62 replies to this topic

[PCC]

The rumour that Red Bull is planning to re-brand its F1 B-team "Visa CashApp RB" (I am not making this up) has caused Edd Straw to declare that this would be "the worst team name in Formula 1 history."

 

Now, he may well be right. I confess I can't recall (or frankly even imagine) an even worse one. But the history of F1 is long, and it's recalled here like nowhere else.

 

So, has there ever, at any moment in history, been a worse team name in F1? Or at least another that could rival if for cringeworthyness?  It might be best to expand the search into other categories.

Edited by PCC, 19 January 2024 - 17:34.

[cpbell]

Racing Point was rather weak.

[PCC]

Racing Point was rather weak.

True. But, mercifully, short-lived.

[F1Frog]

One Motorsport in BTCC is pretty bad.

[10kDA]

The premonition that was embodied in the name Footwork. +/- 81 finishes, 89 DNFs, 22 DNQs, and 1 disqualification indicated the drivers were doing more footwork than racing over the course of the team's existence.

[Sterzo]

I was going to nominate Moneytron. But actually, that's stylish compared with Visa CashApp.

[small block]

Force India (to do what?)

[ensign14]

I doubt anyone would ever beat Dollop, but that was outside F1.

 

Inside it, or at least to F1 spec, I'm not sure Joe Kelly's I.R.A. has stood the test of time.

[Porsche718]

IIRC correctly, the immediate post-war team formed by Emmanuel de Graffenried, Christian Kautz, Enrico Plate and others was originally called Ecurie Intercorse.

 

It was quickly changed after only a few meetings at the British race organisers urgings! I can't imagine why?

[Disco Stu]

Visa CashApp RB isn't even the worst one this year, I'll take that over Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber

[Tim Murray]

I always found ‘Brooke Bond Oxo Team Surtees Racing with Rob Walker’ a bit of a mouthful.

[Bob Riebe]

Not F One but:

Craig Breedlove's : Screaming Yellow Zonker drag team.

 

[68targa]

I always thought 'Racing Point'  was .....   er,  pointless

[Charlieman]

Brawn: Would you eat it if you knew how it was made?

[Tom Glowacki]

Not F One but:

Craig Breedlove's : Screaming Yellow Zonker drag team.

 

No one is going to mistake that thing for anything else.

[PCC]

I always found ‘Brooke Bond Oxo Team Surtees Racing with Rob Walker’ a bit of a mouthful.

But at least we always just called it "Team Surtees". What would we call this new one - "Team Cash"?

[opplock]

Anyone who supports Wimbledon (FC and/or AFC) will nominate MK Dons. 

 

Nothing to do with motor racing admittedly. If we're sticking to motor racing it must be Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber. What has Peter Sauber ever done to deserve a kicking? The stake should be driven through the heart of whichever brand consultant thought up that particular example of verbal diarrhoea.   

[DCapps]

I knew about the Sauber "Stake Whatever" nonsense, but if this for real, Oh. My. Goodness. Simply more proof that the F1 Self-licking Ice Cream Cone is dripping pretty badly...

[Michael Ferner]

IIRC correctly, the immediate post-war team formed by Emmanuel de Graffenried, Christian Kautz, Enrico Plate and others was originally called Ecurie Intercorse.

 

It was quickly changed after only a few meetings at the British race organisers urgings! I can't imagine why?

 

Wasn't it actually Ecurie Intercourse?

 

Anyway, I always thought Yeoman Credit or UDT Laystall were odd names. And then there was the "stockbroker team", I had to look it up (no way I could recall this mouthful! Clarke-Mordaunt-Guthrie-Durlacher Racing Team!!

[DCapps]

By the way, Screaming Yellow Zonkers really weren't that bad. My Ranger company somehow got sent several cases of the stuff in late-1969.

 

Yes, the privateer teams had some truly interesting/fascinating entrant names, so maybe things is actually keeping with a tradition that.., nah, Visa CashApp RB really is pretty stupid.

[10kDA]

IIRC correctly, the immediate post-war team formed by Emmanuel de Graffenried, Christian Kautz, Enrico Plate and others was originally called Ecurie Intercorse.

 

It was quickly changed after only a few meetings at the British race organisers urgings! I can't imagine why?

You have to wonder if, before the urgings, the British organizers were asking each other "Should we tell them?"

[TennisUK]

HRT wasn’t a brilliant name.

[Vitesse2]

Ecurie Cod Fillet was a bit fishy.

[Rob G]

BS Fabrications sounded more like the words of a habitual liar than a racing team.

[Lee Nicolle]

HRT wasn’t a brilliant name.

Holden Racing Team,, and yes that was the official name. 

I often called the Hormone Replacement Team.

