Super Aguri F1's First Season: Finding Wins in a Five-Year-Old Car

Despite facing the reality of competing with outdated equipment, the team embraced a different mindset. They knew that they weren’t going to be able to fight for the World Championship, but they focused on something just as important: keeping morale high and finding small victories. “We just do little things, like ‘What’s five things we’re going to bring to each race?” Mark Preston, the team’s founder and technical director, recalls. “It could be anything from a new engine package to better coffee in the machines. Each one has an impact - either everyone’s whingeing about the coffee or more power in the engine.”

This quirky, determined approach became the hallmark of Super Aguri’s first season in the paddock. Whilst other teams had the budget to stay laser-focused on tenths of a second, some of Super Aguri’s innovation came in the form of keeping the team motivated through creative challenges. And it didn’t go unnoticed, “I remember some of the bigger teams started to realise we were competing with them in ways they hadn’t expected,” Preston says. He recalls other teams saying “You guys are trying to be the first people in in the morning just because you wanted to beat us.”