F1's Most Catastrophic Cars

the McLaren Formula One team is enduring a difficult time having gone from race winning form in 2012 ending the season with the fastest car on the grid to being the last of the point scoring teams in the 2015 season but McLaren is not the only team to have gone from the front to the back of the grid in a relatively short space of time in fact history is littered of teams that have gone from hero to zero and that's what this video is all about the teams that have seen spectacular downturns in form first up is the disastrous season in 1966 to the BRM team who went from second with 45 points the previous season to fourth in the constructors table with 22 points after a miserable time throughout most of the 1950's BRM finally achieved success in the one and a half liter formula of the early 1960s thanks to a small neat v8 and the skills of Graham Hill and latterly Jackie Stewart they won the Constructors Championship in 1962 and were runners-up from 1963 to 1965 but with the 3-liter formula of 1966 looming the team repeated errors from earlier on in the history opting for 16 cylinders of complexity weight and trouble the one and a half liter v8 was fought in Devon the one and a half litre v8 was flattened out to make a flat eight and another was mounted on top to make a three litre h16 engine designed by Tony Rudd the original concept involved six camshafts between the four cylinder heads with the two crank shafts being directly linked think that sounds bad it got worse it ended up having eight camshafts and a chain to link the two cranks the castings were thicker than intended to and it weighed in at more than 250 kilograms for not much more than 400 brake horsepower even Jackie Stewart could do little with it although the engine did score of Grand Prix win and the back of Jim Clark's Lotus at Watkins Glen in late 1966 the following year Lotus switched to the new Ford Cosworth v8 405 brake horsepower from just 167 kilograms and way less fuel was required leaving the H 16 looking uh Turley ridiculous next up is the Lotus 63 from 1969 which calls lotus to slump from first in the Constructors Championship with 62 points to third with 47 four-wheel drive was going to be where it was all at in Formula One just as we once assumed we would one day all have jetpacks it was the past's idea of what the future would look like four-wheel drive would surely be necessary to fully exploit the enormous horsepower that was on its way in 1968 there was crazy talk of 500 brake horsepower soon being achievable the Lotus 63 was born right in the middle of 1969 s four-wheel drive fever it featured an about-face Cosworth DFV driving a gearbox in the center of a car and the differential that diverted around 25% of the torque to the front wheels the fuel tank was at the back where the gearbox would normally be mercurial team boss Colin Chapman was so convinced of the concepts future that on the eve of the British Grand Prix he sold the team's conventional and super-quick 49 models a couple of races earlier Jochen Rindt had refused to drive too low to 63 and this was Chapman's resolution to the problem but rent again refused at Silverstone and after Graham Hill had proved just how much slower it was than the 49 Chapman had to borrow back the cars he just sold wings anti-development had nullified the attraction advantages of four-wheel drive leaving just the downsides of weight and poor drivability next up is the March 7 to 1x from 1972 causing March to drop from fourth the previous season with 33 points - 6 - with 15 points stung by criticism from various courses that the 1970 March 701 was just too conservative designer Robin hurt along with Jeff fairest and aerodynamicist Frank Costin join a more radical approach with the tea-tray front wings seven-11 it made Ronnie Peterson runner-up in the world championship for 1972 Hurd was even more extreme and the 71 X was conceived around the concept of minimizing the polar moment of inertia that's reducing the dumbbell effect of changing direction centering the Cal's mass was the key to this so a transverse gearbox was placed before the rear axle line which moved the engine forward from the rear wheels butting it up against the cockpit up front was a brutal stub nose which in theory would make the car fantastically responsive to direction change instead the forward weight distribution created by the mechanical layout totally overwhelmed standard-issue front ghujiya tires and produced cried understeer to compound that problem when the front tires eventually did grip the car would respond very suddenly inducing horribly unexpected oversteer Peterson rated as the world's fastest driver felt the car was good his teammate app a driver novice called niki lauda insisted it was hopeless heard soon realized that Lauda was right Lotus again next with the Lotus 80 from 1979 which caused the team to slide from first with 86 points to fifth with 39 after changing the face of Formula One downforce with ground effects on route to the championship in 1978 Lotus planned to move the whole game on another massive step a step too far as it turned out the Lotus 80 was conceived to derive all of its downfalls from the underbody with no need for wings skirts around the full length of the car the side pods which housed the ground effect generating venturi tubes were extended and the wings vanished it looked gorgeous but it didn't work the concept required the entire underbody to be enclosed which meant that the side pods were curved in plain view so they simply didn't stop ahead of the rear wheels the skirts could not cope with the curvature and kept sticking but the real limitation was that the huge underbody downforce could not be properly harnessed