Hi.
Well, to start with, there was a well-written article in the weekly supplement to "l'Equipe", the Franch daily sport newspaper, about Life racing and I will post scans next week. It gives you a good insight about the team.
My life with Life requires some time to be told. Since I have some work to do, I'll have to split it in a few 'chapters'.
At the time I was a student of Electronic Engineering at the University of Bologna, looking for a graduation thesis. I was introduced to Mr. Vita by a common friend. They needed someone with some knowledge of electronics, to take care of the TDD-made engine control unit (now TDD-Walbro) on track and in the dyno-bench room, so I was hired and I could do my thesis (a simulation of the W12 motor) with Life racing.
I don't know how come Bruno was hired. All I know is that he was a great guy to work with, and it is likely that he did not get paid. The figure of the contract might be right, but I don't think the money ever materialized. I cannot be sure as I never looked in Bruno's bank account
but...
I worked together with Bruno (I'm an electronic engineer) throughout the season; as I skipped the first two GPs I also never had a chance to meet Brabham apart from once in the facory. Bruno was very helpful, patient, and behaved very professionally despite being obvious to anyone that the team was completely hopeless. He has a good mechanical background and I remember him personally making some parts on the lathe in Monaco: imagine the two of us driving a scooter, searching for a toolshop in Monaco, so that he could make washers that someone in the factory had forgotten to assemble... and imagine one of the current F1 drivers doing so
The performance numbers speak for themselves. On the dyno bench, the motor would give 480 Hp @12000 RPM. A Judd motor of that time was around 580/600 Hp. The lack of horsepower was not probably due to the W12 architecture but due to inefficient combustion. In fact, after Life folded, we took the motor, and for our own intellectual curiosity developed the center 4 cylinders gaining approx 35 Hp. An extrapolation on the whole 12 cylinders made us think that the same changes applied to the whole motor would provide around 580 Hp. Not that the motor would last long, but anyway...
Anyway, it was believed back then that in the car, due to poor air intake, power would significantly drop.
Had the motor been any good, maybe money would have come in from an interested third party. But with chronic lack of funds, and poor performance, it was obvious that the whole operation was doomed.
I was told by Rocchi that before committing themselves to the 12 cyl Boxer, Ferrari had developed and tested a W12 'slice', i.e. a prototype three cylinders motor with the same architecture of Life racing, with good dyno bench result, but eventually the team choose the Boxer as it was a more proven architecture with less in-car installation troubles (the W12 had three exhausts, three injection rails, and so on)
Reliability was abysmal, and still, we are not sure why (I mean myself and my friend who is currently rebuilding the W12). Certainly, however, the symptoms were those of a bad bushing lubrication.
Personally, I think that the motor, with extensive R&D, could be turned into a good engine revving at 12.000 RPM, so good enough to compete in 1990; however, doing so would have required resources far beyond anything available to a small team - let alone a financially broken one... I don't think that the W12 could rev much higher than that.
I just now called my friend who has rebuilt the W12. The complete car was shown recently at a fair in Spain, statically, but the motor was rebuilt, tested earlier on the bench and works. Hopefully before the end of March, it should do a few laps.
I will post more next week.
Regards
Maurizio