11 replies to this topic

[Jhope]

I read somewhere that this car was very controversial. Does anyone know why?

[KzKiwi]

Try this for starters.

I am assuming you are talking about the BT49C (your picture has not opened on your thread). Good old Gordon Murray and his staff designed the first car to try and overcome the new 'skirtless' car rule by utilising hydro-pneumatic suspension, which effectively allowed the car to run closer to the ground at speed. In the pits at low speed the car was quite legal during the mandatory measurement checks for ride height. Mr Murray termed this 'dual rate springing'.

At Monaco in the same year there were suspicions that Brabham had a light weight qualifying car that was several kilos underweight but this was never proven. The same car had carbon fibre brakes and Piquet was often quickest in practice sessions with it.

[Jhope]

I've seen pictures of almost ALL the cars from the 1981 season, and most of them have skirts, and they are even touching the ground. I heard of that rule too, but from what i see, it was never really enforced to it's maximum. In 1982, i did see that the ride hieght of certain cars were significantly higher then in 1981.

I know i should be asking these questions at the technical forum, but this has a little element of history to it.

Jason

[John Cross]

This started out as a power struggle between Jean-Marie Balestre of FISA (the sport's governing body) and Bernie Ecclestone of FOCA (Formula One Constructors Association). Since about 1973 FOCA had effectively run Formula 1 with FISA going along with most of their recommendations. When Balestre was elected to power, he was determined to regain control of Formula 1. In 1980 the skirted 'kit cars' were dominant and Renault were struggling, so Frenchman Balestre decided (without FOCA's agreement) to ban sliding skirts from 1 Jan 1981, ignoring the usual 2 year stability rule. This was ostensibly on safety grounds, but understandably FOCA thought it somewhat 'biassed'.

In the winter of 1980/81 there was talk of a second 'FOCA' F1 series for skirted cars (Williams, Brabham, Lotus & Tyrrell) running in parallel with the FISA non-skirted series (for Ferrari, Renault & Alfa Romeo). On December 4th Goodyear withdrew from F1 in disgust - although they would return later. FISA promptly threatened dire retribution for circuit promoters who ran any FOCA races and in January 1981 all the teams met at Ferrari and concluded the 'Maranello Agreement' for presentation as a peace initiative to FISA. This led to the 'Concorde Agreement' of March, where FOCA yielded to the sliding skirts ban and FISA yielded on F1 finances.

In fact, the 'Concorde Agreement' demanded a consistent 6 cm ground clearance 'at any moment when the car is in motion'. Six wheeled cars were also banned (after Williams' very promising tests at Paul Ricard!) and so was 4 wheel drive from 1983. Just for good measure, they banned 2 strokes, Wankels, diesels and turbines - only 4 stroke engines with reciprocating pistons would be allowed.

In the meantime, the Argentine GP had been cancelled, the South African GP had been run on February 7th to FOCA rules and was subsequently withdrawn from the World Championship. So the first GP of the season was here at Long Beach (by the way, the picture does display, but not very consistently - try right-clicking and selecting 'Show Picture').

Meanwhile Gordon Murray had a month to convert their car for Long Beach. He was convinced everyone would use the loophole to fit devices that would lower the car once it was moving - but no-one else did. In fact, they had problems during practise - the car would go up and not come down, then it came up and wouldn't go down, then one end went down and the other end jammed up. The plastic hydraulic lines melted, the fluid leaked and the car stayed down. So they ran with conventional springs in the race. Since the skirt is clearly touching the ground in the photo, it must have been taken during practise. Meanwhile, the same regulations led Colin Chapman to produce his ingenious twin-chassis Lotus 88 - which was quickly banned (of course!).

When Piquet took pole in the 2nd race at Argentina there were howls of protests, but FISA declared the system legal after San Marino, and Piquet went on to win the World Championship (despite everyone else copying the system).

[Ray Bell]

I was at Monaco that year. Each time a car returned from practice to the pits it had to drive over a frame that was bolted to the ground, this proving or disproving the clearance.

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Life and love are mixed with pain...

[Jhope]

Oh...thank you guys...uhmm i may have been 4 years old at the time, but I remember in 1982 in montreal, I had pit straight seats with my dad in montreal. I remember that everytime a car would come into the pits, it would stop for about a minute or so then proceed to it's pit. I remember them on a platform of sorts. If I have a picture from my dads collection, I can show you guys what I mean. I do not have any web space, but if someone does, would you be willing to post it on tyhis forum?

Again, thank you very very much for the info. I was very useful. Are there any good books on the "skirt" era by the way?

