The Turbo Era: Formula 1 on Steroids

since 2014 Formula One cars have been running on Turbo Power these hybrid engines use a sophisticated combination of mechanical and electrical power to give record-breaking Pace to contemporary cars despite their size and weight and to develop up to 1 000 horsepower almost 300 more than the naturally aspirated ones that preceded them as mind bending as those figures are however they pale in comparison to those of the past some 30 years earlier turbo engines were all the rage it was a time of excess in Motorsport that ran in tandem with Group B and rally cars and Group C in sports cars following the Banning of ground effect and the massive simplification of aerodynamics that followed engine power was the key to success in Formula One with none of the modern considerations surrounding sustainability as engines regularly blew themselves up after only a handful of laps time to look at the turbo era in the early years of Formula One in the 1950s there was a large amount of flexibility surrounding engine regulations with the only concrete rules being a maximum displacement of 1500 CC for engines with a compressor I.E a supercharger or turbocharger and four and a half thousand CC for naturally aspirated engines which could range in configurations from inline Falls to v16s following a brief interregnum where the sport was run to Formula 2 regulations these sizes were amended to 750 cc and two and a half thousand CC respectively in 1954 but no teams chose to build compressed engines despite the fact that Alfa Romeo had won the first two drivers titles under supercharged power off the back of this from 1961 all engines had to be naturally aspirated and between 1300 and 1500 CC having a drop in displacement of almost 50 percent created a drastic drop in power as the brm type 15 which made a single appearance at the British Grand Prix in 1951 and had a one and a half liter supercharged V16 developed almost 600 horsepower whereas Phil Hill's Championship winning Ferrari 156's one and a half liter V6 developed just over 200 horsepower by this time however the cars had moved from being front engine to mid-engined which greatly improved weight distribution and with the more involved aerodynamics meant they were still just as fast by the middle of the decade Formula One cars were beginning to be massively outpaced by sports cars with the 1966 24 hours of lemon being one in a Ford GT40 Mark II with a 7 liter V8 that produced almost 500 horsepower and so from that year the options were to have either a 1500 CC compressed engine or a 3000 CC naturally aspirated engine once again however every Constructor opted for naturally aspirated power and when the 3D to V8 Ford Cosworth dfv was introduced in 1967 it became the engine of choice as it had the trifecta of being powerful reliable and affordable and over the next 16 years was used by every Constructor except Ferrari Alfa Romeo Renault brm and Matra and teams are running it won seven consecutive Constructors championships from 1968 to 1974. compressed engines had been in existence almost as long as internal combustion engines themselves and had an undeniable power advantage over naturally aspirated ones and yet was still largely ignored so what exactly is a compressed engine in essence compressed engines differ from naturally aspirated engines in that they are equipped with a compressor usually either a supercharger or a turbocharger which compresses the air in the intake manifold before it enters the cylinders which increases the size of the combustion in each stroke and therefore increases the power of the engine a supercharger is connected to the crankshaft by either a belt chain or system of Gears which Powers a fan in the intake manifold that compresses the air before it enters the engine whereas a Turbocharger has one fan in the exhaust manifold which is powered by the exhaust gases and a second fan in the intake manifold directly connected to this one which compresses the air superchargers function better at low speed and low revs as there is a direct correlation between the engine's RPM and that of the supercharger itself and therefore the power it delivers turbochargers however deliver far greater amounts of power at high speed and high revs as the fans are not limited by the RPM of the engine however as an offset to that turbo lag is a common side effect at low speeds where the exhaustic acids are not powerful enough to run the turbocharger which slows the car down and makes throttle response and control more unpredictable in 1977 Renault entered Formula One and their first car the rs-01 ran the one and a half liter V6 ef1 engine the first turbocharged engine in Formula One history Renault had experience with the technology as they had supplied turbocharged engines to Mirage in sports cars and they had originally intended to enter Formula One in 1974 supplying turbocharged engines to tyrol but Tyrrell pulled out of the deal so now Renault were also building their own chassis introduced