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 Autosport’s top 10 worst cars to win a world championship grand prix…
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.
In defence of: F1's pointless record-holder Luca Badoer
“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.
Victory: 1977 Austrian GP, Alan Jones
Best other result: 3rd
Constructors’ championship: 7th
Initially designed by Tony Southgate and completed by Dave Wass in 1976, the DN8 scored points in each of its three F1 seasons. But it was never cutting-edge.
On a good day in 1977 Shadow could get one of its cars into the top six, usually driven by future world champion Alan Jones. On a bad day – and there were a few – it posted a double retirement and Shadow was only seventh in the constructors’ championship.
That would have been eighth had it not been for a remarkable day at the Osterreichring. Jones started 14th in a DN8 with revised bodywork, but a wet track on race day provided an opportunity.
PLUS: The wild Austrian GP that launched a future champion
Most runners started on slicks and Jones made impressive progress in the early slippery conditions, gaining a place almost every lap. After 16 of the 54 laps, Jones was second, with only reigning world champion James Hunt ahead.
Hunt nevertheless looked in command until his McLaren’s Cosworth DFV cried enough with just 11 laps to go. Jones, who had been saved from a potential Gunnar Nilsson challenge when the Lotus driver’s engine failed, was left to beat Niki Lauda’s Ferrari by 20 seconds to secure Shadow’s only F1 world championship victory.
“I knew it was a fluke; winning had to be a fluke in the car I had,” said Jones in his autobiography, Driving Ambition. “I knew there wasn't much we could do short of a new car. The one we had was overweight and very slow in a straight line.”
Victory: 2008 Italian GP, Sebastian Vettel
Best other result: 4th
Constructor’s championship: 6th
Despite the odd eye-catching qualifying performance – often due to Pirelli rubber – Minardi was much more likely to finish at the back than the front. And that didn’t seem to change significantly when Red Bull bought the team and renamed it Toro Rosso (before rebranding it as AlphaTauri) for 2005.
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The STR3, which arrived for the sixth round of the 2008 season, was really a Red Bull RB4 with a Ferrari engine instead of Renault power. It wasn’t a bad car and often scored points in the hands of Sebastian Vettel during a season largely dominated by McLaren and Ferrari.
But it only ever looked remotely like a winner once. The combination of wet weather, Vettel’s ability, Ferrari power and a weight distribution that was further to the rear than many, made it a contender at Monza.
Vettel qualified on pole and, despite a wild moment, led every lap aside from during the pitstops to take a brilliant victory – the first for team and driver.
"It was an incredible day, with a package that wasn't supposed to be close to the podium," said Vettel.
Even so, Toro Rosso finished sixth in the constructors’ table and wouldn’t score another podium for more than a decade.
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Victory: 1983 Detroit GP, Michele Alboreto
Best other finish: 5th
Constructors’ championship: 7th (Tyrrell 012 used at some venues)
Ken Tyrrell's eponymous squad was a bastion of the normally aspirated Ford Cosworth DFV engine against the turbo hordes in the early 1980s. To call the 011B a bad car might be rather harsh as it was always going to be outgunned, but in truth it was not normally on the pace.
A development of the reasonably competitive 1982 011, the flat-bottomed B version ended up with the ultimate DFY version of Cosworth's legendary powerplant, but it struggled to finish in the top 10, on the occasions that it actually reached the chequered flag in 1983.
Tight street tracks, which minimised the power advantage of the turbos and highlighted their problems of lag, were the last venues the Cosworth still had a chance.
In Detroit, Michele Alboreto qualified sixth, second fastest of the Cosworth runners. He jumped Marc Surer on lap one, gained another spot when Elio de Angelis’s Lotus suffered crown-wheel-and-pinion failure, then lost it as Keke Rosberg’s Cosworth-engined Williams flew by. Alboreto overcame the Alfa Romeo of Andrea de Cesaris to run fourth again, but Rosberg, Nelson Piquet (Brabham) and Rene Arnoux (Ferrari) seemed out of reach.
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The Tyrrell got ahead of Rosberg when the Williams made a refuelling/tyre stop, which proved to be slow, and moved into second when fuel system problems put out runaway leader Arnoux. Although Alboreto kept the pressure on Piquet, it wasn’t until the Brabham picked up a puncture with 10 laps to go that the non-stopping Tyrrell first hit the front.
Apart from Alboreto's win – Tyrrell’s last – the 011B's best 1983 finish was fifth and it was replaced by the 012 before the end of the campaign.
PLUS: How Tyrrell became a racing Rubik’s cube as it faded out of F1
Victories: 1981 Monaco and Spanish GP, Gilles Villeneuve
Best other result: 3rd
Constructors’ championship: 5th
The first turbocharged Ferrari was all about a powerful engine strapped into a chassis nowhere near as good as most of its rivals. Ferrari, coming off the back of one of its worst seasons in 1980, eventually finished fifth in the constructors’ table and scored just three podiums. But two of those were victories.
Remarkably, they came at two of the season’s three slowest venues. The first was made possible by one of the greatest qualifying laps in F1 history, as Gilles Villeneuve put his Ferrari second on the grid, 2.5s faster than team-mate (and 1980 Monaco polesitter) Didier Pironi.
PLUS: The greatest qualifying laps in F1 history
Poleman Nelson Piquet’s nimbler Brabham inevitably pulled clear of Villeneuve in the early stages and the Ferrari soon had to make way for Jones’s charging Williams. Jones edged towards Piquet, who Source: Autosport