The underfunded car that holds a notable F1 record

One might recognise the Fondmetal name (pronounced 'fond-muh-TAHL') from its appearances on the rear wing of a series of late 1990s Minardi.

An alloy wheels manufacturer founded by the late Gabriele Rumi, once a considerable shareholder in Giancarlo Minardi's team before Paul Stoddart bought it out, Fondmetal is still churning out wheels to this day.

But three decades ago, at a time when there were plenty of Italian industrialists involved in Formula 1, Fondmetal had also bought its own team. In 1990, Rumi became the primary sponsor and shareholder of the Osella team, and changed the name for the following year.

Rumi also opened a design office in Bicester, under the leadership of now-IndyCar aero head Tino Belli, where the engineers were tasked with designing the 1991 Fomet-1. It arrived in time for Imola, and while it made its way out of pre-qualifying more often than the preceding Osella FA1ME, that's all it could offer.

Later in the year, Rumi axed driver Olivier Grouillard for underperforming, and future touring car legend Gabriele Tarquini joined the team. He proved to be an immediate step-up on the glacial Grouillard, making it onto the grid on two occasions in the final three races of 1991.

The Fomet-1 was redubbed the GR01 after it had been reconfigured to fit Ford's lighter, stronger HB V8 engine and was readied for the start of 1992 by Fondmetal's Bicester design office, while the design of the next car was handled elsewhere.

Rumi had outsourced the design of the GR02 to Sergio Rinland's Astauto team, born from the ashes of Brabham after it was dissolved at the end of 1991. Although Rumi had originally wanted a larger engine, Rinland was delighted to get his hands on the Ford HB unit, which he credited for allowing a neat and tidy design.

"You need to look at the car in a holistic view," Rinland explains. "You have an engine, you have a cooling requirement from the engine, a power requirement and a torque requirement from the gearbox - so every component adapts to what you have.

"You don't design a gearbox for a V12 engine when you have a small V8, and things like that. Everything in the design has to be homogeneous with what you have - with the money you have, with the resources and the power you have.

"We had a beautiful little engine, the Ford HB. It was magnificent, the cooling needs of that engine were tiny, and it allowed us to make a car with the same philosophy as the BT60 with the aero, but mechanically it was such a simple car.

The new car had enjoyed very little testing, which meant the reliability issues could not be solved in time

"You didn't need big radiators, you didn't need big sidepods, so we managed to design it with sidepods with less drag than the Brabham, probably about half the drag because you just didn't need that much cooling! The engine was great, and as I say, we designed the car to that engine."

It featured typical Rinland trademarks, with a raised, pinched nose to improve the airflow to the floor. Unshackled by the fleet of thirsty engines he previously had to work with - the BT60 was designed with the sprawling Yamaha powerplant - Rinland's team could bless the GR02 with tighter sidepods and a tidy-looking engine cover.

Crucially, it was incredibly simple in execution.

At the turn of the decade, driver aids had swarmed the F1 grid, with terms such as active suspension and anti-lock braking entering the racing lexicon. The GR02 remained unadulterated by such technology, instead fulfilling the brief of being a simple and effective design.

"The design process was similar to what we had at Brabham," Rinland recalls, "but we had more CAD. At Brabham, we introduced CAD in 1989 with one station, then two or three by the start of '92.

"When I left and started my company, it was all CAD, so we had to change a little bit. We still had guys with drawing boards, but the rest was all CAD. The design philosophy and way of thinking was the same, so we carried over the concept. The Fondmetal should have been the BT61, really."

The GR02 made its debut in the 1992 Canadian Grand Prix, with Tarquini remaining in the driving seat as rookie team-mate Andrea Chiesa persevered with the GR01. Fondmetal's new car had enjoyed very little testing, however, which meant the reliability issues that would usually be ironed out with endless laps could not be solved in time.

Nonetheless, Tarquini immediately hustled his GR02 to 18th on the grid, as Chiesa failed to qualify with the old car, 2.5-seconds behind his team-mate. With Chiesa out of the running before the race even began, Fondmetal's day ended on the first tour as Tarquini's gearbox didn't seem to fancy the 69-lap race ahead.

Next time out at Magny-Cours, Tarquini cemented Fondmetal's position among the Jordans and Tyrrells on pace, as he qualified 23rd - 0.004s behind Grouillard, who had found his way into Tyrrell.

Helpfully for Chiesa, pre-qualifying wasn't needed after the hapless Andrea Moda team got stuck in a lorry driver blockade, and he managed to make it into the race, while also the proud recipient of a brand-spanking-new GR02.