in the second half of the season the rs-01 was the most powerful car on the grid developing just over 500 horsepower but the chassis itself was basic as the entire project was still in the experimental stage and the emphasis was on showcasing and developing its innovative engine they entered only one car driven by Jean-Pierre Shabuway who was a trained mechanic with an engineering degree and was nominantly running the team Pace wise the car was at the lower end of the Midfield as despite the engine being powerful it suffered from severe turbo lag making it especially slow and tight low-speed corners but the biggest problem was chronic unreliability mostly with the engine itself as another issue with turbocharged engines is their tendency to overheat due to their confined design and dependence on hot exhaust gases for power in five races jabway retired from four of them and failed to qualify for the other and the car acquired the nickname the yellow teapot as it frequently went up in a cloud of white smoke 1978 went marginally better as qualifying Pace improved with jab away qualifying sixth upon their return at Kyle Army but reliability was still a serious issue two rounds later Renault achieved their first classified finish with 10th at Monaco and then finished 13th in Spain following this however came seven consecutive retirements though they did turn a few heads by qualifying third in Austria a breakthrough came at the United States Grand Prix where jaboy qualified ninth and managed to finish on the lead lap in fourth to score three points and finish 12th in the Constructors Championship progress was beginning to be made but at the time the other teams were fixated on Lotus whose ground effects are running type 79 had just stormed Mario Andretti to the title and so aerodynamics were the main talking point over engine power initially the rs-01 continued to be used in 1979 but Renault now ran a second car and had recruited Renee our new to drive it a double-engine failure came in Argentina and our new spawn-off in Brazil while jabway finished 10th but the game changer was in South Africa our new qualified 10th but jaboy managed to get Pole Position Kyle Army is nearly 5000 feet above sea level and so renault's turbo engine had a clear Advantage as the naturally aspirated cars suffered massive drops in power in thin air this success did not translate onto race day however as jabway dropped down the order until the engine blew again on lap 48. neither driver raced in Long Beach after a drive shaft failure called jabway to crash in practice and injure his wrist and at the following round in Spain shavoy turned up in a brand new car the rs-10 which used the same engine now equipped with twin turbos but had an improved gearbox and Venturi Tunnels for ground effects as this was gradually being adopted across the board our new began driving a second rs-10 two rounds laser at Monaco and at the team's home race at dijon they really made the grid listen they locked out the front row and jabway went on to take the win becoming the first French winner of the French Grand Prix in over 30 years while our new was caught in a legendary battle with the Ferrari or Zeal veal nerve in the closing laps and they went back and forth and our new eventually finished third Dijon prenoir is another high altitude circuit at over 1500 feet above sea level and has a long straight and medium to high speed Corners negating the turbo lag and making it perfectly suited to their car which combined with the grip afforded by ground effect a high speed made it a winning combination even with this breakthrough reliability was still a major problem after this shapeway and Anu between them got to run of four consecutive pole positions but failed to convert any of these into wins and while our new got two second place finishes and a sixth place finish javaway scored no further points and they only got four more finishes from a potential 14. in 1980 Renault continued to be the only team using Turbo Power though by now almost every other team had their own turbocharged engines in development the re20 used the ef-1 engine once again which had a power advantage of about 50 horsepower over the now 14 year old Cosworth dfv being used by almost every other team reliability had improved but was still a major hindrance jabway got pole at interlagos and kyalami with interlagos also being a high altitude circuit at almost 3000 feet above sea level however despite dropping to Fourth at the starts but getting the lead back by the end of the first lap jabway's turbo blue but our new had gone up to the front as well and took his first win and the fastest lap javaway then got a puncture while leading at Kyle Army but our new once again inherited the win in the fastest lap the cause inherent weaknesses showed up at the more conventional circuits as while our new got a couple of points finishes shabbaway had five consecutive retirements triggered mostly by the gearbox this time at the urster Reich ring however