Start Your Engines Trivia Quiz

Answer: British American Racing

Motorcycle giant Honda built their first road car in 1960 and just four years later, in 1964, entered formula one with a car on which both the engine and chassis were built by the company. In 1965, American driver Richie Ginther gave the team their first win when he took victory at the Mexican Grand Prix and other well known drivers for the team during this era included John Surtees who won the Italian Grand Prix in 1967 and Jo Schlesser whose death at the 1968 French Grand Prix was a major reason behind Honda pulling out of the sport at the end of that season.
Honda returned to the sport in 1983 as an engine supplier and were a major player as over the next nine years they provided the power for the Spirit, Williams, Lotus, McLaren and Tyrell teams and drivers such as Keke Rosberg, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, six times being the engine of the constructors championship winning team.

Following the 1992 season, due to a stagnant economy in their home country of Japan, Honda once again withdrew from the sport, until 2000 when hey returned as the supplier to the BAR team and after buying 45% of the team in 2004, purchased the remaining 55% in 2005 to return to F1 as a team, rather than just an engine supplier and in 2006, Jensen Button returned the team back to their winning ways when he took victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Answer: Yamaha

Yamaha's record in motorcycle racing is impressive to say the least, with over 200 victories at the Isle of Man TT races and over 30 World Championship titles, courtesy of riders such as Giacomo Agostini, Johnny Cecotto, Kenny Roberts, Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo. One would have thought that with a pedigree such as that, the switch to F1 engines wouldn't have been too difficult, but during their eight years in the sport, the engines from Yamaha gained a deserved reputation for lacking pwer and being unreliable. In their first season, 1989, the company supplied West Zakspeed, but the engines were so underpowered that the team qualified for just two of the 16 races and when Zakspeed went out of business at the end of the season, it allowed Yamaha a season to work on their engine before they returned in 1991 as supplier to Brabham. The engine performed well, with no real reliability issues and although still lacking power, both Martin Brundle and Mark Blundell scored points for the team, but unfortunately the following year, as engine supplier to Jordan didn't go as well, with the team scoring no points until Stefano Modena's sixth place finish in the Australian Grand Prix, the final race of the season.

The 1993 season, Yamaha's first supplying engines to Tyrell, was even worse as the team scored no points but 1994 was their best ever season, with a total of 13 World Championship points and the first time a Yamaha powered driver stood on the podium when Mark Blundell finished third in Spain. This was to remain their best result until their final season in the sport, 1997 when Damon Hill in his Yamaha powered Arrows, finished second in the Hungarian Grand Prix, after having led for the majority of the race, only to suffer a suspension failure on the final lap. At the end of the 1997 season, Arrows decided to build their own engines for the following season, Damon Hill left the team to move to Jordan and Yamaha left the sport.

Answer: Porsche

Porsche have a long history of motor sports success, but have not concentrated on F1 racing as much as other series, taking many victories in rally racing and endurance events such as the 24 hours of Le Mans. Although drivers such as Dan Gurney and Jo Bonnier experienced success with the Porsche team in the 1960s and the 1950s saw Wolfgang von Trips and the first woman to race in formula one, Maria Teresa de Filippis, drive for them, the company pulled out of the sport in 1962 due to high costs.

It wasn't until 1983 that they returned, this time as an engine supplier for McLaren, although the engines were badged as TAG, a Luxembourgish private holdings company who provided the funding for the development of the engine. This engine was first used at the Dutch Grand Prix, by Niki Lauda, while team mate John Watson used the Ford power unit that the pair had been running for the previous 11 races. For the final three races of the season, Italy, Europe and South Africa, both drivers used the TAG Porsche unit and although both cars retired with electrical problems in Italy and Lauda was forced to retire with an engine problem in the European race, the engine showed promise.

In the 1984 season, with Alain Prost now partnering Lauda, the Porsche powered McLaren's were unstoppable as they racked up 11 victories in the 16 races, including four races where they finished first and second. At the end of the season, Lauda beat Prost to the driver's championship by half a point and McLaren beat Ferrari to the constructor's championship by a whopping 86 points. The following season, 1985 saw Lauda retire 11 times with a variety of problems including gearbox, electrical, brakes, turbo and three times with engine failure, but Prost suffered only three retirements and won five races, which along with six other podium finishes was enough to see him crowned as driver's champion and McLaren win the constructor's championship, beating Ferrari by eight points.

