British American Racing entered Formula One with significant resources and ambition, backed by British American Tobacco and co-founded by Craig Pollock, manager of 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve. Technical input came from Reynard Motorsports, a respected chassis constructor, and the car was designed with competitive intentions from the outset. The team signed Villeneuve as lead driver alongside Ricardo Zonta, the 1997 Formula 3000 champion and 1998 FIA GT champion, giving BAR one of the stronger driver lineups of any new constructor.
The car's technical foundation drew on Reynard's experience, but reliability proved catastrophically poor. Villeneuve failed to finish the first eleven races of the season, an extraordinary run of misfortune. Mika Salo deputised for Zonta early in the year after the Brazilian injured his ankle at the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos.
Before the season even began, BAR collided with FIA regulations over their proposed livery. The team wished to run two different sponsor schemes simultaneously — Villeneuve's car in Lucky Strike branding and Zonta's in 555 branding, both cigarette brands owned by parent company British American Tobacco. FIA regulations required both cars to carry identical liveries.
The solution was a distinctive split livery, with Lucky Strike covering the left side of the car and 555 covering the right, divided by a graphic "zip" running the length of the chassis, spreading wide across the nosecone. Secondary sponsors appeared on a silver background. The rear wing was similarly divided, with 555 on the forward-facing surface and Lucky Strike on the rearward face. All mechanics' suits matched the split design, while the drivers wore sponsor-specific suits and helmets aligned to their respective car sides.
At rounds where tobacco advertising was banned — the French, British and Belgian Grands Prix — 555 branding was replaced by a triple crescent moon motif (a convention previously used on Subaru Impreza rally cars), while Lucky Strike areas were blanked out and replaced with "Run Free" text on the nose and wings.
The season was a comprehensive disaster despite moments suggesting genuine pace. Villeneuve briefly ran as high as third during the Spanish Grand Prix before retiring. Yet across the full 16-race calendar, neither driver scored a championship point. BAR finished last in the Constructors' Championship, behind considerably smaller operations including Minardi, Arrows and Sauber. The target of pole position and race victory that Adrian Reynard had publicly sought at the opening round went unmet at every subsequent round too.
The split livery was used only for 1999. From 2000 onward, BAR ran predominantly in Lucky Strike colours.
In a retrospective assessment, Autosport journalist Jake Boxall-Legge ranked the BAR 001 among the best Formula One cars never to score a point, placing it alongside the ATS D6 as a car that showed genuine potential undermined by reliability failures. The season stood as a cautionary example of the gap between expectation and execution for a well-funded but inexperienced new constructor. BAR would recover to score points in 2000 and eventually become a competitive front-running team by the mid-2000s, but the 001's pointless debut season remained a defining and frequently cited chapter in the team's story.