F1 Quiz Chain

[Neco FEROX]

Question: Which team first introduced skirts which gave 3 times as much downforce with barely anymore drag?

Bonus Question: Which team copied them a year later?

[marcush.]

we are talking F1 here ,so Hall/Chapparal does not count ,right?
As far as i understand the concept was developped at BRM but not raced and Tony Rudd took it to Lotus where it was first raced on the lotus 78 (they had it already tested on the 77 but decided not to race it.

tbh skirrtish things were already in use 1976 before on Mclarens(?)M26 ...but i think you are referring to the sliding skirts ? back then these were only strips of flexible lexan(?)

[Neco FEROX]

1st Question: The first flexible skirts were introduced into F1 in 1978 on the Lotus-Ford Type 78.

2nd Question: The sliding skirt were developed by Frank Durney for Williams and applied it to the Williams-Ford FW07 in 1979.

Unless my information is faulty.

[marcush.]

Flexible skirts were introduced during 1976 season...sorry to be nitpicky there ,I´m not even sure if this is the final call on this .

as can be seen on this pic ..its not a sliding skirt but surely the concept is to prevent air to leak under the car...

[timbo]

2nd Question: The sliding skirt were developed by Frank Durney for Williams and applied it to the Williams-Ford FW07 in 1979.

Actually in 1979 everybody and his dog were using skirts (Ferrari, Ligier, Wolf etc).

[marcush.]

2nd Question: The sliding skirt were developed by Frank Durney for Williams and applied it to the Williams-Ford FW07 in 1979.

Actually in 1979 everybody and his dog were using skirts (Ferrari, Ligier, Wolf etc).

..



btw the guy you mention is Frank Dernie .He had his own chair prepared by competing teams as he was the spy and was famous for looking up in detail their cars in the paddock .....do not remember which team it was that prepared the Frank Dernie chair...

[Neco FEROX]

Well I'm currently constructing a Tamiya 1/12 Lotus-Ford Type 78 kit and the main body is an upside down wing shape which quickens the air flow underneath which reduces the pressure and sucks the car onto the road. But air was leaking inwards from the sides so they developed the skirts to block the air.

[marcush.]

this kit was the third 1/12 kit I build in 1980 ... after Laudas 312T ,Scheckters Wolf WR1 and then Nilssons Lotus ...incredibly expensive even back then ...

[xpensive]

The Lotus 78 of 1977 was the first car to have true sliding skirts, but I'm not sure if the ceramic wear-strips were employed already then, or if it came with the Lotus 79 the following year. Anyway, this was engineered by Peter Wright and Martin Ogilvie.

In 1979, everyone had the concept, where the FW07 were perhaps the most successful, in which design Dernie was acitive.

[marcush.]

wiki search:
As a sideline to BRM's main development, Rudd and Peter Wright also involved with the design of a ground effect car that never raced; driver John Surtees was adamant that it could not be made raceworthy. Rudd and Wright were later to be reunited at Lotus on work that did lead to successful ground-effect racing cars.

still to me the question was flexible skirt ...not sliding skirt...

I looked up my books from that time and it seems a lot of teams started to employ flexible strips at the sides of the cars during 1976...who was introducing them first? Not sure there ...

[marcush.]

so now, quiz chain asleep?

For sure lotus introduced the sliding skirts introducing their wingcar and sure the lotus 78 was not the first car to wear skirtish things at the bottom.
At the very least it was the lotus 77 in Fuji 1976 that already had brushtype skirts down to the ground.
found PenskePC4 also skirts wearing in Austria..:

[xpensive]

Conclusively, the original Q is impossible to answer marcush.

On the subject of the Penske F1 team, in 1975, Mark Donohue was killed at Österreichring, this was in true American tradition followed by a lawsuit, what was that all about?

[matt21]

As far as I know, his widow filed a lawsuit against Goodyear and won finally in 1984.

[xpensive]

Correct, but the way I remember things, there was also a case against Bell helmets?

Your go matt.

[matt21]

If somebody has a good one, go ahead.
Otherwise you have to wait until tomorrow.