Analysis: Hungary Sees Arrows's Best and Worst

Five years ago, Arrows boss Tom Walkinshaw left Budapest lamenting his lack of luck after an enthralling Hungarian Grand Prix.

Damon Hill, agonisingly overtaken on the last lap, had just failed to secure the team's first ever win and what would have been one of the great upsets of Formula One history.

"Yes," said Walkinshaw, as he stood in the paddock after that race in August 1997. "This is probably my most frustrating experience in motor racing."

This weekend, nearly a quarter of a century after the team's debut and now a record 382 starts without a win, Walkinshaw will not be seen or heard in Hungary. His cars and trucks are parked up at the British-based team's factory and the situation has gone far beyond frustration at finishing second.

The battle now is for the team's survival, the outcome far from certain. Instead of the orange and black motorhome, there is a space the size of a small parking lot between Jaguar and Minardi in the Hungaroring paddock.

Arrows, deep in talks to secure new investors, have pleaded force majeure - an unavoidable obstacle keeping them away - to explain their absence.

"The lawyers have said that we have to focus instead on getting a deal done with investors," Walkinshaw told Britain's Autosport magazine. "There are three different offers on the table from three different continents and we have been running around all over the place.

"I had hoped to have this matter finalised before Hungary, but the best thing now is to sit down and get it sorted."

Extinction Looms

If a deal is not done soon, and the team are deemed to be insolvent, they will lose their right to compete in the Championship. That in turn will make them the second team to fold this year, Prost going to the wall before the season had even started.

It is all a far cry from 1997, a year after Walkinshaw took over. Hill, the 1996 World Champion with Williams, had scored just one point in the 10 previous races but he struck lucky in Hungary.

Leading for 62 of the last 63 laps at the Hungaroring, he was overtaken at the end by Canadian Jacques Villeneuve after wrestling with a gearbox problem. One can only imagine what might have been had he held on and Arrows won that race after 298 fruitless starts instead of coming off second best.

Since then there has been little to celebrate and Hungary 1997 is likely to go down as the pinnacle of Walkinshaw's time at the team, just as the 2002 race could be the nadir.

Before Hill's efforts, Arrows finest hour had been pole position at the 1981 USA West Grand Prix with Riccardo Patrese and the Italian's second place in Sweden in 1978. The team were fourth equal overall in the 1988 Championship but points have been hard to come by of late.

Walkinshaw had tasted World Championship success with Benetton and Michael Schumacher before he signed Hill as part of a grand plan to turn Arrows into Championship contenders. It did not happen. Hill left for Jordan at the end of 1997 and the major battles were fought off the track as financial troubles grew.

This season Walkinshaw, a hard-edged battler known as a survivor and successful businessman with a worldwide motorsport empire, has been fighting on all fronts. He had to dip into his own pocket to pay for Cosworth engines to keep the team on the road at Silverstone after a court injunction halted sale plans.

The team deliberately did not qualify in France but participated in Germany after a veiled warning from the International Automobile Federation.

Hungary, a lap too long for Hill in 1997, is a race too far for Arrows five years on.