From mid-air reveals to robotic stand-ins - Motorsport's weird and wonderful launches

Hawke arrives with a nosedive

When Jordan launched the EJ12 at Brussels airport, a freight hub of new sponsor DHL, the team rolled its Honda-powered 2002 Formula 1 contender out of the side of a just-landed Airbus 300 after it had been declared that there was an urgent delivery for a Mr Jordan. Nice stunt, Eddie, but it had been trumped years before when British racing car constructor Hawke took the wraps off its new – and, as it turned out, one and only – Formula 3 car in mid-air!

Hawke Racing Cars had been purchased by airline owner Mike Keegan in 1974, the year in which son and future F1 driver Rupert had raced – and regularly crashed – one of its DL11 Formula Ford 1600s. By the end of 1975 he had recruited an up-and-coming designer by the name of Adrian Reynard to produce an F1 chassis, only to change his mind early the following year and decide that he wanted an F3 car for his son to race. The hurriedly produced DL18 was the result.

Keegan Sr, who Reynard describes as “a larger than life character”, had a fleet of air-freighters – readers of a certain age will no doubt remember the British Air Ferries decals on a number of cars driven by Keegan Jr – and opted to combine motorsport and aviation for the DL18’s launch.

In late May 1976, the press boarded an Aviation Traders Carvair ATL-98 – a modified Douglas DC-4 – at Southend airport for a short hop over to Le Touquet, just round the coast from Calais. The wraps came off the car somewhere over the English Channel, with near-disastrous consequences, remembers Reynard. 

“Everyone had piled into the cargo hold and, when Mike made the announcement, people moved forward to look at the car and the plane went into a nose-dive,” he explains. “The pilot soon corrected it, but he came over the intercom and asked everyone not to move about too much.”

There was an aeronautical theme to the Hawke F3 car. It initially had what Reynard calls a “Concorde delta wing”. It was quickly replaced by something more conventional, though the DL18 wasn’t a success.

Keegan’s debut of the car – in place of his March 743 – at Silverstone in June was disastrous. He switched to a Chevron B34 for the final phase of a season in which he won the title in the BP-sponsored British Automobile Racing Club championship, the premier F3 series in the UK.

A reworked version of the car for 1977, by the hand of a young Pat Symonds, wasn’t a success either and the project was quietly pushed to one side. But no one present for the launch will ever forget it.

When money is no object

Essex helicopter is perched atop hospitality bus outside the Royal Albert Hall, exemplifying David Thieme's extravagance

Photo by: Classic Team Lotus

When Mario Andretti was asked whether he minded being winched down from the ceiling of a swanky Paris nightclub sitting aboard the Lotus he’d be driving in the coming season, he wasn’t surprised. Nothing shocked him when it came to David Thieme, the boss of new team sponsor Essex Petroleum, and who in his short time in F1 became a byword for excess and extravagance.

“How could I ever forget David Thieme’s extravagance?” says Andretti when asked about the launch of the Lotus 81 and Essex becoming the title sponsor of Team Lotus at the Paradis Latin in December 1979. “It didn’t surprise me that he would go to that length to try to create the moment. David always did things in the most extravagant way.”

It probably wouldn’t be allowed today, not without a proper health and safety assessment. Andretti wasn’t too concerned: “Well, I had a roll hoop over me!”

Not content with one glitzy launch, Thieme had another one organised for the Royal Albert Hall in London the following February. The big news this time was that Andretti would be driving a Penske PC9 in Essex colours at the Indianapolis 500.

It was a lavish affair. Famed French chef Roger Verge was brought in to oversee the dining arrangements, and Shirley Bassey headlined the post-dinner entertainment. But it didn’t stop there: a year later at the ‘Cake Tin’ in Kensington, Ray Charles was the main attraction and prime minister Margaret Thatcher the star guest.

Thieme also demanded in 1981 that one of his helicopters in company livery be on display outside the venue, perched upon the Essex double-decker hospitality bus – a first in F1. No one was sure that the roof could take the weight, so it had to be gingerly craned into place.

Money appeared to be no object for Thieme. He looked into chartering a Concorde supersonic airliner to shuttle Andretti back and forth across the Atlantic between his F1 commitments and qualifying duties at Indianapolis. He even had the road from the helipad to the paddock at Watkins Glen paved at his own expense. “We wanted a gentler ride,” recalls Andretti. 

“I remember my wife telling me that we were never going to experience anything like David’s extravagance again,” he continues. “It was fun, but I did sometimes wonder if it had been better if some of the money could have gone into the team.”

