The last Formula 1 race of the 20th Century occurred 9190 days ago. That means we are now closer to the start of the 2050 season, assuming the world championship is still around to commemorate its centenary anniversary, than we are from the 1990s.
It was a decade that many still hold dear. Rally fans remember it for being the start of the popular World Rally Car ruleset that replaced Group A, while tin-top fans reminisce fondly over the era of Super Touring.
Formula 1 cars were still equipped with spine-tingling V12 engines, while IndyCar remained a category in which multiple manufacturers raced against one another.
But which cars stick out to our team of writers as their pick of the bunch?
By Jake Boxall-Legge, Stuart Codling, Sam Hall, Tom Howard, Alex Kalinauckas, James Newbold, Benjamin Vinel and Gary Watkins
Migeot's radical - Tyrrell-Ford 019
I've written about the Tyrrell 019 before. I've also spoken to its designer Jean-Claude Migeot about it - obviously, for said article, but also so I can nerd out on the finer details of a car that was designed about four years before yours truly started to sap the world of valuable oxygen.
I recall first seeing it in The Concise Encyclopaedia of Formula 1, penned by David Tremayne and Mark Hughes, with a full-page photograph of Jean Alesi's chariot and its V-shaped transition from nose to front wing - an anhedral wing, if you will. This was circa 2000, the point at which a fondness had transformed into an obsession, and this angular-yet-delicate looking car stood out from everything else in the entire (and weighty) tome.
What makes the 019 so great? It was stunningly good on low-speed circuits and on bumpy street tracks, thanks to its monoshock front suspension that helped the front to bite. This was adjustable: only by a few millimetres here and there, but enough to shift the balance of the car for each corner.
The internals were pretty much the same as the 018, as was the rear end, but the car was given a boost by Migeot's wild gamble on the raised nose. He'd tried the design before during his time at Renault, in what he described as a "bad" wind tunnel, but noted an apparent gain and stored it in his memory bank for later use.
At Tyrrell, he had the chance to use it. The adoption of the V-shaped pylons, Migeot says, was a purely aesthetic choice as there was no real difference between a 'straight' pylon and the eventual design. Southampton University's wind tunnel was showing some promising results, Ken Tyrrell allowed Migeot to pursue the idea, and the 019 was a successful piece of kit - one that led to Migeot (re)joining Ferrari. That move didn't go quite so well, mind... JBL
F3000 problem child - Lola T91/50
With apologies to the flame-spitting Volvo S40, I'm going to choose the Lola T91/50 as my favourite '90s racer. But not for reasons of aesthetics. And certainly not because of its on-track success. In fact, anybody unfortunate enough to race it during the 1991 International Formula 3000 Championship was consigned to effective Class B status, as Reynard drivers ran away with it.
It never won a race, although did finish second at Mugello and Enna thanks to Marco Apicella, a result matched at Hockenheim by Vincenzo Sospiri. It also achieved one pole position, widely attributed to the special fuel poured into Laurent Aiello's DAMS-run machine at Spa.
My reason for picking it is simple: it confounded drivers and engineers alike. Racing cars are complex beasts, with modern F1 cars proving especially fickle when it comes to finding the ideal set-up window. But, while these 'diva'-like traits can usually be tamed, that was not the case for Lola runners in 1991, which included pre-season favourites Damon Hill and Allan McNish, who had hoped to emulate Erik Comas's success with a Lola in 1990.
Lola's poor chief designer Mark Williams spent the year chasing his tail applying fixes that could barely paper over the cracks of what turned out to be multi-faceted flaws relating to erroneous wind tunnel data, quality control problems and difficulty understanding Avon's new radial tyres. No amount of new parts thrown at the car either by the factory or its customer teams - still permitted in the multi-chassis open era - could cure its fundamental problems, which caused Lola's market share to collapse.
To my mind, that indefatigable stubbornness makes the T91/50 a machine worthy of begrudging respect. JN
Rallying's cult hero - 1995 Subaru Impreza
Colin McRae and Derek Ringer performing donuts while madly waving a Saltire at Chester Racecourse after winning the 1995 World Rally Championship was an unshakeable sight as an eight-year-old. It was simply the very essence of cool in my eyes.
It sparked a bit of an obsession with the master of “Maximum Attack” and more importantly the unmistakeable look and sound of the Subaru Impreza. To this day when you think of blue, fluorescent yellow and gold in a motorsport context, the car that appears in anyone’s mind is the Impreza.
Through McRae’s flamboyant exploits, driving on the ragged edge across the world’s toughest roads, the Impreza seemingly was everyone’s favourite rally car. Its vivid colours and that deep, booming, boxer engine with its pops and bangs were iconic.
