Two German teams have made serious attempts up to gain a foothold in the formula 1. One was the Zakspeed team founded by Erich Zakowski from the small town Niederzissen in the Eifel-region. At the beginning both the chassis and the turbo engine were built in-house. When turbo engines were banned towards the end of 1988, Zakspeed continued to race with Yamaha engines for two more years. However, with little success. Finally the team had to retire for financial reasons in 1990.