September 16, 2025 • 55 mins
The new 2.5-liter F1 of 1954 raised the bar for engineering excellence and cost of entry to the pinnacle of motor racing. With Mercedes-Benz leaving the shadows of WWII and becoming an accepted participant in motor racing again, the Grand Prix community had to anticipate a full-out effort of a new generation of Silver Arrows. Indeed, new standards were set with a series of W196 variants born out of vast corporate resources, supported by component suppliers like Continental, Bosch, and Esso.
In this story, the imaginary Italian “Unione Automobili,” previously formed of national legacy manufacturers other than Fiat, takes on the role of the Auto Union AG of the 1930s as an antagonist of Mercedes-Benz and promoter of the mid-engine layout. A probabilistic SWAT analysis reveals what it will take to beat the mighty opponent from Stuttgart. This is the start for a motley crew of Austrian and Italian engineers lead by Robert Eberan-Eberhorst to create a victorious challenger. The prescribed engine configuration is a compact V6 in homage to the Lancia brand. Breaking with Italian traditions, emphasis is put on chassis development where innovations in tires, brakes, and aerodynamics will provide decisive competitive advantages.
Dr. Karl-Heinz Mertins (“K-H”) holds degrees in mechanical engineering and a doctorate in mechatronics/ag engineering from the Technical University Berlin, Germany. In more than 35 years of engineering and business experience in Europe and the US, he focused on product innovation and new business incubation, applying cross-disciplinary methods with cross-cultural considerations. His work included experimental work on intelligent mobile equipment and wind energy systems in multinational corporations and start-ups. His enthusiasm for F1 goes back to the 1961 season.
===== (Oo---x---oO) =====
00:00 The Challenge of Beating Mercedes-Benz 03:01 Mercedes-Benz's Post-War Comeback; The 300 SL and the Marshall Plan 08:59 The Shift to Mid-Engine Layout 12:28 The Italian Engineering Dream Team 18:45 Mercedes-Benz's Methodical Development 26:43 Lessons from the 300 SL 29:04 Chassis Design, Radial Tires, Space Frame and Aviation Influence 33:26 Innovative Suspension Systems 38:39 Brakes and Aerodynamic Innovations 40:43 Driver Position and Engine Choices 47:20 Fuel Injection and Aerodynamics 50:29 Concluding Thoughts and Acknowledgements====================
The Motoring Podcast Network : Years of racing, wrenching and Motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge, stories and information. #everyonehasastory #gtmbreakfix - motoringpodcast.net
- More Information: https://www.motoringpodcast.net/
- Become a VIP at: https://www.patreon.com/gtmotorsports
- Online Magazine: https://www.gtmotorsports.org/
This episode is part of our HISTORY OF MOTORSPORTS SERIES and is sponsored in part by: The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), The Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argetsinger Family.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Break Fix's History of MotorsportsSeries is brought to you in part
by the International Motor RacingResearch Center, as well as the
Society of Automotive Historians,the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
Commerce, and the Argo Singer family.
How to beat the Mercedes-Benz W 1 96.
An alternative historyaccelerates the Mid-engine
(00:22):
Revolution by Carl Heinz Mertons.
The new two and a half literformula of 1954 raised the bar for
engineering excellence and cost ofentry to the pinnacle of motor racing.
With Mercedes-Benz, leaving theshadows of World War II and becoming an
accepted participant in motor racing,again, the Grand Prix community had
to anticipate a full out effort ofa new generation of Silver arrows.
(00:43):
Indeed, new standards were set witha series of W one ninety six variants
born out of vast corporate resourcessupported by components suppliers
like Continental Bosch, and so.
In this story, the imaginary ItalianUNE automobile previously formed of
National Legacy Manufacturers otherthan Fiat takes on the role of Auto
Union Ag of the 1930s as an antagonistof Mercedes-Benz and Promoter of the
(01:07):
Midian layout, a probabilistic SWATanalysis reveals what it would take to
beat the mighty opponent for s Stuttgart.
This is the start for a motleycrew of Australian and Italian
engineers led by Robert Ein Horsto create a victorious challenger.
The prescribed engine configuration is acompact V six and homage to the launch of
brand breaking with Italian traditions.
(01:28):
Emphasis is put on chassis developmentwhere innovations and tires breaks,
and aerodynamics will providedecisive competitive advantages.
Dr. Carl Hinz.
Mertons holds degrees in mechanicalengineering and a doctorate in
mechatronics and engineering from thetechnical University of Berlin, Germany.
In more than 35 years of engineeringand business experience in Europe and
the us, Carl has focused on productinnovation and new business incubation,
(01:51):
applying cross-disciplinary methodswith cross-cultural considerations.
His work included experimental workon intelligent mobile equipment and
wind energy systems in multinationalcorporations and startups.
His enthusiasm for F1 goesback to the 1961 season.
Like many people in racing, I'mbending the rules a little bit here,
speaking to a society of historians.
(02:15):
I will talk a little bit about the realhistory, but then we are often to an
alternative history and give a picture ofwhat could have been instead of what was.
So, uh, the question is how tobeat Mercedes-Benz at the time
when it wasn't quite clear.
That they would enter the um, 2.5liter formula one race season in 1954.
(02:40):
And so the model designationof W 1 96 wasn't known yet.
So it's kind of blankedout here in the title.
Let me give you a timeline of wherethis all starts, and then I will talk a
little bit about what happened here onthe left side before we get to 51 in 51.
(03:01):
And all this is somewhat relevantto the story that I will tell in,
uh, 51 Mercedes got back out of thedestruction phase into the reconstruction
and started building cars again.
But not just any car.
They started unveiling the, uh,300 W 180 6 as an internal code,
(03:25):
and it was a challenge to RollsRoyce to Packard, if you want.
So they wanted to really reestablishthe company as a provider of luxurious
cars and, and set the standard.
Shortly thereafter in thispresentation happened at the, uh,
Frankfurt Automobile Show in April.
(03:45):
Shortly thereafter, the board approvedthat the company should go back to racing
and there was a green light given for.
A sports car project.
First, the 300 SL to ease into motorsports again after World War ii.
Now, what happened before, otherwas of course, the World War II and
(04:07):
before it ended, there were plans,particularly in the us the Morgenthal
plan that foresaw that, uh, Germanyshould really be brought back to
the Middle Ages and should have no.
Industrial capabilities anymore.
The facilities that had survived the WorldWar should be dismantled or destroyed,
(04:28):
and, uh, it should be an agrarian societythat, that would go forward and not
be a threat to mankind going forward.
Well, that plan, fortunately,didn't come to pass.
Instead, there was of course, anactivity, some of that on the table,
and some of it was under the table.
There were of course some of the, uh,Mercedes engineers that formed informal
(04:52):
networks, and they were thinking aboutplans of what could they do and how
could they survive, and at some pointgo back to the former glories again.
That happened and that led to thingslike the Unimark, of course, a utility
vehicle, kind of an agriculturaltractor, and of course that kind of
responded to the Morgan for plan.
(05:15):
Of focusing on agriculture and noton things like racing or luxury cars.
That machine, uh, was very successful.
It was developed.
It was very little means and, uh, withexternal help and the binger brothers
chipped in and there were other.
People that had allocations of sheetmetal out for milk cans and and so forth.
(05:36):
And they all contributed because at thetime, in 45 when the war was lost, Germany
was under military rule and the areaaround Stuttgart was about the American.
Administration then, and so material werescars and had to be applied for and to
be a good reason as to why you wantedsome material and you couldn't ask for
(05:58):
material for race cars, for example.
Wouldn't have been a good proposition.
Moves on from there.
Pretty quickly, the Arkansas plangets replaced by the Marshall Plan.
Money flows into Europe and thereconstruction is pretty fast and furious.
So there were some activitiesalready at the beginning of 51.
(06:20):
A couple of the, uh, pre-war one 60 fours.
We're brought to, uh, Argentina torun in one Cyrus at a couple of races.
And the idea was, well, we wereso successful with those pre-war
silver arrows, we could probablyjust dust them off and use them
again in, uh, this new age.
(06:40):
It turned out they were notthat successful, was the, uh,
moving force behind all this.
He had a, a delegation going to Argentinawith these cars engineer responsible for
those who, how was not in the delegation.
So things were probably not perfectly setup, but those cars, three liter mercedeses
(07:02):
were beaten by two liter Ferraris.
And it was kind of a shameful eventfrom a Mercedes perspective because
the DNA of the company was indeed.
You make the best cars you can make andwhen you go racing, you go for the win.
You're not settling for second places.
They had to rethink the solaroperation and scale back a little bit.
(07:25):
Go back to building a sports carand focus only once the dust settled
and it became clear how Formula Onewould be organized in the future,
that there would be indeed a new one.
A formula that would give preferenceto naturally aspirated engines,
and it would start in 1954.
(07:46):
It became clear.
Now, that was the new goal forMercedes, but in the interim, they
were working on a race car that theycould build out of this luxury car.
Kind of a clumsy way to do it,but nevertheless, it turned out
to be quite successful around thesame time, at the end of 1951.
Alfa Romeo, who had had two verysuccessful years with the LF Fetas,
(08:09):
decided that that wouldn't be a long termproposition going forward with those cars.
They were at the end of their developmentpotential, and you couldn't increase
the uh uh, compression ratios andthe supercharger pressures and so on,
and you couldn't deal with the fuelconsumption that increased exponentially.
(08:30):
So the abandoned racing.
Completely.
Now if, if you are a competitorin this Grand Prix racing scene
and you think about, well, I haveto compete with Mercedes again,
they're not doing things half baked.
You have to have the financial strengths.
And you have to have theintellectual strength to build a
(08:51):
true competitor, a good car that canindeed meet and beat Mercedes-Benz.
It takes something.
So here is where I, we are offinto La la land if you want.
So during 1952, where could agroup come about that would make a
challenge for Mercedes, not in France?
(09:12):
I think, you know, the CTA arsenal was.
Rolling disaster and would not haveyielded a real competitor in England.
BRM was a, uh, bureaucratic mess,and it wasn't really going anywhere
fast, and it was also too much lookingbackwards to the 1930s technology wise.
(09:32):
So I could see that scenario in Italy.
If you reconstruct something like the ionthat had been very successful in Germany
and had provided this competitive productto Mercedes in form of the, uh, mid-engine
silver arrows that were initiallydesigned by failure net Porsche and.
(09:54):
Engineering office and then, uh,Nan Ho in particular insourced
more and more of that activity.
So I suggest something like this, and.
Bil should, uh, happen in northern Italyand it would be where, you know, out in
Germany was pretty much mandated by thebanks that they had to support the capital
(10:18):
in Italy, the IRI, the state holding.
To which Alpha Romeo already belonged,would be a good vehicle to provide some
serious competition to fiat, which totallydominated the uh, Italian auto scene
volume wise and value wise, somethingneeded to be done because frankly, I
(10:38):
think people with some foresight knewthat companies like ER and Alpha Mayo.
