Why F1's Legendary 'Fan Car' Was Banned

[Music] formula one would be nothing without its fans fans tune in to keep the championship going fans even keep the cars cool but back in 1978 a fan famously found another purpose in f1 that year f1 was absolutely dominated by the lotus 79 a car that introduced the world to ground effect and led to championship glory for mario andretti and lotus but brabham looking to find a way to beat the all-conquering lotus team found another way of generating downforce with the brabham bt46b or the fan car as it's more affectionately known the fan car was a radical solution to the problem created by lotus in typical colin chapman fashion his team had concentrated its efforts on that giant leap forward as they had done on many occasions in the past this meant that lotus had to jump on everybody when it came to developing ground effects but it wasn't exactly without its problems in the early designs lotus sank a huge amount of resources into 1977's lotus 78 but it wasn't as successful as anticipated with the skirts which were needed to make the side pod wings work requiring further development it took time to get the skirts right leaving lotus to take just five victories that season leaving them adrift of title rivals ferrari and only two points ahead of mclaren due to this most of the grid hadn't cottoned onto the lotus 78's underlying potential when the 79 arrived they were all too late and simply left playing catch-up meanwhile over at brabham they were set to introduce the bt46 a car that had a revolutionary heat exchanger setup rather than the conventional water and oil radiators ordinarily employed just like everyone else in this time period they were looking for the upper hand on their rivals and thought this would offer a way to save a considerable amount of weight and clean up the car's aerodynamics however having tested the new car brabham and their chief designer gordon murray had to concede that the panels laid out on the slanted side pod bodywork simply didn't provide sufficient cooling the bt46 would have to be redesigned the bt46 was unveiled for the second time at the third round of the championship in south africa and the team reverted to a front-mounted radiator arrangement that the car's predecessors had all used a design that the team had been hoping to ditch meanwhile further radiators were stacked on top of the engine to litter the bt46's previously untarnished rear end murray and brabham had toyed with v-shaped air dams on the cars in previous seasons to create a localized low pressure region it soon worked out the 78 appeared to be using their full-length skirts with the side pod underwings to create a similar effect and crucially with much more potential out came the lotus 79 a design that ironed out most of the kinks inherent in its predecessor and set the wheels in motion for the rest of the grid to play catch-up the problem for brabham and gordon murray was that he knew that the car couldn't accommodate the wing-shaped side pod tunnels that were necessary unlike lotus brabham used a flat 12 alfa romeo engine which filled out a lot of the rear end and would limit the space available for ground effects instead murray and co had to think outside the box and decided on a controversial method to equip his b-spec problem with even more downforce equipping the car with a giant fan at the back now there have been a previous example of this before jim hall's chaparral 2j can-am car had been developed in 1970 and the boxy sports car had also employed skirts and fans to create negative pressure under the car before being banned at the end of the year what's not well known is that another f1 team got there first although we have the physical proof that the bt46b existed the tyrol team actually beat brabham to the punch and tested a fan solution on their double08 the project was shelved after its test at paul ricard in 1977 as the team realised they would need to do some serious work to make it race ready and thought they'd be better off improving other aspects of the car adding a fan to the brabham still required adaptation to suit formula one's regulations the main advantage that the chaparral khanam car had over brabham was they've been able to use a separate engine to power the rear fans whereas the bt46b would not only need to run off the alfa romeo engine it would also need to be seen to be cooling it having studied the rulebook and consulted with various parties it was widely accepted that so long as cooling was the primary purpose for the fan on the car it would be considered legal brahma immediately set about making sure that over 50 of the fans duty was to be considered as cooling for the radiators even so this would leave plenty of margin for the fan to create the necessary suction beneath the car to considerably improve performance just as lotus had issues with their skirts on the 78 brabham knew that they too would face a similar challenge and looked for ways to keep the edge of the floor sealed the team opted for a hinged solution that folded up as the car was sucked to the ground a phenomenon that could even be seen when the car was stationary to keep the fan rotating at the right speed the car had to be driven counter-intuitively too with the driver having to add throttle to counter the understeer he'd normally get on corner entry rather than lift out of the throttle this paired with the potential skirt failure led to a pitot tube being mounted on the car's nose while an altitude meter was installed in the bt46b's cockpit on corner entry the driver would monitor the gauge and accelerate if the gauge was in the green they would know they would have to slow if a skirt failed if it was in the red it was pretty clear early on that the lotus 79 was the class of the field and would begin to dominate the 1978 season it wasn't until the swedish grand prix anderson that the fan car was finally unleashed brabham turned up to the race with the bin lids taped onto the fan to hide it because presumably disguising your car as a bin is a brilliant way to throw other teams off the scent when it became apparent that the bin lid wasn't part of the car and was actually concealing a giant fan the rest of the teams were suitably outraged by the bt46b and immediately lobbied for its removal from the event but having done his due diligence ahead of time murray was certain that the governing body would uphold its inclusion meanwhile bernie ecclestone then owner of the brabham team and executive of folker the formula one constructors association had a rather difficult balancing act on his hands worried about the sheer speed of the bt46b compared with the lotus 79 which at the time was noticeably quicker than anything else he ordered the drivers to qualify on full tanks and use the hardest compound attire he even went as far as to speak to his drivers nikki louder and john watson too asking him to deliberately under drive their cars to not show their true pace so watson louder qualified over half a second off mario andretti trying to conceal the bt46b's performance but by the race louder triumphed over ricardo petraezi by 34 seconds having forced andretti into an error in the battle for the lead andressi later retired with an engine failure the bt46b was remarkably quick seeing as they'd failed to win the battle to get the car banned on a technical front the other teams began to voice their concerns over safety andretti encouraged by team boss colin chapman was the most vocal and claimed the car was throwing dirt and stones out the back of the car it was the same tactic that was used to have the chaparral 2j removed from can-am competition so it proved to be a worthwhile line of inquiry but it would be eccleston who would have the last say as he knowing that he needed to placate foca agreed to withdraw the car from formula one after the swedish grand prix before the machine was banned outright brabham and murray had beaten the rule book but had been beaten themselves by a much stronger enemy politics perhaps this is again an entry for sort of band but not really as the fan car wasn't banned it was withdrawn same difference either way i guess as we've yet to see a fan car on the grid since there are also rules against movable aerodynamics as well but maybe with ground effect cars returning to the grid in 2022 one of the teams will try and tack on a secret fan somewhere one can dream i suppose but because of its dominant form and single outing in sweden the bt46b fan car holds a mythical status within formula 1 to this day remaining the only f1 entrant with a 100 win record how do you feel about it would you like to see the return of fan cars or would you prefer to see fans stick to the f1 grandstands let us know what you think in the comments below and what you'd like to see us tackle next and as always stay tuned for the next episode of band you

Channel: Autosport

Views: 60,412

Rating: 4.956017 out of 5

Keywords: F1, Formula 1, formula one, formula one 2020, F1 2020, Formula 1 2020, F1 news, F1 2020 season, F1 car, Autosport, motorsport tv, motorsport network, GP, Grand Prix, brabham, bt46, bt46b, fan car, fancar, lotus 79, lotus

Id: BOxlKfcSs5o

Length: 8min 33sec (513 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020