Bill, I am sure there's a thread on it somewhere, but it is now common knowledge that the McLaren mechanics at Silverstone for the test, were instructed to restrict the available throttle. I amnot going to try and remember the whole story, because as with all things, the devil is in the detail! It was only in recent years that the mechanic who actually made the "adjustment", confessed to Tommy what had gone on.
From an article that qoutes both Tommy and Ron Dennis;
"
On the day of his test he was pitted against Theirry Boutsen, with a number of other up-and-coming drivers sampling the car during the week. Boutsen went out first but came back complaining of understeer after setting a time of 1:10.9s. It was a respectable lap, and as the car was prepared for Byrne, the Irishman knew it would be a defining moment in his career.
"I badly wanted to show those f***ers from Theodore how wrong they were," recalls Byrne. "But here was Boutsen talking about understeer and he was a guy I respected as quick. But once I got in the car my worries completely dissolved. Yes, there was some understeer, but all I did was brake a bit earlier, turn in a bit earlier and get on the gas a bit earlier. Result: no understeer! The car was unbelievably good."
His best time of 1:10.1s was unbelievably good too. Although not directly comparable, it was the fastest time any McLaren had ever recorded at Silverstone, including the qualifying times set by Niki Lauda and John Watson in the same car at that year's British Grand Prix. If that wasn't enough, he had set three identical lap times of 1:10.1 on his final three laps. It was an astounding feat of consistency for such an inexperienced driver, surely there was another side to the story.
The truth is there was another side to the story, although it might not be quite what you'd expect. It turned out McLaren wasn't being completely honest with Byrne. One of its mechanics that day, Tony Vandungen, later spilt the beans: "My recollection is that we were instructed to give Tommy less than full throttle - and only Tommy, not the others. I honestly don't believe it was to screw Tommy, more to protect him and the car. This wasn't a show car, but it was an active race car, one of the team's pukka cars, and damaging it would not have been good. He then went very fast regardless and we all had a good laugh about it, thinking just how fast he could have gone."
But what about those lap times? Surely Byrne couldn't put in such impressive laps without full throttle. A witness at the test and one of Tommy's friends, John Uprichard, had a stopwatch that was telling a different story to McLaren's.
"I started timing him and he was going up to one second faster than what they were showing," said Uprichard. "I went to the team and asked them why the hell weren't they showing the proper times? By the end he was in the 1:09s. His last three laps I had down at 1:09.9s, 1:09.7s, 1:09.6s."
McLaren never did reveal why it didn't show Byrne's true times, but the bigger question was why it didn't offer him a drive. Ron Dennis has often been posed with the question, even more so after the autobiography's release, but always meets it with a stock response.
"I think most people who saw him race would agree that he had what it takes, in terms of the gift of naked car control, to go all the way. But perhaps he lacked some of the other necessary ingredients - the steely determination, the unflinching focus and the towering ambition that mark out the true greats. He was clearly quick - and, had his undoubted talent been matched by an equal quantity of the other traits a top racing driver requires, then he might have become a true great, and I would have been delighted if he had done so at a wheel of a McLaren. Sadly, it wasn't to be."
Edited by f1steveuk, 21 March 2017 - 15:42.
(just a joke, sorry).
