Arrows entered 1999 in a weakened state. The Danka sponsorship that had provided financial stability had ended, and the team failed to secure a replacement of comparable scale. Brian Hart continued as engine supplier, but the ownership dispute between Hart and Tom Walkinshaw that had simmered throughout the previous year came to a head and Hart eventually departed. John Barnard had already left at the end of 1998, and Mike Coughlan now held technical responsibility for a car that was essentially a development of the A19 rather than a clean-sheet design. Mika Salo, who had been in the seat through 1998 and had shown promise, was dropped just one week before the opening race in what appeared to be a budget-driven decision, with Pedro de la Rosa brought in partly on the strength of his Repsol sponsorship backing.
One of the more colourful episodes of the A20 year was the arrival of Nigerian prince Malik Ado-Ibrahim as a 25% shareholder in the team. His T-Minus brand appeared on the cars for much of the year, with Ado-Ibrahim promising that corporations would purchase rights to use the brand and generate revenue. Planned tie-ins with Lamborghini did not materialise, and team insiders later confirmed that the brand brought in no income at all. Investment company Morgan Grenfell later acquired a 50% controlling interest in Arrows, complicating the ownership structure further without providing the operational stability the team needed.
The season was largely a struggle. The A20 was slow from the outset and arguably became slower as the year progressed, to the point that Arrows were being regularly outqualified by the Minardi team, itself not considered a competitive force. The car's one positive result came at the opening race in Melbourne, where de la Rosa finished sixth on his Formula One debut, with Takagi seventh, a one-two points haul that flattered to deceive about the campaign ahead.
De la Rosa later commented positively about the chassis's handling characteristics, placing the blame for the team's inability to compete squarely on the Hart engine's lack of power. Toranosuke Takagi, meanwhile, struggled with a language barrier that made technical communication with the engineering team difficult, and he left the sport at the end of the season.
The A20 scored only a single point across the entire year. Only the chronic unreliability of the newly-formed BAR team prevented Arrows from finishing last in the Constructors' Championship.
Mike Coughlan undertook an extensive refitting of the A20 in preparation for the 2000 season, during which time the team switched to Supertec customer engines. Testing over the winter produced encouraging results; Pedro de la Rosa and Tom Coronel both ran the refurbished car and posted competitive lap times. In November 1999, Mark Webber — at the time an Australian Formula 3000 driver trying to attract Formula One interest — drove an A20 fitted with the Supertec engine and new gearbox. He later recalled in his autobiography that the car handled well above the average expected of a team in Arrows's position. The A20 chassis subsequently formed the basis of the AX3, a three-seat promotional car that Arrows introduced in 2001, using a modified version of the A20 structure and the retained Hart engine.
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