Location: Covilhã, Portugal (and sometimes in Évora)
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I have info about it.....but since my BIG mistake 2 days ago...about aero.....I want to take a look at it before I post.....so get back to you tomorrow....cya
Scarbs description is obviously perfect as ever, I would just add something maybe many don’t knows.
The Ferrari F1/89 (639) wasn’t actually the first Ferrari F1 with an electro actuated gearbox. In 1978 Mauro Forghieri designed a system with hydraulic actuators (from a machine tool) to move the forks and two buttons on the steering wheel for up/downshift. They modified an old 312 and Gilles Villeneuve completed successfully about 100 laps at Fiorano. After the test anyway Gilles said that he wasn’t enough confident “without a metallic link”. Obviously Enzo Ferrari accepted the driver’s decision and the solution was discarded.
Hi, NickT, I’m sorry for the delay.
I’ve got the info from an article, in an Italian magazine, with the Mauro Forghieri testimony. According to him in that years they were starting to work on supercharging, and the first aim was to find a way to reduce the turbo lag and to improve driveability. They were working on two directions, the first one being the electro-actuated gearbox, the second was the system to re-circulate exhaust gasses while the throttle was closed using them to keep the turbine spinning at the necessary speed or close to it.
I agree that it’s a shame that the solution was discarded, F1 had to wait 10 years to see it again.
Sequential simply means one after the other.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The early Jordan had a motorcycle shift system for cost reasons that established the seven gears as the maximum allowed in F1 and sequential actuation.
I discused that system with Garry Anderson in Estoril the first Jordan year.
Sequential means that the gears are only available in order up and down.
Flap levers or buttons simply electricaly operate hydro or pneumatic actuation systems on the selector forks to engage or disengage gears, this can be done fully automaticaly or semi automaticaly and in any order.
It is the regulations that stipulate sequential, manual operation and no more than seven gear.
Sorry to dissapoint Ferrari but I had a fully auto and a semi auto system racing on the ovals in 1976. I discused it with Ferrari both in 1975 and before 1989 when they brought out the Mansel semi auto unit. I should send them a bill.
I have letters to Ferrai UK to prove it. Thats F1 though and thats Ferrari, worse than the Americans.
Awsome 
he loves technical inovation