[john aston]

And some names are irresistibly snappy - I am much taken with the Iron Dames name - the ELMS all female team 

[Rediscoveryx]

”Visa CashApp RB” would be by far the worst team name in history. At least if that is how they’ll be referred to - most teams have formal names like ”Generic Corporate Brand Classic Team Name Engine Manufacturer Racing”, but in common parlance they are just referred to as ”Williams” or whatever.

If they’ll be called ”RB” then that’s bad but not really worse than the myriad of ABC-teams that we’ve had in the past (BRM, BAR, AGS, ATS etc). So probably bottom three percentile but not the ultimate worst there’s ever been.

[Glengavel]

Reminiscent of the showjumping days of the 70s/80s when horses were called things like Sanyo Videostar to get round the television advertising regulations.

[BRG]

I was going to nominate Moneytron. But actually, that's stylish compared with Visa CashApp.

Although at least Visa is a real and credible company that has been around for many decades.  Whereas Moneytron was just a scam like the recent Rich Energy.

[D-Type]

Reminiscent of the showjumping days of the 70s/80s when horses were called things like Sanyo Videostar to get round the television advertising regulations.

I never found out what a Hydrofane Coldstream is.

[AJCee]

I never found out what a Hydrofane Coldstream is.

As far as I know D-Type, Coldstream was the horse’s stable name and Hydrofane (maker of equestrian grooming products) the sponsor. The horse was ‘breeding unknown’ so it wasn’t a name associated with a stud.

[Bob Riebe]

By the way, Screaming Yellow Zonkers really weren't that bad. My Ranger company somehow got sent several cases of the stuff in late-1969.

 

Yes, the privateer teams had some truly interesting/fascinating entrant names, so maybe things is actually keeping with a tradition that.., nah, Visa CashApp RB really is pretty stupid.

I pigged out on them as teenager, and ate them once in a while till they stopped making them in 2007.

Oddly, when I bought some and put them out for friends to eat in the ninties, they did not know they were still around.

[10kDA]

By the way, Screaming Yellow Zonkers really weren't that bad. My Ranger company somehow got sent several cases of the stuff in late-1969.

 

 

 

 

I pigged out on them as teenager, and ate them once in a while till they stopped making them in 2007.

Oddly, when I bought some and put them out for friends to eat in the ninties, they did not know they were still around.

How can I miss them when they won't go away?

 

https://topsecretrec...cat-recipe.html

[cpbell]

HRT wasn’t a brilliant name.

Agreed!

[sabrejet]

A +1 here for Dollop.

 

On a related note I also never liked "Sponsor Geest" (if that is what it was) because it always got auto-corrected in commentary to "Sponsor Guest".

[PCC]

The rumour that Red Bull is planning to re-brand its F1 B-team "Visa CashApp RB" (I am not making this up) has caused Edd Straw to declare that this would be "the worst team name in Formula 1 history."

Update: nearly a year later, the team has fixed the problem, as reported here:

 

 

RB CEO Peter Bayer admits it’s been confusing for fans to know what the team is called, so the name will change from Visa Cash App RB to Visa Cash App Racing Bulls for 2025.

 

Any chance that was decided by a committee?

[Vitesse2]

 

RB CEO Peter Bayer admits it’s been confusing for fans to know what the team is called, so the name will change from Visa Cash App RB to Visa Cash App Racing Bulls for 2025.

I think the final three letters may have been omitted.

[Doug Nye]

I think that even that hysterical Australian TV racing commentator - and, no, I am not suggesting that he's a TransVestite - Lee someone or other would struggle with such a team title.  

 

That fellow seems pre-programmed to announce team and car titles absolutely in total, presumably to provide sponsors with airtime before audiences of undiscriminatingly receptive  nitwits.  

 

Should one of this year's down-field F2 runners get lucky (? to be discussed?) and secure an F1 outing we could perhaps hear - at extreme volume - of "Leonardo Fornaroli's Visa Cash App Racing Bull-RBT RB02" trundling around midfield in "the Rolex British Grand Prix"...

 

DCN

[10kDA]

Aren't track and broadcast announcers often urged to refer to teams in manners defined by the teams' PR functionaries, through press kits etc?

[Vitesse2]

Aren't track and broadcast announcers often urged to refer to teams in manners defined by the teams' PR functionaries, through press kits etc?

Yes, it's all very prescriptive. Always amusing watching televised cricket from Pakistan, where absolutely everything is sponsored. At the drinks intervals the camera switches to four people in a 'tea lounge', all supposedly happily drinking the sponsoring tea company's brew. David Gower's voiceovers for these and for - especially - washing machines and washing powder, which also feature at various points, are very tongue in cheek and he can barely disguise his obvious amusement.

