F1 Quiz Chain

[-Felix-]

Maybe time for a hint.. To reduce the possible races, it happened during an argentinian gp and the part causing the trouble was ironically something that's supposed to safe the driver from harm and not cause it...

And I also found out it happened during the warm up session on race day, so "in front of the pits" seems to have meant indeed on the track on the main straight

[-Felix-]

Well, no interest whatsoever? Here's the answer from Tipler's Book:

Argentinian Grand Prix 1977 Warm Up Session
Subsequently, the front-mounted fire extinguisher on Andretti's 78/2, which was behind the oil cooler, exploded right in front of the pits like a bomb going off. It was because it had been filled with the Halon rather than BCF gas, which expanded ar different rates and was overheated by the oil cooler and the sweltering temperatures. It destroyed the front of the car, tearing back the aluminium top skin and blowing the throttle pedal out of the car. The anti-roll bar across the front bulkhead saved Andretti's feet, although he later dicovered that a bone was broken in one foot.

Maybe another one, an easy one? When Honda built the first f1 car, they called it the Honda RA 270. RA stood for Racing Automobile (was asked couple pages before), but what did the numbers stand for?

[CMSMJ1]

Is it as basic as the project number they were up to - 2 for a car and no70 on the books?

[-Felix-]

No

[Simacher]

The engineer's blind guess that their car's top speed is "maybe up to somewhere near 270km/h" (There's another folklore told over here, that it actually stands for the development goal which was to achieve 270km/h top speed. Anyway it's speed-related). Subsequently the number added up year after year, and was reset to RA300 and onward during the Lola-period by chief Yoshio Nakamura "to mark a new era of Honda F1 design philosophy" (chassis-wise). A fairly well-known story here in the East...

[-Felix-]

Of course that is correct and Simacher can go on! =D>

That is the story I knew also, although I also read another one:

"The target for horsepower was decided by Mr. Honda himself," recalls Akio Okudaira, who was in charge of engine performance. "Whether that horsepower could be achieved was not the question. He just told us we must produce this much power in order to win. For example, the code name for the engine, RA270, was assigned by Mr. Honda, who probably wanted to remind us that the engine had to produce 270 horsepower."

from:
http://world.honda.com/history/challeng ... aoneentry/

[Simacher]

Re the Honda RA270 I came across a rather funny episode when they were developing the car. Hideo Takeda, one of suspension designer in the early Honda F1 project, who worked with Hino Automobile before moving to Honda, recalled a meeting of design team members that: "... the first debate they had was that whether the rigidity is needed or not for the chassis! It's a common sense that an automobile chassis must have the rigidity, or the car simply wouldn't steer properly. But then it really surprised me when the side claiming 'rigidity is unneeded' had won the debate at the early stage." Quite interesting when we see the later hugely overweighted Honda chassis...

And here's the question: After Honda walked away from F1 there was a mysterious private F1 team from Japan, named Maki F1 (Maki Engineering). They used a roundel-shaped logo mark for their team, but what was the design subject that was depicted on that logo mark?

[mertol]

Cherry blossom

[Simacher]

No, it wasn't cherry blossom...

[Sombrero]

Red tulips ?

[Simacher]

Not tulips either, although the answer is definitely a kind of plants. I personally like this logo very much, but once my friend in Malaysia asked me is this a kind of seaweed (he had some knowledge that Japanese eats seaweed perhaps)? I really didn't have any idea what to tell him...

[xwz]

Nice logo. Looks like a poppy.

[Sombrero]

https://everydayclimb.wordpress.com/201 ... s-hate-it/

Red algae ?

[Simacher]

I think it's time to go to the answer: The red, er, thingy pictured in this logo, is a kind of flower known as "butterfly orchid" in the East (I Wiki'd it up and the English name was "Phalaenopsis aphrodite"). This was the traditional family emblem ("Kamon" in Japanese; often translated as "Family Crest" too) of Mr. Maki, the main sponsor of the team at its very initial stage (thus the team's name). The fundings came from Maki's investment company "M's Brain", but this was rather shady business and the company folded before sufficient money went to the team following Maki himself being arrested for multiple fraud cases.
Their stories can be found sometimes in Japanese magazines, and in fact this logo mark anecdote was also found in Japanese automobile magazine (what magazine published at what time I don't quite remember, sorry for that), but the source with entire story bunched together is really hard to find even in Japan, perhaps because the team itself was very small (and rather anonymous), and it also involved some shady things like aforementioned one.

I think anyone with a question can have a go after this.

[xpensive]

I can do that gents!

Perhaps a tough one, but still a classic;

What was Jacky Ickx's comment on his terrible 312B3 after qualifying 8th in the 1973 Swedish GP?