54 replies to this topic

[Zawed]

Have you ever noticed that sometimes the teams come up with a good concept in terms of car/engine design, but they make the mistake of putting them onto a bad car (or using a duff engine)?

For example the inclined Fords in the Arrows A2.
Or how about the hydrolink suspension on the 95 Tyrell. I can definitely recall Harvey Postlethwaite calling the car an "orphan" in the 95 Autocourse Team review.
Or, before anyone else mentions it, the W12 engine...

What other good concepts/bad cars can you think of?

[Garagiste]

Minardi often come up with innovations they can't really exploit. The one that popped into my head was siting the brake calipers at the bottom of the disc to reduce the COG. Such a simple idea but it's as if nobody else thought of it because that's "not where they usually go".
There's a good article about the Cosworth 4X4 F1 car in this months Motorsport - a vehicle which pretty well sums up the thread topic I'd have thought.

[2F-001]

Garagiste - The Lotus 56 had calipers mounted at the bottom of the disc, back in '68.

But to the list, I commend the Chaparral 2H.

[McRonalds]

The car I'm thinking about immediately when I read this topic was the Lotus 79 successor 80. A typical example of 'too much, too far'. Instead of improving a good wing car (79) Champan wanted to create a SUPER wing car (80) and failed. Carlos Reutemann never drove that car - and Mario Andretti gave up after a couple of attempts. The truth is - Lotus went too far. Williams showed them with a PERFECT Lotus 79-clone how to it it right.

[Wolf]

How about Lotus water cooled brakes? Maybe a good idea, but definitely on the wrong car (atm engine) in the wrong time (turbo era), if not only for the weight penalty. Or Lotus 88? The good car doesn't get banned after the first practice, but after few wins- like 'fiddle-brake' McLaren, or Brabham fan-car...;) Sometimes too much can be too bad. :

[Wolf]

Garagiste- I wouldn't bet that bottom placement of th brakes doesn't impair some other aspects of the brake itself (I'd say improvement of the grip resulting from forces on the caliper, for one)...

[stevew]

I think it was in the late '70s that Gordon Murray of Brabham tried to eliminate radiators and replace them with some kind of surface heat-exchangers or something like that.

I'm a little fuzzy about this.

[BRG]

Stevew has beaten me to it with the Brabham "radiatorless" car (BT46?).

Others that spring to mind are the BRM with "polar moment of inertia" concept, which I could never understand at the time, or since - wasn't that the original P180? And of course there was the three brake original BRM.

Then there was the March 721(?) - the one with the rhino-horn front wing that had to be replaced by the F2 based car.

Which was the Lotus with the self-contained semi-inboard brake/suspension units at each corner that could be replaced in one bit. Was it that the 80 that McRonalds mentioned, or was it earlier?

Mind you, all those may have been "bad concepts, bad cars".

[oldtimer]

Originally posted by stevew
I think it was in the late '70s that Gordon Murray of Brabham tried to eliminate radiators and replace them with some kind of surface heat-exchangers or something like that.

I'm a little fuzzy about this.

The Vanwall engineers beat Gordon Murray to that idea in a 1954 car, but abondoned it very rapidly

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by Wolf
Garagiste- I wouldn't bet that bottom placement of th brakes doesn't impair some other aspects of the brake itself (I'd say improvement of the grip resulting from forces on the caliper, for one)...

Actually, I don't see any way the braking loads can do anything else but stress the balljoints of the upright in some way or other. Now, if the braking loads were fed into the chassis in some way, they might be able to load up the suspension, but I'd suspect that the braking loads of F1 cars would be too severe to avoid axle hop or other tyre-to-the-road maladies.

This is a part of a design I have in mind for the rear axle of a Clubman car, by the way.

Originally posted by BRG
Mind you, all those may have been "bad concepts, bad cars".

All too true, too true.

That 3-brake arrangement depended on perfect differential operation to avoid wheel locking also had some funny servo arrangement IIRC.

Weren't all the 'water-cooled brake' efforts aimed at beating the minimum weight limit?

