23 replies to this topic

[Vicuna]

Probably one for Allen - what was the last F5000 car built?

I'm thinking the McRae GM3 and the last Elfin - MR9?? are the obvious contenders.

Any thoughts??

[Ray Bell]

The MR9 came after McRae's final effort...

But there was the McLaren M26 that was converted by Ganley (?) and sold to Allan Hamilton, driven by Alfie Costanzo.

Were these the only two 'ground effect' F5000s built?

[Vicuna]

M26 Ground effect?

Was it given side pods and skirts?

It didn't start life with them

[Ray Bell]

Yes, it was substantially modified...

And I believe it was later taken back to original... but I may be wrong in that. I have a story somewhere...

During 1979 and 1980, Allan Hamilton’s car, driven by Alfredo Costanzo, had proven hard to beat. It was the Lola T430 brought to Australia by Team VDS for Warwick Brown, and development in the hands of its new owners had seen it become the leading car in a field that was getting ever older.

Undeterred by CAMS refusing to give any more than one-year extensions to the formula’s existence, Hamilton went ahead with the purchase of two new cars after a discussion with Vern Schuppan.

Schuppan had formed an alliance with Howden Ganley, the ‘ga’ in Tiga Cars (Tim Schenken had been the ‘Ti’), and they had purchased the James Hunt GP-winning M26 and its stablemate and started to convert one of the cars to F5000 trim.

The M26 had a chequered history, starting very slowly and not being thrown in at the deep end at a time when the M23 was still a good car to have. Jochen Mass raced the car in some events in 1976, but it wasn’t until the 1977 Spanish race that the team decided they had to get on with the job and just make it work.

Hunt was ultimately able to place fourth in France, take a win in Britain, then follow up with a sixth in Austria, another fourth in Italy and a win in the US. The car continued as the McLaren entry until the end of 1978, by which time it was well outclassed. Hunt and team mate Tambay both finished the series on a mere 8 points.

At the time the Can-Am series in America, the series in which Schuppan wanted to compete, was using all-enveloping bodies on single seaters in an effort to attract crowds more used to seeing Sports Cars in bygone days. Half way through the conversion, Ganley decided it was better to build a new car from scratch.

Schuppan’s talk with Hamilton came soon after the AGP at Calder in 1980. “Alf drove the wheels off the T430 at Calder, he was just inspired, he could have won that race if the F1 cars hadn’t been allowed to keep their skirts as was originally planned,” Allan says, “so I wanted to put a ground effect car under him.”

The money spent, there was a long period of stall as Ganley failed to get on with the job of completing the conversion. It was a big job. The original sides were cut off the tub and ground effect or wing sidepods installed. Much change was required at the rear to fit the Chevrolet V8 in place of the DFV Cosworth, and M28 rear suspension was grafted in place.

Additionally, the gearbox was changed to the normal F5000 equipment, the DG 300 Hewland.
Probably uniquely in a F5000 car, this one had the oil tank cast into the bellhousing, which undoubtedly presented a problem when converting from the DFV to Chevrolet power.

In contrast to John McCormack’s attitude when converting the M23 a few years before, no effort was made to ensure easy conversion back to original. If a panel needed to be cut, it was cut.
When it eventually did arrive, there were some headaches suffered as the team tried to make sense of the unsorted car. “It was very heavy to steer,” Alfie remembers, “and the brakes were very hard. It was very hard, physically, to drive.”

The team actually did little development work on it, and it was to have a very brief life.

It was longer and wider than the T430, and even with their lack of experience with ground effects (spring rates as supplied were far too soft and they had no idea how high to take them), Alfie says that the M26 “would have won in anybody’s hands!”

Alfie had his problems in the car, particularly to do with the physical side. “I used to turn in at Mazda House at Amaroo (the sweeper down the back of the circuit), then I would lock my elbow into the side of the car to hold it, otherwise I would have run out of strength to keep turning the corner,” he told us.

“I never got a nice seat in that car, either, and I would do the same thing turning the corner off the main straight at Adelaide International Raceway.”

The car rewarded the team quite well, though, especially at Sandown, where 60 seconds had been a bogey time for the cars for many years. Just a few laps into a practice session Alfie got down to 59.7s, even though the car was slower on the straights than the Lola.
It was the only car ever to lap the circuit under the minute, and Hamilton is sure that with heavier springs Alf would have got into 57s.

