Hotter Formula One : six wheels, turbo and ground effect not abandonned

[Archibald]

Before I was born, and when I was a kid, my Dad bought that cool car magazine Sport Auto.

Between 1977 and 1982 there were four amazing technological breakthroughs
- Tyrrell and their six wheels car
- Renault quest for the turbo
- Lotus wing car
- Brabham turbine car

Of the four, turbo went the farthest: up to 1500 hp in 1985 (!) before they were banned in 1988.

Ground effect cars were banned by 1983

The other two (turbine and six wheels) were only short-lived.

Now imagine all four tech wonders not only lasted, but also blended. Imagine six wheel cars with 1000 hp turbo and ground effect or turbine.

Imagine Ayrton Senna or Gilles Villeneuve driving such monsters under torrential rain in the streets of Monaco, 1984.

Imagine a movie like Ron Howard "Rush" with such cars.

Say what would you want, but Formula One cars would have been sexy as hell.

 

[sonofpegasus]

Unfortunately they might have been as sexy as hell but most drivers would be either in Heaven or Hell depending on your viewpoint!!!!

 

[Archibald]

Do you think a combination of all this would have made the cars too dangerous ?

 

[trurle]

Before I was born, and when I was a kid, my Dad bought that cool car magazine Sport Auto.

Between 1977 and 1982 there were four amazing technological breakthroughs
- Tyrrell and their six wheels car
- Renault quest for the turbo
- Lotus wing car
- Brabham turbine car

Of the four, turbo went the farthest: up to 1500 hp in 1985 (!) before they were banned in 1988.

Ground effect cars were banned by 1983

The other two (turbine and six wheels) were only short-lived.

Now imagine all four tech wonders not only lasted, but also blended. Imagine six wheel cars with 1000 hp turbo and ground effect or turbine.

Imagine Ayrton Senna or Gilles Villeneuve driving such monsters under torrential rain in the streets of Monaco, 1984.

Imagine a movie like Ron Howard "Rush" with such cars.

Say what would you want, but Formula One cars would have been sexy as hell.

Yes, recent Formula One cars are the poor joke over concept of racing. Categorized, standartized, sanitized. Soon will come the "officially approved list of manufacturers" and "valid models list".
Ending in something silly like this:
http://www.tamiya.com/english/mini4wd/regulation.htm

Of course, keeping regulation away would make race more interesting. The problem is what such approach will eventually lead to the monopoly by one car maker. Alpha-romeo was the early harbinger spurring the proliferation of regulations.

 

[yulzari]

A forgotten benefit of the turbines was that they had lives measured in hundreds, if not thousands, of hours so one engine could last a season unchanged. Especially if they replaced the air safety frangible shaft with a solid steel one.

 

[Archibald]

What do you mean by "turbine" ?

 

[GunsCarsGuitars]

Before I was born, and when I was a kid, my Dad bought that cool car magazine Sport Auto.

Between 1977 and 1982 there were four amazing technological breakthroughs
- Tyrrell and their six wheels car
- Renault quest for the turbo
- Lotus wing car
- Brabham turbine car

Of the four, turbo went the farthest: up to 1500 hp in 1985 (!) before they were banned in 1988.

Ground effect cars were banned by 1983

The other two (turbine and six wheels) were only short-lived.

Now imagine all four tech wonders not only lasted, but also blended. Imagine six wheel cars with 1000 hp turbo and ground effect or turbine.

Imagine Ayrton Senna or Gilles Villeneuve driving such monsters under torrential rain in the streets of Monaco, 1984.

Imagine a movie like Ron Howard "Rush" with such cars.

Say what would you want, but Formula One cars would have been sexy as hell.

Do you mean the Brabham 'sucker car'?

 

[Kalvan]

Well, how about derailing Bernie Ecclestone, somehow.

 

[FBKampfer]

What do you mean by "turbine" ?

I believe they mean gas turbine engines.

Basically its a low output jet engine with most of the energy from the fuel being burnt is siphoned off the turbine shaft via gearing and transmitted to a drive shaft.

 

[HesitatedEye]

There is no way those technical examples will ever be combined the six wheeled cars weren't being developed so while in theory more rubber means more grip if you need to change your tires during a race and in the 80's that wasn't always required then your giving away a advantage also the extra design of the car added 190 pounds to the weight which any engineer or designer will immediately want to do without. In regards to the Turbo's it was getting to the stage of haves and have nots the only realistically reliable turbo engines in the 80's were Ferrari and Honda and just like now Mclaren and Ferrari are not going to let their rival teams get those engines and like Honda in the modern era anyone who has the ability to make a Turbo engine is going to be several years behind development wise and then your in a position like now that it's going to be either a Mclaren dynasty which ruins the audiance or Ferrari and Mclaren trading titles which also ruins the audiance. The Fan Car if it had been copied would have killed someone ground effects would have worked upto a point but the problem is the tracks would need a major rebuild to handle the speed of these cars which could bankrupt the sport. However if you want it to happen you need a different outcome in the FISA-FOCA war and that it's a unified front and the FIA will give into technical development.

 

[Archibald]

Yeah I meant the Brabham with the fan on the rear. It was driven by Lauda at the Swedish grand prix in August 1977, won the race, and was shot down by everybody including Colin Chapman on behalf that ground effect was a a dangerous thing. Yeah. Only weks later Chapman designed his wing car and all of sudden, all the teams went with ground effect.
The fan car was not a true turbine (AFAIK) I mean there was no internal combustion, it was just a fan driven by the car engine (or some kind of electric drive, can't remember).

