Why The FIA Banned 6-Wheeled F1 Cars

[Music] we've covered everything from fdx to diffuser tricks to steering solutions but for this episode of band we'll be jumping into the time machine and going back a little bit further than we usually do as we saw in the british grand prix at silverstone difference between an f1 car with four tyres and three can make a world of difference unless your name is lewis hamilton of course but instead of fewer tyres how about more in the past teams have tried their luck with adding more tyres to see if they can gain additional performance boosts with varying results so let's take a trip down memory lane to the late 1970s and delve into the six wheeled formula one car [Music] in 1976 tyrol introduced their p34 the first and only six world car to race in formula one the p-34 was the product of lateral thinking at tyrol as they looked for a way to outsmart their rivals most of which were using the same cosworth dfv engine and the hewland gearbox designer derek gardiner's ambitious plan was to use four smaller wheels at the front of the car the plan was to sit them behind the front wing to reduce the frontal area of the car also aiming to improve the response at the front the p-34 featured four 10-inch wheels mounted at the front of the chassis with the steering directly attached to the front axle while a bell crank arrangement was used to steer the second it was also anticipated that with four wheels at the front rather than two braking would be improved this actually turned out to be more of an achilles heel than a bonus but the team making numerous changes in an effort to improve braking throughout its service the other problem they had was the car's wheelbase which would either be shortened or lengthened if one axle became unloaded or locked up before the other this made driving and setting up the p-34 especially difficult and due to the wheels being much smaller at the front they also went through more revolutions than their larger counterparts at the rear of the car so this overall had a significant impact on the tyre's lifespan a problem that was further exacerbated by goodyear's improvement of the rear tyre and lack of development of the small front tyres that only tyrol was using during this period giorgio piola had unprecedented access to the car and takes up the story it all happened by pure coincidence as i was flying out to rio and ended up sitting by kentural on the flight and life you need to be good but also lucky so ken knew of giorgio's work and asked if he'd be interested in doing the press kit for the car which meant he could get a lot of information and take a lot of pictures of the car it was some of my best work i was very attached to that car said giorgio as i had a very good relationship with tyrell's chief designer derek gardner i did three big cutaways of the car an incredibly detailed top view that derek helped me with this top view of the p34 is one of the most difficult drawings he's done piolar explains that with his usual cutaway drawings you can use tricks like putting bodywork over an area you're not sure about and want to obscure jk it was different with this overview drawing though as it was open and had to be extremely accurate with everything precisely where it should be even down to the position of the pipe work as piola says for me it was one of the best drawings i've ever done but no one would publish at the time as it had 32 annotations this was too much detail and not something that could be published in a magazine at that time due to it being a huge hand-drawn illustration the arrows and numbers simply couldn't be removed the work has been subsequently digitized but let's reimagine how it was originally intended to be seen number one adjustable aluminium splitter number two i think you get the general idea the p-34 did have its moment in the sun taking victory at the swedish grand prix the biggest issue remained as tires continued to hamper performance the lack of development from goodyear inevitably led to the downfall of the project and the p-34 was withdrawn from service following the 1977 season and six-wheeled designs were subsequently banned arterial's foray into this solution had prompted the team to add an axle at the front of the car several other teams had seen an opportunity to do similar at the rear one of them being the march 240. having seen the tyrol p34 robin heard of march started his own six wheel project but unlike the tyrrell his design would have four wheels at the rear of the car rather than two he used the 240 as the car's designation with two lead wheels four driven wheels and zero trailing wheels the car garnered a huge amount of interest with the car appearing on the cover of auto sport a couple of times the first after a soft launch by the team which was designed to try and entice sponsors to the team march was facing a financial crisis and in need of a cash injection not only to keep the six wheel project alive but also keep the team racing the 240 put extra financial pressure on the team given it was having to design and build previously unraised components rather than just pluck them off the shelves as they and many of their competitors did the overall concept of the 240 was sound improving traction grip and reducing the aerodynamic load owing to the narrower rear wheels that would usually be used at the front of the car this also dealt with one of the limiting factors of the p-34 the lack of development of the smaller front tyres only they used which goodyear couldn't fund development on the financial burden that the team was under led to compromises with the design of the 240 with some of the planned structural improvements to the gearbox needed to handle the stresses involved not undertaken this led to some torsional issues and negated some of the gains that would otherwise have been made as a consequence of these mounting financial and technical issues the car never raced and a modified 761 took its place that season good ideas have a good way of coming full circle though and later on williams gave it a go themselves with a six-wheeled version of the fw08 in 1982 this was mainly because williams was unable to acquire the current performance differentiator that helped teams like ferrari and renault a turbocharged engine so they decided to try and get their unfair advantage another way after all more wheels equals more wins right a few years down the line now and with the ground effect in full swing the ability to place the narrow wheels further out would allow the venturi tunnels and bodywork to be lengthened and widened all the way to the rear of the car resulting in a significant increase in downforce while making the sort of gains on drag reduction that robin heard the experience with his 240. it's clear that williams design took advantage of the groundwork done by march a few years earlier and had even enjoyed some of the knowledge that hulun had gained while designing the gearbox for that project but just how williams had taken the lotus 79 and engineered a better version of that concept for the fw07 the idea behind the six wheeler was to improve on that initial march concept clearly having an extra axle and set of wheels at the rear of the car means the car would be much heavier than the minimum weight they were allowed to run to but with a massive increase in downforce this was immediately offset williams put a huge amount of effort into converting the fw07 to test out that theory and even planned on racing the fw08 in that guys that is until the governing body banned four-wheel drive which had proved to be even more infuriating for patrick head when he was told by sir frank williams that he'd agreed to it in a meeting with the other teams at marinello patrick head's attempt at a six-wheeled machine would have been a massive step forward for williams with the car reportedly a handful of seconds quicker than its predecessor but alas it wasn't to be and was shelved without having turned a wheel competitively so while tyrrell actually raced and won with a six-wheeler williams was the closest to following in their footsteps there were others that tried designs out too including another 240 configuration for brm and ferrari with its rather unique twin rear wheel single axle 312 t6 this only adds to the mystique of an era of grand prix racing where it seemed like all you needed to do was able to dream a little bit bigger than your competitor and that concludes our dive into multiple times when f1 teams tried to reinvent the wheel as it were and decided that if four wheels were good then six wheels must be even better an argument which the fia naturally disagreed with what are your thoughts on the six wheelers do you think four is the magic number or do you think mercedes the great great great grandchild of tyrol would be even more dominant today if they had another pair of pirellis on board and what other band innovations would you like us to look into next let us know what you think in the comments below and stay tuned for the next episode of band [Music]

Channel: Autosport

Views: 90,952

Rating: 4.9174485 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

Id: --k3F2j3Pg0

Length: 8min 38sec (518 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020