19 replies to this topic

[jal43]

Hi friends

 

Recently I see this image with the M23 Dave charlton in SA'74, but after see  some times I see the nose of M23 is very different as usually.

Is similar at nose  than Emerson run in Monaco and Sain, but is flat up side!!

Never see this nose before, any can say more about this? more images?

 

thanks a lot

[Marc Sproule]

normally i would just post a link to the appropriate pics. flickr is being a bit of a bother presently and won't let me see my images so i'm just posting the link to my sets. there may/should be some mclaren snaps from the appropriate time frame in my f1 set.

 

http://www.flickr.co...681980@N03/sets

[Michael Ferner]

It's the normal narrow M23 nose, bent upwards through contact (with Richard Robarts's Brabham, iirc).

[Peter Brennan]

The nose is not the normal nose, this nose was known as the Winkle picker by McLaren, it was used by Fittipaldi at Monaco and maybe Spain, Was Marlboro /Texaco colors. It came via  John McCormack[Australia] who built a F5000 out of Charltons car. It was much narrower and had longer canards. I have that nose in my shed,

[blackmme]

The nose is not the normal nose, this nose was known as the Winkle picker by McLaren, it was used by Fittipaldi at Monaco and maybe Spain, Was Marlboro /Texaco colors. It came via  John McCormack[Australia] who built a F5000 out of Charltons car. It was much narrower and had longer canards. I have that nose in my shed,

Agreed it's the 'Winkle picker' but it's angle is definitely not normal as a postulated by Michael bent upwards.  Or did Mclaren get to the raised nose 15 years before Tyrrell 

 

 

Regards Mike

Edited by blackmme, 26 February 2014 - 11:38.

[Michael Ferner]

Well, yes, I said "normal narrow", not "normal, narrow"! The original nose of the M23 was broader, but this narrow version was used several times in early 1974. Apart from various tests and practice sessions, I'm pretty sure that all three works cars ran it in the Spanish and Monaco GPs.

[Peter Brennan]

Agreed it's the 'Winkle picker' but it's angle is definitely not normal as a postulated by Michael bent upwards.  Or did Mclaren get to the raised nose 15 years before Tyrrell 

 

Is your nose the one that used to hang in the shop at Brands?

 

Regards Mike

The nose was fitted to an Elfin MR6 F5000 that i owned, John dressed up the Elfin to look like a M23 for display purposes. Somehow i ended up with the nose.

[Tim Murray]

It was indeed Richard Robarts who Charlton hit - here’s the story as told by Pete Lyons in his Autosport report:

 

 

[Charlton] ... was going well until he stuffed his nosepiece into the back of the second works Brabham. Robarts, his oversteer extreme from too hard rear tyres, was also having his engine go all grotty in the middle of the corners. The unavoidable hesitation caught Charlton unawares at Leeukop. As he came dragging shreds of glassfibre into the pits, McLaren’s Alastair Caldwell instantly snatched up one of his team’s spare noses and ran the length of the pits with it – customer service with dispatch. Unfortunately it didn’t fit properly, being one of the narrow-nose types, and more time was lost “modifying” the sub-frame with a hacksaw to accept it somehow. All this dropped the car to dead last of the survivors ...

 

This would seem to explain the nose's unusual angle.

[Michael Ferner]

Ah, good! I was already wondering why Charlton was running the latest McLaren nose in a race even before the works team did!

[David Lawson]

Fittipaldi also had the winkle picker nose on his car at the Race of Champions.

 

David

[arttidesco]

Fittipaldi also had the winkle picker nose on his car at the Race of Champions.

 

David

 

As did Mike the Bike Hailwood ;-)

[Tim Murray]

... and Denny the Bear - all three McLarens raced with the narrow nose at Brands.

[Peter Brennan]

Was Fittipaldi the only driver of the Charlton car.

[Bonde]

FWIW, I always preferred the winklepicker aesthetically nose to the other ones - made the whole car more elegenat, IMO. But apparently it wasn't right for the car's aero balance since it wasn't used much, and the later 76-77 variants were even 'blunter' than the 73 original.

[Tim Murray]

Was Fittipaldi the only driver of the Charlton car.

The Charlton car was chassis M23/2, which was never raced by Fittipaldi. The chassis was raced in 1973 by Peter Revson and Jody Scheckter before passing to Charlton. Full race history on the ORC site:

 

http://www.oldracing...php?CarID=M23/2

[Peter Brennan]

The Charlton car was chassis M23/2, which was never raced by Fittipaldi. The chassis was raced in 1973 by Peter Revson and Jody Scheckter before passing to Charlton. Full race history on the ORC site:

http://www.oldracing...php?CarID=M23/2

[Peter Brennan]

Thanks Tim,I would like to repaint the nose in the original colours,was it a Yardley or Marlboro paint scheme.

Edited by Peter Brennan, 27 February 2014 - 09:44.

[Tim Murray]

Difficult to say, Peter. As Pete Lyons related above, the cone was one of the spares in the McLaren pit at Kyalami 1974. As McLaren were running cars in both Marlboro and Yardley liveries at that race, and as all the M23s had been fitted with the 'winklepicker' in the earlier Race of Champions, the nose that Alastair Caldwell grabbed to fit to Charlton's car could have been in either livery. We need a better photo to make a definite identification.

Edited by Tim Murray, 27 February 2014 - 10:42.

[Tim Murray]

Here's a slightly better photo:

 

http://www.motoprint...oducts_id=37590

 

Looking at photos of the 'winklepicker' nose at other races, the Yardley car had Goodyear logos on the front top edges of the wings, the rest of the top surface being plain white. The Marlboro cars had 'TEXACO' and 'MARLBORO' on the rear top surfaces of the front wings, with 'TEXACO' being on the r/h wing and 'MARLBORO' on the l/h wing. I reckon I can read TEXACO on the r/h wing of the nose fitted to the Charlton car, indicating that it was painted in Marlboro colours.

[alansart]

Not particularly good quality but here's the Charlton M23 with the narrow nose. Not at the GP as the number is wrong.

 

Photo credit unknown - found via internet search. Will remove if required.