Curious F1 innovations...

Hxc · 4 May 2010 at 22:12

I often find myself flicking through various old F1 car pages on wikipedia and of course you come accross things like the Brabham fan car and the Tyrell 6 wheeler, all well known, but I came accross something that I, being relitively young, do not remember and found a really curious addition to cars...

The 1996/7 (?) "x wings" as seen below..

Made me wonder if there's anything else I'm missing out on knowing about in F1s past? I remember reading a little about McLaren's "3rd pedal" but never actually got round to fleshing out my knowledge on it.

Flibster · 4 May 2010 at 23:09

Hxc said:
Made me wonder if there's anything else I'm missing out on knowing about in F1s past? I remember reading a little about McLaren's "3rd pedal" but never actually got round to fleshing out my knowledge on it.

McLaren's 3rd pedal was essentially a special brake pedal. You could operate each side of the cars brakes independently of the other.

Wasn't technically illegal, but was considered to be against the spirit of the rules. All it really did was allow already allowed and existing systems to be operated in a different method.

For interesting F1 developments - Check out the Lotus 56, Lotus 88, active suspension, ground effect... First 2, interesting but banned or unreliable, 3rd - banned and 4th reduced to a a minimum, sadly.

GingerNinja1989 · 4 May 2010 at 23:26

Brabham's fan was curious, but very, very effective!

What was the first car to feature the front wings on the two struts? Must've seemed curious at the time.

Flibster · 4 May 2010 at 23:48

GingerNinja1989 said:
What was the first car to feature the front wings on the two struts? Must've seemed curious at the time.

Tyrrell 019 was the first F1 car with a properly raised nose.

rpstewart · 5 May 2010 at 10:37

Hxc said:
Made me wonder if there's anything else I'm missing out on knowing about in F1s past?

In addition to Flibster's suggestions go take a look at:

Arrows A22 - nose mounted X wing
Williams FW08D - six wheeler but four at the rear
Ferguson 4WD
BRM H16 & V16 engines

If you want to stray from F1 then most of the Chaparral Can-Am cars have some sort of innovation on them, especially the 2J.

Lopéz · 5 May 2010 at 18:21

Check out these:

Twin chassis'd Lotus 88
4WD Lotus 63
Brabham BT78 Fan Car
Lotus 78 and 78 (not so much oddities but definitely an innovation and an absolute beauty too in the case of the 79)
The frankly horrendous looking split wing Ferrari 126C2 which if I remember rightly was Ferrari's cheeky attempt at getting over the rear wing width rules of the time:

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x207/Starcowboy/Gilles/82/gv21.jpg

Somewhere in my archives I have a magazine article from Motor Sport called something like "Banned/Beautiful/Ugly" which is full of oddities. I'll see if I can find it.

PlacidCasual · 5 May 2010 at 18:35

Didn't one team claim to have water cooled brakes and so required water tanks on the car which ran down as the race went on reducing the final weight of the car? Oh and Honda had a portion of their fuel tank which they claimed was a ballast bladder but was suspected of being used as race fuel to lower the vehicle weight too.

Lopéz · 5 May 2010 at 18:47

PlacidCasual said:
Didn't one team claim to have water cooled brakes and so required water tanks on the car which ran down as the race went on reducing the final weight of the car? Oh and Honda had a portion of their fuel tank which they claimed was a ballast bladder but was suspected of being used as race fuel to lower the vehicle weight too.

Think it was Lotus again, removable ballast, Brazil 82 possibly? Not sure where my Turbo Years book is so I can't check at the moment.

EDIT
It was Brazil 82 that it all got ugly, but it was everyone with Cosworth NA power at the time

http://www.patronisef1.com/index.ph...best/562-six-of-the-bestdodgy-f1-technologies

Duke · 5 May 2010 at 19:24

I remember the Arrows X-wing, looked awful and was banned on safety grounds (could hit pit crew).

LizardKing · 5 May 2010 at 20:08

Not F1 but Mr Chapman strikes again.
The Lotus 56 turbine car (4wd to boot if irc), designed to race the Indy 500 after Parnelli Jones entered a turbine car the year previously.

The sport lost a great character when he died.

Flibster · 6 May 2010 at 11:19

[lotusgeek]
The Indy car was the Lotus 56 - turbines and 4wd in Indy was banned after this car in 1968. There was a F1 varient called the 56b and was used in 3 races in 1971

The colourscheme on the 56b is much better too.

Although at the moment the car does exist, but isn't a runner. It's on CTL's list for restoration - but there are so many on that list.

They are just finishing the Lotus 38 at the moment, before sending it back to the Henry Ford museum at Indy for it to live out it's days.
[/lotusgeek]

Housey · 7 May 2010 at 23:21

If you want to know about innovation in motorsport you need to read Pete Lyons book about the original CanAm championships in the 60's and early 70's, pretty much most of the things people associate with F1 actually stemmed from CanAm.

Ground effect, wings, turbos to name just 3.