Thieme and Essex disappeared from F1 over the course of 1981. But, in case you are wondering, Bassey did oblige by singing (Hey) Big Spender at the Royal Albert Hall.

What to do if you have no car (part 1)

Launch spec Aston would not have been especially quick, despite talents of Habsburg, Di Resta, Juncadella and Dennis

Photo by: R-Motorsport

When the Swiss R-Motorsport squad launched its entry into the DTM under Aston Martin’s banner, it took an unusual approach. Its Class 1 touring car was a matter of weeks away from hitting the track, so instead of revealing the real thing it took the wraps off what was described as a sculpture, a kind of skeleton that only hinted at the racer to come. 

R-Motorsport and parent company AF Racing wanted to make a splash and tell the world about its driver line-up, but it didn’t have a real racing car. Undertaken in conjunction with HWA, the organisation that had masterminded Mercedes’ successes in the DTM, the project had only started the previous summer.

So another AF division, Warwick-based R-Reforged, whose core business was reimagining Astons among other things, produced the sculpture unveiled at AF’s base in Niederwil to the west of Zurich.

“You can say it was a short-notice programme,” says team co-founder Florian Kamelger. “We were the little guys, we were coming in as the underdog against Audi and BMW, and we had to do something special to attract a bit of attention.”

Kamelger, now CEO of Cosworth, suggests that the strategy was successful: “It obviously worked because you are ringing me about it more than five years on. So I think we can say that it kind of paid off.”

The investment in the programme certainly didn’t. It was announced as a four-year deal – “You don’t win in a series like the DTM in season one”, says Kamelger – but foundered after only one. Class 1 was heading for oblivion: it was an open secret through 2019 that Audi would be heading for the exit door. It announced as early as April the following year that it was done with the series. 

What to do if you have no car (part 2)

Its partnership with the James Bond franchise explains Desmond Llewellyn's presence at Kitzbuhel 'launch' of the still under development BMW V12 LM in 1998

BMW had a similar problem to R-Motorsport as it stepped up its efforts to win the Le Mans 24 Hours with a new LMP prototype developed by Williams, the team with which it would be returning to F1 in 2000. It didn’t have a car when its attack on the French enduro was confirmed in late January 1998. 

The V12 LM was late, late, late. Design of the car didn’t get going in earnest until the late summer of the previous year, and the thing wouldn’t turn a wheel for another six or so weeks when the world’s press gathered in Kitzbuhel, Austria at an event combined with BMW’s annual Sports Trophy awards.

“We were so far behind schedule,” says Brian Willis, senior designer on the project. “We were running around in a panic.”

With no car, there was a bit of lateral thinking on the part of BMW, a manufacturer then in the middle of a multi-film deal to supply the cars driven by 007 in a series of Pierce Brosnan-era James Bond films. So, who better to tell us about how trick the V12 LM was going to be than Q, the fictional head of the research and development division of the secret service that supplied Bond his weird and wonderful gizmos? BMW got in the ‘real’ thing, too: actor Desmond Llewelyn turned up complete with trademark tweed suit and waved his arms about in front of a simplistic drawing of a racing car. 

Hans Stuck, one of the drivers confirmed that night, had a decent stab at playing Bond. The veteran of BMW’s Le Mans line-up was definitely the right age!

There is an irony to Q’s presence that night. Williams’s first stab at an LMP car was a bit trick, probably too complicated: all the air for cooling was taken from underneath the car and the engine ancillaries were on the front of the engine in a cut-out in the tub. When the team stuck to new designer Graham Humphrys’s “keep it simple” mantra for the following year’s 24 Hours, it won the race.

Cycling to the top of the pile?

Laurent Aiello and the original R8 take to the velodrome in 1998 as Audi launches its successful Le Mans programme

Photo by: Bildagentur Kräling

Audi had a new car to unveil and a new driver to announce. Strapping the recruit into the thing and sending him around a wooden velodrome wasn’t the obvious way to do it. But the German manufacturer was thinking big when it launched its switch to top-flight sportscar racing in Berlin in late December 1998.

That’s how Laurent Aiello found himself driving the R8 LMP around the hundreds of media flown in from all corners of the globe gathered in the centre of the track.

There was a requirement to do something special, remembers longtime Audi Sport boss Wolfgang Ullrich, the architect of a programme that would end up yielding the marque 13 victories at the Le Mans 24 Hours. The German manufacturer was taking a massive turn in its motorsport engagement.

