BAR

British American Racing arrived in Formula 1 in 1999 amid enormous hype and a famously bold prediction from team principal Craig Pollock that it would win in its first season. Backed by the British American Tobacco company and built around the talents of Jacques Villeneuve, BAR instead failed to score a single point in its debut year.

The team gradually matured, and after Honda came on board as engine partner and eventual co-owner, BAR became a genuine front-runner. In 2004 it finished an impressive second in the constructors' championship behind Ferrari, with Jenson Button taking a string of podium finishes.

Honda bought the team outright for 2006, ending the BAR name but continuing the operation that would, after further twists, become the championship-winning Brawn and then Mercedes team.

BAR began with brash overpromising and early embarrassment, but matured into a serious contender. Its real significance lies in the lineage it founded: the Brackley team that BAR built would go on, as Brawn and then Mercedes, to dominate Formula 1, making this ambitious newcomer a key ancestor of a modern superpower.