[DingleBerry]

Originally posted by BRG
[BOthers that spring to mind are the BRM with "polar moment of inertia" concept, which I could never understand at the time, or since - wasn't that the original P180? And of course there was the three brake original BRM.

Then there was the March 721(?) - the one with the rhino-horn front wing that had to be replaced by the F2 based car.

[/B]

BRG, I think you may be getting mixed up. My own shaky memory awards the March 721X designed by Robin Herd as being the originator of the "low polar movement of intertia" concept. Basically the car just had the gearbox located between the engine and the axle, which was the opposite of the usual arrangement. This was to "lower the polar movement of inertia" by concentrating the greatest mass in the centre of the car. It didn't work. Lauda drove it first, and after just five laps decided it was a turkey and would never work. He was right. I think the team persisted with it for a few races before returning to the regular arrangement

As for the P180, it could probably be described as having a "high polar movement of intertia" as it had two massive water radiators mounted behind the engine and over the gearbox! I think it shared the same fate as the March721X.

Anyway, the "polar movement inertia" mantra got a bad press at the time. When the designer Harvey Postlethwaite was asked about his latest car's "polar movement of inertia" he said it didn't have one, as he defined a "polar movement of intertia" as an "eskimo's teabreak"!

BRG, if you're still there, what was the 3-brake BRM?

[Wolf]

Ray, AFAIK most disc brakes utilize reaction forces on calipers to compress the wheel to the surface and increase adhesion, and hence more braking power can be applied. IIRC rubber to asphalt (or similar road surfaces) friction coefficient is 0.7 (plus rolling coefficient, which can safely be ignored for this purpose) meaning car can decelerate with 0.7g... That translastes into 56m braking distance from 60mph to 0, yet even disc equipped (at least on the front wheels) road cars manage much below that number. The reason for that is that this is limit for drum brakes which brake on the whole cylindrical drum segment, creating only braking torque, but no force. However disc brakes create torque with single force which can with proper disc placement* cause aforementioned effect. For example 45m stopping distance would imply additional force roughly equivalent of 25% cars weight to be able to produce sufficient deceleration (0.87g).

* If my fuzzy mind (at the moment, even more than usual) does not decieve me, that would mean caliper on the front of the disc, and most cars (AFAIK) have that arrangement on the rear end to counter the weight transfer to the front during braking...

As for braking the differntial on BRM is quite a good idea (for a while I thought I invented that contraption), with two downsides: possible cooling problems (which might account for brake locking they expirienced) and vastly increased halfshaft and differential stresses. On the other hand, reduced unsuspended weight and lighter brake should account for something.

And Gilby... If that car was a bit better and had he lasted to see the dawn of 1.5l Formula it would be the very first semi-monocoque F1 car (AFAIK).;)

[Zawed]

Just remembered about the lowline Brabham of 1986, with the BMW mounted on its side (or something like that- feel free to correct me!). Gordon Murray had a good idea with this one I think, but I'm not sure why it did'nt work that well; maybe it was too low or the chassis was'nt crash hot. I don't think it was the engine, because Benetton did well with the Beemer that year. Anyhow, Murray's McLaren MP4/4 was pretty low as well and that one sure worked OK.

[mat1]

Concerning the "low polar movement inertia" movement, I think there were two versions.
1. try to concentrate the mass of the car as much as possible in a point somewhere within the wheelbase. So no front radiator, and no gearbox behind the rearaxle. Also, a tendency to make short cars.
The March 721X was an example of this.
2. try to concentrate the CoG of the car close to the rearaxle. Reasons: better loading of the driven wheels, and: easy turning, because a car (apart from effects resulting from drifting, and if it doesn't have rear wheel steering) always turns on a point on the rear axle line. So concetrating the mass as rearwards as possible makes sense.
The Lotus 72 was an example of this, as was the BRM P180.

1 en 2 were combined in for example the Tyrrell 006 and to some extent the succesful Forghieri Ferrari's like the 312T series.

