Bellow
Hardcore MB Enthusiast
Of all the risks they take.....
Formula 1 2020 (Will Contain Race Day Spoilers)
- Thread starter bob6600
- Start date
Of all the risks they take.....
Jus seen a Tweet that Seb is leaving Ferrari at the end of the year and is retiring from F1. Could be a wind up given the date.
Given there is no F1 or any other motorsport at the moment, here is the next instalment in racing tales from years gone by for your amusement :
Le Mans and McQueen
“I don’t think there is any race driver that could really tell you why he races. But I think he could probably show you.”
Steve McQueen got it spot on, it’s beyond words, that point of driving on the limit in harmony with the machine, indescribable!
It seems there was always a passion for speed on two wheels or four with Steve McQueen, but then it does appear to have run in the family.
My great uncle Drew was a fairly handy speedway rider back in the 20’s and 30’s and made a good living in the sport. He is more famous for being the first man to climb Ben Nevis on a motorbike! On a modern machine with ‘miles’ of suspension travel and almost unlimited power, this is no longer difficult. In his day with about an inch of suspension movement it was properly Heroic.
If family rumour is true, then it seems he met his end shortly after WW2 in real Hollywood style involving boats, guns and illegal substances in the Straits of Gibraltar….
The 2-wheel fascination seemed to skip a generation with my father. In his youth he was away in India during the war playing with motor torpedo boats. But on his return his chosen mode of transport was a BSA three-wheeler. This was economical in a time of petrol rationing and allowed him to travel from Inverness to Anglesey whilst courting my mother. That’s proper dedication.
In later life he would become chairman of the BSA Front Drive club and own a number of 3 and 4-wheel BSA’s.
Some old Jag prototype fronts up to my father's extremely rare BSA T9
My mother tells me that as a toddler I could name all the cars we would see long before I could name all the family. At school I formed the model car club and persuaded the woodwork teacher to allow us to build a slot car track on four 8 x 4 boards stored in there. The cars I built were sold on to other club members to fund my next build. I was writing articles for Model Cars magazine in my early teens.
In 1966 I was an exchange student in the Loire Valley almost within earshot of what was going on a few miles north in Le Mans. The closest I could get was to look at the GT40 model kits in the shop windows in Saumur, but I did win the North West area slot car championship with my Gulf Mirage in 1968.
I had simply no idea that I would end up actually working within motorsport and could only dream of going to Le Mans….and watch ‘uncle’ Steve’s movie.
As it turned out, I would run cars or teams at Le Mans on 16 occasions between 1986 and 2008 resulting in 8 class wins, including 3 overall victories.
After running Toyota’s 3.5 atmo cars at Le Mans in the early 90’s I was also called on to engineer their Super Touring Carinas. Under an agreement with TOM’s Toyota, I was also allowed to subcontract out to engineer the Gulf McLaren cars in sportscar races and at Le Mans to keep my sportscar knowledge up to date. In 1997 I joined the team on a full-time basis as head of engineering.
That year we were running three of the ‘long tail’ McLaren GTR cars in Gulf livery. They would run in the GT class just behind the open top sports prototype cars.
Things didn’t really go that well in practice and although the cars were largely reliable and on the pace of the other GT cars, it seemed unlikely we would be able to challenge the prototype cars on shear pace. Then we lost a car to an oil fire out on the circuit. This one got so hot that even ‘big’ John Nielsen could not get the car back and when we did see the car it was obvious from the look of the well burnt carbon tub that the car would not be making the race. A pressurised BMW oil fitting on the engine had cracked as sprayed the exhaust system. Given there was no time prior to the race to design, manufacture and test an alternative part, BMW’s answer was to fit new ‘zero mileage’ parts to the race engines.
For most of the McLaren cars in the race this was a fix, unfortunately the car I was engineering ended like this. That’s 2 out of 3 roast Gulf Mclarens.
Gutted dosen’t really cover it, but on the positive side it did free me up to devote more time to the 41 car which was making it’s way to the front of the field in a steady but unspectacular fashion. Drivers Raphanel, Gounon and Olofsson were driving swiftly, staying out of trouble and more importantly, staying out of the pits. Their average time in the pit road was only just over one minute each hour.
I then had time to look at the strategy for that car and found that if we were careful we could complete the race without changing a single brake component for the whole race. A first on a carbon braked car. By getting the drivers to adjust the brake balance a few percent for and aft we could use all the available brake…and finish.
A quick measurement each time the wheels were changed lost us no time as the car was being fuelled, then I would work out the balance setting for the next stint.
When Gordon Murray designed the centre driving position in the road going McLaren, I’m sure he wasn’t thinking of the great benefit it would have when the car went racing. The fact you could get a driver out one side whilst the following driver got in the other was helping greatly with the fact that no car would be in the pits for a shorter time during the race that this one.
The prototype car leading the race was interesting, and one that I knew parts of very well. The front half was derived from Ross Brawn’s XJR14 Jaguar, and the rear half from a Porsche 962 amalgamated by the Joest team. A cut and shut Le Mans winner anyone?