located high up in the Austrian Alps they locked out the front row and stormed away in the race however our new God of puncture had eventually finished ninth while jabway just about held on to take the win or worn out tires they locked out the front row once again at xandvalt but our new finished second to Nelson PK and jabway retired with handling problems they got their third consecutive front row lockout at Imola and our new's third consecutive pole position but jabboy's gearbox died and our new had a power loss on finished 10th by now the car's Pace was undeniable but they were still hindered by reliability but managed to finish fourth in the Constructors Championship things changed in 1981 as Renault were joined in the turbo club by Ferrari and Tolman tolman's engines were supplied by heart but the overall car was abysmal and drivers Brian Henton and Derek Warwick each only made the grid once Ferrari on the other hand made their own engines and had originally trialled superchargers but settled on Twin turbochargers which in qualifying trim broke the 600 horsepower Mark Renault used the re20 for the first six races which was then replaced by the re-30 Ferrari and Renault were unrivaled in both power and straight line speed however after four years Renault still could not get the ef1 engine to an acceptable standard of reliability Ferrari on the other hand had a very sound though still problematic engine but the 126 CK was mostly held back by poor aerodynamics it developed only a fraction of the downforce of ramen Williams cars and had a tendency to be unstable in Corners due to the very stiff suspension everyone was running following The Binding of flexible skirts this combined with even worse turbo lag than Renault made the car very difficult to handle mid-season Renault went on a run of six consecutive pole positions four for Renee Anu and two for Alan prostu would replace shabbaway only one of these was converted into a win however with Pros taking victory at zanvort though he did win two other races Jill viel know that Ferrari took consecutive victories at Monaco and harama but otherwise the team struggled to be competitive only Renault was able to pass them on Long straights and so at high speed circuits such as Hockenheim Monza harama and Buenos Aires veal Nerf and teammate Didier Peroni had a tendency to form trains of naturally aspirated cars behind them who were clearly faster overall but were unable to get passed due to the Ferrari's instability and unpredictable racing line through the corners and unrivaled speed and acceleration on the straights as in race trim the Ferrari 021 was some 100 horsepower more powerful than the Workhorse that was the Ford Cosworth DFE the superior reliability and aerodynamics of their Rivals meant that Renault finished third in the Constructors Championship behind Williams and brabham and Ferrari finish to fifth behind legier for 1982 brabham joined Renault Ferrari and Tolman in adopting Turbo Power they took on BMW as their engine supplier who ran a modified version of the inline 4 M12 which had been run successfully in Formula 2 since the 1960s brabham had been testing the engine since 1980 and ran it at the opening round at Kyle Army where lap times at the High Altitude circuit were as competitive as they anticipated but they suffered a double retirement and so team principal Bernie ecclestone shelves the BMW M12 until he felt it was race ready and they went back to the Ford Cosworth dfv pressure from BMW themselves meant the M12 was reintroduced against eccleston's will four races later as older at first Nelson PK ran the BMW powered bc50 while Ricardo petrazzi ran the cosworth-powered bt-49 in which he won a chaotic Monaco Grand Prix while PK was struggling in a clearly underprepared car and even failed to qualify at Detroit after BMW revised the fuel mix control however PK managed to qualify fourth at Montreal and go on to win taking advantage of the circuit's long straight and the cool conditions keeping the turbo under control and then finished second at zanvort petrasi was now also in the bc50 and the team also started experimenting with in-race refueling something not yet trialled in Formula One but what enables a properly test it as a side from a fourth and fifth in Switzerland every other race ended in a double retirement and they finished fifth in the Constructors Championship Tolman ran a b and c-spec model of their 1981 car which against the backdrop of the Falklands War had acquired the nickname General belgrano they managed to qualify for races more often than not but across the year achieved just two classified finishes with 15th and 10th from Derrick Warwick in France and Germany Renault ran a b spec model of the re-30 which without question was the fastest car of 1982 as they got polled in 10 of the 16 races that year and the engine now developed nearly 600 horsepower yet again reliability held them back this time by an experimental electronic fuel injection system and only two of these pole