By themselves couldn't survive long term.
Hindsight tells us that they didn't,but we're back in 1951 ish, two ish.
This could have happened.
We could have had a conglomerate ofdifferent, uh, brands that would cover
(10:59):
different segments in the marketplace.
They could even have an, um,a foreign branch in France.
ARD would be a, a good candidate.
In those days, you couldn't tradeeasily across country boundaries.
So Fiat had sim.
In France, we would have ARD anduh, we would have a luxury segment
(11:19):
where Luncher would play a big role.
Ista Fch would also be integrated,the name rights would be acquired,
and you would establish the luxuryand the top end of the range.
With that brand, there would be anentry also, in terms of a tubial.
Vehicles and the scooter, a prettyrugged scooter from is O was available.
(11:43):
So we have already the low cost entrybrand is O auto vehicle that makes this
ISTA and they also made the scooter.
So we cover that.
And also in addition, goes backto last year's presentation.
We also have a branch that dealswith ag tractors 'cause that helps.
Uh, developed the metso joinregion in Italy, and that's,
(12:07):
uh, one of the motivators why.
IRI will support the sole effort.
This sole effort needs also tobe joined by Pelli, which has an
interest in promoting their tires.
And altogether, this could be acompetitor or could be the financial
resource, intellectual resource toprovide a real competitor to Mercedes.
(12:28):
So we have a few individuals herethat will constitute the core team.
But the head would be RobertHorst, who had ample experience in
mid-engine cars at Ion before the war.
After the war.
He was involved in the Alia 360, whichalso was designed and outsourced and
(12:51):
relocated team of Porsche engineering.
Fer.
Porsche was incarcerated at the timein France, but his son and some of the
old team members were working there.
I put here Kois as kind ofthe project manager in place
as the right hand of Iran.
Horst, who was certainly the intellectualmastermind, but not necessarily
(13:13):
involved in all the nitty gritty.
So Nico is, will take care of that.
He has, um, experience at theAlfreda program and we bring in.
Different generations.
I think from my own professionalexperience, I think it's always
very helpful when you have multiplegenerations on a team, not just an inbred
(13:34):
group, so to speak, of gray beards.
You need some of them, butyou don't want to have the.
Whole team of them.
So we recruit and those are real people.
Of course, as you know, KaloKitty and Choto Sini, both
are already at Alpha Romeo.
It makes sense to rely onthem a lot for chassis and for
development and test and so on.
(13:55):
They're enthused and they come veryimportantly from the University of Pisa.
So they have at least in, in.
Case and degree in aeronauticalengineering, and we'll see later on
that taking license from or learningfrom aeronautical designs and skills and
(14:17):
technologies makes a lot of sense whenyou want to build a world beat a race car.
On the engine side, we leanmore on the ER personnel.
There is of course FrancescoLio, who pretty much developed
the V six engine at Luncher.
The principles, at leastthe angle of 60 degrees.
(14:38):
It goes back to him.
He analyzed the dynamics of various Vangles and when you look at the history
of Blanche and you know, they experimentedwith everything from 11 degrees.
Downwards or upwards and 60 degrees isobviously the ideal, but there's also
a solution with 120 degrees later on.
(14:58):
Dillo found that already in the 1940s,so he is obviously a member of the team.
Then, uh, the kina is maybe a morepractical engine designer who can detail.
An engine war, and he has shownthat already as, as a long term
launcher engineer, I couldn't getany biographic information on him.
(15:22):
Maybe that's where some librarianscan help me in the future.
And then of course, this fellow here.
We'll learn more about him.
Jose Mika, who retired in 1950from the Porsche engineering team.
We'll rehire him as a consultant becausehe's a specialist in aerodynamics, and
we understand aerodynamics will play abig role if we want to beat Mercedes.
(15:46):
And it's also important to work veryclosely with the tire manufacturer.
So we want to have somebody.
I'm not particular about the namefrom Pelli, from the tire partner
because suspension, layout anddesign will have to be very closely
coordinated with the tire capabilities.
And so you want to have thetire people on your side.
(16:07):
It's one of the lessons alsofrom the Solar Arrow pre-World
War II, where Mercedes workedvery closely with Continental and
that was very helpful to them.
Porsche and uh, ot.
We're not quite as engagedwith Continental, and it was
to their detriment sometimes.
So the first task of this newlyformed team was before you start
(16:30):
designing anything, you know,go by this ancient wisdom here.
If you know you're enemyand you know yourself.
You need not fear theresult of a hundred battles.
So find out as much aspossible about Mercedes.
Where are they going?
What can you expect from them?
Rather than focusing just on yourown thoughts and say, we know best
how to build the best race car.
(16:51):
Anticipate what your enemyor your competitor will
do, and then not copy them.
The goal is not to copy them.
You cannot out Mercedes.
Mercedes, you know, if you try.
It's a losing battle.
You have to do something.
You have to look for unfairquote unquote advantages, and you
have to do something different.
For example, mid-engine layoutas opposed to what is most likely
(17:15):
mercedes's solution, the front engine.
And then as mentionedbefore, aeronautics holds.
A lot of nuggets of wisdom and a lotof technology pieces you want to adopt.
So you won't send out people likeKa Kitty to snoop around what's
going on in aeronautics and at theuniversities that still teach that
(17:35):
there wasn't too much actual buildingand designing going on after World War.
'cause of restrictionsby the Allied forces.
So what can you expectreasonably from Mercedes-Benz?
Well, we know the company wanted anddid indeed, uh, recover from the ashes.
There was a lot of rebuilding goingon because Mercedes had a very loyal
(17:57):
workforce and a lot of people thathad survived World War II went back
to remove some of the rubbles andto secure some of the machinery
and repaired and to improve on it.
Uh, it's pretty obvious thatAU and Auer will stay engaged.
Auer already in his sixties, you canimagine, tend to relive the old days,
(18:19):
the glory days of thirties, and that'swhy he pushed for, you know, this
early engagement in Buenos iris in51 because you thought, Hey, we have
the goods still here, and why don'twe just refresh a little bit when we.
Uh, had been successful with, Ithink Rudolph, by his nature, was
more interested in a clean sheetdesign and be more in the times
(18:43):
then rather than looking backward.
What you know about Mercedes is they arevery methodical in their development.
They're not just going from thedrawing board quickly to the foundry.
And to the machine shop and thenassemble and go to the racetrack.
That's not their way of doing things.
They will work on components, testthe components to death, assemble the
(19:05):
components to subsystems test again in thelab, the systems and subsystems to death.
When that all works out, then they havea car, and then they will also test it
first on a lab with a rolling surface.
And before they ever hit the tracks,they will know a lot about the vehicle
and its capabilities, and then theywill go out to the track finally.
(19:27):
And then there's only small modific.
Necessary some tuneups.
And this leads to a situation, this isone of my rocking horses here that I like
to think about and talk about, and that'sthe evolution strategy as it applies to,
uh, technical systems and developments.
The speed of progress.
(19:47):
You can say it dependson the mutation size.
How much do you change you?
You start typically with someknown platform, state of the
art, and if you do very little,there's practically no progress.
If you move on, you get onto apretty steep curve of rapid progress.
And, and there's certainwindow within you can operate.
(20:10):
If you're too low here withtwo small steps of improvement,
you're not accomplishing much.
If you're going overboard, youend up here, you end up in a alia
situation or in, um, a Monaco TRScomes to mind in a freeboard design
of a, uh, grand Prix car, which wasbasically a, an airplane without wings.
(20:31):
You know, the, there was a, uh,a radial engine at the front.
It was.
Hanging over the front exel andmass distribution was something
like 70% front and 30% rear,which is a recipe for disaster.
Of course, you don't have to be aspecialist in engineering to see that.
So that was a design that fellsomewhere into this part of
the, uh, evolution window.
(20:52):
Clearly overshot.
You want to avoid that.
Mercedes was more in thisconservative pioneering mode.
Some people havecharacterized the company as.
Conservative pioneers,they're going for progress.
One example would be that we learn inreal history later on, you know, they go
from carburate to fuel injection and it'san incremental improvement, but it's one
(21:15):
that's solid and it brings some progress.
It's very measurable, but theywouldn't go completely to a rotary
engine or something right off the bat.
There will be a tight budget.
Don't expect any statesubsidies or payments.
Directly or indirectly, because Germanydidn't have much surplus to throw around.
(21:37):
They had hardly beenable to cover the basics.
But there would be technical inputs, ofcourse, from suppliers that Mercedes had
a tradition working with like PorscheContinental and then the fuel supplier.
It was important too becausethe fuel in those days was free.
Formula didn't prescribecommercially available gasoline.
(21:58):
You could brew your own mix,which they certainly did.
And then there was of course theengineering force within the corporation.
You could always ring up acolleague or meet over lunch
and get some inputs and so on.
So there was quite a bit of intellectualproperty and capability there.
Now Mercedes obviouslylost the uh, local nemes.
(22:19):
Out on Yon, there was no chance thatout on Yon would get back racing.
They hardly survived and theywere cut into two pieces.
One in East Germany and one in WestGermany, or one in the Soviet zone.
The other one in the American Zone.
Uh, so there was no chance for that.
So when they did something, it, it wouldhave to have some benefit for their
(22:41):
serious production side of the business.
And so it's very likely, very probablethat they would stick to the front
engine because all their commercial.
Products would be front engine taken alittle dive via Edmund MLA in the 1920s.
The, um, say this or the Bens our agevar, but that didn't last very long.
(23:04):
And so very unlikely that they would makea jump that would to them look like going.
Potentially, uh, down the drain, theywould probably hang onto the swing
AXLs or pendulum AXLs because that wasalso their bread and butter product.
Now, one would expect that theywould modify this thing a little
bit because we know swing AXLs andwe'll get to that in a moment, are
(23:26):
not the ca meow for Good Road ho.
So a case in point for all this,looking more toward what they have
and what they want to commercializeis the uh, W 1 94 project.
This 300 SL first generation,that's an excellent model to study.
If this case for this question that wehave in front of us here, you see this?
(23:49):
AU on the 300 representative car and veryluxurious and expensive and a dream car.
You know, for most Germans, itwas totally an Tanium, and yet it
showed, you know, we're back againand that would be the basis for
this sports car that would go race.
So they had an engine and they had tolive with this engine because unlike
(24:11):
Italians, they didn't jump rightinto making five different engines.
Very quickly, they stuck with the blockand with what they had to work with
rather than tooling up very quickly.
I'm amazed, and some people havewritten with amazement and with
appreciation that, for example, designed25 engines in five years, which was
nuts for a small company like that.
(24:33):
Mercedes had this one engine.
Which was already anoverhead camshaft engine.
So a good start, but it washeavy, a boat anchor if you want.