All this was part of the interesting movements to get a small advantage in chassis design on the rivals. because most teams used the same engine, even a small chassis advantage could be decisive.

mat1

[Darren]

Murray's skateboard Brabham (BT55) was a stack of brilliant ideas and which saw more successful execution at McLaren in 1988. The BMW wasn't on its side so much as inclined - it always reminded me of a Peugeot 404 on crack. It was also a good example of why first-iteration designs are prone to tragedy with the death of Elio de Angelis. The car didn't work for more reasons than you can poke a CAd station at. The BMW didn't like being canted, and over-heated and had shockingly bad response out of corners. The Weissman gearbox broke at the least provocation. The aerodynamics have been implicated, perhaps unfairly, in Elio's death as it appeared to some as if the car had unpredictable lift characteristics over bumps.

I believe Ferrari used Minardi's bottom-mounted calipers for the rear brakes in 2000 and McLaren used them at the front in 2000 or last year.

[Ray Bell]

DingleBerry, the 2.5-litre BRMs all had a brake disc on each front wheel and one on the back of the gearbox to brake the rear wheels...

Wolf, the locking problems were hydraulic, as I recall, not heat-related.

Also, Wolf, the torque reaction of the brakes might well affect weight transfer front to rear or vice versa, but that wouldn't depend on caliper placement. The torque is trying to twist the upright in the direction of travel, no matter where the caliper is mounted... and it can't affect the traction level other than by the rear-to-front transfer.

[Wolf]

Ray You're talking only about braking torque, but with disc brakes You have to create it by the friction force on the caliper. The direction of that force heavily depends on the placement of the caliper, and that force is in whatever way transmitted into suspension/chassis. For example, when the caliper is at the bottom that additional force is fore to aft, and when the caliper is in front that force is directed downwards (the force fed back into chassis is perpendicular to the caliper radiivector from the spindle). In the first case that force insignificantly affects grip, but in the other case increases it. If caliper was behind that force would reduce the grip). IIRC, Porshe 911 has caliper placement that grip of front tyres is somewhat reduced and at the rear increased... If they placed calipers 'opposite' (calipers in front on front wheels and at rear on rear wheels) they would produce reversed effect causing grave braking instability.

[effone2k]

The front torque transfer system from the Benetton a few years back was a loser and so was the rest of the chassis.

[Ray Bell]

I think not, Wolf... otherwise there would never be any variation in caliper placement on racing cars. This would be such a fundamental thing that everyone would follow your principles.

I think you'll find that it's still a rotational thing, that the loads are solely placed on the tyre by the springing medium of the car, the loading being increased by weight transfer that occurs under braking.

[Wolf]

But if there are no additional forces how do You account for those stopping distances? If it was not for them no car would stop below 56 metres (plus/minus something for quality of the rubber, naturally)...

[oldtimer]

The Lancia D50 was another example of designing for a 'low polar moment of inertia'. Fine for low speed corners, but capable of confounding even an Ascari at higher speeds. Ferrari eventually put the fuel tanks in the tail when he took the cars over.

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by Wolf
But if there are no additional forces how do You account for those stopping distances? If it was not for them no car would stop below 56 metres (plus/minus something for quality of the rubber, naturally)...

Wings... weight transfer... that should do it.

[Louis Mr. F1]

How about the 92 Ferrari with the double floor concept?
it failed badly, but maybe it had more to do with it's chassis, engine, management.....

[DingleBerry]

Originally posted by Ray Bell
DingleBerry, the 2.5-litre BRMs all had a brake disc on each front wheel and one on the back of the gearbox to brake the rear wheels...

Thanks. I didn't know that.

One other unusual brake development was the Tyrell twin-rotor front brakes. I know Tyrell tested them, but I'm not sure if they were ever raced. This was a long time ago and before carbon brakes.

posted by mat1
Concerning the "low polar movement inertia" movement, I think there were two versions.
1. try to concentrate the mass of the car as much as possible in a point somewhere within the wheelbase. So no front radiator, and no gearbox behind the rearaxle. Also, a tendency to make short cars.
The March 721X was an example of this.
2. try to concentrate the CoG of the car close to the rearaxle. Reasons: better loading of the driven wheels, and: easy turning, because a car (apart from effects resulting from drifting, and if it doesn't have rear wheel steering) always turns on a point on the rear axle line. So concetrating the mass as rearwards as possible makes sense.
The Lotus 72 was an example of this, as was the BRM P180.

