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Technical Innovations which DID begin in F1?


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#1 sabrejet

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 11:50

I've noted a number of recent posts regarding supposed innovations which saw their first motorsport use in F1, but these have largely been debunked as myth (carbon fibre, slick tyres, turbos, monocoque tubs and ground effects to name a few).

 

This got me wondering what motorsport innovations really had seen their first iterations in F1, and I have to say I can't think of anything. 

 

So can anyone do better? Form a queue here...


Edited by sabrejet, 26 August 2015 - 11:50.


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#2 Ray Bell

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 12:07

Adjustable inlet tracts?

These were a new Mercedes-Benz development slated for use in '56.

#3 RStock

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 17:15

Paddle shifters? Don't know of them being used before Ferrari developed them.



#4 Charlieman

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 19:12

Nothing. Nowt. No thing. Rien. Bugger all.

 

But if you are smart enough to send the fools down a blind alley, I might consider business with with you. 



#5 63Corvette

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 19:38

Invention of the pneumatic tire by the Dunlop Corp  ;)



#6 Rob G

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 00:50

How about the W12 engine? It had been used in aircraft, but never in motorsport until MGN and Life developed theirs... or at least tried to.



#7 DanTra2858

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 02:48

Disc brakes were used on Aircfaft during WW2 & the Pacific War as were Turbo's.

#8 Peter0Scandlyn

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 05:04

F-ducts. Never made it thru to road cars  :well:



#9 nmansellfan

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 06:52

Active suspension.  I was surprised to find it first appeared on a road car (Toyota Soarer, semi active) in 1983, but Lotus had a working prototype on a GP car in '81-'82 I think?


Edited by nmansellfan, 27 August 2015 - 06:53.


#10 Henri Greuter

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 07:09

Ground effect with using underfloor profiles?  Be it the early 70's March or the Lotus 78?

 

 

Henri



#11 Allan Lupton

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 07:48

How about the W12 engine? It had been used in aircraft, but never in motorsport until MGN and Life developed theirs... or at least tried to.

No idea what MGN and Life is/are so must be more recent that the Napier-Railton which raced at Brooklands in the 1930s!



#12 Allan Lupton

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 07:52

Disc brakes were used on Aircfaft during WW2 & the Pacific War as were Turbo's.

That's not answering the question as put, but disc brakes were used in motor sport by Jaguar at Le Mans before they were used in Grand Prix cars.

The 1925 Halford Special was originally turbo-supercharged, but I don't think it raced in that configuration.



#13 Peter Morley

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 09:22

Lanchester apparently had a disc brake in the early 1900s but it was too noisy to be practical.

They started to appear on some American road cars (Crosley?) around 1949 a few years before Jaguar raced them.

 

I suspect the final 'answer' to this topic is that F1 rarely comes up with new ideas but is very good at picking up on and developing new concepts.



#14 sabrejet

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 11:55

No idea what MGN and Life is/are so must be more recent that the Napier-Railton which raced at Brooklands in the 1930s!

 

Dammit! I was going to say that.



#15 sabrejet

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 11:57

Ground effect with using underfloor profiles?  Be it the early 70's March or the Lotus 78?

 

 

Henri

 

CanAm got there before this: see Chapparral. Maybe prior to this however? I know BRM were looking at it in F1 before March, Lotus etc.



#16 sabrejet

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 11:59

That's not answering the question as put, but disc brakes were used in motor sport by Jaguar at Le Mans before they were used in Grand Prix cars.

The 1925 Halford Special was originally turbo-supercharged, but I don't think it raced in that configuration.

 

Wasn't the Vauxhall-Villiers raced as a turbo/sc?



#17 sabrejet

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 12:01

Invention of the pneumatic tire by the Dunlop Corp  ;)

 

First raced where though? Must go along with the first raid-style races? Not F1 then. :)



#18 kayemod

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 13:46

CanAm got there before this: see Chapparral. Maybe prior to this however? I know BRM were looking at it in F1 before March, Lotus etc.

