6 replies to this topic

[markzed]

I was flicking through a stats book (as you do) which stated that in 1984, Tyrell had their championship points stripped because they were 'using pit stops to bring underweight cars up to the specified weight'.
Does anyone know by what mechanism they used to do this?

[Todd]

The cars started the races with tanks of water that were attached to hoses that gave the appearance of bring routed to cool the brakes. Really, the water was just drained as the race started to make the cars competitively quick. Late in the race, they would drive through the pits and refill the tanks with metallic spheres in a dense viscous fluid, in order to bring the cars back up to minimu, weight. Remember, this was long before the introduction of pitlane speed limits, so the time for the stop was more than made up for by the increased pace on the track. I got the part about the spheres from Rob Walker's article on the bust in an '84 Road & Track. He was very sympathetic of Ken Tyrrell's need to cheat! Those two will have plenty of time to hang out together in Hell.;)

[Williams]

Wasn't there also a team that did the "water-cooled brakes" trick openly ? Of course the trick got banned the next race, but I seem to recall it being not specifically illegal when they did it.

[RJL]

It seems to me that cars were allowed to top up fluids after a race, prior to weighing in, and this is what brought about the "water cooled brakes". I think several teams might've used it.
RJL

[PDA]

All of the non turbo cars were using the "water cooled" brakes trick. It was by no means confined to Tyrell. Tyrell were DSQed not for adding water (which was perfectly legal) but for having unsecured ballast (the lead shot was free to mave about in the tank). When considering the penalty which was applied, one should bear in mind that Tyrell were the only team holding out against a new rule which would ban NA motors. By stripping tyrell of the points gained, and excluding them from the championship, they could not vote against the new engine rule. ironic that a handful of years later they all cried enough and banned turbo motors. One effect of the decision was to exclude tyrell from the "travel package" for the following year, so it was, in effect, a 10-20 million dollar fine. Doesn't do to be in the right when Bernie has made up his mind.

[RJL]

Well said, PDA. I've always been a fan of both Ken T & rob W and doubt very much that they will end up hanging together in Hell. I'm not sure about Bernie though...

RJL

[GunStar]

It wasn't that Ken was the only holdout on banning NA engines, it was he was holding out on fuel. He wanted to strip the turbo cars of 40L of fuel per race. This was made as a rule, and everybody EXCEPT him voted to hold it off. If he hadn't been striped of his points and booted for the rest of 84, then the banning of the turbos would have started one year earlier. IMHO, this was the nastiest punishment ever laid down, and only done so everybody else could have their turbos.

But hot d#&n, I loved the turbos.