Image quality is not good, but great to watch this again... <nostalgia modus ON> F1 cars were tiny/small and really beautiful back then... <nostalgia modus OFF>
What this video shows is that if you get rid of the aero {floor, t-tray, barge boards, winglettes} that car can follow nose to tail lap after lap without the need for any DRS crap.
The 2022 cars have done away with mostly all of the things you mentioned. Let's see how close the cars will follow.
Absolutely, The paddle shift concept was invented by Mauro Forghieri, Gilles tested it at Fiorano and disliked it so much that Forghieri abandoned it. Several years later John Barnard discovered it and guessed its full potential. He decided to develop it for the project 639.
According to his biography, Barnard, who is a genius, adopted it to save space in the cockpit and do away with the mechanical linkage. I imagine the system that GV tested was pretty primitive at that time, not surprising that he didn’t like it.
I had the pleasure of meeting him at a Newman/Haas test session at Sebring in, what, maybe 1993 or 94. He was a bit shy but warmed up pretty quickly and immediately took to our bulldog, Amos. I’d never been to a private test session of a front line team so it was very interesting to see how it operated, and frankly how relaxed it was. Something tells me a Penske test would have been a bit more intense.
If I'm not wrong, a lot of the Ferrari engineers didn’t want that system. Barnard said he made sure that a traditional manual gearbox could not be adapted on the 639 so that there would be no going back possible.
I don’t recall that from the biography, but it sounds right. Some in the scuderia had tried to undermine him from day one.
GV was testing this in the late 70’s so for sure the electronics were not as advanced as in the late ‘80s. Also, at the time, the shifting was commanded via buttons on the steering wheel and not the paddle system which was inspired by a similar arrangement on karts.
