March Engineering was a Formula One constructor and manufacturer of customer racing cars from the United Kingdom. Although only moderately successful in Grand Prix competition, March racing cars enjoyed much better success in other categories of competition, including Formula Two, Formula Three, IndyCar and IMSA GTP sportscar racing. March Engineering began operations in 1969. Its four founders were Max Mosley, Alan Rees, Graham Coaker and Robin Herd. The company name is an acronym of their initials - "M"osley, "A"lan "R"ees, "C"oaker, and "H"erd. They each had a specific area of expertise: Mosley looked after the commercial side, Herd was the designer, Rees managed the racing team and Coaker oversaw production at the factory in Bicester, Oxfordshire. The history of March is dominated by the conflict between the need for constant development and testing to remain at the peak of competitiveness in F1 and the need to build simple, reliable cars for customers in order to make a profit. Herd's original F1 plan was to build a single-car team around Jochen Rindt, but Rindt became dismayed at the size of the March programme and elected to continue at Team Lotus. Andrea de Adamich driving a March-Alfa Romeo 711 at the 1971 German Grand Prix De Adamich going to practice in a March 711 March's launch was unprecedented in its breadth and impact. After building a single Formula Three car in 1969, March announced that they would be introducing customer cars for F1, F2, F3, Formula Ford and Can-Am in 1970, as well as running works F1, F2 and F3 teams.
