Having had a fair degree of success in junior single-seaters, Campos Racing made a successful application to move up to F1 as Campos Meta for 2010. The team was only founded in 1998, so team principal Adrian Campos has done a pretty decent job.

Campos himself was a Minardi driver for a couple of seasons, which goes a long way towards making him all right by us, and he can clearly handle himself¹ in the business arena as well, having beaten off stiff competition² in securing the final F1 slot³.

Campos Meta's application included details of deals they had agreed with Cosworth, Dallara and Xtrac, so that's the engine, chassis and gearbox sorted out, which leaves Campos themselves to contribute just the nut that holds the steering wheel. Or Bruno Senna, as he's better known.

However, following a majority buy-out in February 2010, the squad was renamed "Hispania Racing Team" before its inaugural season had even begun, which was (a) good news for the team's future in F1, and (2) an irresistable opportunity to make lots of childish remarks about hot flushes and mood swings.

For the 2012 season the team built its own car for the first time, having previously raced adapted Dallara chassis, and this move really did bring about a significant change in the team's fortunes: after avoiding the final place in the constructors' title in 2010 and 2011, the team trailed home dead last in their third year. They were put up for sale towards the end of the season but failed to find a buyer and quietly went out of business. HRT RIP.

As a mildly diverting footnote, it may be of interest to learn that the "Meta" part of the team's original name referred to Adrian's passion for metaphysics, in particular the concepts of necessity, possibility and the plurality of worlds and how, in conjunction with Leibniz's theories on alternative realities, they might be used to prove that he could have finished in the points if he hadn't been disqualified from the 1987 Brazilian Grand Prix.


¹Fnarr.
²Oik.
³Yip.