In 1975, the Slovenian-Austrian-Canadian businessman Walter Wolf had started to appear at many of the F1 races during the season. A year later, he bought 60% of Frank Williams Racing Cars while agreeing to keep Frank Williams as manager of the team. Simultaneously Wolf bought the assets of the Hesketh team that had recently withdrawn from F1.
The team was based in the Williams facility at Reading but used most of the cars and equipment once owned by Hesketh Racing. The Hesketh 308C became known as the Wolf-Williams FW05 and soon afterwards Dr. Harvey Postlethwaite arrived as chief engineer. Jacky Ickx and Frenchman Michel Leclère were hired to drive.
The team, however, was not very competitive and failed to qualify at a number of races during the year. Leclère left after the French Grand Prix and was replaced by Arturo Merzario while Ickx failed to perform and was dropped after the British Grand Prix, to be followed by a string of pay-drivers. At the end of 1976, Wolf decided that the team needed restructuring.
He removed Frank Williams from the manager's job and replaced him with Peter Warr from Team Lotus. Disillusioned, Williams soon left the team, taking Patrick Head and several others to set up Williams Grand Prix Engineering. Postlethwaite's WR1 was a conventional Cosworth package but with Jody Scheckter hired from Tyrrell, the new-look team presented a strong package.
No-one expected that the team would win its first race in Argentina, however Wolf Racing Team’s Wolf WR-1 Ford driven by Jody Scheckter surprised F-1 fans from the start with its victory debut at the Argentina Grand Prix. The machine, the Wolf WR-1 was painted dark blue and gold and featured a wedge shaped body designed to create down force. The guts consisted of the standard Ford Cosworth DFV engine and six-gear Hewland Gearbox.
The suspension system was comprised of double wishbone in front and twin radius rod composed of lower parallel and upper single “i” arms in the rear. These were ligther, more compact and easy-to-maintain. As there was no central stay for the rear wing, wing edge boards were fixed using large aluminum tubes.
The Wolf Racing Team took an victory during its debut race at Argentina GP when top competitor machines dropped out. However the victories at the Monaco and Canada Grand Prix races were the result of skill rather than luck. At the season finish, the Wolf Racing Team’s consistent performance put J. Scheckter at 2nd in the Drivers’ ranking and the team 4th in the Constructors’ ranking.
The Wolf WR-1 would go down forever pages of F1 history after its brilliant debut win and the Monaco GP victory which marked the 100th win for Ford Cosworth in F1.
During the 1977 season, Wolf showed 3 cars, known only by WR-1, WR-2 and WR-3. Externally cars do not show any difference, but 2 cars participate in the events when the other was being tested with updates. To keep this program, the Team had 31 people between, secretaries, designers and mechanics, everybody had an important responsibility according the team.
The Wolf Racing Team had 8 V8 Ford Cosworth engines, 5 Hewland 6-gear-boxes, 56 different wheels where they used to add the 16 inch goodyear tires. Walter Wolf had a 1 million dolar budget for the 1977 season and paid 12.000 pounds for each engine, 1.600 pounds for each gear box and 100 pounds for each wheel.
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