Great GP Racing Heroes

[colcol]

There has been a series on 7mate [ch73], about F1 drivers of the past, i have been recording it for weeks and have only just started watching it, and its not some kind of hero worship by fans, but a serious doco, and the thing that strikes me most is the lack of safety of that era 60's-70's, people just standing at the side of the track when the cars are racing, all the mechanics wearing shorts, everyone smoking in the pits,, refueling the cars before they go out, by tipping open buckets of fuel into funnels into fuel tanks at the front of the car, the tracks, haybales on corners, armco fencing half a metre from the track, a large fire engine driving on the track going to a car that was on fire, because there were no fire marshalls and the drivers, mechanics and team managers with those appalling long hair and sideburns and oversize sun glasses, and other things, such as the Ferrari mechanics and drivers dressed in BLUE!, long gone car makers advertising at the side of tracks, such as NSU, Simca, Triumph, MG, and it was at Monaco that the winner Jackie Stewart was driven round the track after winning in an open top LANCIA bus, i didn't even know Lancia buses existed, and it cannot end without a reference to that great car maker Alfa Romeo being in F1 as a team and engine supplier, and winning a race with the fabulous and illegal Brabham Fan car, check it out, on 7mate, Colin.

[colcol]

I notice that this coming weekend they have Enzo Ferrari, its a repeat, but well worth watching with all its references to the Alfa Romeo Grand Prix teams of yesterday, Colin.

[Anthony Sharp]

Colin the Alfa Brabham fan car was completely legal when it won the Swedish GP, the rules of the day said that you could not have any moving device thats primary function was for airodynamics. The design purpose of the fan was to cool the car, the down force generated was secondry. The car never ran again under an agreement between the FIA and Brabham, the FIA was going to ameand the rules if the car ran again as they felt that the fan was a hazard, I tend to agree on that piont, I would not want to be in a first corner shunt with it!!! Computer modeling done a few years back proved that the primary function of the fan was to cool the engine, without the fan the car would expire, but the secondry befit of downforce made the car invinceable. The main reason all the Ford teams jumped up and down about it was that they quickly worked out that Alfa and Ferrari had such a pwoer advantage that thay could trade this off for downforce and still be 1st and 2nd in terms of HP.

[colcol]

And when they qualified with the Alfa Brabham Fancar, it was so fast Bernie Ecclestone, [Brabham team owner], knew he couldn't tell the 2 drivers to sandbag, so he made sure that they were both full of fuel for Qualifying, and they still got pole!, it was such a fast car, he didn't want it banned straight away, but it was afterwards, when they used to 'blip' the fantastic Boxer 12 cylinder in the pits, the car would lower down on its suspension, it had such downforce, Formula 1 driver Mario Andretti said it was the only car he has ever raced against that picks up rocks and throws them at you, Colin.

[colcol]

After Brabham ran the fancar, it was deemed illegal, Alfa Romeo was stuck with a Boxer flat 12 motor that gave a low centre of gravity, but where the skirts and wings should have been, to give downforce, to suck the car to the track, the motor was in the way, so Autodelta chief designer DR. Carlo Chiti redesigned the flat 12 to a V-12, so that there would be room for skirts, even though the centre of gravity would be higher, the amazing thing was that it was apparantly done in EIGHT weeks!, the only problem being the engine mounts didn't quite line up, which was fixed by the Brabham team, who were wrapped when their new motor turned up, Colin.