The Zakspeed 891 was a Formula One car for the season run by the German Zakspeed team. Its drivers were German Bernd Schneider in his second year with the team and F1 rookie Aguri Suzuki from Japan. This was the first Formula One car powered by Yamaha engine.

Overview

Due to neither Schneider nor his team mate Piercarlo Ghinzani scoring any points in the 881, the team was forced into pre-qualifying in order to be able to try to qualify for a race. While Schneider was able to qualify his car 25th for the 1989 Brazilian Grand Prix, it would prove to be a false hope with the German only able to pre-qualify and qualify once more, at the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix. Suzuki never made it past pre-qualifying at any of the 16 rounds during the season. Most of this was attributed to what was found to be a very underpowered Yamaha engine. Late in the season following another double failure to pre-qualify at the Spanish Grand Prix, the Yamaha OX88 V8 was reported to be producing only 560 bhp. This compared badly to the base 620 bhp of the customer Ford Cosworth and Judd V8s and the Lamborghini V12 being used by most of the other teams. It was also unfavorable in comparison to the 650 bhp - 700 bhp bhp of the top four engines, the V10's of Honda (McLaren) and Renault (Williams), the Ferrari V12, and the Ford V8 (Benetton). This made Schneider qualifying 21st for the following race in Japan all the more impressive. The 891 was the last Formula One car to be produced by Zakspeed as the team pulled out of Grand Prix racing following the 1989 season. Yamaha also pulled out of Formula One at the end of the year, but would return with the Brabham team in.

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