[BRG]

As we are now officially in the off-season, time to take a look across the board

 

I thought that NASCAR might be a fruitful source of bad team names.....but no.  They are all very ordinary, although 23X1 Racing is a trifle odd.  There is a team called Legacy Motor Club which sounds like a bunch that TNF ought to be supporting! 

 

 Indycar team names are very mainstream,but Superformula have a couple of weirdies - Dandelion and ThreeBond.  The BTCC has a couple of cringey team names - EXCELR8 Motorsport and Zeus Cloud Racing with WSR whilst we also have the ubiquitous and slightly silly TOYOTA GAZOO Racing that also grace the WRC and WEC.

[10kDA]

I think that even that hysterical Australian TV racing commentator - and, no, I am not suggesting that he's a TransVestite - Lee someone or other would struggle with such a team title.  

 

That fellow seems pre-programmed to announce team and car titles absolutely in total, presumably to provide sponsors with airtime before audiences of undiscriminatingly receptive  nitwits.  

 

Should one of this year's down-field F2 runners get lucky (? to be discussed?) and secure an F1 outing we could perhaps hear - at extreme volume - of "Leonardo Fornaroli's Visa Cash App Racing Bull-RBT RB02" trundling around midfield in "the Rolex British Grand Prix"...

 

DCN

Fifteen minutes into the first NBC IndyCar broadcast, I was missing Firestone and Cheever. By the end of the show I had developed an active dislike. Maybe now I can unmute the TV, if Fox does not populate the booth with their NASCAR on-air talent.

[10kDA]

As we are now officially in the off-season, time to take a look across the board

 

I thought that NASCAR might be a fruitful source of bad team names.....but no.  They are all very ordinary, although 23X1 Racing is a trifle odd.  There is a team called Legacy Motor Club which sounds like a bunch that TNF ought to be supporting! 

 

 Indycar team names are very mainstream,but Superformula have a couple of weirdies - Dandelion and ThreeBond.  The BTCC has a couple of cringey team names - EXCELR8 Motorsport and Zeus Cloud Racing with WSR whilst we also have the ubiquitous and slightly silly TOYOTA GAZOO Racing that also grace the WRC and WEC.

The somewhat-saving grace of NASCAR and IndyCar is that most of the top teams do not run the same sponsors on all their cars so the team names tend to be truncated around the entrants' names instead of entire paragraphs containing sponsors' names and IDs. But sometimes the formal name of a given race event becomes a long and tedious description. The event title takes so long to get to the point that the name can barely fit on the program cover if printed in anything larger than 10-point.

[bsc]

Superformula have a couple of weirdies - Dandelion and ThreeBond. 

Reading the above reminded me of one of my favourites: late 1990's Japanese F3 entrant, Team Yellow Hat.

[sabrejet]

... whilst we also have the ubiquitous and slightly silly TOYOTA GAZOO Racing that also grace the WRC and WEC.

 

Apparently "gazoo" is Japanese for image, so aside from being one of those funny foreign words like "tonale" or "ausfahrt", it seems pretty innocuous. Unless you're from 1975.

[john aston]

I love Japanese iconography and nomenclature and Gazoo Racing is , I think , a very cool name indeed. If not so much as Saitama Green Brave , Drago Corse or (from street racing ) The Mid Night Club . Beats Yeoman Credit any day ...

[king_crud]

Reminiscent of the showjumping days of the 70s/80s when horses were called things like Sanyo Videostar to get round the television advertising regulations.

Back in the day the sun visor on cars in the Australian touring car championship could only have drivers names on them. So Peter Janson changed his name by deed poll to Peter NGK Janson, or so i heard

Edited by king_crud, 09 December 2024 - 18:53.

[guiporsche]

Reading the above reminded me of one of my favourites: late 1990's Japanese F3 entrant, Team Yellow Hat.

 

Ah, but Yellow Hat is a bona fides motorsports sponsor: 2nd largest auto and moto parts retailer in Japan, after Autobacs, which with its orangeness graced the Dome prototypes of the early 1980s and many, many Hondas of the Aguri Suzuki-run team in JGTC/Super GT since the early 2000s 'til today (and at least a Nissan GT-R GT500 before that).

Edited by guiporsche, 09 December 2024 - 19:01.

[sabrejet]

Back in the day the sun visor on cars in the Australian touring car championship could only have drivers names on them. So Peter Janson changed his name by deed poll to Peter NGK Janson, or so i heard

 

Didn't that happen in the BTCC too? I have a vague recollection of "Dave B&Q" or similar....

[brucemoxon]

Aren't track and broadcast announcers often urged to refer to teams in manners defined by the teams' PR functionaries, through press kits etc?

 

I'm a track commentator, and sometime race reporter (in print). I'm open to such arrangements, if anyone is wondering. 

 

 

BRM