 

McLaren beat them all to it with the underbody profile of the M6A, refined in later M8s etc, Chaparral were only sticking wings on top at that stage, though some of the frontal ducting om their cars must have helped marginally.

 

Paddle shifters are an odd idea, clearly very good in a racing car, but very little use in most road cars it seems to me, and probably used by few other than boy racers in hot Clios & Meganes. My last two cars had steering wheel paddles, used very occasionally in the first to get the 5 speed box to change up sooner, but almost never in the current 7 speeder, with a really competent auto, what's the point? Road testers in car magazines, yes I mean you Frankel, use phrases like "The paddle shift is a boon to override the box when you're really pressing on", but I think that anyone who drives like that on crowded UK roads should be locked up, if not for that, then for their Pseud's Corner writing style.



#19 Allan Lupton

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 13:47

Wasn't the Vauxhall-Villiers raced as a turbo/sc?

Amherst Villiers used roots blowers, not turbosuperchargers, so no.



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#20 sabrejet

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 14:02

McLaren beat them all to it with the underbody profile of the M6A, refined in later M8s etc, Chaparral were only sticking wings on top at that stage, though some of the frontal ducting om their cars must have helped marginally.

 

Paddle shifters are an odd idea, clearly very good in a racing car, but very little use in most road cars it seems to me, and probably used by few other than boy racers in hot Clios & Meganes. My last two cars had steering wheel paddles, used very occasionally in the first to get the 5 speed box to change up sooner, but almost never in the current 7 speeder, with a really competent auto, what's the point? Road testers in car magazines, yes I mean you Frankel, use phrases like "The paddle shift is a boon to override the box when you're really pressing on", but I think that anyone who drives like that on crowded UK roads should be locked up, if not for that, then for their Pseud's Corner writing style.

 

Agreed on the paddle shifters (and thanks for the CanAm clarification): have had a couple of road cars with paddle shift, and only use them to nudge the gearbox into changing up or down. Any good automatic shouldn't need that of course.

 

But it was also quite good for revving the b@lls out and getting turbine stall 'chatter' on easing off. Which puts me in the boy racer category! God I'm old. 



#21 AJCee

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 14:08

Active suspension.  I was surprised to find it first appeared on a road car (Toyota Soarer, semi active) in 1983, but Lotus had a working prototype on a GP car in '81-'82 I think?

 

Weren't Tyrrell the first to try to develop this on a 008 in 1978?



#22 Tim Murray

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 14:27

Tyrrell tried active camber control on the 008 and 009. In this earlier thread:

Tyrrell 008 fan car ?

there’s some fascinating input from Gene Varnier, who was a Tyrrell designer at the time, including:
 

(etc)

Another interesting well kept "secret" feature designed into the 008 was active camber control. This again was Maurice's idea and was a concept he prototyped on his Mk3 Cortina road car ! At that stage the camber was initially controlled via a pendulum controlled spool valve, front and rear. The response time was acceptable for a road car, but deemed too slow for a racing application. This was when MOOG servo valves first appeared on the motor racing scene, to solve the response problem.
As one of my areas of design responsibility on the Tyrrells was suspension (front and rear), I had to do the installation design of the system for the 008.
If you have a chance to see a 008 at a historic meeting, or museum, you will perhaps then understand why the front and rear top wishbones were not directly mounted to the chassis and rear frame.
As the racing season progressed, the active camber project was also put on hold. It was resurrected for the 009 car, but due to the suspension layout, the control was done via links to the outboard of the bottom wishbones....unfortunately, much more heavily loaded.
This layout was tested by Didier Pironi at the June 1979 Silverstone tyre test. The system worked fine, but as the Goodyear cross-ply tyres of that era were heavily cambered in profile, the lap times with and without the system operating were identical. So, due to the weight penalty and no performance gain, it was decided to remove the system from the car.

