Fittipaldi F8
At the end of 1979 Copersucar decided to end their sponsorship. The team bought the remains of close neighbour Wolf Racing, becoming a two car operation for the first time. The team was renamed Skol Team Fittipaldi for the 1980 season to reflect new sponsorship from Skol Brasil (now an AmBev brand). Emerson and Wolf Racing driver Keke Rosberg raced the first part of the season with reworked Wolf chassis from the previous year. The cars, designated F7s, brought a third place for each of the drivers before being replaced by the less successful F8. The design team that year was headed by Harvey Postlethwaite, another asset gained from Wolf, and also included very young chief aerodynamicist Adrian Newey – both were later designers of championship winning cars for other teams.
Emerson Fittipaldi decided to retire from racing at the end of 1980. He has since said that his last two years in Formula One were very unhappy: “I was too involved in the problems of trying to make the team work, and I neglected my marriage and my personal life”, although at the time he cited colleagues’ deaths as his reason. He was only 33, but had been racing in Formula One for a decade. He had failed to finish seven of the last ten races that year and had several times been outpaced by his Finnish team-mate. He moved into the management of the team and young Brazilian Chico Serra replaced him for 1981. The team, which reverted to the name of Fittipaldi Automotive as Skol sponsorship was lost again, entered a sharp decline from 1981 onwards. Postlethwaite left for Ferrari early in the year and the team once again raced updated variants of the previous season’s chassis, using tyres from Michelin, Avon and Pirelli – including one race in which the two cars were on different brands. Rosberg did manage to finish a fourth at the non-championship FOCA South African Grand Prix at the start of the year, albeit one lap down on the leaders (see FISA–FOCA war), but after that the drivers recorded a succession of DNQs and retirements. When they did finish they were normally at the back of the field and scored no points that year.
Designers: Harvey Postlethwaite and Adrian Newey
Year: 1980
Engine: Ford-Cosworth DFV
Engine (specs): 8 cylinders; 2993 cc
Power: 475 HP
Rahmi M. Koç museum (Istanbul, Turkey)
