By Jake Owen
Everyone loves a good livery reveal. This year is no different, with fans all excitingly waiting for
the teams to show off their new splashes of paint. With these reveals, however, comes the
extravagant show that the teams hide the car behind, driving you insane before anything is even
shown. Imagine yourself sitting there through all the dribble, all the sponsorship nonsense, all
the over-the-top special effects, only then to be shown arguably the worst livery in F1 history.
In 1997, Owner of ‘Tyrell Racing’, Ken Tyrell sold his F1 team to British businessman Craig
Pollock. After the 1998 season the famous Tyrell name, which gave Sir Jackie Stewart his three
world championship titles, was erased from the sport and replaced by the ‘British American
Racing Formula One Team’ or ‘BAR’ for short.
There was buzz around the team going into the 1999 season with 1997 world champion Jacque
Villenuve jumping ship from an under-performing Williams team and joining BAR, mostly thanks
to his managerial connection to the then current CEO and team principal Craig Pollock. Now
think back to what was said before, imagining yourself waiting for the car to finally be revealed
after a long and tedious pre-reveal show. Well Bar did this but once the sheets were removed
from the cars, they didn’t reveal one livery, they revealed two.
One livery was blue and covered in the logo of the cigarette sponsor ‘555’ with driver Ricardo
Zonta wearing overalls matching the car, and the other livery was red and white with another
cigarette sponsor ‘Lucky Strike’ printed across the car with Villeneuve wearing overalls to again
match the car. Obviously, those in attendance were very perplexed by the reveal and I don’t
blame them.
Questions were most definitely asked, and the answers revealed that the desire of the team was
to enter the season with two separate liveries on their cars. The FIA immediately stepped in and
told the team that they must enter the season with two cars identical to one another, as per the
rules.
With the opening race not far away, a quick fix was necessary in order to be allowed to compete.
What they came up with is the worst livery to ever enter F1. Known as the infamous ‘Zipper Car’,
what BAR decided to do was to split both liveries in half along the car and glue them together.
Accompanying the centre of this split with a zipper that ran along the car from the nose up until
the end of the car, deciding to have the rear wing split between the two cigarette sponsors on
the front and the rear. And the drivers? Despite the changing liveries, their race suits stayed the
same which certainly clashed with at least half the car they were driving but matched with the
other.
This ‘one plus one’ approach was accepted by the FIA, and the car was ready for the opening
race in Australia. Immediately, the fans expressed their distaste for the livery which further
embarrassed the already embarrassed BAR team. What they could only hope for to improve
their image was to have a good debut season, but what followed was a season that could also
describe their livery. Ugly. By the end of their first season, the team had racked up an impressive
23 DNF’s between the two cars within the 16-race long season, with Jacque Villeneuve suffering
an excruciating 11 DNF’s in a row. The team in the end scored 0 points and once the season was
over, they immediately scrapped the zipper livery.
So ended the reign of the infamous zipper car, and with that I leave you with a bit of advice. The
next time you think about complaining over a team’s livery, just think how lucky you truly are, compared to those from earlier eras.
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