FROM CHAMPS TO CHUMPS! The Story of Ferrari's 1980 Formula One Season

[Music] we've seen over the years countless times where a team has won the World Championship but when they have to go and defend it the defense year isn't anywhere near as good and it could be because the other teams have just genuinely caught up somebody's found a cheap hack that helps them sort of overtake the team that was previously the best it could be just RNG with the reliability or just a straight up fluke Williams in 1998 Red Bull in 2014 Mercedes in 2022 Ferrari in 2005 all won the constructor's championship and all the drivers Championship the previous season and then the following year they're mere Shadows of their former selves they go from winning multiple races to only one or two or none as the case may be but absolutely mind-boggling thought of that if Indianapolis 2005 had gone as it should have done Ferrari could have gone the whole season without a win where schumacker at the wheel but what links all those Seasons rule changes between 1997 and 1998 the track got narrower and the groove tires came in and then McLaren was the team at the top between 2013 and 2014 the hybrids came in Mercedes was at the top and between 2004 and 2005 with the tire rules and the higher front Wings Ferrari dropped off and it was McLaren and Reno at the top 2021 2022 the switch to ground effect and the start of the Red Bull years but well the restart of the Red Bull years there's a distinct change in car construction that suited one team over another or allows a reset button to be pushed or it just jumbles up the order a bit as some teams decide to sacrifice one year for another but if you're Ferrari in 1980 in terms of the overall regulations not much changed and they ended up going from winning the World Championship to well their worst season on record the year before was 1979 maths as Lotus had been ahead of the game through 19 78 with their ground effect cars the rest of the teams were now scrambling to build their own the garage Easter teams especially as lier were quick to the ground effect party with others developing in the background now this did cause a bit of a kafuffle behind the scenes there was a bit of a spat between Colin Chapman aligned with the focer alliance and Ferrari who are aligned with FAA because while foler was willing to have the teams push the boundaries of what was doable Ferrari wanted ground effect ban because it interfered with their engine design philosophy now Ferrari like 12-cylinder engines which were big and got in the way of the ventury tunnels that were used to suck the car to the ground and if ground effect was banned they'd be able to carry on using their flat 12s and all was well in the world at least on Ferrari's end however Ferrari had still managed to build a ground effect car because if they wanted to win they had no choice Mara fori had taken the 312 that had been in use for several years by this point and modified it to be able to exploit the ground effect pioneered at least in F1 by lotus while the car used ground effect it was still heavily reli lines on topside Arrow due to the Flat 12 getting in the way also this car was not designed with ground effect in mind it was first introduced in 1974 and they were still using it with modifications so it was still having to use the top side Arrow a bit because they were just basically shoehorning this ground effect in it's not like these days where they take a car then lob it in the bin at the end of the season and design a whole new one even though they might look a little bit the same they're still completely new cars and the engine that they were using was the same Eng they've been using in 1970 okay yes the DF still existed but they were using engines that were really old ancient by today's standards the new 312 T4 was introduced for the South African Grand prairy and was immediately competitive while Rena jaab got poll it was a Ferrari onew for jel VV and jod sha which was followed up with another onew at Long Beach Shor and V's fortunes pre and postr effect were noticeable both retired in Argentina with both barely scoring points in Brazil but with the 312 T4 things were better Phil did have races where he was outside of the points but sha was consistently in them and would ultimately win the championship four points ahead of his Lightning Fast Canadian teammate reliability was on Shea's side too as there is a lot less pink on his row of the results along with voves you know first dis likes of Alan Jones although it's interesting to see here that Jones won more races than both of the Ferraris 4 to3 but he dnfed too many times to make it count so it looked like Ferrari had a decent base to then roll into 1980 and still be competitive Shea was the champion in 1979 but maybe in 1980 it might be J's turn yeah about that basically the garage easers had found the winning formula the DF which was still in use despite coming into service in 1967 well 1968 if you begin it from when Lotus lost exclusivity it was much smaller than Ferrari's 3 l Flat 12 which was far too wide to exploit the Venturi effect under the car while the likes of Lotus lier braam and now Williams have made massive strides forwards and Renault using turbo engines to keep sizes a bit more compact if a bit unreliable if this really was Ferrari not getting with the times then they were going to be screwed as already mentioned the car was now six seasons old and hadn't been designed with ground effect in mind it also produced a lot of drag because it was still using quite a bit of topside Arrow while other cars of the era were turning up with front wings that were basically just for show Lotus lier and Company were building brand new cars with ground effect in mind for meanwhile had gone with a mere simple Evolution Ferrari's least competitive season to this point had been 1969 when Ferrari finished six than last of the points scoring teams with only seven points in a season where Matra and Jackie Stewart tore the series a new one the season was peppered with retirements and a Podium at xandor being the only high point of a rubbish season although some would probably use an adjective a bit fruer than that so when they turned up in 1980 at the first round of the season they were effectively doomed from the start their Evol evolutionary car couldn't compete with the brand new models and while the Flat 12 would give them a decent power Advantage anywhere where power was a premium the all new cars designed by their Rivals were far too good in the corners for the 12-cylinder engine to overcome them it really was shaping it to be a repeat of that awful 1969 season a season where the toosi would be quick to scrub it from the records and their memories if they could do so put simply this car had more floor space than my house because the engine was so wide the car had to be wide and the Venturi tunnels were made bigger to exploit the ground effect but because it had all the aerodynamic properties of Yokozuna the garage Easter teams were only ever going to destroy it on top of this the other cars improved and developed while the Ferrari went nowhere in terms of development a dfv powered car with 18in wide tunnels is going to be narrower than a flat 12 with 18in tunnels this thing was a brick and actually the better description is to say that he went backwards over the course of the Season that just is a bit of extra bits and pie P here it's been quite difficult