positions were converted into victories by prostate interlagos and are new at Paul Rickard another circuit perfectly suited to turbo cars with the 1.1 mile long Mistral straight where the front three rows on the grid were taken by Renault Ferrari and brabham Pros took a second victory at kyalami and our new at Monza but there was a run of seven consecutive races mid-season where no points were scored and they eventually finished third in the Constructors Championship Ferrari completely revised the aerodynamics on their car and had built a jack of all trades well-rounded machine it still had the most powerful engine but it was very heavy and the aerodynamics and handling characteristics were far better than before but still inferior to those of Renault where the car stood out was in reliability as across the year there were just two mechanical retirements and Against All Odds Ferrari won the Constructors Championship this was despite the fact that the drivers Championship Was Won by Keke rosberg driving for Williams who finished fourth and that Ferrari's lead driver jealfilner was killed in a crash at zolder so Didier Perroni raced alone for the next three rounds until Patrick tombe took the second seat then Peroni suffered career-ending injuries in a crash at Hockenheim so tombe then ran a load and failed to start in Switzerland before Mario and Jesse joined him for the final two rounds they ran two cars and only half of the races but took advantage of the other team's poor reliability several teams boycotting the San Marino Grand Prix and no one driver winning more than two races all year in 1983 ground effect was banned and so in the interests of remaining competitive other teams started adopting Turbo Power Alfa Romeo debuted the first V8 turbo engine in Formula One which developed 640 horsepower which the year before would have matched Ferrari however Ferrari had now upscaled their engines to 850 horsepower ATS adopted the BMW M12 being used by brabham lotus introduced the Renault ef-1 powered 93t from the second round and from the ninth round Spirit debuted the Honda power 201 marking Honda's return to Formula One after a 15-year absence Williams and McLaren did not introduce turbo engines until the tail end of the season and Tyrrell Ram legier arrows azella and Theodore did not introduce them at all this was the year that turbos came of age as there was a three-way battle for the constructors title between brabham Ferrari and Renault all of whom had gone for completely different design philosophies BMW had upgraded their engines such that in qualifying Trend the brabham bt52 was approaching 1 000 horsepower which was detuned to 850 horsepower for the races in order to make sure that power was efficiently delivered to the tarmac Gordon Murray lengthened the wheelbase and pushed the side pods right back over the rear wheels which gave the car a distinctive dart-like shape the team made liberal use of inrace refueling and so ran aggressive strategies the car was Nimble and easy to handle but still not as well balanced as Ferrari and Renault and not particularly reliable Ricardo petrazi finished just five of the 15 races that year but Nelson PK was a consistent Podium finisher though only with one pole position and took three wins and won his second driver's Title by two points around Frost but bravon was third in the Constructors Championship renault's car the re-40 continued to use the now six-year-old ef-1 engine which they claimed could now produce almost 900 horsepower nearly double when it was first built the car had good aerodynamics and was also the first Formula One car to have an exhaust blown diffuser and externally did not look too dissimilar from a ground effects car but as ever reliability held them back it mostly affected Eddie cheever as Pros took four wins across the year but had three retirements towards the end costing them both titles Ferrari had the best overall package and had built an enormously oversized rear wing which still only produced about half of the downforcer ground effect the engine produced 800 horsepower in qualifying Trim in 650 horsepower in race trim they took eight pole positions just one of which was conversed into a win but one of both drivers finished on the podium nine races Patrick tombay retiring from pole four times eliminated him from the title fight and our news suffered with a run of three consecutive retirements but as both drivers were regular Front Runners they successfully defended the Constructors Championship Behind these three Williams and McLaren soldiered on with their aging Cosworth dfes and both won a race each but simply could not compete against cars that had almost doubled their power and introduced their own turbos right at the end of the year as test mules for 1984 and fish fourth and fifth in the Constructors Championship Alfa Romeo's turbo V8 was distinctly underpowered for its size a decided to repair a second place finishes they were stuck with the other naturally aspirated teams as well