Photo: Iwao / CC BY 2.0 via Flickr (Link credits at the end of the content)
We will start a new journey to bring the Forgotten F1 Drivers 1990 to 1992 and beyond, focusing on the drivers of the past who had short careers in Formula 1 before they left and never got another chance.
Starting with the 1990 season this time, and we will continue in the coming months with Part Two, Part Three, and so on, until the end of the 2010s.
Later, we will also share stories from the earliest days. The aim is to keep fans engaged; it’s what they want to read and remember from the racers of the past, and here at CarsRave, we want to be unique and bring interesting stories to the fans.
This will be the first content in the Forgotten F1 Drivers series, featuring names that are not remembered for winning, but still deserve to be mentioned and remembered. All drivers included will have under 20 Formula 1 race starts. Those with more will not be part of this list, but may appear in future updates.
Before we continue with the content below, we want to apologize for the limited number of images available for some of the drivers. We’ve done our best to bring their stories together with what we could find, and while some drivers have available photos, others unfortunately do not.
Forgotten F1 Drivers 1990–1992 with Short Careers
So let’s begin with Part One: F1 drivers of 90s who had short careers in Formula 1, racing between 1990 and 1992. Because there are many from this era, we will cover drivers from 1993 to 1995 in Part Two.
Gary Brabham: F1 short careers
When you carry the Brabham surname; expectations come with it.
But for Gary Brabham, F1 in 1990 was less about legacy and more about damage control.
He entered the sport with the struggling Life Racing Engines project, a team so uncompetitive, two attempts, two weekends, and no real chance to even reach the race grid.
Before F1, his background showed he was a rising force, with a British Formula 3000 title and strong sports car results proving real potential. But in Formula 1, timing is everything, and his opportunity arrived at the worst possible moment.
Once the Life chapter ended; there was no second chance for Gary Brabham.
Gregor Foitek
The career of Gregor Foitek reads like a tour through F1’s most unstable operations.
He arrived at the tail end of the 1980s, a period when grids were overcrowded and pre-qualifying was a daily execution line for slow cars.
His early runs with EuroBrun were almost invisible; a car that simply couldn’t compete.
Then came a switch to the Rial F1 Team; and with it one of the most frightening moments of his career… an accident, and that was enough for him to step away immediately.
1990 looked like a reset for the Swiss driver, but the teams around him soon became infamous for financial desperation, as funding dried up, the operation reportedly cut corners to survive in ways that bordered on unsafe, when his personal backing disappeared, so did his place on the grid.
His story didn’t end because of a lack of pace alone; sometimes luck isn’t on your side. To show true potential, an F1 driver needs at least a competitive car to stay close to the midfield.
Gregor Foitek had 22 entries but only 7 starts in Formula 1. After the 1990 Hungarian GP, he never got another chance to compete in F1.
Naoki Hattori
When Naoki Hattori joined F1 in 1991, he didn’t join a team; he inherited a crisis… Coloni was already in financial freefall.
Coloni cars were unreliable;testing was almost non-existent, and survival depended more on paying bills than building performance.
Hattori was brought in for the final races of the season, he was hired to replace Pedro Chaves; but by then the project was already beyond rescue.
Pre-qualifying system made things even harder for the Japanese driver, with so many entries on the grid, he had to fight just to reach official qualifying sessions.
After two weekends, nothing changed except the inevitability of the outcome; the team collapsed shortly after, rebranded and rebuilt by new ownership.
Outside Formula 1, his career tells a very different story. Touring cars, endurance racing, and later leadership roles in motorsport showed that F1 had simply caught him at the wrong moment.
Michael Bartels
The case of Michael Bartels is one of pure substitution. In 1991,, he wasn’t a full-time driver.
He was a stand-in for Lotus during scheduling conflicts involving the regular lineup.
He raced only four weekends, four appearances, and no real chance to show his true potential.
The Lotus car itself was already far removed from its competitive past.
The car wasn’t competitive enough, underpowered, and inconsistent, it demanded more experience than any temporary driver could realistically gain in such a short window.
Each appearance became a battle just to survive qualifying; the gaps to the front were massive, and mistakes were easy to make when pushing a car that never truly came alive under race conditions.
When the opportunities stopped; so did his F1 story, but unlike many short-lived careers, his later success in GT racing proved the issue was never purely about ability.
Julian Bailey
The journey of the British driver stands out because; unlike many others on the list, he actually scored a point.
But getting there was anything but smooth, his early F1 years were spent in cars that struggled simply to make the grid.
Out of 20 attempts, he was able to start just 7 races, from 1988 to 1991.
At Tyrrell, he fought through an era where turbo-powered cars were impossible to fight, and failures to qualify became common, and consistency was impossible to build.
A return to Lotus brought brief hope; and then came one chaotic, rain-soaked afternoon in San Marino where everything aligned perfectly, in the chaos, he brought the car home in the points, a rare moment of reward in an otherwise punishing career.
