I should have put on my aluminum cone hat because Dave Killens read my mind ... or took the time to post.
I did have another idea ... instead of engine braking, why not attach it to, say ... the window wipers?
Actually, engine braking as a competition driving technique was no longer used about 1964 when tires started to get wider.
4WD Racing Cars.
The racing fraternity has dabbled with four wheel drive from time to time but it is currently banned from Formula-One (F1) Grand Prix and from Indy Car style racing. Of course four wheel drive is extensively used in rally cars, a trend begun by Audi.
1902: The Dutch firm Spyker built a racing car with full-time four wheel drive and a 6-cylinder engine! It won a hill-climb held by the Birmingham motor club in 1906.
1932: Bugatti built two type 53 4.9L 4WD hill climb cars, said to have been inspired by a front-wheel drive Miller and also in response to the difficulty of getting 300hp onto the road through the skinny tyres of the era. Three T53s were made - one is at the Schlumpf collection, one is in private hands and the fate of the 3rd is unknown. The cars achieved some success in hill-climbs, particularly in the wet. Bugatti T53: wheelbase 2.6m, track 1.25m, front susp': 2 x indep' transverse leaf springs, rear susp': live axle, leaf springs, 8-cyl, 2-valves/cyl, dohc, 300bhp, 4972cc, bore 86mm, stroke 107mm, super-charged, 4-speed manual tranmission, four wheel drive, 3 diff's. The steering swivels used plain Hookes joints (universal joints) not c.v. joints and these inevitably produced unpleasant feed-back in the steering, leading to severe driver fatigue in long events. The front suspension used leaf springs as the top and lower suspension members and was perhaps insufficiently controlled as a result.
4wd.sofcom.com/ClassicCars/Racing.html
Miller 4x4
1932: Harry Miller raced a 5L V8 4WD at Indianapolis
1934: Miller V8 4WD at Tripoli and Avus GP [Motor 1969]
During the 1930s, Auto-Union and Mercedes-Benz indulged in a classic struggle with racing cars that had 8-cylinder, V12 and V16 supercharged engines of up to 6 litres and finally developed well over 500hp before capacities were restricted to 3-litres super-charged (or 4.5L unblown) in 1938. Despite having skinny tyres and enormous power, these cars were two wheel drive.
After WWII, Formula-One racing commenced with engine limits of 4.5 litres naturally aspirated or 1.5 litres super-charged. Porsche built a 1.5L flat 12-cylinder rear-engined car with four wheel drive, the Cisitalia, for P.Dusio. The driver could select two wheel drive, e.g. for cornering, and four wheel drive for maximum grip on acceleration. The BRM 1.5L V16 (4x2) rates as one of the most magnificent failures from the post-war period.
1954: Engine limits were reduced to 2.5 litres unboosted or 750cc super-charged; no one seems to have taken up the 750cc option. Mercedes-Benz returned seriously to F1 Grand Prix racing with the W196 (4x2) and dominated 1954 and 1955. There were plans for a 4WD version of the W196 but this did not eventuate. Mercedes-Benz achieved two world championships to Fangio, before withdrawing from F1 racing.
4wd.sofcom.com/ClassicCars/Racing.html
Ferguson Formula P99 4WD
1961: The engine capacity for Formula-One cars was reduced from 2.5 to 1.5 litres. Ferguson Research devised the Formula Ferguson (FF) four wheel drive system. Jack Fairman drove the 4WD Ferguson Project 99 (P99) F1 car in the British Grand Prix at Aintree. Later, Stirling Moss won the Oulton Park Gold Cup race in it; there was rain during the race but Moss' practice time was second fastest - 1m44.8s v. 1m44.6s by Bruce McLaren in a Cooper - so the P99 was no dry-weather slouch. This innovative car (right) has a front mounted Coventry Climax 4-cylinder engine, Ferguson Four Wheel Drive System and Dunlop Maxaret ABS brakes. Moss nominated the P99 as his favourite Formula-One car in the September 1997 issue of MotorSport and he knew a few cars. The P99 is now at the D0nington Museum.
The project's beginnings were with Fred Dixon and Tony Rolt who were inspired by the racing possibilities of 4WD before WWII. After the war they teamed up with Harry Ferguson (of the tractors). Ferguson Research worked on many, perhaps too many, innovative ideas, trying to interest the major manufacturers in using 4WD in high volume production cars. Claude Hill devised a centre differential arrangement with automatic locking to limit the speed differences allowed between front and rear axles in the case of wheel slip. The idea of a racing car, the P99, was taken up in 1960 for 1961 as a high speed test-bed and demonstrator of the system's advantages. BRM built a 4WD FF-based car for F1 in 1964, and there was more F1 interest by 1969, but American Indianapolis-style racers were more quickly receptive. The Ferguson 4WD system was also used in the Jensen FF 4WD road car (1966).