as Tolman who had a better car but only scored points right at the end in 1984 every single team except Tyrell now had a turbocharged engine arrows adopted the BMW M12 Ram took on hot inline Falls which Spirit also switched over to ozello used Alfredo's V8s and lizier took on Renault v6s ever since their arrival kentiril had insisted that turbo's constitutes as a form of turbine which had been banned since 1971 which was one of his many qualms during the fisa focal war and it wouldn't be until mid-1985 that they caved and got a deal to run Renault engines as they were at a serious detriment to everybody else one solution they had come up with to compensate for this was to deliberately run the car underweight and when filling the water tank used for brake coolant late in the race they would also fill the tank with 140 pounds of lead shot to get the car above the minimum weight limit brabham and Williams had adopted a similar system in 1982 in which they would just dump the water on the track when they left the pit lane and then refill the tanks before each weigh-in the only natural advantage that Tyrrell had over the turbosch teams was that it was easier for them to reach said weight limit without adding ballast to the car due to the size of their engine and as refueling had now been banned they had far fewer problems with fuel consumption in races because changing rules of that nature at the time required a unanimous vote from all teams Tyrell alone was able to block them the giveaway was that after their final pit stops lead shot would often shoot out of the top of the car and rain down upon the neighboring team's pit boxes after Martin brundle finished second at Detroit the cars were weighed and it was determined that this lead shot Laden water was part aromatic and therefore constituted an extra fuel source despite the fact it came nowhere near the engine and had no effect on propulsion so for this Tyrell were charged with in-race refueling using illegal aromatic fuel losing illegal fuel lines and misuse of ballast they were therefore retroactively disqualified from all the previous races and excluded from the championship Tyrrell attempted to appeal this and were then further charged for having illegal holes in the car's floor that constituted ground effect and were banned from the final three races with the only non-turbo charged engine out of the equation the turbocharged teams could now easily pass whatever rule changes that benefited them anterioral's band was seen as a way of fisa pushing out naturally aspirated teams in order to encourage more manufacturers to become engine suppliers McLaren were a bit late to the turbo party but they left the rest of the Grid in their dust they made a deal with Porsche to build their engines which were branded as tags they produced 800 horsepower in qualifying trim and 650 horsepower in race trim which was by no means the most powerful that year but they made up for that as the car was very good on fuel consumption use revolutionary carbon brakes which worked exceptionally well in all but the hottest temperatures and they had by far the strongest driver lineup of Nikki louder and Alan Prost the car wasn't particularly strong in qualifying as they got only three pole positions but had little to no competition in races as louder improster won a record-breaking 12 races and got four one-two finishes and louder got the driver's Title by half a point from frost and the team stormed to the constructors title with more than double the points of Ferrari in second with their competition either being as fast and breaking down or being as reliable but being slower hell you could train a monkey to drive this car gentlemen Ferrari were knocked off their pedestal as they suffered from High fuel consumption but also had high drag from their gigantic rear wing making them as much as 15 miles per hour slower than brabham on the straights they won Only One race but with possible reliability managed to finish second in the Constructors Championship fueling having to redesign the car around this BMW once again had the most powerful engine and it showed as Nelson PK got nine pole positions that year with the team also resorting to building entire engines just for qualifying PK also broke the 200 mile per hour barrier and qualifying at kyalami but in the races the car burned its way through Fuel and was cripplingly unreliable after six rounds no points had been scored only two of PK's nine pole positions were converted into wins there were also six double retirements and they finished fourth in the Constructors Championship being beaten by lotus who had beaten a declining Renault with their own engines the grid closed up in 1985 and minardi Zach speed and haslola all joined the grid menardi had their V6 turbo supplied by matori moderni zakspeed built their own inline fours and has Lola took on heart McLaren ran a b-spec model of their championship winning car from the previous year and increased the engine power by about 100 horsepower