Forced to abandon the FA1 after it was shown that the car was plagiarized against the Shadow DN9, Arrows quickly had to redesign a new car for the second half of the 1978 season. While resembling the FA1, the A1 was quite different from it. to escape further allegations of plagiarism. Competitive enough (Patrese was fourth in Canada), the A1 was also used in 1979 when the new A2 proved much less competitive than Arrows expected. Jochen Mass and Rolf Stommelen also piloted the A2.