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Manama, Thursday 4th March 2010: In a year of anniversaries at the pinnacle of international motor sport, 2010 marks the 80th anniversary of the competitive debut of Scuderia Ferrari.  Heading to Bahrain for next weekend’s Formula 1™ Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix (March 12-14) as pre-season favourite, hopes are high that the oaken anniversary of the most famous name in racing will bring still more success.

In the 1920s Enzo Ferrari was a successful member of the works Alfa Romeo team but found greater success in 1929 when he brought together a consortium of private drivers and investors for whom he prepared Alfa Romeo cars under the name of Scuderia Ferrari.  Through that first season of 1930, Ferrari entered 22 races and took eight victories, setting new standards in presentation including a PR-friendly annual distributed to highlight the team’s achievements each year and the adoption of one of Italy’s most celebrated logos – the prancing horse or ‘Cavallino Rampante’.

The prancing horse had been the personal emblem of Italy’s highest-scoring fighter pilot in World War 1, Francesco Baracca, which Enzo Ferrari claimed had been given to him to use by the dead pilot’s parents.  Meanwhile on the track his cars remained successful and profitable, becoming Alfa Romeo’s principal team in 1933 after the factory squad was disbanded and bringing Ferrari the greatest driver of the era: Tazio Nuvolari.

Despite Nuvolari’s presence, the Scuderia’s successes were soon curtailed by the advent of the ‘silver arrows’ of Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union, which came to dominate the sport for Germany until the outbreak of World War 2.  At the end of 1937 Alfa Romeo decided to take back its front-line racing operations to the factory team, forcing Ferrari to disband his team.  Ferrari’s chagrin was all the greater because he had been developing a new car with Alfa designer Gioacchino Colombo at his workshops in Modena which became known as the Tipo 158 ‘Alfetta’. 

For a few months Ferrari worked, somewhat begrudgingly, as team manager for the works Alfa Romeo squad but quit before the end of the 1938 season to set up a specialist engineering firm: Auto Avio Costruzioni.  Manufacturing vital parts for the war effort during World War 2, Ferrari entered peacetime as a prosperous businessman with a factory in the small farming community of Maranello from where, in 1948, he began to build his own racing cars.

The first Ferrari Formula 1™ car – the Tipo 125 – was designed by Gioacchino Colombo but found that the Alfetta was still the most competitive car in the sport.  Alfa won every race it entered from 1946-1950, culminating in victory in the inaugural Formula 1™ world championship for ‘Nino’ Farina while Ferrari elected to build a new car, the 4.5-litre unsupercharged V12 Tipo 375.

Pitting the greater economy of his big engine against the highly-stressed Alfa Romeos, Ferrari took its first world championship victory at the 1951 British Grand Prix, when Argentinean star Froilan Gonzales drove a faultless race.  Two more victories followed that season for Alberto Ascari and at the end of the year Alfa Romeo retired, leaving Ferrari pre-eminent in the sport.

Since then Ferrari has reached every high and every low that the sport can offer.  Dominating the 1952-53 seasons with Alberto Ascari and the Tipo 500 F2, the Scuderia was then powerless against the onslaught of Mercedes-Benz and only a last minute deal to take over the innovative Lancia D50 cars saved the team from oblivion – at the moment that Mercedes withdrew from the sport.

A successful but unhappy partnership with Juan Manuel Fangio in 1956 was the prelude to years of tragedy in which Ferrari lost his son to illness and his drivers Eugenio Castellotti, Alfonso de Portago, Luigi Musso and Peter Collins in fatal accidents – leading to a personal attack on Enzo Ferrari from the Vatican.  Britain’s Mike Hawthorn prevailed to take the 1958 world championship title, but retired from the sport and died in a road accident in January 1959.

Ferrari meanwhile dropped out of competitiveness as new lightweight rear-engined cars from the Cooper and Lotus teams in Britain transformed the sport.  Ferrari was never as experimental as its ever-increasing number of British rivals, winning only the 1961 and 1964 titles until a radical restructure in the early 1970s transformed the team.

In came a new team manager, Luca di Montezemolo, and a new star driver, Niki Lauda.  Together they made Ferrari virtually unbeatable, taking the 1975 and 1977 titles while only losing the 1976 championship by the narrowest of margins when Lauda suffered near-fatal burns at the German Grand Prix.

Lauda and di Montezemolo departed Ferrari at the end of 1977 and in came undoubtedly the Scuderia’s most popular driver of all time: Gilles Villeneuve.  With his compact physique, flamboyant driving style and never-say-die attitude, to Enzo Ferrari’s mind the Canadian superstar embodied the spirit of Tazio Nuvolari. 