I never really worked out this polar movent of inertia stuff. I remember when Porsche introduced their 924 and 928 models, they made a big song and dance about the fact that the gearbox was mounted in the rear axle to give a "high polar movement of intertia" which would increase grip and roadholding! It seemed the opposite of what F1 designers were doing. An eskimo's tea break sounds more apt to me.

[karlcars]

The Chaparral 2H was mentioned...

This is an excellent example of "bad concept, good car." The car was built brilliantly, with a glass-fiber monocoque that consisted of the main body of the car, using almost all its skin with high efficiency. It was a tribute to the skills of Hall's designers and fabricators.

The 2H concept, however, was wrong. Jim's Chevrolet allies couldn't understand why he went against everything they had learned together to sacrifice downforce for low drag. Exactly the opposite was shown to be the way to go, as it still is today.

For your info we have done a photo book on the Chaparrals for Iconografix in our Ludvigsen Library Series. Should be out later this year.

[Ray Bell]

It's one of those live and learn things, I guess DingleBerry... the disc running at the back of the gearbox was something of a BRM trademark of those years. In the British GP Hill was flying after an stalling on the grid. He passed Brabham and was pulling away, but with only a few laps to go he had a brake problem (he'd been pumping the brakes for some time), miscued and spun to an ignominous retirement.

Hill's car, below in a really nice pose, shows off the rear brake nicely...



A couple of races earlier a more direct problem affected Gurney in the other car, a pipe to the rear brake failing and putting him off the road at the Tarzan Hairpin.

[DingleBerry]

Thanks for the pics Ray. The 2.5 litre GP era was just a few years before my time. My own interest/knowledge of F1 is from about 1968 onwards. Anyway from the start of the 3 litre days. I see that reducing unsprug weight was just as big a deal then as it is now.

BTW, I've never understood why current F1 designers don't site the rear brakes inboard anymore. At one time all the F1 grid had them mounted inboard. I presume it's for heat-dissipation reasons, with the very hot-running carbon brakes.

Thanks again for the pics.

[2F-001]

>>>The Chaparral 2H was mentioned...
This is an excellent example of "bad concept, good car."<<<

Yes, I accept your point, Karl.
I was thinking of good, as in ''seemed like a good idea to begin with''; and bad, as in ''not very successful''!
Well, that's my excuse...
Although possibly the least celebrated and least well known Chaparral, 2H is a very interesting car - the construction, dimensions and 'active' suspension (sort of) are all unusual.
I run a much more modest vehicle with a de Dion rear end, and struggle somewhat with the idea of having a pivot in the middle of the de Dion tube...

[Roger Clark]

Originally posted by DingleBerry


BTW, I've never understood why current F1 designers don't site the rear brakes inboard anymore. At one time all the F1 grid had them mounted inboard. I presume it's for heat-dissipation reasons, with the very hot-running carbon brakes.

I think there are threereasons. First, inboard rear brakes would get in the way of the under car aerodynamics. Second, the carbon fibre brakes are so light that the weight doesn't amount to much. Third, reducing unsprung weight is not very important when you don't have springs.

[bobbo]

Taking a bad idea and making a good car . . .What an idea!!

In that light, I was wondering if the idea of rear engined (actually mid-engined) cars (Lotus, Cooper, etc.) were a "bad idea" in that they undresteered rather nastily, IIRC. My impressions from the early two or three years of that period was that they would rocket down the straights, tiptoe through the turns then rocket down the straights again. I have seen some photos of the cars pushing heavily in turns, especially tight ones. At the same time, the front engined cars seemed to be fairly neutral in those same turns. The success wasn't so much as handling as light weight allowing for better acceleration and braking. That the concept came to success as a "good idea" resulted, IMHO, from decent engineering and MAKING the idea work. Or so it appears to me.

Questions:

1. How much lighter than the Ferrari 246s, BRM P25s, Vanwalls, etc., were the early Coopers and Lotuses (Loti?? )

2. Was the power to weight a factor??

3. What were other factors??

4. Or, did the early (1957 - 1960) cars actually handle that much better??

I lack knowledge, folks!! Help me fill that void!!

