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Same car but still so different?


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#1 Maisteri

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Posted 25 November 2018 - 16:39

This came my mind while I was watching 1991 season review. Was there any reason why Gerhard Berger had seven DNFs compared to Senna's one? Is this one of those things that Prost also faced during his tenure with Senna at McLaren? The Honda factory dedicating engines for Ayrton and such?


Edited by Maisteri, 25 November 2018 - 16:40.


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#2 Dave Ware

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Posted 25 November 2018 - 17:16

It was like that for Ferrari in '74.  Lauda had horrible reliability while Regazzoni rarely broke down at all.  The end result being that Regga came within a whisker of winning the WDC.  If Lauda had enjoyed the same reliability then everyone else would have been racing for second.  But the reasons for it... :confused:



#3 Henri Greuter

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Posted 25 November 2018 - 19:11

It was like that for Ferrari in '74.  Lauda had horrible reliability while Regazzoni rarely broke down at all.  The end result being that Regga came within a whisker of winning the WDC.  If Lauda had enjoyed the same reliability then everyone else would have been racing for second.  But the reasons for it... :confused:

 

Lauda again at the receiving end in '85 in a year when Prost won his first title....

 

Or in '79 with the Alfa V12 against Piquet. Alfa send designated Lausa & Piquet engines to Brabham bot Lauda had one engine failure after another, then, in Monaco, Ecclestone had swapped the labels on the engines and Piquet blew Alfas while all of as sudden Lauda could compet with the fastest cars in practice without any reliability problem....  (Described in Heinz Pruller's Grand Prix Story '79)

 

 

There was talk about Honda favouring Senna in '89 with better engines than Prost got but looking at the results of '89 and in the knowledge that Senna had 4 retirements in a row from race 5 to 8 and antothr painful one in Italy as well and that with hindsight were decisive for his defeat that year....



#4 Tim Murray

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Posted 25 November 2018 - 19:40

Or in '79 with the Alfa V12 against Piquet. Alfa send designated Lausa & Piquet engines to Brabham bot Lauda had one engine failure after another, then, in Monaco, Ecclestone had swapped the labels on the engines and Piquet blew Alfas while all of as sudden Lauda could compet with the fastest cars in practice without any reliability problem.... (Described in Heinz Pruller's Grand Prix Story '79)

During 1979 Lauda had five race retirements due to engine problems, three before Monaco and two after. Piquet had four race retirements with engine problems, two before Monaco and two after. I don’t know how many engine problems they both had in practice, but I’m still inclined to doubt Prüller’s version of events.

#5 F1matt

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Posted 25 November 2018 - 20:05

This came my mind while I was watching 1991 season review. Was there any reason why Gerhard Berger had seven DNFs compared to Senna's one? Is this one of those things that Prost also faced during his tenure with Senna at McLaren? The Honda factory dedicating engines for Ayrton and such?



Highly unlikely, possibly the engine with the most power on the dyno went to Senna for obvious reasons but there is no way Honda couldn’t prepare engines for both cars with their resources.

#6 opplock

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Posted 25 November 2018 - 20:17

 I’m still inclined to doubt Prüller‘s version of events.

 

Me too. History Fan is fond of quoting from Pruller's books. I've never read one but from the versions of events attributed to Pruller on this forum I get the impression that he never let the facts get in the way of a good story.   



#7 chr1s

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Posted 25 November 2018 - 21:25

I seem to remember Eddie Cheever had far more reliability issues than Prost did at Renault in 1983.



#8 Hati

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Posted 25 November 2018 - 21:50

I don't know about the reasons but times mentioned here were such that a driver could affect durability of an engine., later upshift and/or downshift with higher revs. Isn't the red pointer in rpm meter called telltale meter (or what it's in English) and originally installed because drivers kept claiming that they didn't exceed rpm limits engineers gave them.



#9 uechtel

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Posted 26 November 2018 - 07:40

Lauda again at the receiving end in '85 in a year when Prost won his first title....