So it had to be augmented withother designs that were within
the realm of possibility.
And one was obviously aerodynamics.
And that brings me to this image here,because in 1939 when the, uh, Italians,
(24:56):
when they thought they were smart inprescribing, that the uh, grand Prix
of Tripoli was for water tourette.
Cars instead of regular concrete cars.
They thought, well now our feas willhave a good chance to win this race.
Mercedes, at that time when theystill had the pockets designed, the
purpose built W 1 65 and sent to carsto Tripoli and, and ended up one two.
(25:19):
But during qualification, they had tolearn the better lesson that a four
cylinder Maserati with a streamlined.
Body work got the pole position.
It was faster than the Mercedes cars.
Unexpected in a way because theengine was clearly inferior.
So I think they must have gotten a bit ofa lesson there that, hey, we have to look
(25:39):
at the, uh, drag reduction and, and so on.
Also, again, to, um, studysubsystems and obviously roof
came up with the, uh, space frame.
Concept, a very light frame to offsetthe high weight of the engine, but
it was an unknown quantity and notmany people have had built these
(26:01):
types of delicate space frames.
So they built a very quick mule carto test this concept early on before
they ever went too far down thepike and designed this final 300 sl.
Super light, but they did.
And then to reduce the drag coefficientand to reduce the uh, frontal area,
they angled or tilted the engineat about 55 degrees from horizontal
(26:26):
to simply reduce the hood heightand thereby increase there speed.
And here you can see Charles Faru andAlfred Auer looking into the engine
bay of that final product at the mall.
So continued lessons tobe learned from this.
First of all, you learn Mercedes.
(26:46):
They don't go full four out anddesign everything from scratch.
On the other hand, they'rewilling to stretch the envelope,
you know, to design solutions.
Again, somewhat dictated of courseby the space for want to have
a deep door sill and threshold.
They came up with thefirst iteration of the.
Following doors that just reacheddown to the lower edge of the
(27:09):
window, and you had to kind ofwiggle yourself into the driver's.
When it first got to the Eliain 52 with this scar, the, uh,
inspectors were a little bit.
Leery to accept that as doors and, andso it was a test for the subsequent
LA Mall array, and I think they gotinto the lia was this type of door,
(27:32):
quote unquote, later on for lamo.
They changed it to the tall wingdoors as we know them today.
And that was in reaction toand knowing that they would.
Meet less leniency with theFrench authorities and with
the Italian authorities.
Of course, in those years we'retalking 1952, they also experimented
with something that was a little bitout of the ordinary and a little bit
(27:56):
advanced or too advanced for Mercedes.
One could say thisaerodynamic brake system.
Some people will argue that wasmostly shown during the time trials
to confuse irritate competitors.
It was never meant to bereally used in racing.
This was a little flimsy and it wastaken down before the race began.
(28:17):
But we also learned from thisdevelopment that Mercedes was
willing to accept imperfection.
For example, when you look at the enginecompartment, it has no ventilation.
There is no way to get the air out inan ordinary or in a very optimized way
where you help reduce overall drag.
They fix that later on by having someopenings, yet the side, but not in this
(28:40):
first generation of the, uh, 300 ssl.
So that was one, and then theystuck to this somewhat questionable.
Pendulum rear suspension.
Nevertheless, they were victoriousin LA Mall and then particular at the
car Pan Americana, which was quitean achievement for something that was
built from bits and pieces that wereoriginally meant for a luxurious car.
(29:03):
Working.
On the other hand, what learned from therefor the on automobile team is we prefer
chassis over engine power battalions.
Typically, were interested in, forFerrari in particular, the race car was
a big engine, very powerful, and therest was just a means to move forward.
Chassis was never really his.
(29:24):
Preference in those days, at leastin this case, our team will think
differently and will work with Pelliclosely to introduce the radial tires,
which Pelli had developed at that time.
Not for racing, but forpassenger car applications.
Uh, sports car applications, Chira.
Let's see, 67, and we add on acompetition on version of that tire.
(29:49):
We'll use it for our dream car.
Yeah, of course.
That also means the drivingstyle has to be adapted to that.
It's not totally easy from people whogrew up with cross supplied tires.
They have some difficulties and that willrequire also very methodical testing.
Let's look at othercomponents that are important.
The chassis frame itself is very important'cause you want to have a very stiff
(30:14):
chassis, and the flexibility has tobe in the suspension system and not
like letter frames or the frame itselfwas the spring system for most parts.
We have some lessons to learn from Alia,for example, but this Porsche design
very strangely has this space frame, butit doesn't make use of triangulation.
(30:38):
You don't see that any of these,uh, square gaps are broken
up with some triangulation.
Very strange.
I'm not sure.
What their motive was 'cause theywere not under weight restrictions.
Really, to me that seems like ahalf-baked solution, knowing the quality
of the engineers that were involved.
(30:58):
Alpha Romeo with the feta, particularlywhen they ran to the end of its
usefulness and modified it to the uh,1 59, which had the rear axle had also.
At least some specimens hadthis additional framework here.
So you see the original letter frame,oval profile here, and then you can
(31:21):
see they already made some augmentationadded basically, and upper gird and did,
uh, the reinforcement between the twogirders quite well, but there was only
a partial solution because it didn'thave any lateral connection really.
But it was better than nothing.
What makes more sense is a true3D space frame, as you can see in
(31:42):
some of the airplanes of the time.
That's where one of our referencesto aviation comes in the space
frame of a Boeing Stamen plane,which was a training plane.
For the most part, it gives us a good ideaof spatial triangulation of the frame.
Then, of course, we can even go further.
But this is one bridge too far.
(32:03):
I would argue for race car designers,you could use the geodesic fuselage
of British airplanes were successfulin World War II and were very
immune against partial destruction.
They could take a lot of damage andcould still go back to the base.
You see some spinal framework here thatis then cla it by aluminum or fabric.
(32:27):
Whatever the material of choice was.
This is a little bittoo much for race car.
It's also not as easily scaleddown from the airplane size to the
car size, so this is a more likelyand more successful solution.
This could be foreshadowing of MonoCox structures, but again, that's one
or two bridges too far for the time.
(32:49):
Keep in mind, race car designers arealso people and they work and concern
themselves about their daily lives andtheir continuation of their careers.
If they go too far away, it goesback to that evolution function.
If they veer out too far from the known.
They risk that they have a big failure,and having a big failure with something
(33:10):
that's a traditional design is tolerable.
You can always say, well, everybodyelse did something like that.
If you risk and stick out your neck toomuch with something that's totally unique.
And it fails everybody andtheir brother will say, well,
you shouldn't have done that.
Right?
Could be a career modifyingevent, but we're talking
about wheels and suspensions.
(33:31):
Let's start with wheels.
First state of the art were wirewheels, and particularly Bani was
one of the favorite suppliers forthat, but that was also a fairly
flexible wheel, and it needed tuningand adjusting and maintenance.
Cooper early on after World War ii.
Changed over to cast electron wheels,and part of the reason was that it was
(33:56):
easier to get aluminum mag magnesium inEngland after World War II than steel
still was rationed and a lot of aluminumwas found from war efforts and equipment.
So that was one thing.
And it was also good forCooper spare part business.
It was a an OEM wheel that couldn'teasily be replaced as something else.
(34:18):
But more importantly, in the US Heli,brandand had introduced already and proven
the, uh, magnesium cast wheels machinedthen to fit, and that won the 1952 in
the 500, and it became commonplace.
So I'm wondering why people inEurope didn't look at those.
(34:38):
Developments and said, Hmm,there is an advantage here.
We save some unsprung weightand we get a more rigid product.
That is obviously provenon high speed oils.
And then let's look atsuspension systems quickly.
ER had already introduced withthe first generation of the aurel,
a semi trailing independent rearsuspension, uh, which you can see it.
(35:04):
Top view of here would be the acoil spring and the attachment
points to the chassis, andit's the drive shaft the wheel.
So this would be a start, we think for.
Uh, development for an optimized rearwheel suspension, independent suspension.
For a race car, it has its prosand cons as well, but you can play
(35:25):
a lot with the different anglesand orientations of components.
You can do that in 3D and get somereductions in tow, in and in Canberra.
Change with the, uh, spring deflection.
So there's probably something to be found.
Now we assume that a Mercedes must stickwith the pendulum axles, maybe in this
(35:47):
format, but it, it's the one that givesyou the highest roll center, and that's
not very popular really for race cars.
You can really get to the pointwhere you check up the one wheel
and it leads to instabilities.
You have pretty steepkember angle changes.
It's not the best thing for a racecar, so we assume that it as well
(36:08):
modify that you try to make the, uh,pendulum lengths as long as possible.
So you could do something thatgoes underneath, uh, could even
to the opposite side, and youcould crisscross the links there.
So I would expect they'reputting myself into it.
1952 that it would workon some of this stuff.
(36:28):
And what we see here is an interestingcar from New Zealand and it dovetails
quite well with people that came backfrom World War ii, had aircraft experience
where aircraft mechanics, a couple offolks in New Zealand built their own car.
They had studied and read about the Aon.
(36:49):
Mid-engine configuration and they saidwe can build that too, and we can go to
the scrap yard or to the, um, auctionplaces where you can buy cheaply.
The surplus from the army and from theair Force, and that's what they did.
So they built their own interestingcar and it had a very low pivot swing
(37:09):
axle arrangement, which is shown herein a, in a picture of the renovated
or restored version of this car here.
This is, looks almost like it'sover restored, but it's interesting.
You see very long arms of this swing axle.
They almost merged to, to a singleaxis of rotation down here, very low.
(37:30):
And they also pilfered someLio struts from airplanes and
used them as spring and damper.
Very innovative and very interesting.
Car.
Not too much is known about this.
RA four vineyard, which worked with afour cylinder standard Vanguard engine,
slightly supercharged, and it had 2088.
(37:52):
C. So it was a formula Lire car anddidn't qualify for a Grand Prix,
but it was pretty much only raisedin New Zealand, but it has been
restored in England and it will cometo a couple of events in Florida.
One is uh, Moda Miamiand the other is Amelia.
So you will see if you get there,you will see the sky in real life.
(38:18):
And can see more than from these pictures,but an interesting way that tinkerers
worked on something that made a lot ofsense and they had a lot of fun with it.
One of the mechanics was then thedriver, and he managed to participate
at Lady Wig Ram Trophy runs forseveral years was modest success.
(38:39):
Brakes of course areimportant for the race car.
What can you do there?
Obviously, ventilated drum brakes werethe industry standard fin processes
were often used to bond strongly andhave a low thermal resistance between
the iron liners and the aluminum body.
With fins, different shapes of fins.
(39:00):
But by 1952, disc brakes becamealready a possibility for race cars.
And again, that's a technologythat comes from airplanes.
Yeah.
During World War ii, a lot of airplanes,British American used already a form of.