Bobbo

[Catalina Park]

Originally posted by Ray Bell
It's one of those live and learn things, I guess DingleBerry... the disc running at the back of the gearbox was something of a BRM trademark of those years. In the British GP Hill was flying after an stalling on the grid. He passed Brabham and was pulling away, but with only a few laps to go he had a brake problem (he'd been pumping the brakes for some time), miscued and spun to an ignominous retirement.

A couple of races earlier a more direct problem affected Gurney in the other car, a pipe to the rear brake failing and putting him off the road at the Tarzan Hairpin.

And don't forget Hans Hermans crash at Avus when the BRM's brakes failed BRM seemed to invent new ways of failing, the rear disk was such an example, the brake pipes failing from vibrations from the engine (I had this problem on a truck once) and also that they had servo assistance and the servo used to fail with the brakes either stuck on or stuck off and when BRM removed the servo it was found the brakes were much improved!

[Roger Clark]

Were any of the P25 and P48 brake problems the fault of the single rear disk? THey had problems with the servo unit and with vibrations from the engine, but the theory of the single rear disk seems sound.

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by bobbo
2. Was the power to weight a factor??

3. What were other factors??

4. Or, did the early (1957 - 1960) cars actually handle that much better??

Power to weight was a factor in that the cars were all lighter than their front engined counterparts... with the possible exception of the Lotus 12 and 16. Sorry, don't have figures.. but they were easier on their tyres for a start.

Oh, yes, easier on their tyres was a factor, but probably the biggest 'other factor' was the frontal area. Massively reduced... again with the exception of the Lotus 12, which was a tiny thing too.

I think that the handling was probably getting up there by the end of 1958. Pictures of Brabham show wheel angles of all sorts, but he seemed to be able to get the attitude he was wanting on the car. The Lotus 18, of course, addressed most of these issues very well and pushed the development of rear engined cars along towards the level that became common by about 1961.

Roger... locking on and locking off were issues, and brake pipe fractures from vibrations, but I don't know of any real failure directly attributable to the location of the rear brake.

Like I mentioned before, it put an additional demand on the differential, but that shouldn't have been too much to cope with.

Another issue I raised before hasn't been noticed, I don't think... weren't the 'water cooled' brakes just a weight dodge?

[Roger Clark]

Although the Coopers were lighter than most of their rivals, I don't think this was a major advantage of a rear engine. As Ray says the Lotus 12 and 16 were at least as light as the Coopers, in fact the 12 was probably the lightest car of the 2 1/2 litre formula. Tony Rudd has said that the P48 BRM was not much lighter than the P25. The reason that the Cooper was lighter than the opposition was partly the fact that the Climax engine was very light, and partly because other designers didn't pay much attention to weight saving. Their frame of reference was different and was changed by the new generation of British designers, just as the Indianapolis designers was five years later.

There was a major reduction in frontal area and a lowering of the centre of gravity, which had a major effect on performance and handling respecively. Pomeroy calculated that the straight line performance of the cooper with a lightly stressed 240 bhp was better than that of a Vanwall with a highly stressed 280 bhp engine. Reliability benefitted too.

I don't think I've ever heard the early Coopers described as bad handlers, certainly not through understeer. The common view at the time was that a rear engine car would be a violent oversteerer, based on memories of the V16 Auto-Union. In fact, the front-rear weight distributionof the Cooper was very similar to that of the front engined cars. Moss has written of the excellent handling of the Cooper, and the fact that he could make the car do whatever he wanted it to do, unlike, for example, the Vanwall, which understeered no matter what you tried.

[Wolf]

I think in those days British cars (probably not despite engine placement) were generally viewed as better handling than Continental (read Ferrari) cars. IIRC, Cooper boasted that Dino156 suspension was exact copy of 1960 Cooper suspension.

[MarkWill]

Time for me to jump in and show my ignorance. Ray Bell (or others), do you have any insight as to why the canard wing wasn't a big hit after the Tyrell 008?