His spectacular style undoubtedly cost Villeneuve the 1979 championship title, which was won by team-mate Jody Scheckter, and his emotional approach was held as a factor in the accident which claimed his life at the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix but to the sport’s fans the combination of Villeneuve and Ferrari brought a golden era of excitement.

After Villeneuve the team found only sporadic periods of competitiveness and regular, acrimonious management reshuffles throughout the rest of the decade, while at the age of 90 Enzo Ferrari passed away in 1988.  Still more managerial chaos followed until 1992 when Luca di Montezemolo returned as Ferrari president and brought in the organisational skills of Jean Todt to the team principal’s role but even then success was elusive until the team signed Michael Schumacher to lead it towards victory at the end of 1995.

It took four seasons, but the momentum built behind Ferrari and Schumacher to make the most dominant team in the sport’s history, claiming six successive constructors’ titles and five drivers’ championship victories for the German ace.  Two relatively lean years followed, prompting Schumacher’s retirement and the restructuring of the team which then engaged in a furious row with McLaren Mercedes after a disgruntled Ferrari employee sent secret information to the rival team, costing McLaren $100 million while Kimi Räikkönen won the drivers’ championship for Ferrari.

Another controversial season saw Felipe Massa narrowly miss out on the 2008 title, but in 2009 the team was off the pace and lost Massa to an horrendous accident in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix.  With the management structure now firmly in place and the signing of Alonso to partner a fully-recovered Massa, the 2010 pre-season testing has seen Ferrari back in front with the new F10 machine as it prepares for the start of the 2010 FIA Formula 1™ World Championship here in Bahrain.

Tickets to the Formula 1™ Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix are now available for purchase online at Bahrain International Circuit’s official website, www.bahraingp.com. They can also be bought by calling the circuit hotline on +973-17-450000, or by visiting the circuit stands at Seef Mall, Bahrain City Centre or at Race Zone. Tickets can also be purchased at the circuit premises in Sakhir, at the Welcome Centre located at the entrance.

Manama, Wednesday 3rd March: As the 2010 Formula 1™ Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix approaches Williams F1™ prepares to continue to improve on last year’s performance with the introduction of its brand new Cosworth-powered FW32 and a new driving pairing as veteran Rubens Barrichello joins rookie Nico Hülkenburg.

The team can trace its routes back to the late 1960’s when team founder Frank Williams entered the Formula 1™ arena and established himself as one of the most resolute individuals in the world of motorsport. After various incarnations the team built its first eponymous car in the form of 1978’s Williams FW06, proudly carrying the green and white colours of Saudia and Albilad in the first major sponsorships from this region.

The FW06 was a competitive car but Formula 1™ was moving into the ‘ground-effect’ era as Lotus dominated the sport with its advanced aerodynamics – which Williams designer Patrick Head sought to improve.  For 1979 Head designed the FW07 which took the ‘ground-effect’ principal to the limit and at the British Grand Prix veteran Swiss driver Clay Regazzoni brought home the team’s first world championship victory.

Throughout the rest of 1979 Williams grew stronger, with bluff Australian team leader Alan Jones entering the winners circle and in 1980 sealing the Formula 1™ World Championship with aplomb.  Bringing in Argentina’s Carlos Reutemann to partner Jones in 1981 proved to be a controversial decision, however, as a three-way title fight broke out between the two Williams men and the Brabham of Nelson Piquet.  With the two Williams drivers taking points away from each other all season long, Piquet slipped through to take the title and both the Williams men retired from the sport.

For 1982 Williams took a gamble on the flambouyant Finn Keke Rosberg, who had never had a genuine opportunity to show his potential in tail-end outfits.  In a season of high drama Rosberg’s natural speed, the reliability of the Cosworth DFV engine and the bad luck of others meant that even though he only took victory at the Swiss Grand Prix, the 1982 title was his thanks to the FW08’s consistency.

In 1983 ‘ground-effect’ aerodynamics were banned and Rosberg revelled in the lightweight, nimble Williams FW08c to take a mesmerizing victory at the Monaco Grand Prix.  However turbo power was taking over and the team forged an alliance with the Japanese giant Honda to build a new generation of cars with mighty 1.5-litre turbo engines backed up with groundbreaking electronic engine management and advanced technologies.

Success was elusive – with the exception of a mighjty performance by Rosberg at the 1984 US Grand Prix – until the 1985 season.  Rosberg was paired with British hopeful Nigel Mansell, and from mid-season it was Mansell who became the dominant force in the team, sweeping to his first career victories. 