Disc brakes and there wereseveral manufacturers.
Dunlop was one of them.
Dunlop worked with Jaguar on, onsports cars and growing with BRM
(39:24):
and got that to science already.
And then, uh, Tony Derval, who hadalready started his own activities with
the thin wall specials that I want alsoto have the latest technology in brakes.
And he worked with Goodyear andgot some disc brake systems there.
But we can assume that that technologywas off limits for Mercedes.
(39:45):
I cannot imagine that any of thesecompanies, particularly Dunlop,
that helped Jaguar, would also helpMercedes to beat the snot of Jaguar.
I think that was off limits, andI think Mercedes understood that.
And so they were.
Working with these aerodynamic breaks thatwe saw already, this roof mounted effort.
(40:05):
And there's also a, uh, patent thatwas issued to Auto Neon in 1941.
Fortunately, that image didn'tmake it, but it's a German patent
that was issued, and that showsan aerodynamic break, basically
a wing that you can flip up with.
Server power from the engine andassist in braking, probably tailored
(40:26):
to those records trips that peoplemade on the auto barn, but it could
be used in Grand Prix racing as well.
There was nothing.
That would prohibit that Anyway,that would be one way to get
around the, this great embargothat I would think was prevalent.
The other thing is driver positionis one thing, particularly with the
(40:47):
front engine car, the typical bomberseat, you know where you sit pretty
upright, like in an arm chair or thechairs you're sitting on, the driver.
Sits very upright and provides quitean obstacle to the aerodynamic profile.
And fortunately, this picturecame across here and that is
(41:08):
in, uh, what is called Zenger.
He erased this thing that was.
Based on the Volkswagen 64 orPorsche 64 project, got one.
You know, he was an Austrian,so he was close to the Austrian
Porsche office at the time.
So he got one of these, uh, 60 fours,which they were intended for the, uh,
Berlin, Rome long distance arrays.
(41:31):
That never happened, ifI recall that correctly.
So he got that and you have toconsider and had a, a pretty
severe motorcycle accident.
So his right arm was not useful to himand he needed to be able to lean on the
steering wheel when he changed gears.
So he had a shifter on left hand side.
(41:52):
And he leaned forward on thesteering wheel to shift gears.
So it was a bit of an aberration.
He needed that kind of seating position.
But you can see here it's unfortunate.
It's, uh, not the optimum solution whenyou have a rear engine or mid engine.
In our case.
On the other hand, what we learnedfrom aeronautics, and particularly from
glider planes or sail planes, therewas a development going on at the, uh,
(42:17):
polytechnic in terrain in, uh, 1953 inparticular, there was a new Chro d Olo
Avela that was founded, and it was kind ofan operation in the corner of a lab first.
But the, uh, team there wanted to changethe whole composition of sail planes.
'cause in sail planes,they have no engine.
(42:39):
Obviously you need to havea very low frontal profile.
You need to have verylow drag coefficient.
And what they introduced was a leanedbackwards position of the pilot.
It's almost a position like you findin or found then in the, uh, say the
low grand Prix cars, particularlythe monocoque versions, you know, and
(43:01):
they could also beef that up with,uh, some scientific investigations.
I have the source given here that thereare optimum angles for body parts.
And they're not 90 degrees.
And so the upright sitting position isnot necessarily the best, particularly
if you don't have to have high steeringforces to work with, which was one of
(43:22):
the reasons why people set so upright orwhy NASCAR drivers also hang on close to
the steering wheel, at least the past.
But in the case of a front, well ofa, um, car with mid-engine, there's
not much load on the front ax.
Excellence of the steeringeffort, it's much lower.
So you can get by with this more relaxed.
Leaned back sitting positionand it's now a standard practice
(43:45):
of course in sail planes.
But in 53 that was something that was,was pretty new, in fact it was unheard of.
And people were wondering,can the pilots do that?
And they had some test flights andthey felt, Hey, this is great actually.
And so, uh, we sent of course KaloKitty around different universities.
Naturally he has to go to, to and to Milanand understand what's going on there.
(44:11):
And so he comes across this and theinnovator and the young man who wants
to make his place in the history comesacross this and says, Hey, why don't
we experiment with that and reduce thefrontal area of foreign Grand Prix.
And that goes on with, withengines also quickly talking
about different engine choices.
It seems quite reasonable for the twoand a half liter formula, first of
(44:34):
all, that it shows the, uh, naturallyaspirated one and the, uh, supercharged
version that was allowed at 750 cc.
The penalty for superchargingwas just too high.
So you look at the 2.5 literengine and you ask yourself, how
many cylinders do you really need?
You need 16 cylinders or 24 or orfour, maybe six is a good compromise.
(44:59):
Very likely because you cansee Jaguar was very successful.
Was there six cylinders?
Mercedes had just proven, uh, withthe, uh, 1 94 project that, hey.
We can win the races and championshipswith six cylinder engines.
And of course, they had slammedit at Mercedes, their engine.
That was brought to an even moredramatic fact in the Cummins Diesels
(45:20):
special of 1952 that participated inthe Indy 500, and there was Freddie
Cummins desire to prove that dieselengines could be very successful in
any application, including race cars.
So you built this special.
Car with the Watson chassis, elongatedand modified in many ways, but he chose to
(45:41):
tilt the engine practically by 90 degrees.
So the crankshaft is about here,and this is the cylinder head.
Now this was, uh, overhead valve engine,as I understand it was turbocharged and
it was, was tilted for minimum front area.
So you could think Mercedes shouldthink about those lines as well.
In our case here for mobility,we say, well, Landa is really our
(46:07):
flagship brand and it relies onV six engines to a great extent.
Why don't we also make our racingengine just like, say that D 20 V
six lunch here that they had alreadyat a 60 degree cylinder angle.
Makes good sense.
It's a short engine.
It allows more space for thereclined driver position.
So let's do that.
(46:28):
But maybe we should change the angle as.
The Vergilio had proposed you can do that220 degrees to make a shallower engine.
So I put in this image here, which to behonest is not from the time we're talking
about this, uh, a more recent SouthAfrican aircraft engine, and it's a 120.
(46:51):
Degree V six cylinder engine,just to show you what the, the
form factor would look like.
I think that would give a pretty optimalconfiguration for a, uh, mid engine
configuration that minimizes the frontalarea and the, uh, a drag coefficient.
That's it.
So we assume that Mercedes willdo this and, and use an inline six
(47:15):
system, which we can't know at the timethat that was the wrong assumption.
Uh, I can live with that.
And fuel injection is almost inevitable.
And the, um, question is, can you evengo as far as direct injection into the
combustion chamber, or do you allow foran indirect injection ahead of the, uh.
(47:35):
Inlet valves.
Mercedes obviously had some experiencein the, uh, DB 601 aircraft engine of
World War II with direct injection,and we know that Schonberg, who was
the engineer involved, was parked atthe time, still at a small company.
Mm-hmm.
Called Good Broad until he gotthrough his deification process
(47:57):
and then could join Mercedes again.
Very likely that he would push for anadaptation of this kind of injection.
On the other hand, Italy hadquite a lot to offer in terms
of indirect uh, injection.
Fellow Avi Fudo had patented theapplication in in 1937, a solution for.
(48:20):
A very smart electrical injection.
Very much like most cars that wedrive today have their injection
system and no electronics obviously.
'cause that wasn't invented yet, butthe basic makings were already there.
And this thing raised inthe, uh, Elia of, uh, 1940.
There was an alpha Romeo, two anda half liter six C equipped with
(48:44):
this type of injection system.
And it ran on a mix of palm oil.
I understand.
And some other non-conventionalfuel component.
'cause that was whenItaly was in this archy.
Mode and couldn't importa lot of mineral oil.
And so it was a, a theme that fit intothe landscape and it, it demonstrated and
(49:05):
also in a gera motorbike, as I understandthat the system worked quite well.
It got forgotten for quite some time,but you could see electromagnetic
injection valves here, actuatedand timed by a distributor system.
Very much like your time, the ignition.
So it was not a continuous injection.
Like say the Hillborn systemin the US would've been.
(49:28):
So that's basically what we decide, orwe leave it to the engineering team.
Do they want to go with a speakerdirect injection that they also
have at their disposal within forMayo, or when they go with something
like this indirect injection.
So then we say our, our special sourcewill be the emphasis on aerodynamics
(49:49):
and we want to create downforce.
And we saw this picture of the TADyesterday that was explained to us.
You can see the fellow who was behindit was a, uh, who was behind the
patent that you see figures from here.
And you can see that he not only hadside wings, but he also had an elevated
wing with end caps and all the makingsof a modern aerodynamic concept.
(50:13):
So we put all this together into a finalproduct and we think we can beat Mercedes.
On a good day, notalways, but on a good day.
Thank you, Carl.
I think we have some questions.
My thing that strikes me always whenyou have these discussions, why wasn't
(50:37):
this sort of analysis carried out then?
It's very capable.
Everything's there.
Mm-hmm.
So why was the contemporarythinking not along these lines?
Because it's, I know itis just retroactively.
Yeah.
But all that was available then.
Yeah.
And I limit myself particularlyto the availability of
(50:58):
technology bits and pieces.
In hindsight, it's very easy tothrow in electronics, for example,
which wasn't available then.
But a good answer of that is.
I think I mentioned it briefly,people want to survive in
their organizations, right?
And for example, if you're in it,at least in the time when computers
(51:18):
first came up, if you specifiedIBM computers, you were home free.
It didn't matter that they werenot as functional performance wise.
They may have had bad servicewhatsoever, but it was IBM.
And so if you were issuing thepurchase order for IBM computers.
You survived easily, even if things fellby the wayside, if you would've specified
(51:43):
some more exotic, more powerful computerand it would've given you difficulties.
Everybody points at you andsays, you, why did you do that?
You know, how could you do that?
So it's always safer to stay with theincumbent solutions, and it takes risk.
It takes the right personalitiesto venture out a little bit.
(52:04):
And with this.
Evolution window, you haveto be really careful not to
go too far out and and fail.
So I think there's more incentive forplaying it safe than being too daring.
And there's a herd mentality.
So if everybody uses WebberCarburetors in rating, why
should I do something different?
(52:24):
Right?
But if you want to beat the other guy,as I mentioned, you cannot out Mercedes.
Mercedes, don't even try it.
You have to do something differentand you have to take the risk
and to be willing to risk.
I think Iran Horst had demonstratedit throughout his career that
he was willing to do that.
Thank you, Carl.
Thank you.
(52:55):
This episode is brought to youin part by the International
Motor Racing Research Center.
Its charter is to collect, share, andpreserve the history of motor sports.
Spanning Continents,eras, and race series.
The Center's collection embodiesthe speed, drama and camaraderie
of amateur and professional motorracing throughout the world.
(53:19):
The center welcomes seriousresearchers and casual fans alike.
