Without sponsors and chronically lacking funds, Morris Nunn entered his small Ensign Racing team into the 1981 season using a slightly modified version of the 1980 car. The Ensign N180B was a classic ground-effect wing car, openly resembling the Williams FW07, and was powered by the traditional three-liter Ford-Cosworth DFV V8 engine paired with a Hewland FGA 400 gearbox, all mounted on an aluminum monocoque chassis known as the MN16.
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| ENSIGN N180B, Marc Surer Imola, San Marino GP 1981 |
The chassis design was, however, new, developed by the British team's two designers, Ralph Bellamy and Nigel Bennett. The new chassis was necessary due to new regulations requiring a deformable structure in front of the pedals and the abolition of movable side skirts.
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| ENSIGN N180B, Marc Surer Montecarlo, Monaco GP 1981 |
Apart from these modifications, the car was essentially the same as the one that competed in the 1980 season. It was used in the 1981 World Championship by Swiss driver Marc Surer, who was replaced from the Spanish Grand Prix onwards by Chilean driver Eliseo Salazar. Thanks to his strong financial backing from personal sponsors, Salazar easily secured seats in a Formula 1 era increasingly desperate for funding, as was typical of the early 1980s.
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| ENSIGN N180B, Eliseo Salazar Las Vegas, Caesars Palace GP 1981 |
Despite unpromising expectations, the 1981 season turned out to be one of the best in terms of results for Nunn’s team. Surer achieved an unexpected fourth place in the second race of the championship in Brazil and a sixth-place finish in Monaco. In the second half of the season, Salazar managed to secure a sixth-place finish in the Netherlands.
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| ENSIGN N180B, Marc Surer Long Beach, USA West GP 1981 |
Ensign Racing ended the season with five points, the second-best result in the team's ten-year history in the top category, after the ten points scored in 1977. The fourth-place finish in Brazil remained the team’s last major success and its best-ever result. After that, Ensign entered a slow but inevitable decline, which led to the sale of all its assets to Theodore Racing at the end of the 1982 season.
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