(etc)



#23 nmansellfan

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Posted 27 August 2015 - 17:10

Wow, I never knew that!  you learn something new everyday, thanks AJCee and Tim :up:



#24 Charlieman

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 13:00

Paddle shifters? Don't know of them being used before Ferrari developed them.

That was my instinct but I think it far more likely that they existed as assistive technology for disabled drivers or as controls for industrial machinery. If you have a few hours to waste, try looking at patent applications. Although it may well be one of those designs that nobody tried to patent because it is so obvious.



#25 Charlieman

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 13:15

Tyrrell tried active camber control on the 008 and 009. In this earlier thread:

Thanks for that. In the early 1990s, I tried doing the maths/geometry for active camber control. It was just an intellectual exercise although I considered turning it into a computer model. I gave up because there were too many unknowns. It was possible to know the horizon and straight up/down, but racing circuits are rarely flat and drivers have this habit of driving over kerbs. And it was really easy to change the angle of incidence of the car.



#26 Doug Nye

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 10:15

McLaren beat them all to it with the underbody profile of the M6A, refined in later M8s etc...

 

Do tell us more about the underbody profile of the M6A, refined in later M8s...????

 

DCN



#27 kayemod

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 10:54

Do tell us more about the underbody profile of the M6A, refined in later M8s...????

 

DCN

 

We aren't talking about a Lotus 78 type breakthrough here Doug, it was very basic aerodynamic thinking by Robin Herd, and the "underbody profile" was all formed in the floor under the fibreglass part of the front end. I'm sure it must have been covered in your 1984 book McLaren, though I haven't checked. The moulded floor rose slightly towards the front axle line in a shallow curve, and that was all it was, but surprisingly effective. Bruce did his usual bare chassis testing at Goodwood, and was impressed by the difference in front end grip with the body fitted, much more than he'd have expected. Those famous off-body test runs were really just making a virtue of a necessity, as the final bodywork was always ready a few weeks after the rolling chassis, Specialised Mouldings couldn't make the body until McLaren provided either a monocoque, or more usually a plywood copy to work from. The M6A was before my time, just an occasional nosy teenage "family friend" visitor in those days, though I was there to see the thinking being refined when the later M8s came along.



#28 sabrejet

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 11:02

So the Lotus 78 could be described as evolution rather than revolution...



#29 Terry Walker

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 14:08

I doubt that the grand prix environment is the right one for new technologies to appear; rather, car builders are constantly on the lookout for better solutions to their specialised problems, using innovations already proved elsewhere. Anybody introducing a radical new idea,untested, into a racing car with a demanding season ahead is asking for trouble.

 

Was the superfast instant gearchange box a F1 innovation, or a development of something that was already proven?


Edited by Terry Walker, 30 August 2015 - 14:08.


#30 AAGR

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 14:17

Maybe I'm getting forgetful, but wasn't it Peugeot, in 1912, who invented the use of the four-valves-per-cylinder/twin-overhead camshaft engine layout which is universal today ? Or had that already appeared on early aircraft engines of the day ?



#31 D-Type

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 19:04

I seem to remember someone saying that the Ernest Henry four-valves-per-cylinder/ hemispherical combustion chamber/ twin-overhead cam engine layout was tried on a Peugeot motorcycle before the Grand Prix cars.  Can anyone confirm yea or nay?


Edited by D-Type, 02 July 2017 - 11:30.


#32 AAGR

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 21:13

If we can rely on Pomeroy's opinion, in The Grand Prix Car (Volume 1), regarding the 1912 Peugeot, he quotes :

 

'Multiple valves, inclined valves and an overhead camshaft had all be used in various combinations prior to 1912, but Henri was the first to combine all the three features just mentioned and a patent was claimed ....'

 

  So unless there was such usage on an earlier engine of any type, this looks like a real innovation.



#33 Lee Nicolle

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Posted 01 September 2015 - 00:04

F1 has taken ideas from many arenas and spent a LOT of money on them to improve them. Well at least try too.