To share stories of race drivers raceseries, and race cars captured on
their shelves and walls, and broughtto life through a regular calendar of
public lectures and special events.
To learn more about the center,visit www.racing archives.org.
(53:43):
This episode is also brought to you bythe Society of Automotive Historians.
They encourage research into anyaspect of automotive history.
The SAH actively supports thecompilation and preservation of
papers, organizational records.
Print ephemera and images to safeguardas well as to broaden and deepen
(54:05):
the understanding of motorizedwheeled land transportation through
the modern age and into the future.
For more information about theSAH, visit www.auto history.org.
We hope you enjoyed another awesomeepisode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought
(54:26):
to you by Grand Tour Motorsports.
If you'd like to be a guest onthe show or get involved, be sure
to follow us on all social mediaplatforms at Grand Touring Motorsports.
And if you'd like to learn moreabout the content of this episode,
be sure to check out the followon article@gtmotorsports.org.
We remain a commercial free and noannual fees organization through
(54:48):
our sponsors, but also throughthe generous support of our fans,
families, and friends through Patreon.
For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month,you can get access to more behind the
scenes action, additional pit stop,minisodes and other VIP goodies, as
well as keeping our team of creators.
Fed on their strict diet of figNewton's, Gumby bears, and monster.
(55:10):
So consider signing up for Patreontoday at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports.
And remember, without you,none of this would be possible.
Break Fix's History of MotorsportsSeries is brought to you in part
by the International Motor RacingResearch Center, as well as the
Society of Automotive Historians,the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
Commerce, and the Argo Singer family.
How to beat the Mercedes-Benz W 1 96.
An alternative historyaccelerates the Mid-engine
(00:22):
Revolution by Carl Heinz Mertons.
The new two and a half literformula of 1954 raised the bar for
engineering excellence and cost ofentry to the pinnacle of motor racing.
With Mercedes-Benz, leaving theshadows of World War II and becoming an
accepted participant in motor racing,again, the Grand Prix community had
to anticipate a full out effort ofa new generation of Silver arrows.
(00:43):
Indeed, new standards were set witha series of W one ninety six variants
born out of vast corporate resourcessupported by components suppliers
like Continental Bosch, and so.
In this story, the imaginary ItalianUNE automobile previously formed of
National Legacy Manufacturers otherthan Fiat takes on the role of Auto
Union Ag of the 1930s as an antagonistof Mercedes-Benz and Promoter of the
(01:07):
Midian layout, a probabilistic SWATanalysis reveals what it would take to
beat the mighty opponent for s Stuttgart.
This is the start for a motleycrew of Australian and Italian
engineers led by Robert Ein Horsto create a victorious challenger.
The prescribed engine configuration is acompact V six and homage to the launch of
brand breaking with Italian traditions.
(01:28):
Emphasis is put on chassis developmentwhere innovations and tires breaks,
and aerodynamics will providedecisive competitive advantages.
Dr. Carl Hinz.
Mertons holds degrees in mechanicalengineering and a doctorate in
mechatronics and engineering from thetechnical University of Berlin, Germany.
In more than 35 years of engineeringand business experience in Europe and
the us, Carl has focused on productinnovation and new business incubation,
(01:51):
applying cross-disciplinary methodswith cross-cultural considerations.
His work included experimental workon intelligent mobile equipment and
wind energy systems in multinationalcorporations and startups.
His enthusiasm for F1 goesback to the 1961 season.
Like many people in racing, I'mbending the rules a little bit here,
speaking to a society of historians.
(02:15):
I will talk a little bit about the realhistory, but then we are often to an
alternative history and give a picture ofwhat could have been instead of what was.
So, uh, the question is how tobeat Mercedes-Benz at the time
when it wasn't quite clear.
That they would enter the um, 2.5liter formula one race season in 1954.
(02:40):
And so the model designationof W 1 96 wasn't known yet.
So it's kind of blankedout here in the title.
Let me give you a timeline of wherethis all starts, and then I will talk a
little bit about what happened here onthe left side before we get to 51 in 51.
(03:01):
And all this is somewhat relevantto the story that I will tell in,
uh, 51 Mercedes got back out of thedestruction phase into the reconstruction
and started building cars again.
But not just any car.
They started unveiling the, uh,300 W 180 6 as an internal code,
(03:25):
and it was a challenge to RollsRoyce to Packard, if you want.
So they wanted to really reestablishthe company as a provider of luxurious
cars and, and set the standard.
Shortly thereafter in thispresentation happened at the, uh,
Frankfurt Automobile Show in April.
(03:45):
Shortly thereafter, the board approvedthat the company should go back to racing
and there was a green light given for.
A sports car project.
First, the 300 SL to ease into motorsports again after World War ii.
Now, what happened before, otherwas of course, the World War II and
(04:07):
before it ended, there were plans,particularly in the us the Morgenthal
plan that foresaw that, uh, Germanyshould really be brought back to
the Middle Ages and should have no.
Industrial capabilities anymore.
The facilities that had survived the WorldWar should be dismantled or destroyed,
(04:28):
and, uh, it should be an agrarian societythat, that would go forward and not
be a threat to mankind going forward.
Well, that plan, fortunately,didn't come to pass.
Instead, there was of course, anactivity, some of that on the table,
and some of it was under the table.
There were of course some of the, uh,Mercedes engineers that formed informal
(04:52):
networks, and they were thinking aboutplans of what could they do and how
could they survive, and at some pointgo back to the former glories again.
That happened and that led to thingslike the Unimark, of course, a utility
vehicle, kind of an agriculturaltractor, and of course that kind of
responded to the Morgan for plan.
(05:15):
Of focusing on agriculture and noton things like racing or luxury cars.
That machine, uh, was very successful.
It was developed.
It was very little means and, uh, withexternal help and the binger brothers
chipped in and there were other.
People that had allocations of sheetmetal out for milk cans and and so forth.
(05:36):
And they all contributed because at thetime, in 45 when the war was lost, Germany
was under military rule and the areaaround Stuttgart was about the American.
Administration then, and so material werescars and had to be applied for and to
be a good reason as to why you wantedsome material and you couldn't ask for
(05:58):
material for race cars, for example.
Wouldn't have been a good proposition.
Moves on from there.
Pretty quickly, the Arkansas plangets replaced by the Marshall Plan.
Money flows into Europe and thereconstruction is pretty fast and furious.
So there were some activitiesalready at the beginning of 51.
(06:20):
A couple of the, uh, pre-war one 60 fours.
We're brought to, uh, Argentina torun in one Cyrus at a couple of races.
And the idea was, well, we wereso successful with those pre-war
silver arrows, we could probablyjust dust them off and use them
again in, uh, this new age.
(06:40):
It turned out they were notthat successful, was the, uh,
moving force behind all this.
He had a, a delegation going to Argentinawith these cars engineer responsible for
those who, how was not in the delegation.
So things were probably not perfectly setup, but those cars, three liter mercedeses
(07:02):
were beaten by two liter Ferraris.
And it was kind of a shameful eventfrom a Mercedes perspective because
the DNA of the company was indeed.
You make the best cars you can make andwhen you go racing, you go for the win.
You're not settling for second places.
They had to rethink the solaroperation and scale back a little bit.
(07:25):
Go back to building a sports carand focus only once the dust settled
and it became clear how Formula Onewould be organized in the future,
that there would be indeed a new one.
A formula that would give preferenceto naturally aspirated engines,
and it would start in 1954.
(07:46):
It became clear.
Now, that was the new goal forMercedes, but in the interim, they
were working on a race car that theycould build out of this luxury car.
Kind of a clumsy way to do it,but nevertheless, it turned out
to be quite successful around thesame time, at the end of 1951.
Alfa Romeo, who had had two verysuccessful years with the LF Fetas,
(08:09):
decided that that wouldn't be a long termproposition going forward with those cars.
They were at the end of their developmentpotential, and you couldn't increase
the uh uh, compression ratios andthe supercharger pressures and so on,
and you couldn't deal with the fuelconsumption that increased exponentially.
(08:30):
So the abandoned racing.
Completely.
Now if, if you are a competitorin this Grand Prix racing scene
and you think about, well, I haveto compete with Mercedes again,
they're not doing things half baked.
You have to have the financial strengths.
And you have to have theintellectual strength to build a
(08:51):
true competitor, a good car that canindeed meet and beat Mercedes-Benz.
It takes something.
So here is where I, we are offinto La la land if you want.
So during 1952, where could agroup come about that would make a
challenge for Mercedes, not in France?
(09:12):
I think, you know, the CTA arsenal was.
Rolling disaster and would not haveyielded a real competitor in England.
BRM was a, uh, bureaucratic mess,and it wasn't really going anywhere
fast, and it was also too much lookingbackwards to the 1930s technology wise.
(09:32):
So I could see that scenario in Italy.
If you reconstruct something like the ionthat had been very successful in Germany
and had provided this competitive productto Mercedes in form of the, uh, mid-engine
silver arrows that were initiallydesigned by failure net Porsche and.
(09:54):
Engineering office and then, uh,Nan Ho in particular insourced
more and more of that activity.
So I suggest something like this, and.
Bil should, uh, happen in northern Italyand it would be where, you know, out in
Germany was pretty much mandated by thebanks that they had to support the capital
(10:18):
in Italy, the IRI, the state holding.
To which Alpha Romeo already belonged,would be a good vehicle to provide some
serious competition to fiat, which totallydominated the uh, Italian auto scene
volume wise and value wise, somethingneeded to be done because frankly, I
(10:38):
think people with some foresight knewthat companies like ER and Alpha Mayo.
By themselves couldn't survive long term.
Hindsight tells us that they didn't,but we're back in 1951 ish, two ish.
This could have happened.
We could have had a conglomerate ofdifferent, uh, brands that would cover
(10:59):
different segments in the marketplace.
They could even have an, um,a foreign branch in France.
ARD would be a, a good candidate.
In those days, you couldn't tradeeasily across country boundaries.
So Fiat had sim.
In France, we would have ARD anduh, we would have a luxury segment
(11:19):
where Luncher would play a big role.
Ista Fch would also be integrated,the name rights would be acquired,
and you would establish the luxuryand the top end of the range.
With that brand, there would be anentry also, in terms of a tubial.
Vehicles and the scooter, a prettyrugged scooter from is O was available.
(11:43):
So we have already the low cost entrybrand is O auto vehicle that makes this
ISTA and they also made the scooter.
So we cover that.
And also in addition, goes backto last year's presentation.
We also have a branch that dealswith ag tractors 'cause that helps.
Uh, developed the metso joinregion in Italy, and that's,
(12:07):
uh, one of the motivators why.
IRI will support the sole effort.
This sole effort needs also tobe joined by Pelli, which has an
interest in promoting their tires.
And altogether, this could be acompetitor or could be the financial
resource, intellectual resource toprovide a real competitor to Mercedes.
