Back in the 1970s, Formula 1 regulations occupied barely three pages of the FIA Yellow Book, despite appearing in both French and English. Before that, in the 1950s, effectively two sides of one sheet of almost illegible Roneo-copied FIA paper sufficed. Today F1 regs are so complex, governing almost every imaginable technical and operational area, they extend to many internet-presented electrons…
Apart from the Gen-Z marketing imperative to make F1 ‘more exciting’ which played such an alarming role in Ollie Bearman’s Japanese GP crash, it’s hard to recall a previous technical regulation which mandated an effect so dangerous to the participants’ well-being.
For decades it was more normally the case that engineers’ ambitions and ingenuity created a law-avoiding innovation ‘technically legal’ so far as the regulation was worded, yet in practice proving fearfully dangerous…
Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the best-remembered examples of such ’steps too far’ is recalled as having reached F1 primarily via the fertile and hyper-competitive brain of racing’s most illustrious team principal-cum-design engineer, Colin Chapman.
It’s not that he bore prime responsibility for the introduction of the tall, strutted downforce-generating wing on F1 cars, 1967-69, but that his infectious self-confidence took the development too far. Seduced by ever increasing download benefits he eventually ran wings so wide, so light and so structurally frail they could not endure loads at speed.
But any ‘blame’ should have been shared. As early as 1928, Fritz von Opel had his RAK-2 rocket-car builder Eugen Sander fit 50in-span negative-incidence wings each side, hopefully to ensure its tyres maintained contact with our planet in general, Berlin’s AVUS track surface in particular. It worked.
In the 1950s Mercedes-Benz toyed with short-strut-mounted rooftop wings on their works racing 300SL Coupés. At the Nürburging in 1956 Swiss engineer Michael May stunned the scrutineers by arriving with his Porsche 550 Spyder supporting an enormous strutted wing high above its centre of gravity, just aft of ’midships. The officials patted him on the head, hoped the headaches might subside and ordered its removal.
In 1961 at Daytona Beach, driver Art Malone’s Kurtis Kraft Indycar Mad Dog IV – owned and modified by owner Bob Osiecki with input from John J Harper, aerospace professor at Georgia Tech – hurtled round the super-Speedway with Opel-like negative-incidence wings each side. Into the mid-60s ‘race cars with wings’ became serious.
In 1966 Jim Hall’s Chaparral 2E Can-Am contender emerged with a GM R&D-backed tall strutted wing. The struts acted directly upon the rear suspension hub-carrying uprights, thereby directly loading the tyre contact patch against the roadway beneath. Here was the benefit of extra mass at speed for comparatively minimal penalty from actual extra static weight.
“A section of scrap helicopter rotor blade was rigged on short struts”
In April 1966 Chaparral’s first wing was carved from pine and tested 2ft above the back end of a Chevrolet Stingray. A lightweight foam-filled monocoque wing was then made and added to the two works 2Es built. Once structural problems in the support struts had been corrected they proved effective. But even before the Chaparrals had made their debuts, Indy constructor Jerry Eisert had run his J Frank Harrison-owned No96 ‘Batcar’ with a separate inverted aerofoil wing above its rear.
After trying a crude wing on a Vollstedt Indycar in October 1967, Lotus World Champion Jim Clark had been interested enough to suggest a similar device to his mechanics Leo Wybrott and brothers Dale and Roger Porteous during their January 1968 Tasman Championship tour in New Zealand.