“I had the same engine and the same gearing as I had in the Lola,” Alf says, “yet in Shell Corner, where I had to get off the power normally a couple of times, with the McLaren it was just get on the power and keep going!”

The Gold Star or Australian Drivers’ Championship had slipped into near-oblivion by the time this car appeared. That first round at Sandown was held on February 22, and the pole position time of 59.7 was enough to show that the balance of the small field might well go home.

John Wright led the field away, but Costanzo was able to stamp his mark on the race with a new lap record of 60.6 seconds and by putting almost a full lap on John Bowe, having his first drive of the ground-effect Elfin MR9 which featured in this series in MRA No ?????.

Next outing was Amaroo Park in July, with its two 20-lap heats, and again Wright got the better of Alf at the start of heat 1. Alf got by after a few laps with a better run onto the straight, and explains his starting problem as being with the engine. “We were using the alloy-headed engine,” he recalls, “and we got beaten to the first corner every time.”

He also remembers that the clutch had a very short travel, making it tricky, and especially tricky to drive around the pits. But around the pits is not where races are decided, and after Rob Butcher won the start of the second heat Alf got by and ran away and hid. Win number two, but the ailing nature of F5000 was seen in the lack of cars. Just six started, even the MR9 staying away.
The Gold Star had been reduced to just two rounds, one fewer than the previous year!

One other outing for the M26 had seen Alf take an easy win in the Colin Trengove Formula One Challenge race over fifteen laps. He didn’t even approach the lap record to take this race.

Another race at Sandown on September 13 for the abortive ‘Arco Graphite’ Series saw the lap record go down to 59.5 seconds in another demonstration of M26 superiority. They didn’t turn out to the Rose City 10,000 at Winton on October 25, fittingly won by John Wright after a year dogged with troubles.

Sadly, that was the end of F5000 in Australia, officially. The new category, Formula Pacific was up and running in separate races already, and the Grand Prix in November had already been announced as being for the smaller cars.

With the GP in view and Hamilton keen to see Alfie competitive, a deal was brokered to change mounts. This was aided by Bob Jane wanting Alf to be there too, and as the promoter he could see greater numbers through the turnstiles if the local hero was in there with a chance of matching the overseas stars committed to the event.

Jane bought the McLaren to encourage Hamilton to change to the smaller cars, Hamilton then went back to Ganley and his purchase of the two Tigas was to set the scene for the continued domination Alfie was to enjoy in the ensuing years.

But our concern here is with the McLaren, and it lay untouched with Jane for some time. Hamilton then bought it back and then sold it to Greg Jupp. Jupp ultimately sold the car back to McLaren International for their museum.

The second car was “still in boxes in our store in Noble Park,” Hamilton recalls, and was eventually sold to Perth’s Don O’Sullivan to be built up by Jamie Gard. The former WA Champion had ideas of keeping it for later use in Historics, or as an investment, but it was only a further three years on that an English buyer, Graham Storey, insisted on offering more than O’Sullivan could refuse, and the car left the country, later moving on to Switzerland.

The M26 F5000 was a major part of an ignominious end to a formula which had given Australian enthusiasts the greatest open-wheeler racing they had ever seen. With the noise and power, and the inherent lack of balance, F5000 was spectacular and exciting.

It also marked the end of an Australian tradition. From early times it had been popular to fit a big engine into a quality racing chassis, the first examples being Ford V8s in Bugattis and Ballots from about 1936, and successive examples followed right through until the seventies.

How sad it was to see the two fastest F5000s ever built coming onto the scene too late to make any real impact. Certainly Alfie won the series and the Elfin MR9 proved to have plenty of promise, but there were no more races and the politics of the day were edging the class closer and closer to extinction. The Gold Star had reached its lowest level of emaciation yet.

Sad, too, that the car would never see that further development, the testing to show that much harder springs were needed. “We had no experience with ground effect then,” says Hamilton, “bit if we had known what we learned later on . . .”

[Tim Murray]

Originally posted by Ray Bell
Hunt was ultimately able to place fourth in France, take a win in Britain, then follow up with a sixth in Austria, another fourth in Italy and a win in the US.