(12:28):
So we have a few individuals herethat will constitute the core team.
But the head would be RobertHorst, who had ample experience in
mid-engine cars at Ion before the war.
After the war.
He was involved in the Alia 360, whichalso was designed and outsourced and
(12:51):
relocated team of Porsche engineering.
Fer.
Porsche was incarcerated at the timein France, but his son and some of the
old team members were working there.
I put here Kois as kind ofthe project manager in place
as the right hand of Iran.
Horst, who was certainly the intellectualmastermind, but not necessarily
(13:13):
involved in all the nitty gritty.
So Nico is, will take care of that.
He has, um, experience at theAlfreda program and we bring in.
Different generations.
I think from my own professionalexperience, I think it's always
very helpful when you have multiplegenerations on a team, not just an inbred
(13:34):
group, so to speak, of gray beards.
You need some of them, butyou don't want to have the.
Whole team of them.
So we recruit and those are real people.
Of course, as you know, KaloKitty and Choto Sini, both
are already at Alpha Romeo.
It makes sense to rely onthem a lot for chassis and for
development and test and so on.
(13:55):
They're enthused and they come veryimportantly from the University of Pisa.
So they have at least in, in.
Case and degree in aeronauticalengineering, and we'll see later on
that taking license from or learningfrom aeronautical designs and skills and
(14:17):
technologies makes a lot of sense whenyou want to build a world beat a race car.
On the engine side, we leanmore on the ER personnel.
There is of course FrancescoLio, who pretty much developed
the V six engine at Luncher.
The principles, at leastthe angle of 60 degrees.
(14:38):
It goes back to him.
He analyzed the dynamics of various Vangles and when you look at the history
of Blanche and you know, they experimentedwith everything from 11 degrees.
Downwards or upwards and 60 degrees isobviously the ideal, but there's also
a solution with 120 degrees later on.
(14:58):
Dillo found that already in the 1940s,so he is obviously a member of the team.
Then, uh, the kina is maybe a morepractical engine designer who can detail.
An engine war, and he has shownthat already as, as a long term
launcher engineer, I couldn't getany biographic information on him.
(15:22):
Maybe that's where some librarianscan help me in the future.
And then of course, this fellow here.
We'll learn more about him.
Jose Mika, who retired in 1950from the Porsche engineering team.
We'll rehire him as a consultant becausehe's a specialist in aerodynamics, and
we understand aerodynamics will play abig role if we want to beat Mercedes.
(15:46):
And it's also important to work veryclosely with the tire manufacturer.
So we want to have somebody.
I'm not particular about the namefrom Pelli, from the tire partner
because suspension, layout anddesign will have to be very closely
coordinated with the tire capabilities.
And so you want to have thetire people on your side.
(16:07):
It's one of the lessons alsofrom the Solar Arrow pre-World
War II, where Mercedes workedvery closely with Continental and
that was very helpful to them.
Porsche and uh, ot.
We're not quite as engagedwith Continental, and it was
to their detriment sometimes.
So the first task of this newlyformed team was before you start
(16:30):
designing anything, you know,go by this ancient wisdom here.
If you know you're enemyand you know yourself.
You need not fear theresult of a hundred battles.
So find out as much aspossible about Mercedes.
Where are they going?
What can you expect from them?
Rather than focusing just on yourown thoughts and say, we know best
how to build the best race car.
(16:51):
Anticipate what your enemyor your competitor will
do, and then not copy them.
The goal is not to copy them.
You cannot out Mercedes.
Mercedes, you know, if you try.
It's a losing battle.
You have to do something.
You have to look for unfairquote unquote advantages, and you
have to do something different.
For example, mid-engine layoutas opposed to what is most likely
(17:15):
mercedes's solution, the front engine.
And then as mentionedbefore, aeronautics holds.
A lot of nuggets of wisdom and a lotof technology pieces you want to adopt.
So you won't send out people likeKa Kitty to snoop around what's
going on in aeronautics and at theuniversities that still teach that
(17:35):
there wasn't too much actual buildingand designing going on after World War.
'cause of restrictionsby the Allied forces.
So what can you expectreasonably from Mercedes-Benz?
Well, we know the company wanted anddid indeed, uh, recover from the ashes.
There was a lot of rebuilding goingon because Mercedes had a very loyal
(17:57):
workforce and a lot of people thathad survived World War II went back
to remove some of the rubbles andto secure some of the machinery
and repaired and to improve on it.
Uh, it's pretty obvious thatAU and Auer will stay engaged.
Auer already in his sixties, you canimagine, tend to relive the old days,
(18:19):
the glory days of thirties, and that'swhy he pushed for, you know, this
early engagement in Buenos iris in51 because you thought, Hey, we have
the goods still here, and why don'twe just refresh a little bit when we.
Uh, had been successful with, Ithink Rudolph, by his nature, was
more interested in a clean sheetdesign and be more in the times
(18:43):
then rather than looking backward.
What you know about Mercedes is they arevery methodical in their development.
They're not just going from thedrawing board quickly to the foundry.
And to the machine shop and thenassemble and go to the racetrack.
That's not their way of doing things.
They will work on components, testthe components to death, assemble the
(19:05):
components to subsystems test again in thelab, the systems and subsystems to death.
When that all works out, then they havea car, and then they will also test it
first on a lab with a rolling surface.
And before they ever hit the tracks,they will know a lot about the vehicle
and its capabilities, and then theywill go out to the track finally.
(19:27):
And then there's only small modific.
Necessary some tuneups.
And this leads to a situation, this isone of my rocking horses here that I like
to think about and talk about, and that'sthe evolution strategy as it applies to,
uh, technical systems and developments.
The speed of progress.
(19:47):
You can say it dependson the mutation size.
How much do you change you?
You start typically with someknown platform, state of the
art, and if you do very little,there's practically no progress.
If you move on, you get onto apretty steep curve of rapid progress.
And, and there's certainwindow within you can operate.
(20:10):
If you're too low here withtwo small steps of improvement,
you're not accomplishing much.
If you're going overboard, youend up here, you end up in a alia
situation or in, um, a Monaco TRScomes to mind in a freeboard design
of a, uh, grand Prix car, which wasbasically a, an airplane without wings.
(20:31):
You know, the, there was a, uh,a radial engine at the front.
It was.
Hanging over the front exel andmass distribution was something
like 70% front and 30% rear,which is a recipe for disaster.
Of course, you don't have to be aspecialist in engineering to see that.
So that was a design that fellsomewhere into this part of
the, uh, evolution window.
(20:52):
Clearly overshot.
You want to avoid that.
Mercedes was more in thisconservative pioneering mode.
Some people havecharacterized the company as.
Conservative pioneers,they're going for progress.
One example would be that we learn inreal history later on, you know, they go
from carburate to fuel injection and it'san incremental improvement, but it's one
(21:15):
that's solid and it brings some progress.
It's very measurable, but theywouldn't go completely to a rotary
engine or something right off the bat.
There will be a tight budget.
Don't expect any statesubsidies or payments.
Directly or indirectly, because Germanydidn't have much surplus to throw around.
(21:37):
They had hardly beenable to cover the basics.
But there would be technical inputs, ofcourse, from suppliers that Mercedes had
a tradition working with like PorscheContinental and then the fuel supplier.
It was important too becausethe fuel in those days was free.
Formula didn't prescribecommercially available gasoline.
(21:58):
You could brew your own mix,which they certainly did.
And then there was of course theengineering force within the corporation.
You could always ring up acolleague or meet over lunch
and get some inputs and so on.
So there was quite a bit of intellectualproperty and capability there.
Now Mercedes obviouslylost the uh, local nemes.
(22:19):
Out on Yon, there was no chance thatout on Yon would get back racing.
They hardly survived and theywere cut into two pieces.
One in East Germany and one in WestGermany, or one in the Soviet zone.
The other one in the American Zone.
Uh, so there was no chance for that.
So when they did something, it, it wouldhave to have some benefit for their
(22:41):
serious production side of the business.
And so it's very likely, very probablethat they would stick to the front
engine because all their commercial.
Products would be front engine taken alittle dive via Edmund MLA in the 1920s.
The, um, say this or the Bens our agevar, but that didn't last very long.
(23:04):
And so very unlikely that they would makea jump that would to them look like going.
Potentially, uh, down the drain, theywould probably hang onto the swing
AXLs or pendulum AXLs because that wasalso their bread and butter product.
Now, one would expect that theywould modify this thing a little
bit because we know swing AXLs andwe'll get to that in a moment, are
(23:26):
not the ca meow for Good Road ho.
So a case in point for all this,looking more toward what they have
and what they want to commercializeis the uh, W 1 94 project.
This 300 SL first generation,that's an excellent model to study.
If this case for this question that wehave in front of us here, you see this?
(23:49):
AU on the 300 representative car and veryluxurious and expensive and a dream car.
You know, for most Germans, itwas totally an Tanium, and yet it
showed, you know, we're back againand that would be the basis for
this sports car that would go race.
So they had an engine and they had tolive with this engine because unlike
(24:11):
Italians, they didn't jump rightinto making five different engines.
Very quickly, they stuck with the blockand with what they had to work with
rather than tooling up very quickly.
I'm amazed, and some people havewritten with amazement and with
appreciation that, for example, designed25 engines in five years, which was
nuts for a small company like that.
(24:33):
Mercedes had this one engine.
Which was already anoverhead camshaft engine.
So a good start, but it washeavy, a boat anchor if you want.
So it had to be augmented withother designs that were within
the realm of possibility.
And one was obviously aerodynamics.
And that brings me to this image here,because in 1939 when the, uh, Italians,
(24:56):
when they thought they were smart inprescribing, that the uh, grand Prix
of Tripoli was for water tourette.
Cars instead of regular concrete cars.
They thought, well now our feas willhave a good chance to win this race.
Mercedes, at that time when theystill had the pockets designed, the
purpose built W 1 65 and sent to carsto Tripoli and, and ended up one two.
(25:19):
But during qualification, they had tolearn the better lesson that a four
cylinder Maserati with a streamlined.
Body work got the pole position.
It was faster than the Mercedes cars.
Unexpected in a way because theengine was clearly inferior.
So I think they must have gotten a bit ofa lesson there that, hey, we have to look
(25:39):
at the, uh, drag reduction and, and so on.
Also, again, to, um, studysubsystems and obviously roof
came up with the, uh, space frame.
Concept, a very light frame to offsetthe high weight of the engine, but
it was an unknown quantity and notmany people have had built these
(26:01):
types of delicate space frames.
So they built a very quick mule carto test this concept early on before
they ever went too far down thepike and designed this final 300 sl.
Super light, but they did.
And then to reduce the drag coefficientand to reduce the uh, frontal area,
they angled or tilted the engineat about 55 degrees from horizontal
(26:26):
to simply reduce the hood heightand thereby increase there speed.