Launched during the Group A era of WRC regulations, the Impreza made its WRC debut in 1993 - but for many its crowning moment was in 1995 when McRae defeated Carlos Sainz in a heated battle for the world title. This was when the WRC was deemed important enough to feature on the front and back pages of the UK press.
It further developed a cult status especially among the youth with its starring role in the Network Q RAC Rally Championship game on the PC, before further becoming a household name through the launch of Codemasters’ Colin McRae Rally series (albeit featuring the 1997-98 Impreza).
To bring this childhood obsession full circle, this writer was fortunate enough to work with a 1996 version of the car when Autosport conducted its ultimate rally test to mark 50 years of the WRC at the Goodwood Festival of Speed last year. A moment that will live long in the memory. TH
Hill's chariot - Williams-Renault FW18
There’s just something about that helmet livery in that Williams colour-scheme. Damon Hill and the FW18, flying to eight wins and the 1996 world title, which brought out Murray Walker’s famous “I’ve got to stop, because I’ve got a lump in my throat” as he sealed it at the Suzuka finale.
Although legendary designer Adrian Newey had plenty of input into this car’s successor, this was the last Williams into which he’d have quite so much work. The result was 12 total 1996 wins from 16 races and the team’s first title double since 1993. Given what was to follow, this was really the start of the team’s decline.
But the whole 1996 story is wrapped in further intriguing subplots – such as Hill learning from Autosport that he was to be dropped in favour of Heinz-Harald Frentzen for the following year, with intra-team title rival Jacques Villeneuve’s star rising following his successful switch from IndyCar.
It made Hill’s success all the more sweet and made up, somewhat, for the disappointment in losing the 1994 title to Michael Schumacher’s ruthlessness.
Friday favourite: The Williams that put Hill in an exclusive F1 club
Let’s take this moment to say that F1, in 2025, will be poorer without Hill’s occasional presence in the paddock as a presenter on UK TV channel Sky Sports F1. A driver who knows so well what it’s like to deal with the challenge of taking on the most merciless racer of his generation – as Lando Norris found out against Max Verstappen in 2024 – should’ve been able to make his views on such matters known in a respectful environment. Alas, that’s definitely not the case now he won’t feature on screens from 2025.
But let’s hope there will be more moments such as the 2021 Silverstone Festival and Hill’s demo outing in the FW46 to come in 2026 and the 30th anniversary of his emulating his father in taking F1 title glory. AK
The mothballed Le Mans winner - Porsche WSC95
It started life as something else, spent a year in storage and was then dusted off for the Le Mans 24 Hours. It went and won the French enduro at the first time of asking and repeated the trick the following year. It was also the car that set Tom Kristensen on course for sportscar superstardom. How could a journalist whose focus, then as now, was endurance racing pick any other car than the Porsche WSC95, Le Mans winner in 1996 and 1997, as his favourite racing machine of the 1990s?
The story of the WSC95, and in particular chassis #001, beggars belief. It was a cut and shut job on one of Jaguar’s XJR-14 Group C chassis, a project magicked up by Tony Dowe in short order to save the US arm of Tom Walkinshaw Racing from closure. Porsche took up the ‘design’ for an assault on sportscar’s triple crown events, Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans, only for it to be canned after a late rule change prior to the first of those races.
It might have stayed canned but for that wily old fox of endurance Reinhold Joest. He saw the potential in the car and persuaded Porsche’s senior management to rent him the two cars - one recycled Jag, one a fresh build - for Le Mans 1996. A hasty development programme turned it into a winner with #001.
That might have been the end of the story, but for Joest’s deal with Porsche: if he won Le Mans, he could keep the car. When his plan to run a pair of 911 GT1s the following year foundered, he turned to the car sitting in his workshops. Against Porsche’s wishes.
Late-signing Kristensen was the star of the race at Le Mans 1997, setting a string of fastest laps and a new lap record in the night. He went on do rather well at the Circuit de la Sarthe in the years that followed.
And as for Joest, its second Le Mans double after 1984 and 1985 resulted in the team being picked up by Audi to run its LMP cars in top-flight sportscar racing. The Joest-Audi-Kristensen partnership would yield five victories in sportscar racing’s big one. GW
The last champion of a legend - Williams-Renault FW19
When my interest in Formula 1 ignited in 1998 as a six-year-old, I was presented with a somewhat Manichean introduction to what I’d missed the previous year: Michael Schumacher had attempted to take Jacques Villeneuve out as they fought for the world championship.
I decided Villeneuve should be my favourite driver (a debatable call, as he never won again) and took a sharp interest in the 1997 season – a classic, with iconic machinery up and down the grid.
