Judd, were there engines ever any good?

I know that Judd supplied March, Williams, and Lotus in the late 1980s, but was their engine any good? Did the teams blame Judd for bad results? Any other info on the Judd f1 project would be helpful.

Not that I know of.

The Judd designed OX11A was the first of the new breed of sub-100kg F1 motors. I think given a sufficient budget Judd could have developed a top-drawer engine, although to take the next step up would have required him to do a lot more delegation of the hands-on aspects and be more managerial which is not really his style.

They got a few 2nd places; Mansell (Williams) in Spain and Britain in 1988, Capelli (March-Leyton House) in France 1990, after leading for most of the race. Gugelmin (March-Leyton House) was 3rd in Brazil, 1989 but on reliability. Capelli also led for a while in the Japanese GP, in 1988 was it? Judd probably lacked a bit in the fianance department and was'nt able to put in much development.

Did'nt Yamaha base their engine on the Judd engine block, they had a reasonable year with Tyrell in 1994.

John Judd can claim some GP victories - having been one of the team that created the dual-world championship winning Repco-Brabham engines.
Desmo could be right about him being too much "hands on". Three or four years ago I arranged an interview with him early in the week of the Australian Grand Prix. He fidgeted like a cat on a hot tin roof and had trouble concentrating on what I was asking him - though I did get a column out of it.
I asked him, if I was to visit him in England in the F1 off-season, could he give me some time to talk about Jack Brabham (who was a business partner with him in the engine business until selling his share back to Judd a few years ago) and the Repco-Brabham days.
He said, "Not really. There is no off season for me."
It sounded a lot like a man who takes on more than he can handle (and I can relate to that - sitting here surrounded by "projects").

Judd's 3.5-litre F1 engine now enlarged to 4 litres is one of today's best sportscar engines. So John is still very much living off that initial "GV" design from years ago (1991, to be precise).

Plus that the now standard F3000 Zytek engine is one of his designs as well...

They did not do very good for Williams.

Judd produced a V8 engine which was nearly on par with the Cosworth DFRs of the day. Their packaging was nearly identical. I'd like to have seen what could be done with more money.

mhferrari,

I doubt anything could have helped Williams in 1988 short of the Honda V6 turbo. In fact, even having that couldn't help Lotus either.

Originally posted by mhferrari
They did not do very good for Williams.

Not in 1988. But in 1982 as the horsepower gap to the turbo teams widened, Williams decided to throw a bit of money John Judd's way to see how much additional power they could wring out of the venerable DFV. They did get a rumoured additional 30-40 hp out of it compared with what Cosworth were prepared to give them. Keke Rosberg won the WDC with that Judd developed DFV.