I saw that the Brabham BT 45 had its fair share of problems, and that in one race to solve a downforce problem they brought in a front air dam based on the BT44 design. So my question is - what was good about the BT44 (which was Carlos Reutermann's favourite-handling car) as far as the front end goes that didn't work on the BT45 onwards? To my uneducated eyes, the BT44 should have been a slow but nimble car, because of its low C of G and large frontal area (although it must have made a good job of pushing the air away from the front wheels - the problem as I see it is that there was just too much frontal area). I don't know if this is nostalgia or technical forum, but I feel more at ease posting here. Maybe those of you who are able to find the answer elsewhere would be kind enough to give me the reference.

Thanks

markwill

[Ray Bell]

I don't know if it will help you reach an accurate conclusion, but the big noses kept a lot of air from going over the front tyres, helping them retain heat.

Surely, though, a lack of adjustability (or easy adjustabililty) was a difficulty?

The Technical Forum would be a better place to put the question...

[MarkWill]

Hi Ray,

You`re right - its one for the technical forum, but I suspect that you're right about the ease of adjustabiliy, because throughout history many developments have failed because the end-user found it impractical (I wonder how long BMW will keep their magic control knob on the new seven-series?).

Ok, now for a nostalgia question. To what extent was Elio de Angelis the number one driver at Lotus? He looks like YET ANOTHER gifted driver who died before his potential was realized. Still, he seems to be in the Tom Pryce bracket - not heralded too much, and yet he looks as though he was quite a driver.What is considered to be his best race? Are there many films of races in the '70's?

[josh.lintz]

Here's two:

Lotus' turbine car, the 56B.
Perhaps the engine needed to stretch its legs at a place like Indy in order to be useful.

4-wheel-drive.
All the guilty suspects.

[Ray Bell]

Is this the only 4WD to win a race?



Graham Hill and the Ferguson at Warwick Farm... they won Lakeside's 'International 99'...

[oldtimer]

Originally posted by bobbo
Taking a bad idea and making a good car . . .What an idea!!

In that light, I was wondering if the idea of rear engined (actually mid-engined) cars (Lotus, Cooper, etc.) were a "bad idea" in that they undresteered rather nastily, IIRC. My impressions from the early two or three years of that period was that they would rocket down the straights, tiptoe through the turns then rocket down the straights again. I have seen some photos of the cars pushing heavily in turns, especially tight ones. At the same time, the front engined cars seemed to be fairly neutral in those same turns. The success wasn't so much as handling as light weight allowing for better acceleration and braking. That the concept came to success as a "good idea" resulted, IMHO, from decent engineering and MAKING the idea work. Or so it appears to me.

Questions:

1. How much lighter than the Ferrari 246s, BRM P25s, Vanwalls, etc., were the early Coopers and Lotuses (Loti?? )

2. Was the power to weight a factor??

3. What were other factors??

4. Or, did the early (1957 - 1960) cars actually handle that much better??

I lack knowledge, folks!! Help me fill that void!!

Bobbo

This subject has interested me for many years, but before responding to Bobbo's questions, I thought I would browse through a few old MotorSports and visit the www.formula1results.com site.

Re question 1, one of the things we tend to forget in the weight question is the weight on the starting grid. The 1958 Vanwall had a 35 gallon tank, sufficient for a 200 mile (320 km) race. The weight of fuel (petroleum based) in a full tank would be in the range of 260 to 280lbs. For 1957, the Vanwall would be sitting on the grid with about 400 to 450lbs of alcohol based fuel for a 500km race. What I don't know is how much fuel the 1958 Cooper took to the grid, but I suspect the reduction in race length in 1958 favoured the lower powered car.

It is very interesting to compare the race performances of the Coopers and their main front-engined performers, Ferrari and Vanwall from 1958 to 1960.

In 1958, the Coopers were basically blown off, except for Moss running on canvas in the Argentine GP, and Trintignant picking up the pieces dropped by BRM, Vanwall and Ferrari at Monaco.