“It was a completely new step for Audi,” recalls Ullrich. “Because after the Auto Union days in the 1930s, motorsport for Audi was always linked to four-wheel-drive systems. This was the first worldwide programme where we were not using the quattro system and it also came at a time when Audi was developing into more of a premium brand.”

Think about what Ullrich is saying. From the Quattro World Rally Championship contender in all its iterations, through various programmes in North America in IMSA GTO and Trans-Am, and then Super Touring, Audi’s competition cars had always been all-wheel-drive, save for when it was banned in tin-top racing. That was a move that helped push Audi towards prototype racing.

The idea of the event at what is simply known as the Velodrom came from Audi’s new head honcho of PR, who was also introduced that night in Berlin. Petra van Oyen was a former tennis player who had transitioned into the world of TV and was seen as something of a star signing by Audi. 

Audi didn’t have any concerns that the stunt with Aiello and the first iteration of the R8 – a car that had yet to gain the R suffix because officially, at least, there was no R8C – might be in any way dangerous. Ullrich remembers a recce being undertaken to make sure the car wouldn’t bottom out and points out that the R8 had already run at much higher speeds on a banked oval at its Ingolstadt testing establishment.

And what did Aiello make of being asked to get his first taste of the R8 on a wooden track? “He was impressed with our rather special idea,” remembers Ullrich, “and happy that he would be the one driving the car.”

Trying to Spice up your life

The Spice Girls helped launch McLaren's rebrand with new partner West in 1997

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Ron Dennis looked decidedly uncomfortable suited and booted – in Hugo Boss, no doubt – sitting in the front row as the Spice Girls strutted their stuff in front of the 1997 McLaren-Mercedes MP4/12 at Alexandra Palace in London. But he had only himself to blame. A team principal viewed as staid and serious had told his marketing department to go to town on the launch.

It was a significant moment in the team’s history, and that of engine supplier Merc. The dayglo orange of Marlboro that had bedecked its F1 cars since 1974 was gone. The team had jumped ship from Philip Morris to Reemtsma’s West brand, so now its cars could become Silver Arrows, harking back to the Mercedes grand prix cars of either side of the Second World War.

“Ron was focused on doing something really big, different and exciting, and that’s what he instructed his marketing department to do,” remembers Wolfgang Schattling, Merc’s head of motorsport PR. “We were happy about that because we wanted to celebrate the cars being silver for the first time.”

David Coulthard, who was going into his second season with McLaren, remembers the significance of the moment, a new beginning for a team that hadn’t won a grand prix since Ayrton Senna’s departure at the end of 1993. “McLaren was coming out of the Marlboro era and needed to redefine itself,” he recalls. “If there had been a weaker launch maybe it would have taken longer to do that.”

DC has some amusing memories of that February evening, not least being introduced as “the drivers” to the five Spice Girls. The look on their faces suggested, he recalls, that they were “wondering why they were being introduced to their chauffeurs”. But Geri ‘Ginger Spice’ Halliwell, who would, of course, renew her association with F1 years later, did declare herself on stage to be a “big fan of the grand pricks”.

The Spice Girls, little more than six months on from the release of their first single, weren’t the only attraction that night at Ally Pally, once the first home of BBC Television. Car nut Jamiroquai also performed, while the cast of Starlight Express buzzed about on their rollerskates. Davina McCall, as ubiquitous then as she is now, was the compere. 

As surreal as it was, you can’t help wondering how Ron would have felt if he’d known he was watching the future wife of one his rival bosses in F1 jumping around in a long coat as red as her hair.

McLaren's anti-launch

McLaren's launch of its new M28 in 1978 was decidedly low key and for good reason

Photo by: David Phipps

There was no razzamatazz when McLaren took the wraps off the new M28 in October 1978. Just an invite to a few journos to watch the shakedown at a cold and windy Silverstone. A photo of the drivers and team members with the car was as grand as it got. There is a story – maybe apocryphal, maybe not – that when bums were perched upon various parts of the machine, the whole thing creaked and moaned like a doomed submarine.

It might just be true based on what happened next in the development programme of McLaren’s first true ground effect car. A multi-day test was booked for Watkins Glen in upstate New York, but ended up lasting no more than a handful of laps. 

New McLaren signing John Watson, who’d switched over from Brabham, takes up the story: “We had these three or whatever days booked for Watkins Glen. I did four or five laps and then came in for the car to undergo a spanner check.

“When it was up on the stands someone noticed that the front of the car was dropping down. The front bulkhead was so inherently weak that the car was bending under its own weight. Alastair Caldwell [team manager] said, ‘Right, we’re going home. The test is over.’ We were wrapped up inside half an hour!”

