Who would have thought you could compare a Lotus Type 79 with a De Havilland Comet Aircraft? Now you may think there isn’t much you can say that they have in common or you may think I’m going to mention some sort of ground braking technology that they share between them but the truth is much simpler than that. I’m going to argue that these two represent the top of an evolutionary chain and that what has come after has been nothing more than re-inventing the wheel to improve on rather than develop whole new areas of design.
The De Havilland Comet was the world’s first passenger jet airliner. It represents the conclusion of 50 years of aircraft development from the Wright Brothers to the point at which it made its debut flight. Now ask yourself this, since the world’s first jet liner took to the skies, how far has aviation development got in the next 60 years? Sure the jet engines have improved in power and are more fuel efficient, there is a lot to be said for modern avionics and the materials used in the construction of aircraft have improved but at the end of the day, if you want to fly long haul you are going to do so in a pressurized, four engine, jet airliner much like the De Havilland Comet.
In my opinion the same applies in Formula One. The Lotus Type 79 represents the point at which Formula one development effectively ended. Worse still, any avenues of development that may have led to interesting areas of design have been pinched off for either safety reasons (a valid point in most cases) or by the FIA being desperate to prevent another financial arms race. The bulk of F1 design since 1978 have been about aero, with the exception of a brief period in the mid 80’s when there was a race to see how much horse power you could get into a four cylinder turbo without an explosion on the scale of an atomic bomb. It’s more about trying to make the wheel as round as possible rather than inventing something better than the wheel (yes that may be possible). As recently as two years ago when three new teams joined F1 from scratch (without buying into another outfit) for the first time since the Toyota in the early 00’s or the truly awful Lola Mastercard effort of the mid 90’s, even with a clean sheet of paper on which to design their cars we still saw three identikit formula one vehicles roll off the production line.
We have become so used to the jet passenger liner or the formula one car in its present form that there seems to be no real motivation for a dramatic change in the way things are designed. While I actually thought they looked awful, the proposed Dallara flying arrow shaped car that was a contender for the next generation of Indy car was at least a step in the right direction and it’s great to see that it will have its day on the track in the form of a prototype LMS car.
This brings us neatly on to the second part of the title the myth of “Trickle Down” technology. Ferrari were complaining this season about the lack of relevancy in modern F1 and how they feel that the design of Formula one cars should allow for the eventual use of the technology in GT cars and presumably across the range of all Ferrari sports cars. In Formula one terms the car that could be seen as exploiting as much technology as possible to maximise its aero was the Williams FW14B of 1992. This car had just about every driver aid it was possible to cram onto one F1 car and won the title at a canter. Now you would have thought that systems like Traction Control, ABS, Active Suspension and Semi Automatic Gear Boxes would have began their life in F1 and then trickled down through sports cars into the average family hatch back sometime later. Well, if you look at their origins, this is far from the case. The Anti Lock Braking System was first developed for aircraft landing gear as far back as 1929 and was used on the Ford Zodiac in the 60s and for the first time in F1 on the Fergusson P99 four wheel drive car. By the mid-70’s almost all of the American Car makers were offering ABS as an option on and by the late 70’s and early 80’s so were Japanese and European based car makers. In 1971, Buick were offering a car with Traction Control and by the mid 70’s all the cars in the Buick range came with Traction Control as standard, long before Nigel Mansell had turned a wheel in F1.
Semi Automatic Gear Boxes can trace their origins even further back to the 1940’s. There is even a suggestion that the first “Paddle Shift” gear box can be traced as far back as the Bollée Type F Torpédo" of 1912. In F1 the first semi-automatic gear box featured on the Lotus Type 76 which used a button on the gear lever to activate the clutch and a sequential rather than gated gear leaver action.
Perhaps the only true F1 inovation could be Active Suspension which was developed by Lotus in 1982 but not raced. It was later used on the Lotus 99T which won two races in the hands of Ayrton Senna in 1987 using the hyrdaulically activated system however it was again shelved by Lotus as being too heavy to be effective. The system found on the Williams FW14 in 1992 was an electronically driven system and sadly that had all ready been developed and was used on road going cars from Mitsubishi, Citreon and BMW severall years before Adrain Newey’s car.
Brining back my original point about the development of the F1 car. Once the point of the Lotus 79 had been reached (Monocoque, Single Fuel tank, Front and rear wings, Engine as a stressed chassis member, sculpted side pods containing the radiators with effective management of Aero over and under the car etc) the whole point of additional developments such as active suspension was to ensure the maximum aerodynamic efficency of the car. Things like mass damping systems, F ducts, walrus noses, flexi wings and blown diffusers are all the same idea centered on the same single concept of maximum aerodynamic efficency to put as much downforce onto the wheels as possible.
Even in terms of general development of an F1 car, monocoque chassis were in use in motorsport before the Second World War. Cars with wings and under body aerodynamics were pioneered by Jim Chapperell in Can Am racing long before Colin Chapman and his team began to develop under body aerodynamics. Having said that, Tony Rudd at BRM did design an early version on the Wing Car concept for BRM in 1969 however it never got out of the wind tunnel, in part due to the lack of finance at BRM and in part to John Surtees objecting to the BRM board that the design was far too radical and would detract from BRM’s current efforts on the track. So just to get to the point where we have the Lotus Type 79 we can see that the sport wasn’t as pioneering as we some times think it was.
It’s hard to see where F1 has contributed to modern car design other than in the branding of modern cars and the association with sporting success. It’s not hard to argue that the number of unit sales for Ferrari increased during their years of unbeleiveable success in the early 00’s.