In 1959, the Ferraris could only deal with the Coopers on the ultra-fast circuits, Rheims and Avus. IMO, Brooks could have dealt with Moss at Monza if his Ferrari hadn't blown a piston coming off the grid. Moss duped the the other Ferrari drivers into burning off their tyres, but I don't thing he could have done the same thing to Brooks, who, in any case, was the only Ferrari driver to match the pace of the Coopers in practice.

In 1960, Ferrari were reduced to hanging out a pit board with the message "Bravo" to Phil Hill as he valiantly tried to hang on to a disappearing Brabham at Spa. In Jenks report from Spa in 1960, he remarked from observing at the Masta kink that speeds did not appear to be higher than in 1958, and concluding that the big reduction in lap times was coming from improved tyres and acceleration.

Tables don't seem to work for me in the Atlas format, but the following compares Ferrari and Cooper best laps at different circuits from 1958 to '60. The Cooper times were all recorded by Brabham so as to leave out the perturbing effect of Moss on a hot lap. Or Moss lapping the whole field (where was that in the best 100 drives?) in Portugal in 1959

Monaco Ferrari Cooper
1958 1min 40.6sec 1min 41.0sec
1959 1min 40.0sec 1min 40.1sec
1960 1min 38.3sec 1min 37.3sec

Zandvoort
1958 1min 39.1sec 1min 38.5sec
1959 1min 36.6sec 1min 36.0sec
1960 1min 36.3 1min 33.4

Spa
1958 3min 57.1 4min 05.1
1960 3min 53.3 3min 50.0

Rheims
1958 2min 21.7 2min 27.3
1959 2min 19.4 2min 19.7
1960 2min 18.2 2min 16.8

Monza
1958 1min 41.8 1min 46.4
1959 1min 39.8 1min 40.2

It seems to me that these comparisons show that we were not seeing a revolution in performance by mid-engined cars in 1958. They suggest rather that the Coopers developed far more rapidly than Ferrari from 1958 on. Bearing in mind tyre development, it almost looks as though Ferrari were stagnating. Since BRM could still lose engines in all 3 of their entries in one race in 1960 (Spa) after 5 years of development, a stagnation label could justifiably be applied to them.

And what was the fastest developing component in the Coopers? The Coventry-Climax engine. By 1960, the Cooper designers could keep all 4 wheels on the ground and more or less upright, but they weren't that much faster than the Yeoman-Credit cars (1959 chassis) in 1960.

So, in those years, were we really looking at the effect of engine development in a formula that favoured a smaller chassis with smaller amounts of liquids to carry?

[oldtimer]

Originally posted by Roger Clark
Were any of the P25 and P48 brake problems the fault of the single rear disk? They had problems with the servo unit and with vibrations from the engine, but the theory of the single rear disk seems sound.

Asking one brake to do the work of two may seem sound to a designer in his office, but maybe not to a racing driver in a real hurry. BRM lost leads at Monaco twice (1958 and 60) and Silverstone in 1960 due to fading brakes. Monaco, of course, is very hard on brakes, and when you compare Graham Hill's practice times to his race times, you realise the moustache was really bristling. So it does seem that the BRM braking system didn't serve its drivers well when they really called upon it.

Roger also mentioned the Vanwall understeering no matter how hard you tried. Well, Moss could provoke the Vanwall the Vanwall into oversteering slides. I saw him do it at practice at Goodwood, and it was as big a piece of car man-handling as I've seen. He also provoked the Vanwall into some vicious looking oversteer slides at Silverstone in his 'win or bust' drive in 1958 at Silverstone. That I wished I had seen.

[Roger Clark]

I still think think that te BRM braking problem was with the hydraulics and the servo, not with the single rear disk.

As regards the handling of the Vanwall, moss said in "My Cars and My Career: "Chapman designed the system to encourage inherent understeer" and later "These basically understeering cars had to be driven between very precise limitsand were never as forgiving.. as the essentially oversteering Masreati 250Fs". I've always thought that the picture of Moss in a tail slide at silverstone in 1958 were a sign either of a handling problem that day,or that he was overdriving in an attempt to keep up with the Ferraris. I don't think he would deliberatly provoke such a slide during a race. I can't recall any other pictures of him in such a position with any car.