However, his later success in touring cars and GT racing confirmed that he had the ability and potential to compete at F1 level.
Pedro Chaves
There is a different kind of story here too, and it belongs to Pedro Chaves.
Others at least reached race weekend, his F1 record never progressed beyond pre-qualifying, thirteen attempts, all ending before the official qualifying sessions even began in 1991.
He arrived at Coloni during one of the weakest phases in the team’s history.
Testing was nearly non-existent; spare parts were scarce, and reliability was unpredictable at best, in some weekends, he barely completed double-digit laps across entire events.
The breaking point came at the Portuguese GP, his home race, where mechanical failure cut his session short almost immediately, that moment was the end of the story, Pedro Chaves never came back to F1.
However, he rebuilt his career away from F1, and eventually found success in rallying, he even won the Portuguese Rally Championship in 1999 and 2000.
Emanuele Naspetti
The career of Emanuele Naspetti is one of those rare cases; where the driver actually had momentum… and still ended up trapped by timing.
By the early 1990s, he was already a proven junior formula winner, fighting at the sharp end of International Formula 3000.
But then suddenly came the opportunity, a mid-season F1 seat with a struggling March operation that had run out of stability and patience.
Naspetti made a bold decision at the time, instead of chasing a potential title in F3000, he stepped directly into F1 for the final stretch of 1992.
The results weren’t dramatic crashes or failures to qualify; in fact, he was consistently solid for the for the conditions he had been given.
But that wasn’t enough in a team fighting financial problems, when the team disappeared over the winter, he made another choice that seemed safe at the time, a test driver role with Jordan.
It kept him close to the sport, but it also quietly removed him from the race seat ladder!
His final appearance came in 1993 with a brief call-up, a chance that ended almost immediately with mechanical failure, after that, F1 simply moved on without him.
Enrico Bertaggia
If there is a symbol of wasted opportunity in this era; Enrico Bertaggia fits it almost too perfectly.
He didn’t just struggle in F1, he was repeatedly dropped into teams that were already falling apart before he arrived.
His first stint came with Coloni in 1989, a team that was already fighting pre-qualifying, every attempt ended the same way, early exits, no meaningful running, and no chance to build rhythm.
Then came a second chance in 1992 with Andrea Moda, another project that was unstable, what followed wasn’t a racing program but a sequence of administrative problems, failed entries, and cars that were never properly ready to hit the track.
Even when Bertaggia tried to stabilize his career with new sponsorships, the situation collapsed, in the end, he became another name removed from the grid not because of pace alone, but because the teams themselves were no longer operational, and non competitive, eight entries, zero starts in F1.
Perry McCarthy
Few stories from this period are as extreme as that of Perry McCarthy; on paper, he entered F1 in 1992, in reality, he was placed in a team that was simply impossible to qualify for the race.
Same as Bertaggia, Perry McCarthy was at Andrea Moda F1 team.
His weekends often ended before they even began, and the situation escalated further when safety concerns and legal issues finally caught up with the team, leading to its expulsion from F1 altogether, that decision ended McCarthy’s F1 dream, with 10 entries, zero starts in F1.
Later, he rebuilt his career in endurance racing and became globally recognizable in a completely different role, but his F1 record remains one of the clearest examples of a driver trapped inside a team that was simply non-competitive at the time.
Andrea Chiesa
We have shared in the past the story of Andrea Chiesa and his short attempt in F1, his story isn’t about chaos or collapsing teams, it’s about contrast.
At Fondmetal in 1992, the car itself wasn’t the main problem, the issue was the gap between teammates and the lack of development support available to close it.
While his teammate consistently extracted performance and secured mid-grid positions, Chiesa struggled to adapt quickly to the demands of a highly competitive qualifying format.
Without private testing and meaningful development time; every weekend became a steep learning curve with no margin for error.
By mid-season, the team made the decision to replace Chiesa, his F1 dream faded away, with ten entries and just three starts.
Giovanna Amati
The last one is Giovanna Amati, her entry into F1 carries historical weight far beyond results.
She arrived at Brabham in 1992; at a time when the once-great team had already fallen into severe financial decline.
The car was outdated, testing was minimal, and competitiveness had long since disappeared.
Her attempt to qualify came during one of the most unforgiving periods, where even experienced drivers struggled to make the grid.
Despite this, she continued through three consecutive race weekends, but failed to qualify for the race.
She was replaced by Damon Hill, the future champion of F1, but even he struggled to extract performance from the same car.
However, Amati moved away from F1 and rebuilt a quieter but far more successful career in sports car racing.
FEATURED IMAGE CREDITS: Photo by Iwao / CC BY 2.0 via Flickr
Last words from CarsRave before the content ends:
We want to stay connected with our fans. If we have missed any drivers, feel free to email us at CarsTimeFB@gmail.com so we can expand this series, especially for drivers from 1990 to 1992 who had short Formula 1 careers.
Thanks,
CarsRave Team