Most cars that win in Formula 1 are special. The level of competition ensures that genuinely poor designs rarely get near a podium, particularly given the reliability of modern racing machines.
But sometimes a combination of luck, inspiration and/or unusual weather gives underdog cars their moment in the limelight. For this list, we looked at the overall pace of the cars, their reliability, how difficult they were to drive and the circumstances of their success.
So, here are Motorsport.com’s top 10 worst cars to win a world championship grand prix…
Raikkonen’s victory at Spa in 2009 owed much to the KERS unit on his Ferrari F60 that allowed him to blast past Fisichella’s Force India at a restart
Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images
Victory: 2009 Belgian GP, Kimi Raikkonen
Best other finish: 2nd
Constructors’ championship: 4th
Ferrari’s car for F1’s new 2009 regulations was poor. Not only did the team miss the double-diffuser trick, most effectively utilised by Brawn, the F60 lacked the ideal weight distribution thanks to its KERS, although a longer wheelbase introduced at the British GP in June helped matters.
Ferrari didn’t agree with the legality of the double diffuser and, with testing restrictions, didn’t respond as quickly as it might have done previously. It also sometimes struggled to get the best out of the Bridgestone tyres. The top eight cars scored points that season and it took Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa four races to get Ferrari off the mark.
A safety car he helped cause and KERS enabled Raikkonen to snatch victory at Spa from Giancarlo Fisichella’s KERS-less Force India during a strong four-race run, but the woeful (and point-less) performances of Luca Badoer and Fisichella – both of whom stepped in after Massa’s serious Hungary qualifying crash – underlined how difficult the car was.
“We didn’t have enough downforce or efficiency,” said then team manager Chris Dyer in the official 2009 F1 season review. “Both Luca and Giancarlo found the car hard to balance under braking with KERS.”
Had Toyota been more operationally savvy, it’s possible Ferrari would have finished fifth in the constructors’ table, having taken the crown in 2008.
9. Shadow DN8
Jones triumphed on a chaotic afternoon at the Osterreichring for Shadow in 1977
Photo by: LAT Photographic
Victory: 1977 Austrian GP, Alan Jones
Best other result: 3rd
Constructors’ championship: 7th
Initially designed by Tony…
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