I suspect more innovation in Sports Cars than F1.

More innovation on American dirt tracks and Indy cars too. Especially in the 50s 60s. Such as seat belts and rollbars!

 

Flappy paddle gearboxes on road cars are generally just an auto, a T bar shift [column!!] would work just as well and be easier to maintain too. But it is Yuppy/Trendy! As is so many pieces of bling on road cars.



#34 Lee Nicolle

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Posted 01 September 2015 - 00:06

If we can rely on Pomeroy's opinion, in The Grand Prix Car (Volume 1), regarding the 1912 Peugeot, he quotes :

 

'Multiple valves, inclined valves and an overhead camshaft had all be used in various combinations prior to 1912, but Henri was the first to combine all the three features just mentioned and a patent was claimed ....'

 

  So unless there was such usage on an earlier engine of any type, this looks like a real innovation.

The basic idea from these Pug engines generated the Offy.

Has anyone ever used an Offy in a F1. Not to my knowledge. I dont think the rules ever favored thus.



#35 Ray Bell

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Posted 01 September 2015 - 01:45

Other than Rodger Ward at Sebring in the USGP of 1959, you mean?

I do think there was some kind of lineage from the 1960 Scarab engines back to that ancestry, wasn't there?

#36 Lee Nicolle

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Posted 01 September 2015 - 07:46

Other than Rodger Ward at Sebring in the USGP of 1959, you mean?

I do think there was some kind of lineage from the 1960 Scarab engines back to that ancestry, wasn't there?

I have no idea at all on this stuff. That is why I asked



#37 Peter Morley

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Posted 01 September 2015 - 11:37

The Scarab F1 cars ran a specially made desmodromic Offenhauser engines during the season they competed in F1.

They certainly have some lineage to that ancestry.

In historic racing they have used non-desmo engines, I think there is a precedent in that at some race in period they ran such an engine.

 

Rodger Ward's Leader Cards Kurtis Kraft that he ran in the 1959 US GP also had an Offenhauser engine.



#38 Gene Varnier

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Posted 02 September 2015 - 20:43

McLaren beat them all to it with the underbody profile of the M6A, refined in later M8s etc, Chaparral were only sticking wings on top at that stage, though some of the frontal ducting om their cars must have helped marginally.

 

.

To add my two pence worth to this thread, my experience finds that Chaparral were the first to try to achieve downforce by profiling the underside of a race car. For those lucky enough to have a copy of "Chevrolet=Racing, 14 Years of Raucous Silence" (first edition,printed 1972), if you turn to page 103 you will see a side view of the Chaparral 1 (1963 car) showing a curved underside profile. Reading the text below the photo states that "the theory of the moment" was to intentionally curve the underside in order to create half a venturi in order to create a low pressure area beneath the car, holding it down. Unfortunately, all they achieved was lift ! As is the case with many concepts, one or two vital elements were missing that would have made the concept work. In this case it was the addition of skirts, which is what Colin Chapman and his designers did with the Type 78 and more effectively with the 79.

So, is it Chaparral, McLaren and finally and the most successful, Lotus ? Or, is it really McLaren first because they did achieve a degree of downforce. Anyway, maybe someone can up with an earlier example ?



#39 sabrejet

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Posted 03 September 2015 - 11:51

To add my two pence worth to this thread, my experience finds that Chaparral were the first to try to achieve downforce by profiling the underside of a race car. For those lucky enough to have a copy of "Chevrolet=Racing, 14 Years of Raucous Silence" (first edition,printed 1972), if you turn to page 103 you will see a side view of the Chaparral 1 (1963 car) showing a curved underside profile. Reading the text below the photo states that "the theory of the moment" was to intentionally curve the underside in order to create half a venturi in order to create a low pressure area beneath the car, holding it down. Unfortunately, all they achieved was lift ! As is the case with many concepts, one or two vital elements were missing that would have made the concept work. In this case it was the addition of skirts, which is what Colin Chapman and his designers did with the Type 78 and more effectively with the 79.