McLaren also used TAG badged Porsche engines for the 1986 and 1987 seasons, finishing second in the constructor's championship both times, before spiralling costs forced Porsche from the sport. Although they returned in 1991 as the engine supplier to Footwork Arrows, results were not kind to say the least, with drivers not qualifying on seven occasions and retiring from every race for which they did qualify, leading the team to abandon Porsche engines after just seven races, and return to Ford power.

Answer: Alfa Romeo

Alfa Romeo can boast of having two of the greatest ever drivers in Nino Farina, first official Formula One World Driver's Champion in 1950 and Juan Manuel Fangio who took the title in 1951. Although the company stopped competing in the sport following the 1951 season, they did still supply engines to a variety of teams, including De Tomaso, Cooper, McLaren and March in the 1960s and 1970s before becoming Brabham's engine supplier for the season's 1976 to 1979, which saw their revolutionary Alfa Romeo powered fan car, which destroyed the opposition in its only race, with Niki Lauda beating second placed Riccardo Patrese's Arrows by over 34 seconds. After objections from other teams regarding the legality of the BT 46B, fan cars were banned and Brabham reverted to the original BT 46 design, minus the huge fan.

Following their association with Brabham, Alfa Romeo returned to the sport as a constructor in 1980 and between then and their withdrawal in 1985, saw their best season in 1983, when Andrea de Cesaris took second place finishes at Germany and South Africa, helping the team to a sixth place finish in the constructor's championship. Between 1983 and 1988, Alfa Romeo supplied engines to the Osella team, but these were hugely unreliable, with the team scoring just five world championship from 132 Grands Prix and the relationship ended when Osella switched to Cosworth power in 1989. Alfa Romeo, as a team returned to Formula One in 2019, when they took over the Sauber F1 team, but perhaps wisely, they chose to use Ferrari engines, rather than their own.

Answer: Lamborghini

Lamborghini have a long, proud history of making stunning cars with incredible power, but unfortunately this didn't transfer over to the race track. Following their debut season as an engine supplier in 1989, when the Larousse Lamborghini scored just a single point, they supplied both Larousse and Lotus in 1990. While both cars looked the part, the multi coloured Larousse and the Camel cigarette pack Lotus, and the driver line ups of Eric Bernard and Aguri Suzuki for Larousse and Derek Warwick and Martin Donnelly for Lotus, were talented, results didn't go their way, the high point being Suzuki's third place finish in Japan, the low point being the 34 retirements that the four drivers amassed.

The following season, supplying Ligier and Modena didn't work out any better as the Ligier Lambo had 12 retirements and Modena only qualified for six races. Despite supplying engines again to Larousse in 1992 and 1993, along with Minardi in 1992, the results never came with the two teams scoring just five points between them over the course of these two seasons. While Lamborghini continue to turn out exciting road cars, infused with Italian passion, their Formula One days appear to have ended at the end of the 1993 season, when Larousse, following the lead taken by Minardi the season previous switched to Ford engines.

Answer: Williams

Williams F1 have a glorious past with drivers such as Alan Jones, Keke Rosberg, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve all winning the driver's championship while with the team. Both Jones and Rosberg achieved the feat using Ford Cosworth engines, Piquet with Honda power while Mansell, Prost, Hill and Villeneuve all had a Renault under the hood. Since the glory days of the 90s, Williams have used a variety of engines, including Mecachrome and Supertec, which were both rebadged Renault engines, used after the French giant withdrew from the sport.

Between 2000 and 2005, the team used BMW engines which saw them finish third in the constructor's championship in 2000 and 2001 and second in 2002 and 2003. When BMW decided to set up their own works team for the 2006 season, Williams returned to Cosworth engines but for the first time since their debut season in 1977, didn't score a single podium finish, leading to them signing a deal with Toyota for the 2007 season. The first season of this partnership was promising with a fourth place constructor's championship finish, but results slid away in 2008 and 2009, with not even the skills of Nico Rosberg, son of former Williams driver Keke able to halt the slide.