due to poor passing the violent bouncing actioned as the airflow got out of phase with the bumps on the track and the cars springing when the car finally did race it did so equipped with conventional front and rear wings Lotus a Mario Andretti persevered with it for a few races but since it was unable to run its intended wingless form a much of its potential downfalls was rendered useless it was simply a heavier less agile Lotus 79 and it was Julie abandoned fast forwards in 1986 with the Brabham BT 55 which caused Bradham to slide from fifth with 26 points to ninth with just two brevin were one of F ones sharpest squads in the early 1980s with star driver Nelson Piquet taking the 1981 and 1983 drivers titles and the team winning races into 1985 but by 1986 with engine supply BMW falling behind in the technology stakes and Brabham team boss Bernie Ecclestone starting to lose interest the roller skate BG 55 was a case of designer Gordon Murray gambling had their house on red it was positioned radically lower than any other car with even its predecessor towering over it and it's seat was reclined but at an angle of more than 30 degrees the low drag dimensions were made possible by counting over the four-cylinder engine at 72 degrees meaning the crank shafts later one side of the central axis and a trick transverse gearbox had to be devised the traction problems the car suffered could probably have been cured but the biggest limitation was the engines breathing problems oil could not circulate properly costing both power and reliability and the old bt 54 was exhumed before the season got too old Brabham never really recovered as the car failed to ignite Bernier cousins interest in the team but murray was later vindicated when he used almost the same dimensions on the McLaren mp4 for in 1988 which one all but one race next up is the Ferrari f9 to a from 1992 when the team fell from third the previous season with 55.5 points to fourth were 21 frenchman jean-claude michel is a brilliant aerodynamicist who came up with the modern high knows concept on the tier 0:01 9 they're pretty much the same time that agent knew he was doing the very same thing over at leighton house despite the fact that the o1 9 collected just nine points over the course of 1990 michel subsequently landed a job at ferrari as their chief of aerodynamics for the 1992 season michaud devised the twin floor for re f9 to a a a machine featuring tall narrow side pods that were raised up from the floor to form a channel running between the floor and the underside of the pods the air flow will accelerate back from the front wing a long channel and then over the top of the full-width diffuser the faster the air flow was sucked over the front wing the more downforce will be created at the front and the faster the air flow sped over the diffuser the greater the difference in pressure between the underfloor and the upper body thereby increasing underbody downforce as well this theory was perfectly sound when considering an aerodynamic isolation but the increase in the center of gravity of the height from raising the side pods and the radiators within them in account was already far too heavy turned out to be disastrous to untangle such a complex problem the team really needed to have a very technically astute lead driver onboard before I had Jonah lazy driving alongside Ivan Capelli so the Scuderia slumped from championship challenging form in 1990 continued and lastly it's the McLaren mp4 18 from 2003 the team were third with 65 points the previous season and retained third with a previous car this car was never raised MacLaren's 2003 machine was all set to take construction to new levels with its no compromise approach to weight saving in Aero perfection the brainchild of Asian Nui its construction was so extreme that to make key setup changes the car had to be taken apart and have new carbon-fiber sections bonded in unfortunately it also had a tendency to shake itself to pieces as proved by test driver alex vertices massive accident at the Paul Ricard circuit in France in addition the engine cooling proved marginal due to the super narrow side pods progress on the MV 418 was delayed after it failed several crash tests so McLaren started the season with a d' spec update of the old mp4 17 was the 18th set to appear during the European part of the season that debut never materialized as the 18 continued to destroy itself in testing a Monza debut was then mooted because of the summer testing ban this date also came and went at which point Kimi räikkönen was fighting a convincing campaign in the 17d he entered the final round showdown still in the old car and the mp4 18 and it's update the 18 B never raced in fact so far ahead of its time was the mp4 18 that it didn't race until 2005 by which time it had been properly developed as the MP 420 in that incarnation it was clearly forming the ones fastest car kept from the title only as a result of an unreliable engine and the combined talents of Fernando Alonso and Renault thank you very much for watching this video if you enjoyed it be sure to give it a like and subscribe for more if you don't want to miss any future videos from this channel on the screen are two more videos and I think you might enjoy also I'd like you to put in the comments your favorite catastrophic downturn in form from a motorsport team once again thank you very much for watching

Channel: F1Fan0001

Views: 1,573,117

Rating: 4.4751453 out of 5

Keywords: Formula One (Sport), Automobile (TV Genre)

Id: Graj3Pm1Pvw

Length: 11min 42sec (702 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 06 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/stillusesAOL]

Starts at 1:16 if my link doesn't work.