In 1986 Mansell was joined by Piquet while the team revealed its FW11 which proved to be unquestionably the class of the field as a design but once again the rivalry between the two Williams drivers took its toll and despite nine race wins and the constructors’ title, McLaren’s Alain Prost won the drivers’ championship.  For 1987 the intra-team rivalry intensified while Williams sought to build a new kind of car, Patrick Head’s FW11B featured active suspension and swept to both the constructors’ and the drivers’ titles with Piquet beating Mansell.

Despite the enormous success of 1987 the team was dealt a savage blow when Frank Williams broke his neck in a road traffic accident, confining him to a wheelchair.  As a result Honda elected to abandon the team and Williams was left struggling until 1989 and a new technical partnership with Renault.

Throughout the 1990s Williams-Renault defined the technological pinnacle of the sport.  For 1991 Patrick Head was joined by Adrian Newey and together they built the FW14 in which Mansell took the title fight to McLaren-Honda and its star Ayrton Senna.  In 1992 the FW14B saw the introduction of advanced driver aids including active suspension, a semi-automatic transmission, anti-lock brakes and traction control with which Mansell steamrollered all opposition to wrap up the championship in record-breaking time.

At the end of the year Mansell found himself out of a drive after he and Williams failed to agree new terms, giving the most competitive drive in the field to three-time champion Alain Prost.  Prost duly won the 1993 title in the Williams-Renault FW15C and promptly went into retirement, opening the door for three-time champion Ayrton Senna.

Senna and Williams was supposed to be the dream team, but it became a nightmare.  For 1994 the teams were all banned from using the advanced driver aids that Williams had pioneered, and both Senna and team-mate Damon Hill found the FW16 a very difficult car to handle.  At the third round of the season Senna crashed fatally but Hill stepped up to the team leader’s role with gusto, closing up on Michael Schumacher through the year until the German crashed into Hill in the final race of the year, thus ensuring himself his first world championship crown.

Having developed the FW16 into a potential championship-winner in 1994, Williams came out fighting in 1995 with the FW15 but while his car was clearly better than the Renault-powered Benetton of Schumacher, Damon Hill was suffering in such a bitter battle between himself and Schumacher and could not offer a challenge to the German.  In 1996 Schumacher moved to struggling Ferrari and gave the Williams-Renault team a head start on the title, with Hill eventually holding off his talented young team mate Jacques Villeneuve to become the only son of a world champion – 1962 and 1968 title-winner Graham – to take the title for himself.

Like Mansell before him, Hill came off second best in his pay dispute with Frank Williams and left the team at the end of his championship-winning season.  This left Villeneuve – son of the late Ferrari legend Gilles – free to stamp his authority on the team and, after fending off a revitalized Schumacher and Ferrari challenge, the Canadian claimed his crown after his German rival failed to crash into him in the deciding round.

At the end of 1997 Renault opted to take a break from Formula 1™ while Ferrari and McLaren-Mercedes swept past the Williams team into a battle of their own.  Williams endured lean times until it began new partnerships with BMW and Michelin tyres, starting in 2000 when it gave 20-year-old Jenson Button his big break.

For 2001 Button was replaced by Juan Pablo Montoya and the explosive Colombian star made a huge impact on the sport.  With the Williams-BMW FW23 he had a car more than capable of taking the fight to Ferrari and while there were times when his temperament got the better of him, there were many more times when he harried Schumacher harder than any other driver.

Ferrari was unstoppable in 2002 but in 2003 the Williams-BMW FW25 was the best car on the best tyres with the best engine.  Sadly for Williams it had two temperamental drivers in Montoya and Ralf Schumacher who were more intent on beating each other at all costs than on beating the less-than-dominant Ferrari of Michael Schumacher, gifting away both championships by the end of the season.

Since then Williams has endured many lean times.  BMW parted company, forcing the team to take customer engine deals, although the addition of young talent Nico Rosberg has delivered several strong results to keep the team battling in the middle of the Formula 1™ field.  For 2010 Rosberg may be gone but with the experience of Barrichello and the exciting new talent of Hülkenburg together with a promising new car and engine, this may be the season in which Frank Williams and Patrick Head turn back the tide, starting with the 2010 Formula 1™ Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix on March 12-14.

Tickets to the Formula 1™ Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix are now available for purchase online at Bahrain International Circuit’s official website, www.bahraingp.com. They can also be bought by calling the circuit hotline on +973-17-450000, or by visiting the circuit stands at Seef Mall, Bahrain City Centre or at Race Zone. Tickets can also be purchased at the circuit premises in Sakhir, at the Welcome Centre located at the entrance.