When FORD Designed the GREATEST F1 Engine Ever!

this is the most dominant engine in Formula One history this thing won 155 Grand Prix 131 pole positions and even completed the Triple Crown Winning Monaco the Indy 500 and Le Mans but it's not from one of the modern day powerhouses like Mercedes Ferrari or Honda it's a Ford and a pretty special one this engine changed the course of formula one but not because it's got a special trick or one clever innovation no it's because it had dozens of them that's down to the fact that it was designed by one of the greatest engine designers in history and where Modern engines are designed for in CAD software in simulations or made in CNC machines this thing was hand-drawn and handmade so let me show you why it's so incredible this is its designer Keith Duckworth every firing stroke which there's 92 per cylinder per second is a force of about seven tons on the Piston so the whole of the forces involved in an engine our colossal Duckworth worked for Cosworth the team that designed the Ford Cosworth dfv and that project came about because formula one had moved from 1.5 liter engines to three liter versions and when that happened Colin Chapman of lotus was left with an issue he was currently running the bizarre unreliable and uncompetitive h-16 engines and wanted something else you can't blame him really we actually made a video about that engine it was essentially two V8s stuck together and it loved to blow up of course watch that video after this one then Cosworth approached Ford for some funding and they granted Duckworth 100 000 pounds to develop an engine to compete at the front of Formula One the rules were pretty simple three liters naturally aspirated and you could pick any arrangement of any number of cylinders now the majority of engine builders at the time were aiming at the most cylinders for the most power Ferrari Maserati and Honda were all making V12 whilst brm were using an h16 as we mentioned earlier but Duckworth went another way he liked to see the performance of a Formula 1 car as a whole he knew a greater cylinder count could lead to more power but a simpler V8 could come with its own benefits it could be smaller lighter and rev higher and that's where the dfb started it actually started life as two four-cylinder engines at the time the fva this was the engine Cosworth were designing for Formula 2 at the time and it had four valves per cylinder rather than the conventional two meaning it could get more air and fuel in as well as more exhaust gases out a Freer breathing engine means more power and more revs so the Formula One engine was called the dfv the double four valve now if you like the idea of learning more about the skills needed to design an engine science technology engineering and maths you should check out today's sponsor brilliant.org for free you can learn about the fundamentals of these principles in their excellent classical mechanics course where they use Formula One to explain physical mechanics and if that isn't for you they had thousands of visual lessons that enable you to learn by doing you could learn about coding geometry or even calculus there is anything you could think of within the world of science computer science and maths brilliant know that you're busy so they make their courses bite-sized so you can tackle learning complex subjects for just 15 minutes at a time and there's always a practical application to their courses that really puts your knowledge to the test it's that extra layer of learning that traditional methods just don't do but brilliant does try everything brilliant has to offer free for a full 30 days visit brilliant.org forward slash Drive 61 or click on the link in the description first 200 of you will get 20 off brilliant's annual premium subscription and you'll want to take advantage of that that's the brilliant and now back to the video the DFE was first in the Lotus 49 and you might recognize this as one of the most iconic Formula One cars ever designed by Colin Chapman and driven by Graham Hill and Jim Clark it was an instant hit the engine was producing just over 400 horsepower and revving to 9000 RPM and so great gamehill put the car on pole position in the first race but it did have its issues Graham Hill was leading the engine's first race at zanville when the tooth snapped off one of the cam gears meaning that the timing jumped out and well we all know what happens then the Piston smashes the valve this smashed the hole through the Piston bending the conrod before the crank came around again and the conrod came through the side of the block a catastrophic failure that happened in less than a second anyway with hillow Jim Clark in the other Lotus came from the back of the grid to win that race so not bad for the engine's first outing now this engine didn't get all of the 155 wins from Lotus the success of this engine came from the fact that Cosworth soldered at a great price to anyone who wanted it Lotus McLaren Matra brabham March Tyrell honestly the list goes on it was putting cars from the mid-60s when they looked like this all the way up to the early 80s when things got a bit mad and the cars were using ground effect to create incredible damp Force but why was the engine so good well in my eyes there were a number of reasons for it first it was very high revving the with knew that with fewer cylinders than the other teams he needed to get more reps to compete on power so he went for a 32 valve design four valves per cylinder rather than the traditional two allowing for more flow of fuel and Air in and more exhaust gases out on top of this Duckworth designed the engine's components to be as light as possible because when you make the engine's rotating components lighter you can allow for more revs and so more power with this in mind instead of a cross-plane crank that looks like this he used a flat plane crank these are lighter and while they produce less low end torque they do produce more top end power which is what you want in Formula One it also made an awesome sound just listen to the dfb V8 it absolutely screams and it also changed the firing order meaning that the exhaust system could actually be a bit simpler secondly Duckworth designed the engine to be load-bearing meaning that the engine actually formed the structure of the car where the suspension mounted to the engine and gearbox and this was new at the time and has since been copied throughout formula one but it actually made the engine a bit heavier as before the parts didn't need to be quite as strong the engine casing actually needed to be beefed up a little bit to carry the suspension loads but Duckworth again was thinking from first principles the engine would be a little bit heavier but the car would be lighter with this system you no longer need a space frame chassis to carry the suspension loads and support the engine making the car lighter and more simple thirdly the packaging was small where other teams were using long and wide v12s the DFE was compact it had a 90 degree V angle with the cold air entering the engine from the middle of the V and the exhaust coming out of the side and then the exhaust packaging was Tighter and the ending was simply easier to put in the car and this may sound like a small Advantage but is one of the main reasons the engine stuck around for so long remember Ferrari and Alfa Romeo were using flat v12s at this point making use of the lower center of gravity that they allowed but the dfb was very different because whilst this engine was used in the 60s in cars like the Lotus 49 it was also used in the mid 70s when the grand effect cars were taking over and this ground effect type of car required a narrow engine just check out this clip from an 80s documentary about the dfv the ground effect Wing will only work if there is space between the rear wheels and the engine block allowing the air from under the car to diffuse into the Wake the rear of a Ferrari is filled with engine because it is a flat 12. six cylinders on either side which are impossible to move out of this Airstream so its size meant it was the only option for those looking to make full use of the ground effect Venturi tunnels so whilst the dfb didn't have the power of the early turbo car us it more than made up for it by allowing for more downforce again thinking of the whole car the main feature of the dfb was its completeness in design Cosworth worked from first principles to design exactly the engine F1 needed and absolutely no excess it was powerful efficient lightweight and easy to package in a car on top of all of that it was reliable meaning that teams had a hard time choosing anything else when the turbo engine eventually took over Formula One in 1972 the DFE had won 155 Grand Prix making 12 drivers to World Championships and one with drivers like Graham Hill Jackie Stewart Emerson fittipaldi James Hunt Mario Andretti and the list goes on now if you like F1 engines you should watch this video on the incredible but bizarre brm h-16 engine thanks again to brilliant for sponsoring this video and I'll catch you in the next one

Channel: Driver61

Views: 442,391

Keywords: Formula 1, Driving, Coaching, Motorsport, Engineering, F1, Racing, Incredible Motorsport, Driver61, Scott Mansell, Callum McIntyre, Cosworth, Ford, DFV, Cosworth DFV, British Engineering, Lotus, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, Lotus 49, BRM H16

Id: ljEA34m-NLQ

Length: 8min 49sec (529 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 30 2023