 

Or in '79 with the Alfa V12 against Piquet. Alfa send designated Lausa & Piquet engines to Brabham bot Lauda had one engine failure after another, then, in Monaco, Ecclestone had swapped the labels on the engines and Piquet blew Alfas while all of as sudden Lauda could compet with the fastest cars in practice without any reliability problem....  (Described in Heinz Pruller's Grand Prix Story '79)

 

 

 

 

To me Prüller is an Austrain-biased storyteller in best Neubauer tradition. I would never rely on his statement for historical accuracy...
 



#10 john aston

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Posted 26 November 2018 - 08:23

Not sure I'd rely on yours if that's how you spell Austrian.... :drunk:  



#11 Michael Ferner

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Posted 26 November 2018 - 08:59

Uechtel is right, Prüller was a writer for an Austrian tabloid newspaper, iirc, he didn't even write for a specialist motorsport magazine. I shouldn't be too ungrateful, since way back Prüller once enabled me to have the lifetime opportunity of visiting the Hockenheim pits and paddock during the final qualifying session for the 1982 German GP, but his yearbooks were extremely biased and opinionated, he was definitely writing for an audience (i.e. for Rindt/Lauda/Berger fanatics). As for the 1979 situation at Brabham, I recall reading an interview with Piquet later that year, after Lauda had retired, in which Nelson related how he found out that the new Alfa engines were "done" after about 200 miles, and so he always made sure he had a fresh engine for the races. He also told how he kept this information to himself, and that Lauda didn't seem to have noticed that, which I'm sure was at least partly down to Lauda losing interest halfway through the season - he usually was too sharp to not have noticed!

Bottom line: treat Prüller's yearbooks as for entertainment only, not an information source!

As for the OP question, some drivers are hard on equipment, others not so much. Remember, Berger also had about three times as many retirements as Mansell at Ferrari, at a time when he was the Golden Boy at Maranello, and Mansell wasn't exactly a mechanically sympathetic driver himself. This is not all black and white, and there's a certain element of luck involved, too, but it's rarely a coincidence when one driver retires more often than his teammate.

#12 Charlieman

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Posted 26 November 2018 - 11:53

As for the 1979 situation at Brabham, I recall reading an interview with Piquet later that year, after Lauda had retired, in which Nelson related how he found out that the new Alfa engines were "done" after about 200 miles, and so he always made sure he had a fresh engine for the races. He also told how he kept this information to himself, and that Lauda didn't seem to have noticed that, which I'm sure was at least partly down to Lauda losing interest halfway through the season - he usually was too sharp to not have noticed!

In his 1976 book, Lauda recorded that Ferrari engines were prone to lose performance and that fresh engines were typical for a race start. I'm sure that Lauda was acute enough to question Alfa Romeo about this factor.

 

Returning to the OP, I'm sceptical about special engines for special drivers. At some races, the engine manufacturer supplied a silly number of fresh engines to each of the top teams.

 

1. My understanding of turbo engines of that era is that they were sensitive to car installation. Performance and reliability was affected by intercooler and conventional cooling systems, and it was rare for two chassises to be as similar as today. Engines might blow up more frequently in a particular chassis.

 

2. By definition a "grenade" engine, such as used for qualifying times, tends to go bang when pushed. There was no magic testing solution at the factory and it is improbable that engines were run at max boost for more than a few seconds on a dyno. When tested, the engine used a dyno cooling setup. 

 

3. Team managers will indulge any mind game which motivates drivers. If Senna required the best engines, somebody would have stencil painted S on the engine crate.



#13 Henri Greuter

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Posted 26 November 2018 - 14:01

Uechtel is right, Prüller was a writer for an Austrian tabloid newspaper, iirc, he didn't even write for a specialist motorsport magazine. I shouldn't be too ungrateful, since way back Prüller once enabled me to have the lifetime opportunity of visiting the Hockenheim pits and paddock during the final qualifying session for the 1982 German GP, but his yearbooks were extremely biased and opinionated, he was definitely writing for an audience (i.e. for Rindt/Lauda/Berger fanatics). As for the 1979 situation at Brabham, I recall reading an interview with Piquet later that year, after Lauda had retired, in which Nelson related how he found out that the new Alfa engines were "done" after about 200 miles, and so he always made sure he had a fresh engine for the races. He also told how he kept this information to himself, and that Lauda didn't seem to have noticed that, which I'm sure was at least partly down to Lauda losing interest halfway through the season - he usually was too sharp to not have noticed!

