Footwork Arrows

The season began with the A11C chassis and Porsche engines, but after neither Michele Alboreto nor Alex Caffi qualified in Brazil there was a reshuffle: Alan Rees was made financial director and John Wickham named team manager. The prototype FA12 appeared but was destroyed when its suspension failed at the Tamburello turn at Imola. Alboreto suffered a broken foot and Caffi damaged a second new car at Monaco. Caffi was then hurt in a road accident and was replaced by Stefan Johansson for several races.

In June the team replaced the unsuccessful Porsche engines with Hart-prepared Cosworth DFR engines. Having failed to score points for a year, the team was forced to pre-qualify from mid-season and appeared in races only rarely in the second half of the year. Despite the problems, the team opened a 40%-scale windtunnel at Milton Keynes.

For 1992 Caffi was dropped and Aguri Suzuki joined, bringing a supply of Mugen V10s derived from the 1990-spec Honda V10s that Mugen had serviced for Tyrrell the previous year. The FA13 chassis, designed by Alan Jenkins, was a conventional and straightforward car. Alboreto scored four times — 5th in both the Spanish and San Marino Grands Prix and 6th in both the Brazilian and Portuguese Grands Prix — giving the team six points and equal 7th with Ligier in the Constructors' Championship.

For 1993 Alboreto was dropped to make way for Derek Warwick, who joined Suzuki. With Mugen engines and a new FA14 chassis, it was a disappointing year. Warwick scored all four of the team's points: a 6th place at the British Grand Prix and a 4th at the Hungarian Grand Prix, the latter remaining the best Footwork result in history until late 1995. The team finished 9th in the Constructors' Championship. At the end of the season Ohashi withdrew his sponsorship but continued to hold shares; as a consequence the team lost its Mugen engines and had to return to Ford V8s for 1994.

Although the Footwork logos were gone from the cars, the team continued to be recognised as Footwork by the FIA because Ohashi still owned shares and had not applied for a name change. Jenkins designed the FA15 for young drivers Gianni Morbidelli and Christian Fittipaldi, but money was short. The car drew admiring glances: Fittipaldi took 4th at the Pacific Grand Prix and was one of the stars of the Monaco Grand Prix, running third before his gearbox failed.

Initially fragile, the car was improving when revised regulations following the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna cost the cars their neat aerodynamics. Further points came at the German Grand Prix where the cars finished 4th and 5th out of eight finishers. Thanks to Michael Schumacher's disqualification from the Belgian Grand Prix, Morbidelli was promoted to 6th; this was some compensation for Fittipaldi being disqualified from 6th in the parc fermé at the Canadian Grand Prix. Footwork finished 9th in the Constructors' Championship with nine points. At year's end Fittipaldi quit Formula One for the IndyCar World Series, and Wickham departed, with Alan Harrison replacing him for 1995.

With an increasingly difficult financial situation the team chose pay driver Taki Inoue to partner Morbidelli in the Jenkins-designed Arrows-Hart FA16. Mid-season finances were so tight that Morbidelli was replaced by Max Papis, although he returned for the final three races and scored Footwork's first and only podium in Adelaide. That result, plus a 6th place in the Canadian Grand Prix, allowed Footwork to finish 8th in the Constructors' Championship, equal on points with Tyrrell but claiming the higher position through better results (Tyrrell's best results were two fifth places). At year's end Jackie Oliver and Alan Rees bought back Ohashi's shares with assistance from finance house Schwäbische Finanz & Unternehmensberatung AG.

In March 1996 Tom Walkinshaw acquired a controlling interest by buying out Rees, holding 40% of shares with associate Peter Darnbrough buying 11% and Oliver retaining 49%. The team was renamed TWR Arrows for the rest of the 1996 season, though the FIA continued to recognise it as Footwork until 1997 as mid-season constructor name changes are not permitted. Jos Verstappen scored a 6th place in the Argentine Grand Prix, the last ever point for Footwork in Formula One. The team finished 9th in the Constructors' Championship.

In 2001 Ohashi's company was involved in a fraud scandal that bankrupted it. One year later the TWR-operated Arrows team also collapsed due to financial problems.

This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.