So, do we forsee a time when F1 will move on from the current shape of F1 cars and become more radical? Has the sport ever been the pinical of motoring development or has it followed where others have lead? Has it become stuck in a rut, trying to find ever smaller percentages of speed from squeezing every last drop of aero efficency that the rules allow? What do you think?
The De Havilland Comet was the world’s first passenger jet airliner. It represents the conclusion of 50 years of aircraft development from the Wright Brothers to the point at which it made its debut flight. Now ask yourself this, since the world’s first jet liner took to the skies, how far has aviation development got in the next 60 years? Sure the jet engines have improved in power and are more fuel efficient, there is a lot to be said for modern avionics and the materials used in the construction of aircraft have improved but at the end of the day, if you want to fly long haul you are going to do so in a pressurized, four engine, jet airliner much like the De Havilland Comet.
In my opinion the same applies in Formula One. The Lotus Type 79 represents the point at which Formula one development effectively ended. Worse still, any avenues of development that may have led to interesting areas of design have been pinched off for either safety reasons (a valid point in most cases) or by the FIA being desperate to prevent another financial arms race. The bulk of F1 design since 1978 have been about aero, with the exception of a brief period in the mid 80’s when there was a race to see how much horse power you could get into a four cylinder turbo without an explosion on the scale of an atomic bomb. It’s more about trying to make the wheel as round as possible rather than inventing something better than the wheel (yes that may be possible). As recently as two years ago when three new teams joined F1 from scratch (without buying into another outfit) for the first time since the Toyota in the early 00’s or the truly awful Lola Mastercard effort of the mid 90’s, even with a clean sheet of paper on which to design their cars we still saw three identikit formula one vehicles roll off the production line.
We have become so used to the jet passenger liner or the formula one car in its present form that there seems to be no real motivation for a dramatic change in the way things are designed. While I actually thought they looked awful, the proposed Dallara flying arrow shaped car that was a contender for the next generation of Indy car was at least a step in the right direction and it’s great to see that it will have its day on the track in the form of a prototype LMS car.
This brings us neatly on to the second part of the title the myth of “Trickle Down” technology. Ferrari were complaining this season about the lack of relevancy in modern F1 and how they feel that the design of Formula one cars should allow for the eventual use of the technology in GT cars and presumably across the range of all Ferrari sports cars. In Formula one terms the car that could be seen as exploiting as much technology as possible to maximise its aero was the Williams FW14B of 1992. This car had just about every driver aid it was possible to cram onto one F1 car and won the title at a canter. Now you would have thought that systems like Traction Control, ABS, Active Suspension and Semi Automatic Gear Boxes would have began their life in F1 and then trickled down through sports cars into the average family hatch back sometime later. Well, if you look at their origins, this is far from the case. The Anti Lock Braking System was first developed for aircraft landing gear as far back as 1929 and was used on the Ford Zodiac in the 60s and for the first time in F1 on the Fergusson P99 four wheel drive car. By the mid-70’s almost all of the American Car makers were offering ABS as an option on and by the late 70’s and early 80’s so were Japanese and European based car makers. In 1971, Buick were offering a car with Traction Control and by the mid 70’s all the cars in the Buick range came with Traction Control as standard, long before Nigel Mansell had turned a wheel in F1.
Semi Automatic Gear Boxes can trace their origins even further back to the 1940’s. There is even a suggestion that the first “Paddle Shift” gear box can be traced as far back as the Bollée Type F Torpédo" of 1912. In F1 the first semi-automatic gear box featured on the Lotus Type 76 which used a button on the gear lever to activate the clutch and a sequential rather than gated gear leaver action.
Perhaps the only true F1 inovation could be Active Suspension which was developed by Lotus in 1982 but not raced. It was later used on the Lotus 99T which won two races in the hands of Ayrton Senna in 1987 using the hyrdaulically activated system however it was again shelved by Lotus as being too heavy to be effective. The system found on the Williams FW14 in 1992 was an electronically driven system and sadly that had all ready been developed and was used on road going cars from Mitsubishi, Citreon and BMW severall years before Adrain Newey’s car.
Brining back my original point about the development of the F1 car. Once the point of the Lotus 79 had been reached (Monocoque, Single Fuel tank, Front and rear wings, Engine as a stressed chassis member, sculpted side pods containing the radiators with effective management of Aero over and under the car etc) the whole point of additional developments such as active suspension was to ensure the maximum aerodynamic efficency of the car. Things like mass damping systems, F ducts, walrus noses, flexi wings and blown diffusers are all the same idea centered on the same single concept of maximum aerodynamic efficency to put as much downforce onto the wheels as possible.
Even in terms of general development of an F1 car, monocoque chassis were in use in motorsport before the Second World War. Cars with wings and under body aerodynamics were pioneered by Jim Chapperell in Can Am racing long before Colin Chapman and his team began to develop under body aerodynamics. Having said that, Tony Rudd at BRM did design an early version on the Wing Car concept for BRM in 1969 however it never got out of the wind tunnel, in part due to the lack of finance at BRM and in part to John Surtees objecting to the BRM board that the design was far too radical and would detract from BRM’s current efforts on the track. So just to get to the point where we have the Lotus Type 79 we can see that the sport wasn’t as pioneering as we some times think it was.
It’s hard to see where F1 has contributed to modern car design other than in the branding of modern cars and the association with sporting success. It’s not hard to argue that the number of unit sales for Ferrari increased during their years of unbeleiveable success in the early 00’s.
So, do we forsee a time when F1 will move on from the current shape of F1 cars and become more radical? Has the sport ever been the pinical of motoring development or has it followed where others have lead? Has it become stuck in a rut, trying to find ever smaller percentages of speed from squeezing every last drop of aero efficency that the rules allow? What do you think?