Formula-One later changed from 1.5 litre engines to 3 litre engines and one would have thought that four wheel drive would have become even more relevant, what with the increased power and relatively primitive tyre technology, but it was not tried again until 1969.
1964: Bobby Unser drove Andy Granatelli's STP-Oil Novi V8 with four wheel drive at Indianapolis, but the car was damaged in an accident. In 1965 it retired with mechanical problems.
1967: Granatelli's STP-Paxton 4WD Pratt and Whitney gas-turbine car ran well at Indianapolis, leading the race until retiring with mechanical problems. The design had the gas-turbine sitting along-side the driver.
1968: Lotus worked with Granatelli to build the wedge-shaped Lotus 56, powered by a rear-mounted Pratt and Whitney gas-turbine and with four wheel drive; four were entered. Mike Spence was killed in one during practice. Lotus 56s qualified 1st, 2nd and 11th: Joe Leonard at 171.56mph, Graham Hill at 171.21mph and Art Pollard at 166.3mph; remember that this was in the days before "wings" and ground-effect. Graham Hill crashed during the race due to suspension failure and the other two cars failed to finish, Leonard having run consistently in the top 3, and holding the lead when the fuel pump failed on lap 192. A 4WD Lola also took part in 1968, driven by Al Unser.
1969: The air-inlet cross sectional area for gas-turbines was restricted in 1969 but the Lotus 56s returned to Indianapolis. A crash in practice revealed a manufacturing flaw in the hub carriers and the cars were withdrawn before the race. Four wheel drive and gas-turbines were banned after 1969.
4wd.sofcom.com/ClassicCars/Racing.html
Lotus 63
1969 brought a brief flowering of four wheel drive to the 3-litre era of Formula One (F1). Lotus, Matra and McLaren tried 4WDs and Cosworth, the engine maker, built one of their own. The 4WDs did not perform well, but they were brand new and barely developed, while teams concentrated on the main-chance 4x2s. The drivers also objected to the heavy handling, or was it just "different"? Some thought that there could not be a 4WD success unless a team and its drivers wholeheartedly committed themselves to the system - a similar phenomenon later occurred in the F1 turbo-car era. (4WD however was later banned from F1.)
1969 June 21: The Dutch Grand-Prix at Zandvoort saw Matra and Lotus bring 4WDs to practice - the Matra MS84 and the Lotus 63. At this time all cars were powered by the 3 litre Ford Cosworth V8, except for a lone Ferrari V12 for Chris Amon and uncompetitive BRM V12s for John Surtees and Jackie Oliver. The drivers put most effort into their 4x2 cars - Jackie Stewart in has Matra MS80, Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt in their Lotus 49Bs. Hill did achieve a 4WD practice-lap time within 3.8 seconds of his best 4x2 time and Stewart one within 2.4 seconds of his best 4x2 time (1:21.5). Neither 4WD car started the race. Stewart won (MS80).
The Lotus 63 drew on Lotus' experience with the type 56 Indianapolis gas-turbine cars although powered by the 3-litre V8 Cosworth engine. Because of this latter fact it had a water radiator, mounted in the nose as was the custom of the day, although the car was very low and the nose long and rather wedge shaped. The rear-mounted engine was turned around with the gearbox behind and beneath the driver's back. Drive was taken fore and aft by shafts on the left hand side of the car. The driver was positioned quite far forward with his ankles beneath the front "axle". The ventilated disc brakes were inboard, which reduced unsprung weight and made more room for the steering, hub, and c.v. joints out at the wheels. (Inboard brakes were inherited by the later Lotus 72, despite its being 4x2. The Lotus 72 also brought side-mounted radiators to F1; Colin Chapman was a very innovative designer.)
The Matra MS84 was less radical in appearance than the Lotus 63, resembling the 4x2 MS80. It also used the Cosworth engine turned around but with the drive shafts on the right hand side of the body.
Some controversy surrounded "aerodynamic devices" on the F1 cars at Zandvoort. Aerofoils, or were they "spoilers" sprouted on noses and tails and there was much stretching and bending of, and grumbling about, the rules in this regard.