So, is it Chaparral, McLaren and finally and the most successful, Lotus ? Or, is it really McLaren first because they did achieve a degree of downforce. Anyway, maybe someone can up with an earlier example ?

 

Seems that yet again, Jim Hall has a great deal to be proud of. I do recall seeing a (1920s?) patent for simple under-body suction somewhere, so I suppose Hall can only claim (for now) its first practical application in motorsport. For sure, from the late 50s to the '70s, single-seaters were generally toothpaste tubes, and so not much chance of even accidentally stumbling on such an effect. 



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#40 Roger Clark

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Posted 03 September 2015 - 16:00

Did not the 1938 Auto-Union record-breaker have all the essential elements of ground effects: fairing along the sides almost touching the ground, curved underbody and raised tail - effectively a diffuser?



#41 Roger Clark

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Posted 03 September 2015 - 16:24

If we can rely on Pomeroy's opinion, in The Grand Prix Car (Volume 1), regarding the 1912 Peugeot, he quotes :

 

'Multiple valves, inclined valves and an overhead camshaft had all be used in various combinations prior to 1912, but Henri was the first to combine all the three features just mentioned and a patent was claimed ....'

 

  So unless there was such usage on an earlier engine of any type, this looks like a real innovation.

Griffith Borgeson, in The Classic Twin Cam Engine, says that he searched for evidence of a patent but found none.  The speed with which the Peugeot engines were copied also suggests that there was no patent.


Edited by Roger Clark, 03 September 2015 - 16:26.


#42 bradbury west

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Posted 03 September 2015 - 17:03

Whilst I claim no originator's laurels for Paul Emery, and I dislike getting into who did what first type discussions, those of us fortunate enough to have enjoyed conversations with the redoubtable John Campbell-Jones will be aware of the elementary ground effects of the Formula One car which John drove for Emery. The perceived evidence was in wet practice at Silverstone with an old 4 pot Climax vs V8s. John is an honest man, sure of himself , and has no reason to make things up. That car disappeared in its original form.
Roger Lund

#43 kayemod

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Posted 03 September 2015 - 18:26



To add my two pence worth to this thread, my experience finds that Chaparral were the first to try to achieve downforce by profiling the underside of a race car. For those lucky enough to have a copy of "Chevrolet=Racing, 14 Years of Raucous Silence" (first edition,printed 1972), if you turn to page 103 you will see a side view of the Chaparral 1 (1963 car) showing a curved underside profile. Reading the text below the photo states that "the theory of the moment" was to intentionally curve the underside in order to create half a venturi in order to create a low pressure area beneath the car, holding it down. Unfortunately, all they achieved was lift ! As is the case with many concepts, one or two vital elements were missing that would have made the concept work. In this case it was the addition of skirts, which is what Colin Chapman and his designers did with the Type 78 and more effectively with the 79.

So, is it Chaparral, McLaren and finally and the most successful, Lotus ? Or, is it really McLaren first because they did achieve a degree of downforce. Anyway, maybe someone can up with an earlier example ?

 

Well, maybe one pence at a pinch, but that's being generous. Jim Hall in his racing days was a brilliant engineer, I'd give him full credit for all kinds of clever ideas, but any ground effect or downforce creating shapes on his 1963 or earlier cars wouldn't be one of them. Look at this 1963 photo and judge for yourself. While Jim did a lot of development work on his Chaparral 1, it took him a year to make it even competitive, and the original design wasn't his. It was almost all the work of Troutman & Barnes who built the first cars, body styling was all the work of industrial designer Chuck Pelly. Jim never made any secret of the fact that he didn't have much to do with it, he says that he never thought of his first car as a Chaparral at all. Also, I can't quite understand how anyone could claim that any experiment that had the opposite effect from what was hoped for was "a technical innovation".