in both qualifying and race trim but found that their Rivals had still caught up to them the car's relative lack of power and Alan prost's emphasis on prioritizing race setups meant to achieved just two pole positions but as of 1984 the car had excellent reliability and excelled at high speed circuits allowing him to take five wins and his first driver's title and for Nikki louder in his final year in the sport to help the team defend the Constructors Championship Ferrari had built a very strong car that like McLaren wasn't the most powerful at just 750 horsepower but had fantastic race pace which meant michaeli alvarezzo led the championship for most of the year as the season wore on and parts wore out reliability started deteriorating and albaretto retired from the final four races which cost him and the team both titles Williams had taken on Honda the previous year to build their engines but in 1984 had suffered with a car that essentially wasn't fast enough for the engine their 1985 car was far more robust and Honda had built a monster of an engine that developed as a 1250 horsepower in qualifying trim and 900 horsepower in race trim KK rosberg a notoriously aggressive driver got Paul at Silverstone with an average lap speed of 160.94 miles per hour on a damp track with a deflating Tire a record he would hold for the next 17 years until Juan Pablo Montoya clocks 161.45 miles per hour for his pole app at malzer in 2002 also in a Williams teammate Nigel Mansell shared rosberg's all-in hyper aggressive driving style and both drivers won two races including the final three of the year but had to Cecil for third in the Constructors Championship Lotus built a qualifying car and got eight pole positions that year and managed once again to beat a declining Renault with their own engines problem and BMW continued to break power records constantly operating the M12 engine its true power outputs in 1985 is not known as BMW's dynamometer only went up to 1 280 horsepower but is estimated to be somewhere in the region of 1400 horsepower with six bar of pressure in the turbos without which the inline 4 engine by itself would have developed a trifling 150 horsepower unsurprisingly they had serious problems delivering this much power efficiently as Nelson PK and Mark zero would get wheel spin in fourth gear as good as it was at high speed circuits including Sierra hitting 210 miles per hour Paul Rickard almost 40 miles per hour fast than Stefan belloff with a still naturally aspirated Tyrion 0-12 severe turbo lag and Pirelli tires that worked well in the southern hemisphere heat but not at the European circuits created severe understeer and their Pace went out the window at low speed circuits and they had to settle for fifth in the Constructors Championship Renault the original pioneers of Turbo technology in Formula One had been persistent in their efforts but never achieved outright dominance despite the fact that turbos eventually became necessary to remain competitive after Prost left they went into a rapid decline as their engines got outdeveloped by other manufacturers and they never had the best aerodynamics after twice being beaten by customer team Lotus coupled with Rising costs they withdrew as a Constructor at the end of 1985 but continued on as an engine Supply to Lotus legier and Tyrell for 1986 before withdrawing from Formula One completely though they would return as an engine supplier in 1989 and as a Constructor in 2002 in 1986 naturally aspirated engines were banned and turbos made compulsory though in practice this made no difference as all teams had turbocharged engines anyway early on hasselola Switched from heart engines to the first Ford Cosworth turbos new team Benetton who had bought out Tolman took on the BMW M12 an ATS who appeared later the seat and joined minority and using maturi madoni v6s Peak performances were being reached and the teams now resorted to having entire engine skier boxes and sets of tires just for qualifying that would be written off after only a couple of laps are never used again contrast this with modern power units which are expected to last for seven races each carbon fiber replacing aluminum honeycomb across the board meant weight was consistently dropping to the point where cars could weigh 540 kilograms of 1400 horsepower creating a power to weight ratio of 2 600 horsepower per tonne more than double that of the modern cars some teams found ways of mitigating turbo lag which was worse on single turbo engines like BMWs but it had become a far greater issue than when Renault had first struggled in the poultry 500 horsepower ef1 in the 1970s as the cars would go for 200 horsepower to 1400 horsepower out of nowhere one artificial way of trying to curb this as the engines would be massively detuned for races was to reduce maximum fuel capacity for 220 liters to 185 which forced the drivers to slow down and meant many ran out of fuel in the dying stages of races components being pushed to their limits makes 1986 the worst