Mearly to contradict Porsche's possible return I think our dearly beloved Ferrari is ready: Sorry for the link as I keep forgetting to subscribe.
Gracias for the pic and if that is the mounting position it reminds me of the Brabham BT55/M10 "Skate" from 1986.
THAT was a cool car. Yes it is harder to get all Goose-bumpy over a 4 cyl F1 car but in the end HP is HP.
You kids don't remember when 4 cylinder turbocharged ruled open wheel racing... Beautiful to look at and wonderful to hear. I speak of the Turbo Drake Offenhauser (Offy) Just think of F1 aero packaging aorund it. Could be interesting. especially if ground effects will be in play... look how narrow the engine is. http://www.tsrfcars.com/toys-full_size_eagle.htm Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I belive the 4 cyl turbo in the pic is the one that Ferrari did back in 1986.... they toyed with the idea of a 4 cyl.. with a huge turbo...
Well, the 80's were not kind to Ferrari Drivers - but they did win two Constructors Championships - 82 and 83... but that has never been much consolation. From 1986 - to 1990 was a very hard time... Berger won several races, and in 89 He and Mansell won 3 -4 but really it was very dissapointing... in 85 with Alboreto - they were the championship leaders untill European GP... then not sure what happened but the development stopped and they fell way behind... pity - the 1985 Monaco GP is one of the best in memory... Alboreto was really flying! caught and passed Prost several times... As for the 4 cyl engine... it was not really developed as it was thought that it was not right by Mr. Ferrari for a F-1 car... despite the enormous HP that could be produced. the V-6 Turbos could also produce upwards of 1200 HP, but the BMW regularly broke the Dyno's - they could not actually record how much HP above 1500hp... so that goes to show you with the crude mid 80's technology compared to today's electronics what COULD be done...
Call me old fashioned, but I miss the days of the Ferrari F1 V-12s... the sound of those was absolutely INCREDIBLE. Man I miss those... Frank
I miss them too but as was pointed out in a recent Motorsport piece Ferrari did not have much GP success with them early on.
Sad but true... They developed great power, but their thirstiness hurt them over race distances... also their larger size meant that the bodywork had to be larger as well which hurt the aerodynamics compared to smaller units. They were big, loud, and powerful. Everything an F1 engine should be (to me at least ). Frank
That was a god-awful car, it killed Elio DeAngelis I remember them QUITE well, thank you. Those are some great pics from a time when racing was transforming from an actual 'sport' to a 'business'. What's funny is as you look at those pics, you see 'chief mechanic' on the side. Today it is 'chief engineer'. That tells you what it takes to work on one of these POS today. Me too. Early on few have great success with anything 'new'. I do recall reading about the BMW Turbo in 1983 - with the turbo intact it had almost 1300 HP, but if the turbo broke? 91HP. That is a LOT of pressure to ram thru a motor. I remember Piquet blowing up a motor in practice, they were picking parts out of the people in the grandstands.
That is very true... I remember being at Imola in 83 - ATS blew up an engine, and later when I was standing at the corner and tripped on a chunk of metal from the engine! the corner worker showed me a bucket with other "parts" they collected off the track. they were almost un recgonizable.
Sad but true; in 2 years the bone rattling shriek of normally aspirated F1 engines will be gone forever (except in historic racing). Same with Indy Car (not the same - I know); but in this environment of hybrids/kers/turbos etc. I don't ever see normally aspirated engines returning to motorsports. That will leave NASCAR standing alone in that arena. The turbos sound cool (whoosh), but nowhere near the same........... Kevin
It just depends on your tastes. When I covered F1, I LOVED how much quieter the turbos were, I didn't need earplugs, and I didn't go deaf. If they are going to have turbos, they better mandate the fuel, or you are going to have teams like BMW running on rocket fuel (LITERALLY) again. You ever read the story on that stuff they used in '83?
Should be interesting to hear these engines running with a pneumatic valve-train AND blow-off valves... They should theoretically rev as high(if not higher than) the 2.4 v8's.