to get accurate sizing of everything so whether the car was as big as claimed online needs to be taken with a pinch of salt part of the arms race in terms of development meant that the tires were being designed to try and keep up Ferrari had complained quite loudly about the Michelin they and Renault were using in 1980 and michelin's development had been tailored more to the Rena and the turbos they had with Ferrari stopping for fresh tires being a common sight throughout 1980 the 1980 car was basically the 1979 car but with with only a few modifications the mini skirts on the side were worse than they had been in 1979 and the glass resin side pods were not stiff enough to cope with the newer improved cornering forces because the car couldn't Corner as hard the tires weren't warming up to their optimal and the snowball gets bigger the worst Point came at the Canadian gury at Montreal PK had scored pole by around 8/10 of a second ahead of Jones but down near the bottom in 26th Place was sha under modern Formula 1 rules this would be a qualification but since only 24 cars could start this race it's down as a non- qualification there was no 107% in those days so as long as you were in the top 24 you were starting no matter how far off the pace you were filer meanwhile managed to qualify 22nd and get himself up to fifth as people dropped out of the race but for the world champion in the Constructor Championship winning car from the previous season he wasn't on the grid because he was too slow that's embarrassing fil scored the best results of the Season Two fifth places and two sixth places while Sha's only finish in the points all year was at the usgp West at Long Beach from the raceing California to the end of the season sha was never close to scoring a point as it was only the top six scoring in those days if social media existed back then he'd be called washed eight points in all were scored which is only one point more than that horrendous 1969 season and actually both seasons have a few parallels I mentioned before about Ferrari being slow to embrace new ideas there's that famous quote from Enzo where he said aerodynamics is for people that can't build engines as he believed that having the biggest engine with the most amount of power was the way to win whereas in Britain the Mantra was at least from Chapman simplify and add likeness although both approaches had their issues you know I'm not going to say that the Lotus approach was better because their cars were notoriously fragile and it was luck that you finished more than anything even Jim Clark someone who was ever so gentle with his mechanical Parts fell victim to this fragility so when Lotus and the other team started whacking Wings on the cars for downforce Ferrari was slow on the uptake because engine power over everything else by the time 1969 rolled around the dfv was in the hands of anybody that wanted to buy one and wings were Common Place Ferrari had put Wings on the 312 in 1969 but they couldn't get them to work like the other teams had the dfv powered cars were also lighter and handled better thanks to also being shorter because they had four fewer cylinders powerful engines were done in racing it was all about handling although it should be said at this point that it was also a rebuilding season for Ferrari around this time Enzo had sold 50% of his team to Fiat and was using that money invested by Fiat to help rebuild the team so it's a little bit more than just aerodynamics bad I don't want wings I'm Enzo Ferrari I'm going to do it my way although reading up on some stuff here because the Anar on the Autos sport forums usually have something interesting to say is that the rumor of the time was that lotus's secrets to success was some sort of trick differential that became something of an obsession for fori whether Lotus had intentionally psyched everybody out by having a limited slip diff that could do black magic when really it was just a ground effect I don't know but it is something to consider but one thing to remember as well is that ground effect was still an untapped thing around this time and turbos had been looked at as the future so the Flat 12 design was on borrow time as was the fabled dfv it seems that Ferrari had done just enough through 1979 before the Dynamic shift and they were basically in the right place right time with that particular car and having one that was a bit more reliable by the time 198 rolled around the modifications to the car had been a backward step and they had begun development on their own turbo engine at this point so really it was a mix of resource allocation bad car and not being able to understand what was wrong with their bad car there is a story floating around online that they went to about five different wind tunnels and each of those wind tunnels with the same model of car they got five different results either way the car was so bad that Sheeka just quit racing at the end of the season or at least quit Formula 1 he only scored two points all the year in his title defense season so yeah he was gone while vov meanwhile still had a desire to win that's probably why vilner did a lot better throughout the course of the Season he was much hungrier than Shea was Ferrari did learn a lesson from this season though for 1981 they introduced the 126c a V6 turbo powered car car that was borrowing from Renault and really helped usher in the turbo years Enzo had hired Nicola Matzi to help build this as Matzi had been part of the team building the turbocharged lania stratas gr5 the car was an immediate Improvement and won two races in the hands of VV but was still unreliable with the arrival of Harvey pel threat for 1982 Ferrari was looking certain to take a driver's title before Fate intervened on top of this Ferrari had also issued some bits and pieces regarding a 3 ground effect car that took design ideas from the famous tial six wheeler even going as far as to look at an eight wheeler although these were just mockups designed to keep the other teams on their toes would have been cool if they built a working prototype though but yeah 1980 possibly Ferrari's worst ever season yes they scored fewer points well one fewer point in 1969 but this was a championship defense season and they got utterly crushed by the competition that had simply taken everything to the next level and left Ferrari behind so really they went from champ to Champ but is it really their worst ever season I'll leave it down to you to discuss in the comments so then a look at Ferrari's utterly atrocious 1980 season if this has been something you've enjoyed learning about today then do leave a like on the video so I know I've done a good job and for more like this make sure you're subscribed with that Bell on so you never miss out on anything else I do around here massive thanks as ever to the Fine bunch of lads over at patreon that continue to support the channel at a more personal level and if you want to help keep things running around here then a link to patreon on is in the description along with links to Discord socials and other bits and Bobs that you might want or need to know well the super thanks and memberships if you want to do stuff that way so until next time I've been a m have a great day wherever you are and goodbye [Music]

Channel: Aidan Millward

Views: 22,860

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Id: 67ocuTbCPR4

Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2024