1969 July 6: The French Grand-Prix, Clermont-Ferrand. Jackie Stewart concentrated on practice in the 4x2 Matra MS80 (3:00.6), and was 6 seconds slower in a session in the 4WD MS84. A new driver, John Miles, drove the 4WD Lotus 63, recording 3:12.8 in practice and starting the race, 12th out of 13 on the grid. The car retired after one lap. Stewart won (MS80).
1969 July 19: The British Grand-Prix, Silverstone saw McLaren join Matra and Lotus in the 4WD club, trying the 4WD M9A, although only as an aside to the 4x2 M7As. The last 4 out of 17 places of the starting grid were filled with 4WDs: Derek Bell (McLaren M9A), John Miles (Lotus 63), Jean-Pierre Beltoise (Matra MS84) and Jo Bonnier (Lotus 63). Beltoise finished 9th, and Miles 10th, out of 10 finishers, respectively 6 and 9 laps behind the winner (Stewart, MS80) [MotorSport].
In due course, four wheel drive was banned from Formula-One Grand Prix racing. It is interesting to speculate if it would be in use today, if allowed, or do the current aerodynamic devices give sufficient traction for 4x2s?
Copyright Larry Stanley
- picture #1 by Rod Genn
See the Rover Gas-Turbines and 4wdonline Magazine pages
The late sixties revolutionised the world in many ways and its ideals were even reflected in Grand Prix racing. The arrival of the Cosworth DFV at the time of the Paris student revolts marked F1's own emancipation as youthful, exhuberant underdog garagistes finally found a powerhorse to match their kit-car machines, enabling them to enjoy unparalleled freedom. Then, in that hippie summer of '69, came three more technical innovations, of which one was to change the face of F1 and two went belly-up within one season. The one least likely to succeed, if only judging by the flimsy and uncharismatic looks of those first aerofoils, took the sport by storm, whereas the ideas that theoretically seemed to make more sense, completely failed. We are talking about turbine engines and four wheel drive.
The latter is the theme to our picture. It shows Jochen Rindt being forced to drive the unpopular Lotus 63 through Old Hall corner at the 1969 International Gold Cup at Oulton Park. Rindt finished second, which sounds rather nice, but it actually was a very distant second a lap down on winner Brabham's Jackie Ickx in a low-on-class field in which, incidentally, Graham Hill took to the track with an F2 Lotus 59 after Andretti crashed the second 63 tub at the Nürburgring. Still, Jochen's second place was a podium finish, which marked the car's best result by far in its single season of existence.
But did it achieve the best result by a four-wheel-drive Grand Prix car ever? Well, no.
Two other performances have more right to that title: Johnny Servoz-Gavin's drive to 6th at the 1969 US GP (indeed the only occasion a 4WD F1 car ever scored Championship points - although the 4WD system was actually switched off!) would be deserving, as would be Stirling Moss winning the wet 1961 Gold Cup (yes, that race again) driving the curious Ferguson P99 - a racing project by tractor company Ferguson! Designer Claude Hill, the man responsible for the P99, was in fact the true Formula One pioneer of 4WD, building on the first experiences by Freddie Dixon and Tony Rolt just before the war. Eventually it took Ferguson too much time to get a car up and running, but still it raced eight years before four separate companies started off on the 4WD trail that became an integral part of the 1969 season.
The driving result of Harry Ferguson's Project 99 was a very interesting machine in many aspects. As a front-engined car it looked obsolete on the spot but the choice of front engine position was no incident: it was determined by the 4WD system, which needed a central engine and gearbox location hooked onto a centre diff' from which the drive was transfered onto front and rear differentials. Even more oddly, the engine was canted to the left to fit into the space frame and to minimize frontal area, while the driver's seating was slightly offset. It had a single World Championship outing at the hands of Jack Fairman and Moss, before Stirling drove it to a convincing victory in the Gold Cup. It returned to competition in the 1963 Tasman Cup, driven by Hill and Ireland, and started a new life when it was introduced to Indianapolis by the legendary Andy Granatelli of STP fame - at Indy the system looked less out of place, hailing back to an albeit marginal tradition dating back to several pre-war experiments in the thirties. In P99 guise it was tested by Fairman at the August Indy trials before it transformed into the P104 'Novi'. The Ferguson system then found its way into the Jensen FF road car.