And here you can see Charles Faru andAlfred Auer looking into the engine
bay of that final product at the mall.
So continued lessons tobe learned from this.
First of all, you learn Mercedes.
(26:46):
They don't go full four out anddesign everything from scratch.
On the other hand, they'rewilling to stretch the envelope,
you know, to design solutions.
Again, somewhat dictated of courseby the space for want to have
a deep door sill and threshold.
They came up with thefirst iteration of the.
Following doors that just reacheddown to the lower edge of the
(27:09):
window, and you had to kind ofwiggle yourself into the driver's.
When it first got to the Eliain 52 with this scar, the, uh,
inspectors were a little bit.
Leery to accept that as doors and, andso it was a test for the subsequent
LA Mall array, and I think they gotinto the lia was this type of door,
(27:32):
quote unquote, later on for lamo.
They changed it to the tall wingdoors as we know them today.
And that was in reaction toand knowing that they would.
Meet less leniency with theFrench authorities and with
the Italian authorities.
Of course, in those years we'retalking 1952, they also experimented
with something that was a little bitout of the ordinary and a little bit
(27:56):
advanced or too advanced for Mercedes.
One could say thisaerodynamic brake system.
Some people will argue that wasmostly shown during the time trials
to confuse irritate competitors.
It was never meant to bereally used in racing.
This was a little flimsy and it wastaken down before the race began.
(28:17):
But we also learned from thisdevelopment that Mercedes was
willing to accept imperfection.
For example, when you look at the enginecompartment, it has no ventilation.
There is no way to get the air out inan ordinary or in a very optimized way
where you help reduce overall drag.
They fix that later on by having someopenings, yet the side, but not in this
(28:40):
first generation of the, uh, 300 ssl.
So that was one, and then theystuck to this somewhat questionable.
Pendulum rear suspension.
Nevertheless, they were victoriousin LA Mall and then particular at the
car Pan Americana, which was quitean achievement for something that was
built from bits and pieces that wereoriginally meant for a luxurious car.
(29:03):
Working.
On the other hand, what learned from therefor the on automobile team is we prefer
chassis over engine power battalions.
Typically, were interested in, forFerrari in particular, the race car was
a big engine, very powerful, and therest was just a means to move forward.
Chassis was never really his.
(29:24):
Preference in those days, at leastin this case, our team will think
differently and will work with Pelliclosely to introduce the radial tires,
which Pelli had developed at that time.
Not for racing, but forpassenger car applications.
Uh, sports car applications, Chira.
Let's see, 67, and we add on acompetition on version of that tire.
(29:49):
We'll use it for our dream car.
Yeah, of course.
That also means the drivingstyle has to be adapted to that.
It's not totally easy from people whogrew up with cross supplied tires.
They have some difficulties and that willrequire also very methodical testing.
Let's look at othercomponents that are important.
The chassis frame itself is very important'cause you want to have a very stiff
(30:14):
chassis, and the flexibility has tobe in the suspension system and not
like letter frames or the frame itselfwas the spring system for most parts.
We have some lessons to learn from Alia,for example, but this Porsche design
very strangely has this space frame, butit doesn't make use of triangulation.
(30:38):
You don't see that any of these,uh, square gaps are broken
up with some triangulation.
Very strange.
I'm not sure.
What their motive was 'cause theywere not under weight restrictions.
Really, to me that seems like ahalf-baked solution, knowing the quality
of the engineers that were involved.
(30:58):
Alpha Romeo with the feta, particularlywhen they ran to the end of its
usefulness and modified it to the uh,1 59, which had the rear axle had also.
At least some specimens hadthis additional framework here.
So you see the original letter frame,oval profile here, and then you can
(31:21):
see they already made some augmentationadded basically, and upper gird and did,
uh, the reinforcement between the twogirders quite well, but there was only
a partial solution because it didn'thave any lateral connection really.
But it was better than nothing.
What makes more sense is a true3D space frame, as you can see in
(31:42):
some of the airplanes of the time.
That's where one of our referencesto aviation comes in the space
frame of a Boeing Stamen plane,which was a training plane.
For the most part, it gives us a good ideaof spatial triangulation of the frame.
Then, of course, we can even go further.
But this is one bridge too far.
(32:03):
I would argue for race car designers,you could use the geodesic fuselage
of British airplanes were successfulin World War II and were very
immune against partial destruction.
They could take a lot of damage andcould still go back to the base.
You see some spinal framework here thatis then cla it by aluminum or fabric.
(32:27):
Whatever the material of choice was.
This is a little bittoo much for race car.
It's also not as easily scaleddown from the airplane size to the
car size, so this is a more likelyand more successful solution.
This could be foreshadowing of MonoCox structures, but again, that's one
or two bridges too far for the time.
(32:49):
Keep in mind, race car designers arealso people and they work and concern
themselves about their daily lives andtheir continuation of their careers.
If they go too far away, it goesback to that evolution function.
If they veer out too far from the known.
They risk that they have a big failure,and having a big failure with something
(33:10):
that's a traditional design is tolerable.
You can always say, well, everybodyelse did something like that.
If you risk and stick out your neck toomuch with something that's totally unique.
And it fails everybody andtheir brother will say, well,
you shouldn't have done that.
Right?
Could be a career modifyingevent, but we're talking
about wheels and suspensions.
(33:31):
Let's start with wheels.
First state of the art were wirewheels, and particularly Bani was
one of the favorite suppliers forthat, but that was also a fairly
flexible wheel, and it needed tuningand adjusting and maintenance.
Cooper early on after World War ii.
Changed over to cast electron wheels,and part of the reason was that it was
(33:56):
easier to get aluminum mag magnesium inEngland after World War II than steel
still was rationed and a lot of aluminumwas found from war efforts and equipment.
So that was one thing.
And it was also good forCooper spare part business.
It was a an OEM wheel that couldn'teasily be replaced as something else.
(34:18):
But more importantly, in the US Heli,brandand had introduced already and proven
the, uh, magnesium cast wheels machinedthen to fit, and that won the 1952 in
the 500, and it became commonplace.
So I'm wondering why people inEurope didn't look at those.
(34:38):
Developments and said, Hmm,there is an advantage here.
We save some unsprung weightand we get a more rigid product.
That is obviously provenon high speed oils.
And then let's look atsuspension systems quickly.
ER had already introduced withthe first generation of the aurel,
a semi trailing independent rearsuspension, uh, which you can see it.
(35:04):
Top view of here would be the acoil spring and the attachment
points to the chassis, andit's the drive shaft the wheel.
So this would be a start, we think for.
Uh, development for an optimized rearwheel suspension, independent suspension.
For a race car, it has its prosand cons as well, but you can play
(35:25):
a lot with the different anglesand orientations of components.
You can do that in 3D and get somereductions in tow, in and in Canberra.
Change with the, uh, spring deflection.
So there's probably something to be found.
Now we assume that a Mercedes must stickwith the pendulum axles, maybe in this
(35:47):
format, but it, it's the one that givesyou the highest roll center, and that's
not very popular really for race cars.
You can really get to the pointwhere you check up the one wheel
and it leads to instabilities.
You have pretty steepkember angle changes.
It's not the best thing for a racecar, so we assume that it as well
(36:08):
modify that you try to make the, uh,pendulum lengths as long as possible.
So you could do something thatgoes underneath, uh, could even
to the opposite side, and youcould crisscross the links there.
So I would expect they'reputting myself into it.
1952 that it would workon some of this stuff.
(36:28):
And what we see here is an interestingcar from New Zealand and it dovetails
quite well with people that came backfrom World War ii, had aircraft experience
where aircraft mechanics, a couple offolks in New Zealand built their own car.
They had studied and read about the Aon.
(36:49):
Mid-engine configuration and they saidwe can build that too, and we can go to
the scrap yard or to the, um, auctionplaces where you can buy cheaply.
The surplus from the army and from theair Force, and that's what they did.
So they built their own interestingcar and it had a very low pivot swing
(37:09):
axle arrangement, which is shown herein a, in a picture of the renovated
or restored version of this car here.
This is, looks almost like it'sover restored, but it's interesting.
You see very long arms of this swing axle.
They almost merged to, to a singleaxis of rotation down here, very low.
(37:30):
And they also pilfered someLio struts from airplanes and
used them as spring and damper.
Very innovative and very interesting.
Car.
Not too much is known about this.
RA four vineyard, which worked with afour cylinder standard Vanguard engine,
slightly supercharged, and it had 2088.
(37:52):
C. So it was a formula Lire car anddidn't qualify for a Grand Prix,
but it was pretty much only raisedin New Zealand, but it has been
restored in England and it will cometo a couple of events in Florida.
One is uh, Moda Miamiand the other is Amelia.
So you will see if you get there,you will see the sky in real life.
(38:18):
And can see more than from these pictures,but an interesting way that tinkerers
worked on something that made a lot ofsense and they had a lot of fun with it.
One of the mechanics was then thedriver, and he managed to participate
at Lady Wig Ram Trophy runs forseveral years was modest success.
(38:39):
Brakes of course areimportant for the race car.
What can you do there?
Obviously, ventilated drum brakes werethe industry standard fin processes
were often used to bond strongly andhave a low thermal resistance between
the iron liners and the aluminum body.
With fins, different shapes of fins.
(39:00):
But by 1952, disc brakes becamealready a possibility for race cars.
And again, that's a technologythat comes from airplanes.
Yeah.
During World War ii, a lot of airplanes,British American used already a form of.
Disc brakes and there wereseveral manufacturers.
Dunlop was one of them.
Dunlop worked with Jaguar on, onsports cars and growing with BRM
(39:24):
and got that to science already.
And then, uh, Tony Derval, who hadalready started his own activities with
the thin wall specials that I want alsoto have the latest technology in brakes.
And he worked with Goodyear andgot some disc brake systems there.
But we can assume that that technologywas off limits for Mercedes.
(39:45):
I cannot imagine that any of thesecompanies, particularly Dunlop,
that helped Jaguar, would also helpMercedes to beat the snot of Jaguar.
I think that was off limits, andI think Mercedes understood that.
And so they were.
Working with these aerodynamic breaks thatwe saw already, this roof mounted effort.
(40:05):
And there's also a, uh, patent thatwas issued to Auto Neon in 1941.
Fortunately, that image didn'tmake it, but it's a German patent
that was issued, and that showsan aerodynamic break, basically
a wing that you can flip up with.
Server power from the engine andassist in braking, probably tailored
(40:26):
to those records trips that peoplemade on the auto barn, but it could
be used in Grand Prix racing as well.
There was nothing.
That would prohibit that Anyway,that would be one way to get
around the, this great embargothat I would think was prevalent.
The other thing is driver positionis one thing, particularly with the
(40:47):
front engine car, the typical bomberseat, you know where you sit pretty
upright, like in an arm chair or thechairs you're sitting on, the driver.