I don't think there ever was a Formula 1 powered by an helicopter turbine. But it would be a cool idea. I think about the ubiquitous PT-6A (600 to 1800 hp). Now that's would be one hell of a car.

Oh, and I hate both Ecclestone and Mosley.

@HesitatedEye certainly made some interesting points. Tracks like Monaco couldn't really handle such monsters.
The great Nikki Lauda later remembered driving a 1000 hp McLaren during qualifications at Moncao, either in 84' or 85', as "scary".

 

[GunsCarsGuitars]

Yes, the fan sucked the air from under the car, creating a downforce that kept the car glued to the track. Drivers complained the fan was dangerous, because it threw up stones and debris, while team owners said it violated the rules against 'moveable aerodynamic devices'.

 

[yulzari]

Yeah I meant the Brabham with the fan on the rear. It was driven by Lauda at the Swedish grand prix in August 1977, won the race, and was shot down by everybody including Colin Chapman on behalf that ground effect was a a dangerous thing. Yeah. Only weks later Chapman designed his wing car and all of sudden, all the teams went with ground effect.
The fan car was not a true turbine (AFAIK) I mean there was no internal combustion, it was just a fan driven by the car engine (or some kind of electric drive, can't remember).

I don't think there ever was a Formula 1 powered by an helicopter turbine. But it would be a cool idea. I think about the ubiquitous PT-6A (600 to 1800 hp). Now that's would be one hell of a car.

The Brabham BT46B used a take off from the engine to power a fan to suck the air from under the car and pass it out through a rear radiator. The mass of air needed to cool the radiator actually was most of the airflow so it was legal as it was principally a cooling device: in strict interpretation of the rules.

The Lotus 56B used a Pratt & Whitney PT6 turboshaft in both non Championship and Championship Grands Prix with the last outing at the Italian Grand Prix. The 4WD made it the fastest in a wet practice but the weight of fuel to last the whole race (no refuelling allowed) held it back. The engine was really an off the shelf item and one purpose modified for the task would have run more economically and been allowed to stress the components more than in an aero engine rated to carry passengers about the sky.

 

[Scott_B]

There’s no safety reason against six wheels, but ultimately, marketing people like to push the tenuous link to the car fans own, and six wheels makes that tougher, so they are probably hard to keep.

As for the rest, the safety tech wasn’t there, as they get faster, you’d get into the realms of G force issues, never mind them being pretty lethal in a crash.

Today’s hybrid turbo F1 cars are arguably the fastest, and one of the most powerful (and definitely the most efficient) in the sports history, it took till now for the technology to keep the drivers alive to catch up and allow this.

 

[Masked Grizzly]

Not sure about six wheels, though the fan and ground effect would have been interesting.

On the turbo front an interesting titbit is that Cosworth in OTL were interested in providing their GBA V6 turbo to more established teams such as Brabham, Williams and Lotus, however Ford basically pressured Cosworth to provide the GBA V6 turbo to only Haas Lola. On top of that Cosworth felt their turbocharged engine was very competitive against the Honda turbo unit once they ironed out the issues, only for the F1 regulations to impose restrictions and outlaw turbos from 1989 after the F1 higher-ups promised changes in regulations were going to happen from the end of the 1980s to early-1990s.

 

[HesitatedEye]

There’s no safety reason against six wheels, but ultimately, marketing people like to push the tenuous link to the car fans own, and six wheels makes that tougher, so they are probably hard to keep.

As for the rest, the safety tech wasn’t there, as they get faster, you’d get into the realms of G force issues, never mind them being pretty lethal in a crash.

Today’s hybrid turbo F1 cars are arguably the fastest, and one of the most powerful (and definitely the most efficient) in the sports history, it took till now for the technology to keep the drivers alive to catch up and allow this.

The Hybrid turbos aren't the most powerful compared to the 80's cars the most powerful Turbo Car was the 1986 Benneton B186 which had a BHP of 1400 compare that to say this years Mercedes which is about a 1000 they are efficient yes but that's to keep in line with the regulations and engine penalties until fairly recently (early 00's) teams used two engines a qualifying engine and a race engine if in the 80's they were told you have to use certain numbers of engines in a season then reliability would have been much better.

 

[Scott_B]

The Hybrid turbos aren't the most powerful compared to the 80's cars the most powerful Turbo Car was the 1986 Benneton B186 which had a BHP of 1400 compare that to say this years Mercedes which is about a 1000 they are efficient yes but that's to keep in line with the regulations and engine penalties until fairly recently (early 00's) teams used two engines a qualifying engine and a race engine if in the 80's they were told you have to use certain numbers of engines in a season then reliability would have been much better.

Hence why I said ‘one of.’ Being around the 1000bhp mark is worth noting, though still less than the crazy 80’s quali spec turbos.

 

[HesitatedEye]

Hence why I said ‘one of.’ Being around the 1000bhp mark is worth noting, though still less than the crazy 80’s quali spec turbos.

Missed the one of bit sorry.

 

[Scott_B]

Missed the one of bit sorry.

Quite alright!

 

[Archibald]

Colin Chapman, you old genius. So he did it. Turbine powered car. And that was ten years before my OP. I didn't even knew.