Attempts to strengthen the monocoque resulted in the car becoming overweight. Despite a third place on the debut for the M28 at the Argentinian Grand Prix in Buenos Aires with Watson, McLaren opted to start afresh. By the British GP at Silverstone in July, Watson had a new shiny M29 under him. There wasn’t time for a launch on that occasion.

What to do if your driver is AWOL

‘KK Robot’ joined new Williams signing Nigel Mansell in 1985

Photo by: Williams

There were two things missing from Williams’s launch of its new sponsorship deal with Canon ahead of the 1985 F1 season.

The first was its latest Honda-powered contender, the FW10, which was a fair cop given the London event was in December and the season’s start still more than three months away. But its big name driver, who’d won the team the world title just two years before, was absent. There was no Keke Rosberg: Williams had to make do with new signing Nigel Mansell.

Rosberg was otherwise engaged on the other side of the Pond learning to fly Lear Jets in the Arizona desert. So the agency handling the Canon account came up with an idea, something tongue in cheek and a bit of a piss-take of its AWOL star. CSS Promotions co-founder Andrew Marriott remembers borrowing what by the looks of it was a rather unconvincing robot that had already been used in a British School of Motoring marketing campaign. 

“We got hold of this robot thing and dressed it up in some overalls,” recalls Marriott. “We wrote ‘KK Robot’ somewhere on them and put it up on stage with the car and Nigel.”

Mixing racing and football

Toon Army were indifferent to Needell et al

Photo by: Lister Cars

Newcastle United owner Sir John Hall had an idea with his son and deputy chairman, Douglas. They wanted to create a continental-style sporting club straddling different disciplines. They ended up buying teams competing in rugby union, basketball and ice hockey. An involvement in motorsport was part of that grand plan. 

The explains why before the Premier League match against Arsenal in early January 1996, a racing car with a livery inspired by the black-and-white stripes of Newcastle’s home strip was wheeled onto the pitch. Despite the best efforts of driver Tiff Needell to gee up the crowd, the Toon Army took not a blind bit of notice. Nor did they when the car was on display outside the ground before the match. 

Perhaps it wasn’t surprising. A resurgent United, rescued by Hall when they were facing relegation to the third tier of English football, were top of the table under the managership of Kevin Keegan. More to the point, there were pints to be drunk and pies to be devoured.

You might ask why the revived Lister marque was chosen as the vehicle for Newcastle’s motorsporting aspirations. The reason was that Douglas Hall owned a souped-up Jaguar XJ12 saloon supplied by Laurence Pearce, who relaunched Lister as a purveyor of what today might be termed reimagined Jags. That led to the first new Lister in 30 years, the Storm supercar.

Hall Jr read about Pearce’s plans to take the car to the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1995 in the pages of Autosport and asked whether he could tag along. 

“Douglas came to the race and then a few weeks later I was asked to fly down to Marbella to meet him,” recalls Pearce. “He asked me how much it would cost to build him a new race car. I didn’t really know, so I said, ‘500 grand plus VAT’. He wrote me a cheque for £537,500 there and then.”

Interest in the Lister at the 1997 Le Mans 24 Hours was greater than its reception at St. James' Park

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Lister would race in Newcastle colours for five years, the flanks of the original aluminium-chassis Storm GTS and a carbon GTL carrying the decals of club sponsors Adidas and Newcastle Brown Ale. Castrol also provided sponsorship, which came courtesy of Keegan. 

“Keegan had a contact at Castrol,” explains Pearce. “He rang up and told me to send this guy an invoice for 50 grand. He didn’t want anything in return. Kevin was pretty special.”

Long after the Lister/Newcastle partnership had broken up, the idea of bringing motorsport and football together was revived by the short-lived Superleague Formula single-series of 2008-11. The idea was that motorsport would tap into the fan base of some of the world’s biggest clubs, who were ably supported by race teams such as Alan Docking Racing, Astromega and Hitech. 

PLUS: Memories of a flawed ‘throwback’ series

That cold night at St James’ Park explains why your writer confidently predicted that Superleague wouldn’t work. Correctly, as it turned out. Not that he’s claiming to be some kind of mystic. What became Super Touring was going nowhere, he reckoned, on reading about it in the summer of 1989. And as for the man bag… 

Francesco Totti and John Arne Riise were among the interested parties when Giancarlo Fisichella and the Superleague Panoz arrived

Photo by: Jorge Andreu