Some confusion here, I think. Hunt was third (not fourth) in France, and won in Britain, USA and Japan. Mass was fourth in GB, sixth in Austria, fourth in Italy and third in Canada.

[Ray Bell]

Very simple confusion... thanks...

Just thinking about this, surely the rebuild on this car was sufficiently substantial to consider it a complete car for the sake of this discussion... ie a new car, and thus probably the last F5000?

[dolomite]

Are there any pictures of this car? How similar was it to the modified ground effect M26 tried by the works team in practice for the '78 British GP?

[Ray Bell]

Sorry, I have none...

But I daresay somebody has. I don't think it would have looked anything like what McLaren did in 1978, but I'm away from all my mags and books at the moment so I can't say.

[oldjonesfan]

Are there any pictures of this car? How similar was it to the modified ground effect M26 tried by the works team in practice for the '78 British GP?

 

Yes there are pictures on the web of the Tiga modified/converted M26 Chevrolet.  There is a least one website (Italian if I recall correctly) that has a photo of Alf Costanzo in the Tiga modified car but incorrectly attributes it as the works F1 modified car.

 

Again if I recall correctly there was an article on the Tiga modified car in I think it was Australian Motor Racing where it's modification was described particularly the cutting of the Tub to slab sided and the side pod layout which was described I think as laid out on the shop floor or back of an envelope type job or something like that!  It appears different to the works modified "partial" ground effects M26 as practiced by James Hunt at the British Grand Prix in 1978 (there are at least twp photos of Hunt's car on the net which I am aware of one of which is on Wikipedia).

 

Be interesting if someone knew the respective Chassis Numbers?

[Tim Murray]

Lindsay Ross posted a photo of the car in the F5000 thread:
 

Alfredo Costanzo McLaren M26 Chev Sandown 1981

According to this site the chassis number was M26-4:

http://www.tuttomcla...ren M26 (F5000)

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by oldjonesfan
.....if I recall correctly there was an article on the Tiga modified car in I think it was Australian Motor Racing where it's modification was described particularly the cutting of the Tub to slab sided and the side pod layout which was described I think as laid out on the shop floor or back of an envelope type job or something like that!  It appears different to the works modified "partial" ground effects M26 as practiced by James Hunt.....

This car, according to the story in Motor Racing Australia, had been driven by Mass as well as Hunt. The latter used it, apparently, to win in Britain, finish sixth in Austria, fourth in France and Italy and continued with the team through 1978. There is no mention of any shortfall in the design, in fact no mention of design at all of how or where Ganley had set about the conversion to ground effects.

There is nothing in Alan Hamilton's account in the F5000 Thunder book about any such thing either, both stories merely mention that Ganley and Schuppan gave up on converting the car to Can-Am and that Ganley contracted to finish the conversion to a F5000 with ground effects.

Obviously there are pics of the car with both stories.

[Tim Murray]

Ray, you're repeating incorrect info that I corrected earlier in this thread:
 

Some confusion here, I think. Hunt was third (not fourth) in France, and won in Britain, USA and Japan. Mass was fourth in GB, sixth in Austria, fourth in Italy and third in Canada.

Here are the F1 race histories of the various M26 chassis, from the ORC site:

http://www.oldracing....php?TypeID=M26

If it is a chassis in which Hunt won GPs, it has to be either M26-2 or M26-3, and not M26-4 as on that Italian site I linked to above.

Edited by Tim Murray, 05 February 2016 - 17:20.

[Ray Bell]

Sorry Tim...

I didn't look back in the thread before I posted. It was more the 'back of an envelope' or 'workshop' floor mention that I was seeking.

[Lee Nicolle]

Lindsay Ross posted a photo of the car in the F5000 thread:
 

According to this site the chassis number was M26-4:

http://www.tuttomcla...ren M26 (F5000)

Good pic of the M26. I had forgotten it even raced until I saw the pic.

Thommos Benz in the background. How many drivers has that car had?

[Lee Nicolle]

The MR9 came after McRae's final effort...

But there was the McLaren M26 that was converted by Ganley (?) and sold to Allan Hamilton, driven by Alfie Costanzo.

Were these the only two 'ground effect' F5000s built?

Garries MR9 was the only true 5000 ground effect. The M26 was a modded F1.