A further two seasons with Cosworth followed before, in 2012, Williams were reunited with Renault and Pastor Maldonado, on clinching victory at the Spanish Grand Prix, scored the team's first win since 2004. Unfortunately, 2013 continued with the teams downward slide, with just five championship points scored and in 2014, they signed a long term deal for Mercedes Benz to be their engine supplier.

Answer: Peugeot

McLaren won four consecutive constructor's championships between 1988 and 1991 with Honda engines, but when Honda pulled out of the sport at the end of the 1992 season in which McLaren finished second, success like that was always gong to be hard to replicate. Nevertheless, the Ford engine they used in 1993, coupled with the driving talents of Ayrton Senna and Michael Andretti brought them another second place constructor's finish, but this was always seen as a short term arrangement while they sought a new engine supplier.

Enter Peugeot who had won the 1992 World Sportscar Championship as well as the 24 hours of Le Mans in both 1992 and 1993, but the relationship with McLaren went from bad to worse as the team recorded no victories and had drivers Mika Hakkinen and Martin Brundle retire 17 times during the season, mainly due to poor engine reliability. McLaren switched to Mercedes power the following year, and Peugeot supplied engines to Jordan from 1995 to 1997 and then to Prost from 1998 to 2000, where an uncompetitive car, coupled with still more reliability issues from the Peugeot power unit led to a parting of the ways at the end of the 2000 season, with Peugeot leaving the sport and Prost using Ferrari engines, re-badged as Acer.

Answer: Red Bull

Renault first entered F1 in 1977 with a works car, known affectionately as the "yellow teapot" and competed until 1985, when rising costs forced them out, although they had also made their first foray's into engine supply when their engines were used by Lotus, Ligier and Tyrell between 1983 and 1986.
After a brief hiatus, Renault began supplying engines again in 1989 to the Williams team, a partnership which would continue until 1997 and saw Williams take four constructor's titles. During this time they also supplied the Benetton team, who would win the constructor's in 1995.

Renault again left the sport in 1997 but returned in 2002 as a works team again after purchasing Benetton and would win the constructor's championship in both 2005 and 2006. Once again rising costs proved to be the catalyst to Renault becoming an engine supplier and in 2007, they began supplying Red Bull, whilst still running their own works team, which easily outpaced Red Bull for the first two seasons. In 2009 though Red Bull found their feet and their aerodynamics package and finished second in the championship, leaving Renault trailing in eighth place. 2010 saw Red Bull take the title, with Sebastian Vettel becoming the youngest driver to take the driver's crown, while Renault finished in fifth and this continued for the next three years.

Answer: Subaru

Coloni were an Italian team with big dreams but a small budget and were never going to be able to compete with the big boys. In their first season, in 1987, their sole driver, Nicola Larini had to retire from the only Grand Prix he qualified for and although fortunes improved in 1988 when they replaced Larini with Gabriele Tarquini, he still only managed to complete four races, all a long way off the points. In 1989, they failed to qualify for all but four races and retired in each of those four, but when Subaru came on board in 1990, to replace Cosworth as their engine supplier and wipe out debts, it seemed that the team had a saviour.

This turned out to not be the case as Bertrand Gachot failed to qualify for the opening eight races, due more to the design of the car than the quality of the engine and following the British Grand Prix, Subaru withdrew from the team, leaving Coloni to go back to Cosworth engines, but with the same results.
Coloni lasted just one more season, in which they again failed to qualify for a single race, before being sold to Andrea Sassetti and re-branded as Andrea Moda.

Answer: Pratt and Whitney

Pratt and Whitney have been building aircraft engines since 1925, and it seemed perfectly logical to fit such an engine to a car for maximum performance. This became the Lotus 56 which with its gas turbine engine competed in the Indianapolis 500 of 1968, although none of the three cars entered finished the race.

The car underwent considerable modifications in order to try and make it competitive for Formula One, but of the three races in which it was entered, it finished two, one where it was not classified and in its final appearance, where the great Emerson Fittipaldi managed to bring it home in eighth place in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.