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Memories of the short-lived Beatrice Racing Team (and another Haas)
There are many column inches devoted to the doomed racing team and I have all our press releases for the launch at Brands Hatch in 1985, the European and Monza GPs for the same year, etc - so I’ll just devote this to my archive of personal photo memories from that time. For history buffs, the best account is from Gordon Kirby in MotorSport magazine “The First Haas F1 Team” - and I have taken a few quotes from that
Launch Day - Brands Hatch 1985 - bringing AJ out of retirement
Thinks: “am I doing the right thing?"
First appearance of the truck
The ‘Suits’ (money men - over from the Beatrice Corporation, Chicago for the launch): Lee Reiser and Dick Stahler
The cake
Off to Brands Hatch for the European GP Oct ‘85
John Bisignano introduces corporate guests
Among other companies, the Beatrice Corporation owned Avis, Playtex, Parker Pens, Smith Kendon, Culligan water softeners, Max Factor, Sanson Ice Cream and Samsonite - so the goody bags for the corporate guests consisted of a Leather Sports bag by Samsonite, in Beatrice colours, a Parker swing pen, Smith Kendon Travel sweets.. in fact everything except Playtex (the ladies were disappointed that there was no freebie Playtex bra). With a budget of $85M, a lot of money was spent on PR, but mostly on a fantastic Team built around Jones and Tambay with the expertise of Carl Haas, Teddy Mayer, Tyler Alexander, Neil Oatley, John Baldwin and Ross Brawn - with Charlie Crichton-Stuart as Director of Public Affairs for Team Haas and friend of Alan.
John Hogan with Charlie Crichton-Stuart
Teddy Mayer with Patrick Tambay
Beatrice Corp executives, Jim Melvin and Dick Stahler
Jim Melvin
…….and the Main Man, Lee Reiser (all Beatrice Chicago)
Monza - Italian Grand Prix 1985
My job was to hire a car at Milan airport, drive up the Autostrada to Lake Como, where we were staying (and to use the car to collect the Beatrice executives next day). Very nervous and my first experience of left hand drive - failed to find the aircon in the strange BMW and still looking for the button when I arrived at Como and turned left instead of right, driving 60 miles the wrong way around the Lake, so by the time I found the hotel I was extremely late and incurred the wrath of my boss (and I only found the aircon button after I’d parked….. bad start, but it got better).
Franz Weiss and Carl Haas in hospitality
Practice day
“I wasn’t impressed with the engines at all,” Jones declares. “We started with an interim Hart engine which I used to call a hand grenade because it was never a matter of, ‘Will it blow up?’ It was, ‘When will it blow?’ It was basically a two-litre F2 engine that had been stretched out to do an F1 job and it was just too highly strung.”
A second Beatrice F1 car was run in 1986 for Patrick Tambay, Can-Am champion with Haas’s team in 1977 and ‘80. Tambay had driven for Theodore and Ligier in F1 in 1981, then Ferrari in 1982 and ‘83 and Renault in 1984 and ‘85. Tambay believes the Beatrice team had all the elements to succeed"
Charlie Crichton-Stuart and John Bisignano
Tyler Alexander (pit), Neil Oatley and AJ
"Jones didn’t share Tambay’s optimism. “There was always the promise of that wonderful new Ford engine that was coming,” Jones remarks. “It was a beautifully-built little engine, like a piece of clockwork. But it was just gutless. It didn’t do the job.”
Tyler Alexander believes the required effort never went into the Ford turbo primarily because Cosworth founder Keith Duckworth had long been a vocal opponent of turbocharging and had no enthusiasm for the project"
Qualifying day Hospitality. John Bisignano with hostesses (all provided by Gucci’s caterers!)
Teddy and Tyler (pit), Neil Oatley with AJ
Carl Haas with Patrick Tambay
Weaverbird’s memories 2021
