Colour photo, printed from an original colour transparency, of the 1979 Arrows A2 "Doodlebug" one of the strangest F1 cars ever built. Riccardo Patrese is at the wheel in the Dutch GP of 1979 at Zandvoort.
Available 10x7" (250x175mm) or 7x5" (175x125mm)
The A2 was a radical ground-effect car made to take full advantage (or so the idea went..) of the new technology of under-car aerodynamics. It was the goal of several designers at this point to make the underside of the car take all the aerodynamic loads and do away with drag enducing conventional wings. Lotus also tried with the terrible 80 model which didn't last more than a few races. The Arrows did actually debut with no conventional wings at the French GP but by the following race was in the form you see here. It never worked and by the seasons end a nice normal car the A3, based very much on the trend setting Williams FW07 was being built and proven much more competetive, even getting a pole position at Long Beach in 1981.
The drivers of the A2, Mass and Patrese endured a terrible year in 1979 just a season after Arrows' promising debut had also turned into a fiasco when the original A1 design was subject to a court order as it was claimed the car was really the 1978 Shadow (penned by the same designer) with a slight make over..and Shadow objected! On top of this the teams intended lead driver was Gunnar Nilsson who was dying of cancer.. it was a very bad start to the team's tenure in F1 which ended in another fiasco a couple of years ago when they ran out of money and were dumped out of the sport.
Nice photo printed from the original 35mm slide in a commercial photo lab