Sits very upright and provides quitean obstacle to the aerodynamic profile.
And fortunately, this picturecame across here and that is
(41:08):
in, uh, what is called Zenger.
He erased this thing that was.
Based on the Volkswagen 64 orPorsche 64 project, got one.
You know, he was an Austrian,so he was close to the Austrian
Porsche office at the time.
So he got one of these, uh, 60 fours,which they were intended for the, uh,
Berlin, Rome long distance arrays.
(41:31):
That never happened, ifI recall that correctly.
So he got that and you have toconsider and had a, a pretty
severe motorcycle accident.
So his right arm was not useful to himand he needed to be able to lean on the
steering wheel when he changed gears.
So he had a shifter on left hand side.
(41:52):
And he leaned forward on thesteering wheel to shift gears.
So it was a bit of an aberration.
He needed that kind of seating position.
But you can see here it's unfortunate.
It's, uh, not the optimum solution whenyou have a rear engine or mid engine.
In our case.
On the other hand, what we learnedfrom aeronautics, and particularly from
glider planes or sail planes, therewas a development going on at the, uh,
(42:17):
polytechnic in terrain in, uh, 1953 inparticular, there was a new Chro d Olo
Avela that was founded, and it was kind ofan operation in the corner of a lab first.
But the, uh, team there wanted to changethe whole composition of sail planes.
'cause in sail planes,they have no engine.
(42:39):
Obviously you need to havea very low frontal profile.
You need to have verylow drag coefficient.
And what they introduced was a leanedbackwards position of the pilot.
It's almost a position like you findin or found then in the, uh, say the
low grand Prix cars, particularlythe monocoque versions, you know, and
(43:01):
they could also beef that up with,uh, some scientific investigations.
I have the source given here that thereare optimum angles for body parts.
And they're not 90 degrees.
And so the upright sitting position isnot necessarily the best, particularly
if you don't have to have high steeringforces to work with, which was one of
(43:22):
the reasons why people set so upright orwhy NASCAR drivers also hang on close to
the steering wheel, at least the past.
But in the case of a front, well ofa, um, car with mid-engine, there's
not much load on the front ax.
Excellence of the steeringeffort, it's much lower.
So you can get by with this more relaxed.
Leaned back sitting positionand it's now a standard practice
(43:45):
of course in sail planes.
But in 53 that was something that was,was pretty new, in fact it was unheard of.
And people were wondering,can the pilots do that?
And they had some test flights andthey felt, Hey, this is great actually.
And so, uh, we sent of course KaloKitty around different universities.
Naturally he has to go to, to and to Milanand understand what's going on there.
(44:11):
And so he comes across this and theinnovator and the young man who wants
to make his place in the history comesacross this and says, Hey, why don't
we experiment with that and reduce thefrontal area of foreign Grand Prix.
And that goes on with, withengines also quickly talking
about different engine choices.
It seems quite reasonable for the twoand a half liter formula, first of
(44:34):
all, that it shows the, uh, naturallyaspirated one and the, uh, supercharged
version that was allowed at 750 cc.
The penalty for superchargingwas just too high.
So you look at the 2.5 literengine and you ask yourself, how
many cylinders do you really need?
You need 16 cylinders or 24 or orfour, maybe six is a good compromise.
(44:59):
Very likely because you cansee Jaguar was very successful.
Was there six cylinders?
Mercedes had just proven, uh, withthe, uh, 1 94 project that, hey.
We can win the races and championshipswith six cylinder engines.
And of course, they had slammedit at Mercedes, their engine.
That was brought to an even moredramatic fact in the Cummins Diesels
(45:20):
special of 1952 that participated inthe Indy 500, and there was Freddie
Cummins desire to prove that dieselengines could be very successful in
any application, including race cars.
So you built this special.
Car with the Watson chassis, elongatedand modified in many ways, but he chose to
(45:41):
tilt the engine practically by 90 degrees.
So the crankshaft is about here,and this is the cylinder head.
Now this was, uh, overhead valve engine,as I understand it was turbocharged and
it was, was tilted for minimum front area.
So you could think Mercedes shouldthink about those lines as well.
In our case here for mobility,we say, well, Landa is really our
(46:07):
flagship brand and it relies onV six engines to a great extent.
Why don't we also make our racingengine just like, say that D 20 V
six lunch here that they had alreadyat a 60 degree cylinder angle.
Makes good sense.
It's a short engine.
It allows more space for thereclined driver position.
So let's do that.
(46:28):
But maybe we should change the angle as.
The Vergilio had proposed you can do that220 degrees to make a shallower engine.
So I put in this image here, which to behonest is not from the time we're talking
about this, uh, a more recent SouthAfrican aircraft engine, and it's a 120.
(46:51):
Degree V six cylinder engine,just to show you what the, the
form factor would look like.
I think that would give a pretty optimalconfiguration for a, uh, mid engine
configuration that minimizes the frontalarea and the, uh, a drag coefficient.
That's it.
So we assume that Mercedes willdo this and, and use an inline six
(47:15):
system, which we can't know at the timethat that was the wrong assumption.
Uh, I can live with that.
And fuel injection is almost inevitable.
And the, um, question is, can you evengo as far as direct injection into the
combustion chamber, or do you allow foran indirect injection ahead of the, uh.
(47:35):
Inlet valves.
Mercedes obviously had some experiencein the, uh, DB 601 aircraft engine of
World War II with direct injection,and we know that Schonberg, who was
the engineer involved, was parked atthe time, still at a small company.
Mm-hmm.
Called Good Broad until he gotthrough his deification process
(47:57):
and then could join Mercedes again.
Very likely that he would push for anadaptation of this kind of injection.
On the other hand, Italy hadquite a lot to offer in terms
of indirect uh, injection.
Fellow Avi Fudo had patented theapplication in in 1937, a solution for.
(48:20):
A very smart electrical injection.
Very much like most cars that wedrive today have their injection
system and no electronics obviously.
'cause that wasn't invented yet, butthe basic makings were already there.
And this thing raised inthe, uh, Elia of, uh, 1940.
There was an alpha Romeo, two anda half liter six C equipped with
(48:44):
this type of injection system.
And it ran on a mix of palm oil.
I understand.
And some other non-conventionalfuel component.
'cause that was whenItaly was in this archy.
Mode and couldn't importa lot of mineral oil.
And so it was a, a theme that fit intothe landscape and it, it demonstrated and
(49:05):
also in a gera motorbike, as I understandthat the system worked quite well.
It got forgotten for quite some time,but you could see electromagnetic
injection valves here, actuatedand timed by a distributor system.
Very much like your time, the ignition.
So it was not a continuous injection.
Like say the Hillborn systemin the US would've been.
(49:28):
So that's basically what we decide, orwe leave it to the engineering team.
Do they want to go with a speakerdirect injection that they also
have at their disposal within forMayo, or when they go with something
like this indirect injection.
So then we say our, our special sourcewill be the emphasis on aerodynamics
(49:49):
and we want to create downforce.
And we saw this picture of the TADyesterday that was explained to us.
You can see the fellow who was behindit was a, uh, who was behind the
patent that you see figures from here.
And you can see that he not only hadside wings, but he also had an elevated
wing with end caps and all the makingsof a modern aerodynamic concept.
(50:13):
So we put all this together into a finalproduct and we think we can beat Mercedes.
On a good day, notalways, but on a good day.
Thank you, Carl.
I think we have some questions.
My thing that strikes me always whenyou have these discussions, why wasn't
(50:37):
this sort of analysis carried out then?
It's very capable.
Everything's there.
Mm-hmm.
So why was the contemporarythinking not along these lines?
Because it's, I know itis just retroactively.
Yeah.
But all that was available then.
Yeah.
And I limit myself particularlyto the availability of
(50:58):
technology bits and pieces.
In hindsight, it's very easy tothrow in electronics, for example,
which wasn't available then.
But a good answer of that is.
I think I mentioned it briefly,people want to survive in
their organizations, right?
And for example, if you're in it,at least in the time when computers
(51:18):
first came up, if you specifiedIBM computers, you were home free.
It didn't matter that they werenot as functional performance wise.
They may have had bad servicewhatsoever, but it was IBM.
And so if you were issuing thepurchase order for IBM computers.
You survived easily, even if things fellby the wayside, if you would've specified
(51:43):
some more exotic, more powerful computerand it would've given you difficulties.
Everybody points at you andsays, you, why did you do that?
You know, how could you do that?
So it's always safer to stay with theincumbent solutions, and it takes risk.
It takes the right personalitiesto venture out a little bit.
(52:04):
And with this.
Evolution window, you haveto be really careful not to
go too far out and and fail.
So I think there's more incentive forplaying it safe than being too daring.
And there's a herd mentality.
So if everybody uses WebberCarburetors in rating, why
should I do something different?
(52:24):
Right?
But if you want to beat the other guy,as I mentioned, you cannot out Mercedes.
Mercedes, don't even try it.
You have to do something differentand you have to take the risk
and to be willing to risk.
I think Iran Horst had demonstratedit throughout his career that
he was willing to do that.
Thank you, Carl.
Thank you.
(52:55):
This episode is brought to youin part by the International
Motor Racing Research Center.
Its charter is to collect, share, andpreserve the history of motor sports.
Spanning Continents,eras, and race series.
The Center's collection embodiesthe speed, drama and camaraderie
of amateur and professional motorracing throughout the world.
(53:19):
The center welcomes seriousresearchers and casual fans alike.
To share stories of race drivers raceseries, and race cars captured on
their shelves and walls, and broughtto life through a regular calendar of
public lectures and special events.
To learn more about the center,visit www.racing archives.org.
(53:43):
This episode is also brought to you bythe Society of Automotive Historians.
They encourage research into anyaspect of automotive history.
The SAH actively supports thecompilation and preservation of
papers, organizational records.
Print ephemera and images to safeguardas well as to broaden and deepen
(54:05):
the understanding of motorizedwheeled land transportation through
the modern age and into the future.
For more information about theSAH, visit www.auto history.org.
We hope you enjoyed another awesomeepisode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought
(54:26):
to you by Grand Tour Motorsports.
If you'd like to be a guest onthe show or get involved, be sure
to follow us on all social mediaplatforms at Grand Touring Motorsports.
And if you'd like to learn moreabout the content of this episode,
be sure to check out the followon article@gtmotorsports.org.
We remain a commercial free and noannual fees organization through
(54:48):
our sponsors, but also throughthe generous support of our fans,
families, and friends through Patreon.
For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month,you can get access to more behind the
scenes action, additional pit stop,minisodes and other VIP goodies, as
well as keeping our team of creators.
Fed on their strict diet of figNewton's, Gumby bears, and monster.
(55:10):
So consider signing up for Patreontoday at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports.
And remember, without you,none of this would be possible.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.