Chiesa then proceeded to christen his new car by tangling with Jordan's Mauricio Gugelmin on lap one, spearing into the wall as the suspension members broke away and tore through the roll hoop. Although Chiesa was incredibly lucky in the incident, the cash-strapped Fondmetal team still had a hefty repair bill - and Chiesa had to revert to the GR01 next time out.

Ultimately, the GR02 proved to be surprisingly rapid. With his hands tied by insufficient finance, Rinland decided to design the car around a select group of circuits and maximise the chances of results at those, rather than produce an all-rounder.

With his experience designing cars for small teams, Rinland knew that focusing on certain characteristics to capture stronger performances at a smaller range of circuits would offer more chance of a greater pay-off. It was that school of thought that helped what was then Force India break into the midfield in 2009, by focussing on the high-speed, low-drag circuits with its VJM02 chassis.

Rumi couldn't afford to fund the team off his own back, and Fondmetal almost ran out of spare parts after the various incidents

As Rinland reflects: "When you're working for a small team, you're trying to say 'OK, where do we want to perform?' You can't perform everywhere at the top with a small team, you have to say 'I want to perform well at Monza,' or Monaco, or Spa... and you know if you can perform well at Spa you can do well at Silverstone or Barcelona.

"So you have to make those decisions, because you didn't have three or four variations of bodywork, you have maybe two front and rear wings, so you have to decide where to put those efforts."

Tarquini was something of a Silverstone/Spa specialist, qualifying 15th at the British Grand Prix - and recording the car's first finish with a run to 14th place. He followed that up with a solid 19th-place start next time out at Hockenheim, as Chiesa, despite having access to the GR02 once again, failed to qualify.

Rumi then ousted the Swiss driver and drafted in the newly unemployed Eric van de Poele for the Hungarian Grand Prix after Brabham had begun to circle the drain. Van de Poele was a much more consistent presence, dispelling the non-qualifying issues with a greater turn of pace than Chiesa, while Tarquini set the curious record of being the last driver to top a pre-qualifying session. He carried that form into qualifying proper with an excellent 12th-fastest time, outqualifying both Lotuses in the process.

But both drivers added to Fondmetal's woes with a difficult race in which it should have capitalised. Tarquini was put out of the race at Budapest in a first-corner incident with Johnny Herbert and the two Ligiers; Thierry Boutsen spun and collected Erik Comas, which left Herbert and Tarquini with nowhere left to go. Van de Poele put his car into the gravel two laps later, compounding the team's misery.

Tarquini then continued his impressive qualifying form as GR02 qualified 11th at Spa, but suffered engine woes after half-distance in the race as home hero van de Poele beat the two Ilmor-powered Marches to 10th. This matched the team's best-ever finish after it had managed 10th at the previous year's Belgian GP thanks to Grouillard's efforts.

Then, though, the financial well ran dry. Rumi couldn't afford to fund the team off his own back, and Fondmetal had almost run out of spare parts after the various incidents it had endured throughout the year - and a double-retirement at Monza seemed to be the final nail in the coffin.

Rumi's overtures to find a pay driver to keep the team ticking over until the end of the year came to nought; drivers with enough wealth and experience to be trusted to keep the car on the road seemed to be something of a rarity. With three races remaining on the calendar, and the value of the Lira plummeting after Italy was rocked by a financial crisis, Rumi pulled the plug.

The GR02, while hardly anything more than a footnote in F1's steeped history, perhaps deserves appreciation for being a genuinely fast car developed on a tight budget. Had Fondmetal enjoyed greater investment during its short-lived tenure in F1, the GR02 might have even snared a point or two given Tarquini's latent pace in qualifying.

It is rumoured, however, that a GR03 was in the works - which allegedly became the basis for the wildly unsuccessful Forti FG01. As the cumbersome yellow peril was visually outdated by the time it made its debut, it's certainly not a completely spurious rumour.

Specifications

Chassis: Carbon fibre and honeycomb composite monocoque
Suspension: Double wishbones, pushrod-activated KONI dampers
Wheelbase: 2835mm
Engine: Ford HBA5 75-degree V8
Engine Capacity: 3498cc
Power: 660bhp @ 12,000 rpm
Gearbox: Six-speed manual Xtrac gearbox
Tyres: Goodyear
Weight: 505kg
Notable drivers: Gabriele Tarquini, Andrea Chiesa, Eric van de Poele