A1 in under 60 days. When the court ruled against them, Arrows were able to present the completed A1 to the press just three days after the judgement and did not miss a single race as a result. The speed of the car's creation was a remarkable feat of engineering and organisation.
Six Arrows A1 chassis were built in total, numbered A1-01 through A1-06.
The Arrows A1 was among the first Formula One cars to exploit ground-effect aerodynamics, using the venturi-shaped sidepod tunnels that were generating downforce across the grid during that period. The car was rushed into service without any testing or development following the FA1 ban, yet proved to be genuinely competitive.
The original three chassis (A1-01, A1-02 and A1-03) were built to a common 1978 specification. For the start of the 1979 season in Argentina, three cars were prepared to an updated A1-B specification, which stiffened the monocoque and revised the ground-effect sidepods. The two race cars were the updated A1-03 and the new A1-05, with A1-04 as a spare monocoque.
During the Argentine Grand Prix warm-up, A1-05 was involved in a crash. This chassis was subsequently rebuilt to the further improved A1-C specification, alongside the final chassis built, A1-06. The A1-C update incorporated a new rear wing with a single central support, improved rear suspension geometry, and totally redesigned ground-effect sidepods that were more swept up toward the rear tyre.
The A1 made its debut mid-season in 1978 after the FA1 ban. At the 1978 Canadian Grand Prix, Riccardo Patrese scored a fourth-place finish, demonstrating that the car could compete at the front of the midfield despite its rapid development.
In 1979, the A1 continued to score results in the fourth and fifth place range across several races. The season's most dramatic moment came at the Monaco Grand Prix, where Jochen Mass ran as high as third place after qualifying eighth. A sustained competitive drive through the streets of Monte Carlo brought the possibility of a podium into view before brake problems intervened, dropping Mass to sixth at the finish.
Riccardo Patrese was the team's lead driver through both seasons. He held the A1 in particularly high regard, believing it to have more predictable handling than the successor Arrows A2. Even after the radical but ultimately unsuccessful A2 was introduced mid-1979, Patrese chose on occasion to practice in and race the older A1.
Three of the older specification Arrows A1s — A1-02, A1-03 and A1-04 — were sold to Charles Clowes Racing, which competed in the 1979 and 1980 Aurora AFX British Formula One Championship. Rupert Keegan won the 1979 Aurora championship in a Clowes-run Arrows A1. Guy Edwards finished third in the 1980 series in another of the Clowes cars, behind two Williams FW07s. Chassis A1-01 was placed on display in a museum.
The Arrows A1's creation story became one of the more remarkable episodes in Formula One's history: a complete racing car designed, engineered and built in under two months, ready to race within days of a court judgement. The fact that it proved genuinely competitive — scoring points and challenging for podiums in its first full season — made the achievement more significant still. The A1 established Arrows as a capable independent constructor and set the template for a team that would compete in Formula One for over two decades.
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