In Europe, apart from BRM's brief flirt with 4WD - Dick Attwood banned from participating in the 1964 British GP with the four-wheel-drive P67 - the 4WD concept did not catch on in F1. In 2-litre guise the P67 proved a class act in hillclimbs, however, its superior traction giving Peter Westbury several wins. So why did it return to F1 designers' minds during 1969? Quite simply, it was for the same reason wings and turbine engines were tested: the quest for better grip.
In the late sixties the magical 150bhp/litre performance border looked set to be crossed and designers started to worry about finding solutions to transfer all that power onto the road. Traction control didn't yet cross their minds but several other interesting ideas cropped up. In theory, 4WD wasn't a bad idea. Actually, it was a great idea. By more evenly distributing torque over all four wheels there was much less wheel spin to account for, thus allowing for better traction off the line and in cornering. On top of that, the car could use equally sized tyres, reducing drag and allowing for a more uninterrupted air flow across the side of the car.
The downside of it was brought on by the lack of practicality (the more complicated the solution, the easier it breaks) and reality not being very helpful. Firstly, there weren't any wet races in 1969 for the 4WD cars to show their advantages. Secondly, the tyres (effectively four fronts) weren't up to it. Thirdly, in their embryonic stage the undeveloped systems gave the cars plenty of extra ballast (in the case of the Matra MS84 over 60kgs) in places where you didn't want it. This prompted the difficulty in finding a good weight distribution. Gradually over the season, more power was transfered to the rear wheels (especially by Lotus, and in Matra's case completely) but although this led to better balanced cars, the cars were still overweight by a large margin whereas the potential advantage of four-wheel-drive was partially or completely undone. And so the concept was abandoned.
A season before it looked ever so promising as Lotus introduced their turbine-powered 4WD 56 Indycar. It prompted Matra, McLaren and Cosworth to follow Chapman's lead and to start working on developing a 4WD F1 car for their own. The Matra was a heavily adapted 4WD version of the MS80 that helped Jackie Stewart take his first title. Derek Gardner's 4WD design used the Ferguson drive system and applied a technique it shared with all the other 4WD cars of the day: the DFV was turned back-to-front with the driver sitting just in front of the gearbox, which had front and rear diffs running fore and aft. The car debuted at the Dutch GP in June and unexpectedly scored its single point at the US GP. This was after most of the other constructors had dropped their 4WD projects. In effect, Matra had as well, as the MS84 was an overweight rear-wheel-drive car at the time JSG had his first outing in it.
Jo Marquart's McLaren M9A was a totally new design which eventually raced only once. The venue was the British GP, which saw a record number of four 4WD cars entered: Jean-Pierre Beltoise in the MS84, Derek Bell in the M9A, John Miles in the first Lotus 63 and Jo Bonnier in the second, having swapped his trusty 49 with a disconsolate Rindt, who after practice refused to have anything further to do with the wretched machine. The same applied to Bell and the M9A. Afterwards, Bell told he had taken on a huge job in driving the car… After the M9A retired due to rear suspension failure it was inconspicuously wheeled away after just the one race.
Just as the McLaren the Lotus 63 was a new design, but Maurice Philippe naturally borrowed several parts from the 56 Indycar. It had much more in common with the 64 Indycar, however. The 63 made its debut at the Dutch GP, where Hill deserted it after practice. Because both Rindt and Hill didn't like the 63, third driver John Miles was entrusted with driving the car, although Mario Andretti also had one go in it (and duly destroyed one of the two tubs). Miles got completely nowhere with the machine while ironically the time Chapman forced Rindt to drive it, at the non-points Oulton Gold Cup, the Austrian took it to second place.
An almost forgotten part of the 4WD saga was Cosworth's ill-fated attempt at designing a full GP car. Although outwardly extremely ugly, Robin Herd's design was ingeniously thought out, featuring two sponsons between the wheels, linked by a stressed sheet floor and magnesium bulkheads. The front bulkhead formed a box containing the front diff' while each sponson carried three separate bag tanks. Common with general 4WD design practice it featured a reversed magnesium-block DFV unit whereas the linking parts between the self-designed gearbox and the front and rear drives weren't the usual Ferguson concept but of a totally original design. The gearbox had a shaft drive to a centre differential on the right-hand side of the driver, in turn moving the cockpit slightly to the left. The car has had two different shapes. Here is the original shape, with a tea-tray aerofoil and an oil radiator on top of the engine. Trevor Taylor, who did most of the testing chores, is driving. Later, a smaller rear wing was fitted while the nose wedges were extended to the full width of the front tyres. In this shape the car can still be seen in the Donington F1 Museum. The car was planned to drive at the 1969 British GP (which would have increased the number of 4WD entries to a massive five) but it was silently withdrawn. When Herd left to form March, plans to redesign the car were aborted.
