Kauhsen was a Formula One constructor from Germany, founded by former sportscar driver Willi Kauhsen. The team started in Formula Two in 1976, purchasing Renault cars, and raced with an assortment of drivers with limited success. Kauhsen then entered the 1979 Formula One season, spending 1978 designing their own chassis with Cosworth engines. They participated in two World Championship Grands Prix with Gianfranco Brancatelli, failing to qualify on both occasions, before the team was shut down. Formula Two Willi Kauhsen, who had raced Porsches and quasi-works Alfa Romeo sports cars, founded his racing team in Formula Two in 1976, buying the championship-winning Elf-Renault 2J Formula Two cars. The cars, driven by Michel Leclère and Klaus Ludwig, were renamed to Kauhsen-Renaults and initially started successfully, with Leclère taking pole at the first race of the 1977 Formula Two championship at Silverstone. Continued modifications to the chassis by Kauhsen however led to downturns in performance, and the car's original performance turned to successive failures to qualify; the poor results making Ludwig leave the squad mid-season. The second seat was then rotated between José Dolhem, Vittorio Brambilla and Alain Prost for the remainder of the season. Brambilla achieved a third place in the second heat at the Misano Circuit, which was the team's best result in the Formula Two championship. Subsequent races saw a best result of 10th for Prost, and with successive retirements and failures to qualify Kauhsen gave up on the championship before the final races. Formula One Although unsuccessful in Formula Two, Kauhsen decided to enter Formula One in , and after failing to secure a deal to run the Kojima cars used in the 1977 Japanese Grand Prix, Kauhsen spent 1978 designing their own chassis. Bringing in designer Klaus Kapitza from Ford, Kauhsen planned to construct a copy of the Lotus 79, a car that had dominated the 1978 championship due to the use of ground effects. Apart from the chassis, Kauhsen bought the rest of the components from suppliers, including the Cosworth DFV engine utilised by the majority of the teams at the time, and an outdated five-speed gearbox from Hewland. Having planned to follow the then-advanced use of ground effects by Lotus, initial testing of the prototype revealed fundamental design issues; the designers failed to take account of the variable ride height of cars during braking and acceleration, stopping the ground effects functioning correctly. These problems forced