The comparison of front and rear engined performance is very intereseting and I will dig out some more on that this evening.

[ehagar]

How about these two cars....

The Bugatti 251. Built in 1956 and was designed by Gioacchino Colombo, a former Ferrari designer. Some of the more advanced features included:

A straight-eight power unit mounted transversely behind the driver. Before Cooper!

Weight distribution was like modern cars.

Fuel was carried alongside driver in pannier tanks which were later used in the late 60's early 70's.

On the downside the car used rigid axles rather than independent suspension, which was the standard at the time.

The car was unfortunately, quite underdeveloped and slow...

The Arrows A2

Had radical bodywork to take advantage of the ground effect concept. The engine and gearbox were canted upwards to maximize the width of the undertray. The only problems was the inclined engine raised the centre of gravity.... And the car suffered from persistent porpoising.... It turned out that the centre of pressure of the car was constantly moving....

Novel concept. They just never cured the cars problems...

[Catalina Park]

I think the main BRM rear brake problems were the Servo sticking on or off and brake pipe fractures caused by harmonic vibrations from the engine. Vanwall had vibration problems with fuel injection pipes breaking and the throttle linkage breaking both problems were fixed with high pressure fuel hose they replaced the pipes with hose and the linkage had a section of hose added as well!!

[Mohican]

What about the 1988 Ligier ?

The one with two fuel tanks; in front of and behind, the engine ?
Surely this qualifies as odd (if not good) and unsuccessful.

Certainly the drivers (Johansson and Ghinzani, if I remember correctly) thought it best suited for lighting a huge bonfire.

[Blackrazor]

Benetton figurered out the raised nose concept YEARS before anyone else caught on. There car just wasn't all there in the early 90's thanks to the weak Ford HB engine.

[oldtimer]

Roger, re the understeering characteristics of the Vanwall, I was provoked by the 'no matter how hard you tried'. . Rules of what can and cannot be done in a racing car were not something that bothered Moss too much. I suspect the Silverstone episode may have been overdriving, since Moss drove straight into the 'dead car' park without stopping at his pit when the Vanwall engine let go. It all looked like a 'win or bust' effort to me. It is interesting that both books on the Vanwall, Jenks and Balmsey's, are silent on details.

As to the practice session at Goodwood in April, 1957, Moss repeatedly threw the Vanwall into an oversteering slide at Woodcote whilst using Brooks as a pace setter. It took an awful lot of very rapid wheel winding, and was very impressive to watch. Whether Moss was exploring the Vanwall's response to the technique in the early part of a new season, or just enjoying himself, or both, only the man himself can tell us. He certainly didn't gain much time over Brooks who was out there doing his usual smooth stuff.

Re the pace of the Coopers to the front-engined cars, I noticed two references in 1959 MotorSports to the Coopers out-accelerating other cars. One is in reference to McLaren out-accelerating Moss in a BRM in an attempt to catch him at the finish of the British GP at Aintree. And the P25 BRM was no slouch in the matter of acceleration. The other is Jenks description of Moss taking care of his tyres in the corners and out-accelerating the Ferraris, causing them to push hard in the corners.

These reports suggest that the strong point of the '59 Coopers seemed to be the Coventry Climax engine.

[Roger Clark]

I think it's generally agreed that the 1959 Climax engine was less powerful than the Ferrari. THe Cooper scored by being much lighter, and having lower frontal area, both of which contribute to good acceleraration. Low weight also reduces tyre wear, but I think the greatest contribution to that at Monza was behind the wheel.

The other strong point about the Climax was its broad power band which enabled the drivers to out accelerate rivals in race conditions when they couldn't always be in the optimum gear.

[Ray Bell]

Somewhere in the past couple of days I've seen a pic of McLaren and Moss heading for the line at Rheims, with the captions saying that Bruce had tried to nail Stirling by out accelerating him from the final corner, but the BRM had just a bit more go than the Cooper.

I don't think the frontal area affects acceleration too much, but the tyre technology was probably edging onto the side of the Coopers too. Remember that racing tyres used to be hard as nails so they wouldn't throw treads, but this was changing at Dunlops through this era.