Two years later 4WD briefly returned to the GP scene when Chapman introduced the 56B, an F1 derivative of the 56 USAC car, powered by a gas turbine supplied by aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney. In its brief existence it suffered several setbacks, throttle lag its most common problem, which hit the driver hard on road circuits.
In the end, it was the pace of development and the large sums of money involved in perfecting 4WD that nibbed the concept in the bud. Furthermore, the drivers detested it. If ever, 4WD - especially when applied with the wrong power distribution between front and rear drive - prevents a driver from steering the car on the throttle. An instinctive driver like Jochen Rindt looked awkward in his efforts to make the Lotus 63 slide through a corner. So, 4WD disappeared from the sport for over a decade before it resurfaced at Audi in 1981, when the Ingolstadt marque introduced their quattro rally car.
Since then, 4WD has formed an integral part of the World Rally Championship. Then again, the shock performances of 1998 by Philippe Bugalski's two-wheel-drive Citroën Xsara F2 on asphalt surfaces - outpacing the best 4WD WRC machines at the San Remo and Corsica events - underline the fact the technology is more suited to rough and loose surfaces. In the pre-war days 4WD would have been a godsent.
Reader's Why [by Michael Ferner]
Best result of a 4wd Grand Prix car?
Not quite: Same race and eight years earlier, the P99 Ferguson actually won although that was perhaps because it was driven by Stirling Moss who was anyway never beaten at this particular track!
The first 4wd racing cars of note appeared at Indianapolis in 1932, two 5.1 litre V8 Millers that both retired within minutes of the start of the race. Several more attempts were made in the thirties, but only one finish was recorded (4th in 1936).
Then, in England ex-motorcycle racer Freddie Dixon and teenage sensation Tony Rolt (who had first raced in an International Formula Libre race at the age of 18!) built a 4wd special, but WW2 ended their experiment. After the war they got support from Ferguson Research (of Ferguson tractor fame), but still it took until 1960 for a car to be built, and like the Scarab it was obsolete before it even turned a wheel because it was front-engined. When Moss took the chequered flag at Oulton Park he not only recorded the one and only 4wd GP win, but also the last for any front-engined car - quite an achievement!
Surprisingly, the P99 was put away thereafter but resurfaced at a hill-climb in 1963 (where Jo Bonnier drove it to victory) before Andy Granatelli tested it at the Speedway and commissioned Ferguson to build him a car for his famed Novi V8. While this was not exactly a success, it triggered a movement that finally swapped over the pond again. In 1969 the top 3 F1 constructors, plus Cosworth each developed 4wd GP cars, albeit to no avail.
Meanwhile, the original Ferguson had proved successful in hill-climbing, winning the 1964 RAC Hill Climb Championship and inspiring BRM to build a 4wd GP car that never raced on a circuit, but in 1968 won another Hill Climb Championship. Still, in Grands Prix 4wd led nowhere and was soon forsaken.
Three further examples were developed until 4wd was banned in 1983, the March 2-4-0 and the Williams FW07D and FW08B. Only the March ever raced, and then only in hill climbs, again. In the end, 4wd proved to be just another thoroughly expensive cul-de-sac!
The staunchest supporter of 4wd in Europe was Colin Chapman. His love affair began when he replaced Granatelli's cumbersome, home built turbine racer with his Lotus 56 in 1968. Of the five cars built, three were wrecked during the month and two ran away with the race but retired. For the following year Chapman deviced two designs, the 63 GP car and the 64 Indycar, both being failures. However, one of the surviving 56s was later modified for F1 use and ran as 56B, also without much success. That was the end of the line of 4wd Lotuses.
Incidentally, for Rindt to shine in an 4wd car has a somewhat unreal touch to it since the Austrian was above all known for his exuberant driving style and hated the 63 correspondingly. His rise to prominence had been meteoric in the sixties driving F2 Brabhams and F1 Coopers, but in GP racing he was actually out of luck until after this race. He went on to finish second and third at the following two GPs and then finally won his first, at Watkins Glen. That was the breakthrough he was longing for and ultimately led to his crushing superiority in 1970 and his tragic triumph. But, even more than that he will be remembered by enthusiasts for his incredible winning streak in F2, where he was undisputed king as long as he drove!
Coyright Forix
, wait till you see my other ideas ,this has bean great research ,