year on record for reliability with an average finishing rate of just 40 percent Williams had become the team to beat and built a well-rounded car with solid aerodynamics and a powerful Honda engine which featured variable geometry to regulate the turbo use across the power band and world-class drivers in the form of Nelson pique and Nigel Mansell neither driver would win the driver's title but they comfortably took the constructor's title McLaren we're now running a c-spec version of the mp42 which was noticeably less competitive with each passing year it was underpowered relative to Williams now had worse aerodynamics and was not very fuel efficient exacerbated by KK rosberg's hyper aggressive driving style he had taken over from the ground effect era meaning he often ran out of fuel and was driving the car Beyond its limits defending Champion Alan Cross had a markedly smoother style as ever prioritizing race Pace over qualifying Pace with only one pole position but achieved four wins and took advantage of the squabbles between PK and Mansel to successfully defend the driver's title Lotus once again impressed with a car that was excellent in qualifying as ayat and Senna achieved eight pole positions in race trim the car was weaker however and he won only two races and he and teammate Johnny Dumfries had several retirements and they settled for third in the Constructors Championship Ferrari built a car that was excellent in a straight line but terrible in the corners and aside through a few podiums they were rarely able to run at the front and finish fourth in the Constructors Championship problem as ever were unbeaten in the power department but due to the BMW engine's physical size Gordon Murray had decided to tilt it on its side to smooth an airflow to the rear wing something which hadn't been done since the 1960s from an aerodynamic perspective it works very well as the car was the fastest in a straight line that year but being an inline four with a single turbo the engine still had severe turbo lag and being tilted on its side put strains on the gearbox which meant it was amongst the slowest cars at low speed circuits like the hangara ring but amongst the fastest at high speed circuits like Monza poor reliability compounded with inconsistent Pirelli tires and the team being marred by the death of elio DeAngelis in a testing Crush at Paul Rickard left them with just two points and an abysmal ninth in the Constructors Championship only a year after it was enforced the ban on naturally aspirated engines was lifted for 1987 and so Tyrrell AGS March larousse and Colony all adopted the three and a half liter V8 Ford Cosworth DF said which developed just under 600 horsepower for them two separate championships were set up the Jim Clark trophy for drivers won by Jonathan Palmer and the Colin Chapman trophy for Constructors won by Tyrell one advantage these teams had was generally good engine reliability as Tyrrell managed to beat the turbocharged arrows brabham zackspeed ligier and minadi in the Constructors Championship for the turbocharged teams efforts were made to slow them down which included mandatory pop-off valves that would limit turbo pressure to 4 bar where it had been as high as 6 creating a loss of up to 400 horsepower and qualifying trim and also Banning super soft qualifying tires despite that continued engine development meant the cars had hardly slowed down at all and were still consistently breaking down ligier switched over to BMW engines now rebadged as Megatron and at the same time Benetton switched from these to the Ford Cosworth GBA Williams made only minor modifications to the fw-11 and backed their already strong race Pace with good qualifying pace and got 12 pole positions and with mantle and PK comfortably defended the constructor's title and PK took his third driver's title McLaren maintained a good level of fuel economy by downgrading the turbo pressure from 4 bar to 3.6 but were down on power to Williams and took only three wins and finished second in the Constructors Championship with renault's departure Lotus adopted Honda power and also took on active suspension which they had trialled in 1982. it allowed is and Center to take wins at the very bumpy Monaco and Detroit but was otherwise tricky to handle despite being very good in a straight line and they finished third once again Ferrari builds a glass cannon that was powerful and drove well but was chronically unreliable with a run of six consecutive double retirements mid-season they rectified this near the end of the season and won the finals two rounds from pole but had lost so many points they had to settle forth in the Constructors Championship back to an upright engine but built an incredibly fragile car as Ricardo patrici and Andre de Cesar as each got opposium but between them saw the checkered flag just eight times out of a possible 32 and slumped to eighth in the Constructors Championship behind the naturally aspirated Tyrrell Bernie Eccleston then sold the team and