They each had a specific area of expertise: Mosley looked after the commercial side, Rees managed the racing team, Coaker oversaw production at the factory in Bicester, Oxfordshire, and Herd was the designer.

In addition, the factory ran two team cars for Jo Siffert (Porsche were paying for his drive) and Chris Amon sponsored by STP.

Ronnie Peterson appeared in a semi-works car for Colin Crabbe when his works Formula Two commitments allowed; various other 701s went to privateers.

Peterson and Niki Lauda then drove the disappointing experimental 721X factory cars (using an Alfa Romeo transverse gearbox and intended to have a low polar-moment, anticipating in some ways the much more successful Tyrrell 005/006 series).

Also, the German team Eifelland entered under its own name a 721 much-modified with distinctive and eccentric bodywork by designer Luigi Colani for its driver Rolf Stommelen.

The four extant 721Gs were re-bodied and fitted with nose-mounted radiators and the crash-absorbing deformable structures that became mandatory that season; although no new chassis were built, they were re-designated 731s.

The Hesketh team, after an initial non-championship outing using a Surtees, bought a March which was heavily re-developed by Harvey Postlethwaite and became a regular points-scorer, again hinting that there was little wrong with the basic concept of the 721G/731.

1973 marked the first year that F2 became more important to March than F1, with the new two-litre rules heralding the beginning of a long relationship with Paul Rosche at BMW.

Patrick Depailler took the F2 championship in an Elf-sponsored March-BMW, the marque's last title for several years as the Elf sponsorship programme and (in 1976) the arrival of Renault engines turned the formula into a French benefit.

During the same weekend of the Austrian Grand Prix, Mark Donohue died after a practice accident in a Penske-owned March.

Through the mid-1970s, March provided privateers with simple, fast, and economical cars; at one point Frank Williams bought an allegedly brand new 761B only to discover that it still had orange paint on it from its time as a 751 with Brambilla driving.

The 761 was fast but fragile, with the F2 components starting to show the strain; by this point the F1 effort was being run on a small budget with a two-car works effort featuring Peterson and Brambilla, the cars tending to turn up in different liveries as race-by-race sponsorship deals were signed, and a B-team entered under the March Engines banner for Stuck and Arturo Merzario.

The theory behind the design was that this arrangement would offer improved traction and reduced aerodynamic drag (compared to the Tyrrell, which used ultra-small front wheels and normally sized rears).

Yet, as the works were fading from F1 the 761, by virtue of being cheap, simple and readily available, became the tool of choice for privateers, notably Frank Williams who after his acrimonious split with Walter Wolf needed a car to get back into racing before his own vehicle was ready.

In 1981 March made a half-hearted and ill-financed effort to return to F1, building cars that were little more than heavy and insufficiently stiff copies of the Williams FW07 for Mick Ralph and John McDonald's RAM Racing.

The team acquired a major sponsorship deal from Rothmans in 1982, but the money came too late for Herd or Adrian Reynard (who was working as chief engineer) to improve the performance of the cars.

An important sideline appeared when Group C and IMSA GTP racing started; March built a line of sports-prototypes descended from the unsuccessful BMW M1C, which, fitted with Porsche or Chevrolet engines, enjoyed considerable success in America (but less in Europe).

March abandoned the Formula Three market at the end of the 1981 season; they had enjoyed periods of dominance in the category, but this had faded in favour of Ralt, though.

Into the late 1980s, the F3000 programme started to be eclipsed by Lola and Ralt, and was virtually obliterated by Reynard Motorsport's entry to the market.

It was the only normally aspirated car to lead a race in anger (Nigel Mansell in the Willams Judd had led away at the Brazilian Grand Prix after inheriting pole position - although was second by the first corner)[6] - albeit briefly - during the season when Capelli passed the all-powerful McLaren-Honda turbo of Alain Prost on lap 16 during the Japanese Grand Prix (Prost missed a gear out of the chicane which allowed Capelli to lead over the line.

Herd remained the biggest shareholder, and a block of shares was made over to key employees who had stayed with the company through thick and thin.

The situation was resolved in early 1989 when Akira Akagi's Leyton House bought March Racing, including both the F1 operation and F3000 production facilities, leaving Herd to embark on other ventures.

The wind tunnel was a disaster, with the insulation being far too efficient - it was effectively a pressure cooker that generated useless results and this destroyed the competitiveness of various teams that used it, including Lotus.

The economic downturn of the late 80s affected March's market severely and the management recognised that they were producing poor customer cars; the logical move was to merge with Ralt, with March becoming the brand for industry partnership deals, leaving Ralt to look after the production categories.

The team was bought by Ken Marrable, an associate of Akagi, and resumed the name March for the 1992 season but with little funding and results fell far short of expectations.

The Leyton House Racing operation closed down as the team (now unconnected to the March group) attempted to assemble a project for the beginning of the 1993 season.

[8] The entry was made when a forty-five million Euros budget cap was being considered for Formula One, to allow less well-funded teams to be competitive with the frontrunners.