As it turns out, Williams’s FW19 was a pivotal car in the team’s history – not least because it marked its last world titles, with legendary designer Adrian Newey joining McLaren that year and sparking the Grove-based outfit’s decline.
Adorned by its memorable Rothmans livery (which accounts for 32 grand prix wins in 66 races from 1994 to 1997), the FW19 was notably tricky to set up and handle compared to its predecessors. Villeneuve and team-mate Heinz-Harald Frentzen struggled to get the most out of the car, with the Canadian making high-profile driving errors and the German lacking consistency. Although Williams was dominant in terms of pure pace, the car never achieved a single 1-2.
Still, Schumacher’s sudden lapse in composure at Jerez gave the FW19 a bigger place in history than it otherwise would have had – along with a remarkable Hungarian Grand Prix. Bridgestone-shod Damon Hill dominated the race at the Hungaroring until his unfancied Arrows got stuck in gear due to a hydraulics issue and was overtaken by Williams’ Villeneuve, two wheels on the grass, on the last lap… BV
Making dreams come true - Stewart-Ford SF02
For me, there will always be one Formula 1 car that stands out above the rest, the Brawn GP 001. But since that’s from the wrong decade, we move to item number two – the Stewart-Ford SF02.
Yes, the second Stewart F1 car that took a best result of fifth courtesy of Rubens Barrichello in 1998 is an admittedly peculiar choice, given all the other cars that I could have selected. But it's a car that I have a particular connection to as the first F1 car that I got to sit in – and it wasn’t even at a race track or event.
To drive out of my then-home town, we had to go past a Ford dealership which, for a brief period, had a show car SF02 and what was presumably a replica of Nigel Mansell’s #55 BTCC Ford Mondeo. After much pleading, my mum caved and took me in to have a closer look.
Having left many fingerprints on the car despite the clear ‘do not touch’ signs, there was only one sign left to ignore – ‘do not sit in the vehicle’. The dealership management was adamant that this must be observed but, before we left, we were advised to return the next morning before the official opening time.
Following this suggestion, we made the second trip as instructed, and there was the cockpit, waiting for me to clamber into. I remember it feeling massive – it would to a child! – as I attempted to peer over the steering wheel and down the nose. Then there was the iconic and much underrated tartan livery.
For a few minutes, in a static car, I got to live out a fantasy. Maybe we can be reunited and have the engine running one day! SH
Visceral front-engine fever - Panoz LMP-1
I was supposed to be washing the wheels of Hugh Chamberlain’s Chrysler Viper GTS-R but something else kept boxing me forcefully about the ears. Le Mans 1998 and the rhythm of the race was dictated by the ground-shaking roar of the two six-litre Roush-tuned Ford V8s – then just the one from mid-morning onwards – every few minutes as something unmistakeably monstrous grunted past along the pit straight.
Even behind the garages, fingers thrust into ears, you felt it through your feet and chest.
On the Thursday, Hugh had walked me up the pitlane and grunted something dismissive about the peculiar shape of the Panoz GTR-1 ‘Batmobile’, and the tangential involvement in the project of sometime disc jockey and Mr Blobby wrangler Noel Edmonds. But the personality with the most influential fingerprints on the engineering concept was Donald Panoz, an Italian-American pharmaceutical magnate with a quaint habit of claiming Irish heritage when he felt the occasion called for it.
Don was indulging his son Danny’s dream of running a car company. Applying this eponymous concern’s branding to a generic racing car did not float Don’s marketing boat. He was insistent that the race car should, like the Panoz company’s Esperante road car, have an American V8 mounted in front of the driver. Adrian Reynard, never one to beat a retreat from someone waving a substantial cheque, then indulged Don in turn and the Panoz GTR-1 was born.
Come 1999 the principal international sportscar series had dropped the GT1 category and Panoz, even though he had founded his own championship – the American Le Mans Series – went with the flow. Reynard’s Andy Thorby reworked Nigel Stroud’s original design without a roof and Panoz’s factory team duly went into battle with the likes of BMW in the ALMS and at Le Mans in a year overshadowed by Mercedes’ aerial dance routine at the legendary enduro.
For a fundamentally compromised car, the LMP Roadster S was quick. But more than anything else it was a visceral experience to behold. At Le Mans in 1999 I was bashing a keyboard rather than scraping spent rubber from the inside of racing wheels and, during practice, stood by the barrier on the outside of Indianapolis – sensibly, there’s a bigger gravel trap there now – and excitedly recorded each cars’ passage on my Dictaphone, also noting the make of car.
There really was no need to do that for the Panoz. I’ve probably still got the tape somewhere but there’s no need to dig it out – the memory remains imprinted. And it still makes my toes twitch. SC