Bottom line: treat Prüller's yearbooks as for entertainment only, not an information source!

As for the OP question, some drivers are hard on equipment, others not so much. Remember, Berger also had about three times as many retirements as Mansell at Ferrari, at a time when he was the Golden Boy at Maranello, and Mansell wasn't exactly a mechanically sympathetic driver himself. This is not all black and white, and there's a certain element of luck involved, too, but it's rarely a coincidence when one driver retires more often than his teammate.




Thanks for the warning. I already was aware of certain biases etc. and his nationalism (but hey, that ain't nothing new) but that it was that bad, I wasn't aware of that yet. Thanks.

#14 E1pix

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Posted 26 November 2018 - 16:56

I find it suspect that any manufacturer pursuing a Manufacturer's Championship would provide engines intentionally built to fail.

#15 Charlieman

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Posted 26 November 2018 - 17:14

I find it suspect that any manufacturer pursuing a Manufacturer's Championship would provide engines intentionally built to fail.

I find it bloody daft to believe that an engine manufacturer and a chassis builder collaborated in a grassy knoll conspiracy to ensure that Senna had the best engine in his car.

 

My reading is that Senna annoyed mechanics, team owners and co-drivers during his apprenticeship. And in F1.



#16 uechtel

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Posted 26 November 2018 - 22:19

Thanks for the warning. I already was aware of certain biases etc. and his nationalism (but hey, that ain't nothing new) but that it was that bad, I wasn't aware of that yet. Thanks.

 

I never said his books aren´t good reading. It´s just that they contain some nice story but not always history.

 

A story ON HIM I have once read was, that at some time around the eighties/nineties somebody made him a birthday present, a typewriter that had only the letters "B" "E" "R" and "G"...



#17 guiporsche

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Posted 26 November 2018 - 23:28

At least Honda's personnel adored Senna precisely because of his fussiness, which they interpreted as care/dedication and which on their judgement exceeded Prost’s (hardly known for not caring about his cars).

There’s an outstanding Brazilian biography written about Senna (that unfortunately was never translated to English, probably because it lacks sensationalistic appeal) by the journalist Ernesto Rodrigues. He took the time to interview the Honda personnel (Nobuhiko Kawamoto, Yoshitoshi Sakurai, Takeo Kiuchi, Osamu Goto, and a few mechanics too) and while they make it clear that the engines were all similar, from their statements it becomes  clear that in their heart of hearts Senna gradually became the favourite.

 

This went back to the Lotus days, and one of the episodes they mention is that once in testing Senna parked the car on the grounds that the engine was about to blow up. As there was not a sign of smoke they did not take him seriously but once they opened the engine they realized he was right. By the time he went to Mclaren, the Japanese admit that they were happier in their demeanor to work with Senna because on Sakurai’s take, not only they perceived Senna as faster but his feedback was judged to be much more detailed than Prost too. And because of that, they naturally started structuring engine development around Senna’s preferences. The specific example Sakurai gives is that Prost preferred a smoother, rounder powerband, while Senna preferred a peakier, more abrupt one.

So while one can imagine why in that context Prost started feeling pushed aside, until proof in the contrary, his claims of having inferior equipment were/are mistaken. 


Edited by guiporsche, 26 November 2018 - 23:29.


#18 john aston

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Posted 27 November 2018 - 07:48

I find it suspect that any manufacturer pursuing a Manufacturer's Championship would provide engines intentionally built to fail.

 I completely agree - any grown up would think the same. But not the legions of bleating Lewis Hamilton fans in 2016 who were convinced that it was in Mercedes' best interests that Hamilton's car should be sabotaged  to ensure Rosberg won. The stats don';t quite  bear this out - Hamilton has fewer than 10 retirements. And that is  in the entire  hybrid era.  5 seasons...



#19 2F-001

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Posted 27 November 2018 - 08:04

I find it suspect that any manufacturer pursuing a Manufacturer's Championship would provide engines intentionally built to fail.

I don't find it suspect - I find it nonsense!