Weston Motorsport

**Weston Motorsport** is an English team currently competing in Formula A that previously competed in the now-defunct IFS. Founded in 1988 by IFS Legend George Weston, the team has been historically successful, achieving a drivers’ championship in 1992 and coming very close to the championship in countless other seasons.

## **History**

### Foundation

After George Weston decided to end his career in 1987, setting his sights on team owning, he would purchase the struggling Lemarchand team, best known for winning the GPWC championship in 1951, 1952, and 1975 (under the name Yugostar due to sponsorship purposes). Over the offseason, the team would reinvent itself, hiring many well-known staff from around the paddock, including top-tier race engineers, designers, strategists, and more. Paired with title sponsor Maeda, the largest technology company in Japan, the large influx of funding would facilitate a seemingly perfect start. They would sign star drivers Francois Martin and Rene Muller, the former an IFS champion, and the latter a multi-time IFS race winner with SAMB. The team had the perfect start, with a solid lineup of drivers and staff, a large sponsor behind them, and a large engine effort behind them, with Tachibana agreeing to supply engines to the team for the 1988 season. The team would perform well in pre-season testing, solidifying their place on the grid as a contender for points consistently. As the season started, they would score points in 5 of the first 6 rounds, only dropping points with Francois Martin falling out of 6th place due to a puncture with 3 laps to go at Monaco. As the season would continue, they would find themselves 4th in the constructors’ championship, finishing behind only SAMB, McKenzie, and Barzetti, considered by many to be an incredible result for a debut season. 1989 would post similar results, with the team performing well and scoring multiple podiums on the season. Despite this, reliability would drop them down to 5th in the standings, with Romano superseding them as they scored a shock drivers’ championship with South African talent Patrick Williams. As they transitioned into the 90s, with different regulations hampering Barzetti and Romano, 1990 would once again prove to be an amazing season for the Weston outfit, achieving 3rd in the constructors.

### IFS: 90s – Constant results

1991 would see Weston bringing in Patrick Williams, the 1989 champion. He would immediately post incredible performances, heading a title fight between Frenchman Olivier Laurent and Risto Pulkkinen, dueling with each other throughout the season. In a historic title fight, Olivier Laurent would narrowly grab the title as it came down to the wire in Brazil, with the gap deciding the championship coming down to only 5 seconds. 1992 would see Weston grab their only IFS drivers’ championship, with Patrick Williams engaged in another historic title fight with Risto Pulkkinen, with a crash at a flooded Brazilian Grand Prix giving Williams the championship. 1993 would see Weston fall behind an unstoppable McKenzie, producing an incredible car. 1994 would see Williams in another title fight, this time against Matteo Russo of Eurotechnica. In a season marred in controversy and carnage due to the banning of in-car assists, Weston would take the constructors’ championship capitalizing on much of the chaos that was notorious for the season, eliminating top teams like SAMB and McKenzie from the title fight. 1995 would see Weston taking on a new sponsor, Denham, a long-standing tobacco company. The iconic liveries would fall back to the unstoppable titans of Carlos Oliveira and David Mrázek, who would fight over the title after title as the decade went on. They would find themselves sliding behind SAMB and Barzetti, who would go on to dominate the next few seasons. They would finish 3rd in the constructors' 4 seasons in a row, before dropping down to 4th in 1999, as Anton Hackl’s miracle title run with Doherty propelled them to 2nd in the constructors’ championship.

### IFS – 2000s: Weston-Braun and Weston-Tsukuda

Weston would announce their partnership with German manufacturer Braun in 2000, becoming a full factory effort. The contract was set to last for 5 years, and the team would bring in 2 new drivers, Argentinian hopeful Flavio Torres and German talent Andreas Rast. The partnership would prove successful, taking the first two wins of the 2000 season. Despite this, they would trail off as the season progressed, and Barzetti and Christian Stroemqvist would run away with the championship. Battling with McKenzie and SAMB throughout the early part of the decade, Flavio Torres would prove to be an invaluable asset for the team, proving to be incredibly successful before leaving for Barzetti in 2004. 2003 and 2004 would prove to be their best seasons, capitalizing on a struggling McKenzie and taking the fight directly to Barzetti. The seasons would be incredibly close, with both title fights coming down to the wire between Weston and Barzetti. Despite this, Barzetti would take both championships. After Braun became frustrated with the lack of results relative to the amount of money put into the program, they would leave in 2006, with Weston making the switch to customer Tsukuda engines. The customer Tsukuda program would prove to be unsuccessful, with Weston dropping down to 5th in the constructors, slowly declining year after year despite the Tsukuda factory team’s great amounts of success, consistently contending for championships. Despite having incredibly talented drivers come through their ranks, including future champion Alex Thompson and George Weston’s son, Owen, the team would still find little success, falling to 6th and 7th in the constructors’ as the team struggled to find continued sponsor investment due to their lack of results. The team's downward spiral would continue, rounding out the decade with an unsuccessful 2009, mainly brought upon by a lack of development on the double diffuser concept.
A main cause of Weston’s lack of return on investment during this time is due to large amounts of internal conflict in the team, with multiple parts of the team not being willing to work together throughout the various partnerships the team undertook. Multiple designers hired from other teams disliked or did not work well with the philosophy undertaken by Braun as a manufacturer and the two sides ended up being incredibly rigid in their approaches, causing little compromise to be made with the partnership. George Weston would later state in his memoir that he “wished that the partnership worked out differently”, saying that “If we allowed ourselves to be more amicable, I feel that Barzetti would’ve feared our team heading through the decade, instead of allowing ourselves to fall by the wayside as the decade progressed.”

### IFS – 2010s: Steady Decline

As the 2010s went on, Weston would continue to decline, suffering from a lack of funding and as a result, a lack of development. 2010-2012 would prove to be difficult years, as they would continue to struggle in the midfield against teams that were doing well, such as VG Motorsport, Eurosilva, and Equipe Girault. 2013 would prove to be a decent season though, finishing a recent high of 5th in the constructors, passing by Equipe Girault after a horrible season for the team. 2014 would prove to be a return to much of the same, however, switching to Kruse engines until the end of the IFS. As the decade continued to run out, the team would have many decent drivers pass through their ranks, including future champion Floris Van Velzen. The team would be consistent contenders for points from 2014 to 2019, with the team scoring a couple of surprise podiums in especially chaotic races. In 2016, George Weston would pass leadership of the team over to Owen Weston, retiring from the team principal position, although maintaining ownership of the team. 2020 to 2022 would prove to be considerably harder for the team, as their title sponsor, Metro Petroleum, would leave after 2019, with the team running on the bare minimum funding before the end of the season. The team would last until the final season of IFS, finishing last in the championship.

### Transition to Formula A

The team would make the jump to Formula A along with much of the former IFS grid, maintaining the status quo of backmarker performances, finishing 10th in the standings. In 2024, team owner George Weston would pass away due to cancer.