I saw the MR9 at its maiden race meet, the Austin7 club of SA [which Garrie was a member]  Easter meeting which was ofcourse being used as a test session. The single post wing had the wobbles up the straight which I suspect may have been disconcerting.

How many  5000 meets did the MR9 do? very few I suspect.

Edited by Lee Nicolle, 05 February 2016 - 23:25.

[Tim Murray]

Here's reliable confirmation that the car was M26-4, again from the ORC site:

http://www.oldracing...php?RaceID=A81A

Thus as a works car it was only ever raced by Hunt, with a best result of 4th in the 1978 Argentine GP.

[oldjonesfan]

This car, according to the story in Motor Racing Australia, had been driven by Mass as well as Hunt. The latter used it, apparently, to win in Britain, finish sixth in Austria, fourth in France and Italy and continued with the team through 1978. There is no mention of any shortfall in the design, in fact no mention of design at all of how or where Ganley had set about the conversion to ground effects.

There is nothing in Alan Hamilton's account in the F5000 Thunder book about any such thing either, both stories merely mention that Ganley and Schuppan gave up on converting the car to Can-Am and that Ganley contracted to finish the conversion to a F5000 with ground effects.

Obviously there are pics of the car with both stories.

 

Time dims the memory and I gave away most of my magazines/papers so I can't check where it was but maybe it wasn't a story on the McLaren/Tiga M26 Chev itself but a story/interview with the person who maintained it?  Can you recall Ray who Alan Hamilton's Chief Mechanic was? From memory the comments weren't necessarily about any shortfall in design as such but more implied about how it was done.  For lack of better words the conversion sounded "basic" in the sidepod layout and "agricultural" in execution of making the tub slab-sided to accept the sidepods.

[Ray Bell]

I do remember who he was, but I don't remember his name offhand...

It was a German name, however.

[oldjonesfan]

Some of the photos of the McLaren M26 as practised by Hunt at the British Grand Prix at Brands in 1978 should show the differences between the two :

 

https://upload.wikim...s_Hunt_1978.jpg

 

https://c1.staticfli...c7324192e_b.jpg

 

http://img06.deviant...ory-d77imo3.jpg

 

 

 

and here is an interesting photo of a "standard" M26 tub that shows some of what would have had to have been cut away to make the thing slab-sided :

 

http://www.fullalove...inished-tub.jpg

[Lee Nicolle]

Is it my imagination or does the car have skirts in Hunts hands. The bodywork looks very similar to me. more streamlined at the back over the DFV, the Chev is a tighter Vee so taller. Hence the wing being a bit higher too it seems. A fence in the radiator opening but the sides seem to be the same. Too build the tunnels in the tub may well be a lot more work.

[oldjonesfan]

The Hunt car did have skirts as they were legal in 78 (and 79 and 80).  (Even though they were really a "moveable aerodynamic device" which were of course illegal.)

 

The sidepods look different.  Radiator placement is further back on the Tiga modified car and I dare say much larger radiators required for the Chev compared to those required for the DFV.

 

Remember too that the text quoted by Ray above described the (quite significant) changes in the rear end (such as M28 - oh the horror! - rear suspension) so significant work on the sidepods would not be surprising given that in the two years between Mclaren having it's first go at partial ground effects (not to mention their first go at a full ground effect the M28 - oh the horror! again - was a complete disaster.  Somewhere on YouTube is a program on developing the M28 - oh the horror! yet again - aerodynamics.  Must have a look for it after this.) even someone like Tiga would know a lot more about ground effect and sidepod underside profiles.

 

I think the key would be to find that Article describing the slab siding of the Tiga modified tub.  (Or even better a photo!)

[oldjonesfan]

Can't find it for some reason (maybe because the Search engine is next to useless these days with people paying for their videos to be "found"!) but found this Tamiya video of the Mclaren Works in 1977 (they must have been there getting details for their then forthcoming and first 1:20 kit which was of the 1976 M23) which shows M26 tubs particularly the rear end with curved sides.

 

[oldjonesfan]

This looks like it but I can't get it to work :

 

http://www.motorspor...things-to-come/

 

Pretty sure it was on YouTube but still can't find it there.

 

Sorry to digress with such a horror story!

[oldjonesfan]

Still digressing - a short horror movie!  (If only they knew what they were in for!)

 

Edited by oldjonesfan, 11 February 2016 - 00:15.