March 821 car-by-car histories

Raul Boesel rounds Druids Bend at Brands Hatch in his March 821 during the 1982 British Grand Prix. Copyright Martin Lee 2017. Used with permission.

The March 821 was an update of Robin Herd's March 811 design produced by Adrian Reynard for the RAM team in 1982. The car was overweight, slow and unreliable, and little was achieved.

March started the year with two new drivers, the hugely experienced Jochen Mass and Brazilian F3 driver Raul Boesel, and healthy sponsorship from Rothmans, ICI and Newsweek. More might have been achieved but for two changes of tyre supplier, the retirement of their lead driver after a horrific accident at the French GP, and the departure of Reynard in the autumn. The season ended without a single point scored.

March started the season with two new 821s, RM07 for Boesel and RM08 for Mass, with an old 811 as a T-car. At the Brazilian GP, RM09 appeared for Boesel, with RM08 continuing as Mass's car and RM07 becoming the spare. The next change was at the Belgian GP, where Emilio de Villota joined to drive RM07, and a new RM10 was introduced as the team spare. All four cars were taken to North America for the Detroit and Canada races, but Boesel damaged RM09 in the startline crash in Canada and had to use RM10 for the restart. When the team returned to Europe, RM11 was built as a new car for Mass, with Boesel continuing in RM10, and de Villota in RM07, with RM08 now the spare car. Boesel then wrote off RM08 in a testing accident, so the team had no spare car until de Villota gave up his attempts to qualify RM07. No sooner was the team back to having three cars for two drivers than Mass wrote off RM10 in his nasty accident at the French GP, forcing a reshuffle. For the next few races, Boesel was forced to use RM07, and Rupert Keegan, taking the place of Mass, took over the German's RM11.

At the Italian GP, RM09 rejoined the team, having been fitted with new pullrod front suspension designed by Dave Kelly to fit the existing suspension pickups. Boesel drove this car at Monza, after which RM11 was modified with the same changes for the last race of the year, at Las Vegas. However, that car travelled to Las Vegas using the chassis plate off RM07, which created some confusion when the cars were sold into private hands.

The two pullrod cars, one complete and one in bits, were sold to Ken Moore, and the complete car went on to John Brindley, who raced it in the 1984 BRSCC MacLean Hunter Formula Libre Championship. The unmodified car still with rocker arm suspension, which must have been RM07, passed through several owners to Alvin Powell and was used in libre racing in Wales in 1989. All three of these cars were in California by the end of the 1990s. Meanwhile, the repaired tub from RM08 was sold separately to Colin Bennett's team and was used to build up a Can-Am specification car for Walter Lechner in 1983, utilising the remains of a crashed 811. That car also had rocker arm suspension, as would be expected. It was rebuilt to F1 specification in the US in the 1990s and moved back to the UK in 2015.

Please contact Allen Brown (allen@oldracingcars.com) if you can add anything to our understanding of these cars.

These histories were last updated on 08 Jun 2026.