Tom Walkinshaw’s Orange Arrows team had a decent season in 2000 with Jos Verstappen and Pedro de la Rosa performing excellent. The Supertec engine was great and the Arrows A21 was a neat design. There was only a small problem for 2001; Renault acquired their old engine department back from Supertec since Renault would enter the Formula One as a team in 2002. Faced with a possibility of having to pay for expensive customer engines Tom was looking for a new supplier. He found one in AMT (later Asiatech), the unknown company that purchased Peugeot’s engines after the French company announced they would close the door for Formula One at the end of 2000.
There are two parallel stories going on here, Tom Walkinshaw who is looking for “cheap” engines and AMT, which just purchased the engine project from Peugeot who announced their exit in Formula One.
AMT was established in 2000 under the lead of Dr. John Gano and Enrique Scalabroni who had years of experience in the Formula One as a designer for Ferrari and Williams. One of the investors behind AMT was Hideo Morito an heirs of Sony. Rumours went that the company tried to lure the rights owner of Lotus in the company to have the engines branded as Lotus. Their other goal, eventually, was to appear with their own team on the grid in 2004 or 2005. Asiatech officially announced in March 2002 their plans. During the Grand Prix at Monza they showed the media a scale model of their A-001. However, they would not appear as a team on the grid.
The company stayed in Velizy in France, keeping most of the former Peugeot employees at the factory. The total budget was 60% higher than it was in the last year Peugeot was still in the lead.
Only a few weeks later the name AMT disappeared and became Asiatech.
The same time Tom Walkinshaw had a great season with Arrows, scoring several points with the Arrows A21 the team was positive for the future. The problem now was to find a new engine supplier. Supertec would disappear because Renault purchased their old assets back. In 2001, they would debut their Renault engine with Benetton, the team they purchased as well. To get Renault’s customer engines he probably would have paid much more. Therefore, the search could begin. The deal between Arrows and then AMT was signed in early August 2000. The first batch of fresh AMT engines came the 10th of August 2000.
In-between the Japanese and Malaysian Grand Prix Arrows flew one of their A21’s to Valencia where both Jos Verstappen and Pedro de la Rosa tested with the new AMT A20 V10 engine. As there was more money now the then still Peugeot-engines were already tweaked and improved. The team compared both the A21 with Supertec and with the AMT engine. The car was slightly faster when fitted with the AMT engine. At that time, the Arrows A21 was painted white. Jos and Pedro were impressed with the engine’s performance.
During the pre-season testing in late 2000 and early 2001, intensive testing was happening with the AMT engines. Newly signed Arrows test driver Johnny Herbert was impressed as well by the engine while he was doing mostly conducting back-to-back testing. On the Friday the engine did not start.
The season started reasonable for Arrows a handful of top 10 finishes by Jos Verstappen, and eventually one point during the Austrian Grand Prix. This would be the only point the team would score. A copy of the 1996 season when Jos Verstappen scored also one point for the team during the season. As the performance were not what they expected the two-year deal got exterminated. For 2002, the Cosworth engines would power the A23. While Asiatech would power the Minardi PS02 in 2002. Asiatech would disappear at the end of the season out of the Formula One.