Jason

[CVAndrw]

Six centimeters! That was the inviolable rule. Dual rate springing, variable ride height, hydraulic override; whatever you want to call it: the goal was to run the cars out on the circuit as low as possible so that the non-sliding skirts would provide a seal along the sidepods, and then upon reentering the pits the cars would jack themselves up so that it would clear FISA’s six centimeter block. There were lots of fun arguments during this period- eventually FISA had to write tortuously worded definitions of terms like “flexible” and “movable” because people like Gordon Murray were telling them “You ever watch the wings of a 747 at takeoff? There’s no such thing as a rigid, unmovable surface!” Check the current FIA technical regs- a lot of this language is still in there.

As for underweight Brabhams- you bet. Herbie Blash, then chief mechanic for Brabham and now Max Mosely’s right hand man, has said that the cars were always underweight, often with comic result. They had a heavyweight seat which was pretty effective: when Piquet would come in, they’d just slide the light seat out from under him and neatly slip in the leaded dummy to bring the car up to minimum. Likewise a fifty kilo rear wing it took two mechanics to lift. The problem here was if the car stopped out on the circuit those same two hapless mechanics would have to sneak out to the abandoned BT49, sweating and groaning under the weight of that selfsame wing before it got towed in and everyone was busted.

Believe it- those notorious water-cooled brakes that Williams and Brabham got nailed for were the tip of the iceberg. And as for Nelson not being a lawyer, well, he may not have had the regulations memorized, but he was in it heart and soul with Murray and Blash to get what Donohue and Penske called “the unfair advantage”. I for one thought it was a pretty entertaining era.

[desmo]

Both these pictures porport to be of the BT49C, which was, I read, essentially a BT49 with more carbon, and was raced in '82 with carbon brake rotors.

The images on the retro2 site won't work because of poorly written javascript, I believe.


[This message has been edited by desmo (edited 03-17-2000).]

[CVAndrw]

I think you’ll find the bottom photo is of the 1982 BT50/BMW which failed to qualify at
Detroit and then ran away and hid from everything else at Montreal. Nelson Piquet and Dieter Stappert of BMW Motorsport waged a furious battle that year to keep developing and racing the BMW turbo while Bernie, increasingly bored and impatient with the day to day mundane chores of running a racing team, wanted to forget the whole thing and go back to the Cosworth. Eventually BMW laid down the law and a year later Nelson was the first turbo powered World Champion, at the painful expense of Prost and Renault. I’ve always wondered at Bernie’s timeline during that period- did he broker the deal with Balestre and draft the Concorde Agreement before or after he’d negotiated the deal with BMW?

You know, for those of you who like to complain about the serpentine world of F1 politics today…

Regarding books on the FISA/FOCA war (it was fought over a lot more than skirts), I don’t know. I got a lot from Mike Doodson’s Piquet biography and Niki Lauda’s "To Hell and Back" ("Meine Story" in Europe) and was able to extract bits and pieces from Rob Walker’s reports in R&T at the time, but no doubt the juiciest stuff was kept very hush-hush. Anybody know of better sources? If Bernie ever writes his memoirs after he retires, THAT I’d love to read.


[This message has been edited by CVAndrw (edited 03-18-2000).]

[This message has been edited by CVAndrw (edited 03-18-2000).]

[Jhope]

I don't doubt that politics back then were any, I mean any different then they are today. There was that literal battle between the FOCA and FISA, that kept things interesting for a while. Christ, i can even find evidence that it caused Gilles death!!! You also had speculation that Balastre favoiured the Renault cars, since he was french, and things seem to have been done to favour them.

Back to the Brabham. I justr got Dave Hodge's book, and I find it very interesting. Alot of the team actually tried to duplicate the hydrolic suspension that Brabham where using at the time. It was thought that those teams would catch up to them, but no one ever did. Gordon Murray was and is one of the pioneer's in formula one evolution. Besides him, i would say Champman, Newey, Posthelwaite, Head and so on. We can also say that that era, because of all the loopholes that were discovered, can be used as an example of the type of racing we have today. Everyhting is so detailed, that when someone thinks they have found a loophole, that item gets banned and never reaches it's full potential. Well, so much for revolution, and up with evolution.

Well, i know there is no book on Skirts, unless....nah forget it! :-) what i meant, was are there any books on that era in Formula One history, or will this always be considered a dark period in the sport?

Jason

[Racer.Demon]

CVAndrw/desmo: the second of desmo's pictures is indeed a BMW-powered BT50, but this picture is not from 1982. Look at the starting number! In fact, this is a very rare shot of the single 1981 appearance (at an official event, that is) of the BT50. It happened in practice for the 1981 British GP, where Nelson took out the BT50 for a few laps.

R.D

[desmo]

These may be more BT49 pix. F1 taxonomy is not my forte.

These images are from the www.f1m.com modeling site, which I highly recommend.