so they sat out 1988 and returned in 1989. in 1988 further turbo restrictions came in with a pressure limit of just two and a half bar and a fuel limit of 150 liters compared to 215 for naturally aspirated engines this meant a drop of another 300 horsepower to the point where turbo engines had less than 100 horsepower on the naturally aspirated ones Williams Benetton legier and minardi all switched to naturally aspirated power leaving just McLaren Lotus Ferrari arrows Zach speed under Zella running Turbo Power McLaren took on both is and Cena and Honda power from Lotus and put on a master class of a campaign building a car that was a perfect 10 in all categories and trounced their Rivals most of whom were just using modified versions of their 1987 cars the engine was powerful reliable and economical and the chassis was Slender and set low to the ground forcing Center and Prost into a pioneering reclining driving position they won all but one race coming within two laps of winning the other before Senna crashed into a back marker and got pole at all but one race Often by a massive margin only losing out at Silverstone after trying new Bodywork that was introduced later in the season they also set the speed record for the year of 207 miles per hour Hockenheim though due to the DraStic power restrictions this was 10 miles per hour slower than the previous year and only 10 miles per hour faster than the fastest naturally aspirated car reliability as well was solid and their fuel consumption was far better than their turbocharged rivals Ferrari went into the year seen as the team to beat but only ran a modified version of the 1987 car which inhaled fuel destroying the car's race Pace exemplified by them occupying the front row at silverson and finishing 9th and 17th Gerhard Berger took the sole non-mclaren win of the year and they finished runners-up with less than a third of McLaren's points Benetton had the strongest naturally aspirated car which was only marginally down on Powers of the turbocharged ones but had a much larger fuel tank this added a lot of weight to the car particularly early on in the races when the tank was full but meant that unlike Ferrari they could drive flat out a finished third seven times and were third in the Constructors Championship Lotus had the same Honda engines as McLaren and had abandoned active suspension due to the weight of the system however a mediocre chassis that was flexing and poorly designed meant defending Champion Nelson pique and satoru Nakajima had to settle for fourth Williams took on Judd V8 and their own active suspension system for 1988. the car was painfully slow in a straight line however as the active suspension added weight and was draining power from the engine and also had air leaking into the Hydraulics meaning the settings were changing erratically it was hastily removed Midway through the season which improved the car but it was also very unreliable and there were seven double retirements a small surge at the end of the season left them seventh in the Constructors Championship in 1989 turbocharged engines were banned outright due to them being potentially dangerous extremely expensive to run and also bad PR for manufacturers due to how often they broke a new displacement limit of three and a half thousand CC was mandated and engines ranged from V8s to v12s McLaren's Honda V10 could reach 700 horsepower but this was only half of what the turbos could do it would be another 25 years before turbochargers returned though in a much different guys advances in every field of engineering mean that despite being 60 heavier and having 70 percent of the power contemporary cars are still at least 10 seconds a lap faster than those of the 80s and up to 10 miles per hour faster in a straight line modern considerations regarding sustainability both financially and environmentally mean that it's unlikely we'll see a return of Formula One cause spitting flames and creating skip fulls of engines and gearboxes at the end of each race weekend but it's a time in the sports illustrious history that could be looked upon fondly and perfectly encapsulates Formula One status as the Pinnacle of Motorsport thank you [Music] that's all for this video thanks for watching don't forget to like comment share and subscribe follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Brook underscore F1 a huge shout out to thank you as ever to my patreon subscribers do subscribe to my patreon if you want early access to audio only versions of each video as well as a few videos that YouTube won't allow me to put up and I'll see you all next time

Channel: Peter Brook

Views: 496,358

Keywords: Formula 1, Formula One, F1, F1 History, Formula One History, Formula 1 History, Motorsport, Turbos, F1 Turbos, F1 1980s, Turbo era, Senna, Prost, Mansell, Piquet, Brabham, Williams, McKLaren, Ferrari, Renault, Lotus, Jean-Pierre Jabouille, Jabouille

Id: wlY0Dis5u6U

Length: 38min 0sec (2280 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 26 2023