 

Chaparral%201.jpg

 

McLaren on the other hand achieved exactly what they'd hoped for with their toe in the water experiment with the M6A underside. After the first day of Goodwood testing, Bruce got the times of the bare chassis car, with only radiator ducting fitted, down to 1:16.2. When the body eventually arrived, he was able to lap consistently in the mid 1:14s, a full two second improvement, and rather more than they'd hoped. When Denny had a go, he achieved times a full second faster than that. We all know how successful the car was when raced, so I think that certainly does qualify as innovative.



#44 Ray Bell

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Posted 03 September 2015 - 21:58

Jim Hall didn't claim all the credit for a lot of innovation...

In one article in an American magazine he gave that credit to Hap Sharp... along the lines of: "He comes up with ten ideas a day, not all of them work but one will. Who else do you know who comes up with one good idea a day?"

#45 TIPO61

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Posted 04 September 2015 - 19:42

Jim's actual quote about Hap's ideas was a tad pithier than you recount.



#46 TIPO61

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Posted 06 September 2015 - 07:58

That pic in post #43 of Jim in front of Penske and (I think) Bruce McLaren is a Chaparral body that, I think, only ran twice with that guise. Mosport and Sebrring both in '63. It was, of course, firther modified with those silly F.I.A fins at Sebring. Not pretty. 



#47 Doug Nye

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Posted 06 September 2015 - 09:05

I'm going to do a pernickety Dave McKinney here. Mention in this thread of pre-WW1 pioneering Peugeots and pre-WW2 pioneering Auto Unions surely ignores the 'F1' definition in the title question?  In other words, surely, innovation from 1947 forward. I am still fascinated by the McLaren M6A story - one I don't recall having heard before, or if I had I certainly have not retained it.  Thanks for bringing it up. Not that it's anything to do with 'F1' - tee-hee...

 

DCN



#48 Manfred Cubenoggin

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Posted 06 September 2015 - 10:22

The more I look at the pix in post #43, the more I"m convinced that this is from the '63 running of the Player's 200
at Mosport. Tipo61's references made me look that much more closely. The scene of this photo would be in the short chute
between T9 and T10 coming up to finish a lap.

I attended the event and took many snaps in the paddock with my 'Box Brownie'. All three of these cars figured in my captures.
I still have the photos and negs but have long since lost the ability to post them here at TNF. The #44 Cooper is actually driven
by Dan Gurney. The #6 car is the highly-controversial Zerex Special driven by Roger Penske(not Patrick McGooghan).

#49 D28

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Posted 06 September 2015 - 15:44

Correct, the photos is from 63 Players 200.



#50 kayemod

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Posted 06 September 2015 - 17:04

I'm going to do a pernickety Dave McKinney here. Mention in this thread of pre-WW1 pioneering Peugeots and pre-WW2 pioneering Auto Unions surely ignores the 'F1' definition in the title question?  In other words, surely, innovation from 1947 forward. I am still fascinated by the McLaren M6A story - one I don't recall having heard before, or if I had I certainly have not retained it.  Thanks for bringing it up. Not that it's anything to do with 'F1' - tee-hee...

 

DCN

 

You're right of course Doug, and I'd say that bringing in pre-WW2 examples is beyond the scope of this thread, but later than that? As you'll probably recall, when you entered McLaren's Colnbrook factory back in the 70s, there weren't separate areas for different types of car, there could be a couple of F1s, a CanAm car, an F5000 and even an F2, all in more or less the same open space. Everything seemed to be being worked on at the same time, so that a "technical Innovation" on a CanAm car could easily find its way onto any of the others and vice versa, they wouldn't have pigeonholed any bright ideas in the various categories. Most other teams at the time weren't as multi-disciplined as McLaren, but the same would apply to them, though maybe to a lesser extent. As you'll be well aware, huge teams employing hundreds of people to concentrate on F1 to the exclusion of everything else are a relatively recent phenomenon in F1 terms, so I think maybe we shouldn't be restricted solely to F1 here.