Built but unraced Formula 1 cars

[Giando]

639 or 640, still a most beautiful car, in particular the absence of the horrid scoop that followed, surely John left because of it.

Well... that's not true eheh... he actually designed the new roll bar and tall airscoop on the 640 before to leave. The new air intake was tested in late may 1989.

John left for other reasons. Mainly a huge part of the team was against him, his methods and ideas. Ironically, in early july when he left, they were testing an additional small cooling channel to the alternator of the engine which was the main issue for reliability, and from then on the car started to deliver...

Sorry for the off topic.

[Giando]

Back on topic, here's another italian F1 car that never raced: the FIRST Racing, team headed by former F3 driver Lamberto Leoni.

This car, originally designed by brasilian Ricardo Divila, was built in november 1988 and tested by Gabriele Tarquini for a couple of times in Monza, then at the Bologna Motorshow Race in december, same year.

It mounted a Judd V8 engine.





Divila himself, when he saw the final monocoque built and noticed its carbon fiber structure wasn't as good as it should be, refused to ackonowledge that car and threatened to take legal action if his name would have been associated with the car in case it would have raced, advicing any drivers not to drive that singleseater.

The team then went quickly into huge financial troubles, even before beginning to start the 1989 season.

They sold all the material to italian enterpreneur Ernesto Vita, who revamped and modified that chassis with the help of former Ferrari engineer Gianni Marelli to mount the in-famous W12 (triple V 4-4-4) designed by former Ferrari engineer Franco Rocchi for his Life racing team: the F190 tried to pre-qualify for 14 races but that horrible singleseater never managed to access the regular qualification session.

[Giando]

Also, in the late 1987 McLaren built an MP4/3B test car replacing the TAG Porsche engine with the Honda turbo.
The car was tested by Prost, Senna and test driver Emanuele Pirro.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/antsphoto/ ... /lightbox/

[Carmack]

A great link relating to unraced cars:

http://8w.forix.com/6thgear/neverraced.html

L.

[stefan_]

1969 Cosworth F1 car

Cosworth made an attempt at designing a full Formula One Grand Prix car in 1969. The car, designed by Robin Herd, used an original 4WD transmission designed by Keith Duckworth (different from the Ferguson used by all other 4WD F1 cars of the 1960s) and powered by a magnesium version of the DFV unit. The car was planned to drive at the 1969 British Grand Prix, but it was silently withdrawn. When Herd left to form March Engineering, the project was cancelled. The external design of the car was a product of Herd's use of Mallite sheeting (a wood-aluminium laminate composite) for the principal structural monocoque sections, a technique he pioneered on the first McLaren single-seat cars, including the McLaren M2B of 1966.

[marcush.]

cool find ,i was completely unaware of these pics...

[hollus]

Clearly this is the car the F1 in schools rulset is based on.

1969 Cosworth F1 car

[xpensive]

Robin Herd, March, MrM, guilt by association, though he can hardly spent too many hours on that cosworth design?

[timbo]

Anybody has a picture of the McLaren which was used to test Honda V10 during 1988?

[stefan_]

Well, it's not really a complete car, but I guess I can put this one here too as it didn't race.

1993 Williams FW15C CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission)

The year was 1993 and David Coulthard was Williams official test driver. When not testing race weekend preparations, the team had been in partnership with their fellow Renault engineers to produce a revolutionary automatic gearbox design for F1, dubbed continuously variable transmission, or CVT for short.

One FW15C test car was fitted with the new gearbox, and what followed was the weirdest sounding F1 car ever. The gearbox and engine would essentially be linked via control software to keep the rev range within the engines peak performance window, continuously. There were no gear changes, or gears for that matter in the traditional sense, as belts and pulleys were used to continuously adjust the power from the Renault engine.

This led to a very strange sight and sound of an F1 car heading into a corner and the noise of the revs being nearly the same from approach to entry to exit!

The idea was subsequently banned prior to 1994, and the car and gearbox never even saw a race weekend. The test car is now on display at the DAF museum in Eidenhoven in the Netherlands.





[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3UpBKXMRto[/youtube]

[motorloon1993]

http://audio.rpix.org.uk/mwm/8/mwm8-41.mp3

A good talk about unraced f1 cars comes around 39:00.

This is the 'Unraced' Book.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unraced-Sam-Col ... 1845840844

[timbo]

Anybody has a picture of the McLaren which was used to test Honda V10 during 1988?

Found one myself:

[stefan_]

Another rarity I stumbled upon yesterday, with the help of Scarbs' retweets.

Senna testing an MP4/5B fitted with a high nose at Monza in 1990.

[Huntresa]

Another rarity I stumbled upon yesterday, with the help of Scarbs' retweets.

Senna testing an MP4/5B fitted with a high nose at Monza in 1990.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ba_T_ZkCEAA0qme.jpg:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ba_QQQhIIAEG_jb.jpg:large

Did someone forget the word pillar ? Or didnt the regs allow it? I mean its looks retarded to say it lite with the FW at the same height as the nose.

[timbo]

Another rarity I stumbled upon yesterday, with the help of Scarbs' retweets.

Senna testing an MP4/5B fitted with a high nose at Monza in 1990.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ba_T_ZkCEAA0qme.jpg:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ba_QQQhIIAEG_jb.jpg:large

Did someone forget the word pillar ? Or didnt the regs allow it? I mean its looks retarded to say it lite with the FW at the same height as the nose.

Regs definitely allowed it. It is indeed strange they didn't use pillars, they probably reduced the effectiveness of front wing a lot and made it interfere with the flow over the rest of the car.