The crack driving squad were a pair of ex F1 Ferrari pilots Alboreto, Johansson and a young lad called Tom Kristensen. Tom had driven F3 for TOM’s and I had used him to test a stillborn Toyota LMP car the previous year. He was good, very good, but I don’t think anyone had the thought at that stage he would become Mr Le Mans, with an unprecedented 9 wins!
We would win together a few years later.
Our Gulf McLaren was just one lap down on the Joest prototype at the end of the race. A GT winner yes, but just a lap away from an overall victory, the closest a GT car has ever got.
So this Macqueen got a GT win with a Gulf car at Le Mans, something ‘uncle’ Steve missed out on, but I’ll never even get close on the ‘cool’ stakes!
Just to ramp up the celebrity status a little more, the GTC team owner was a former Williams F1 team manager.
His name was Michael Caine.
Not a lot of people know that.
Le Mans and McQueen
“I don’t think there is any race driver that could really tell you why he races. But I think he could probably show you.”
Steve McQueen got it spot on, it’s beyond words, that point of driving on the limit in harmony with the machine, indescribable!
It seems there was always a passion for speed on two wheels or four with Steve McQueen, but then it does appear to have run in the family.
My great uncle Drew was a fairly handy speedway rider back in the 20’s and 30’s and made a good living in the sport. He is more famous for being the first man to climb Ben Nevis on a motorbike! On a modern machine with ‘miles’ of suspension travel and almost unlimited power, this is no longer difficult. In his day with about an inch of suspension movement it was properly Heroic.
If family rumour is true, then it seems he met his end shortly after WW2 in real Hollywood style involving boats, guns and illegal substances in the Straits of Gibraltar….
The 2-wheel fascination seemed to skip a generation with my father. In his youth he was away in India during the war playing with motor torpedo boats. But on his return his chosen mode of transport was a BSA three-wheeler. This was economical in a time of petrol rationing and allowed him to travel from Inverness to Anglesey whilst courting my mother. That’s proper dedication.
In later life he would become chairman of the BSA Front Drive club and own a number of 3 and 4-wheel BSA’s.
Some old Jag prototype fronts up to my father's extremely rare BSA T9
My mother tells me that as a toddler I could name all the cars we would see long before I could name all the family. At school I formed the model car club and persuaded the woodwork teacher to allow us to build a slot car track on four 8 x 4 boards stored in there. The cars I built were sold on to other club members to fund my next build. I was writing articles for Model Cars magazine in my early teens.
In 1966 I was an exchange student in the Loire Valley almost within earshot of what was going on a few miles north in Le Mans. The closest I could get was to look at the GT40 model kits in the shop windows in Saumur, but I did win the North West area slot car championship with my Gulf Mirage in 1968.
I had simply no idea that I would end up actually working within motorsport and could only dream of going to Le Mans….and watch ‘uncle’ Steve’s movie.
As it turned out, I would run cars or teams at Le Mans on 16 occasions between 1986 and 2008 resulting in 8 class wins, including 3 overall victories.
After running Toyota’s 3.5 atmo cars at Le Mans in the early 90’s I was also called on to engineer their Super Touring Carinas. Under an agreement with TOM’s Toyota, I was also allowed to subcontract out to engineer the Gulf McLaren cars in sportscar races and at Le Mans to keep my sportscar knowledge up to date. In 1997 I joined the team on a full-time basis as head of engineering.
That year we were running three of the ‘long tail’ McLaren GTR cars in Gulf livery. They would run in the GT class just behind the open top sports prototype cars.
Things didn’t really go that well in practice and although the cars were largely reliable and on the pace of the other GT cars, it seemed unlikely we would be able to challenge the prototype cars on shear pace. Then we lost a car to an oil fire out on the circuit. This one got so hot that even ‘big’ John Nielsen could not get the car back and when we did see the car it was obvious from the look of the well burnt carbon tub that the car would not be making the race. A pressurised BMW oil fitting on the engine had cracked as sprayed the exhaust system. Given there was no time prior to the race to design, manufacture and test an alternative part, BMW’s answer was to fit new ‘zero mileage’ parts to the race engines.
For most of the McLaren cars in the race this was a fix, unfortunately the car I was engineering ended like this. That’s 2 out of 3 roast Gulf Mclarens.
Gutted dosen’t really cover it, but on the positive side it did free me up to devote more time to the 41 car which was making it’s way to the front of the field in a steady but unspectacular fashion. Drivers Raphanel, Gounon and Olofsson were driving swiftly, staying out of trouble and more importantly, staying out of the pits. Their average time in the pit road was only just over one minute each hour.
I then had time to look at the strategy for that car and found that if we were careful we could complete the race without changing a single brake component for the whole race. A first on a carbon braked car. By getting the drivers to adjust the brake balance a few percent for and aft we could use all the available brake…and finish.
A quick measurement each time the wheels were changed lost us no time as the car was being fuelled, then I would work out the balance setting for the next stint.
When Gordon Murray designed the centre driving position in the road going McLaren, I’m sure he wasn’t thinking of the great benefit it would have when the car went racing. The fact you could get a driver out one side whilst the following driver got in the other was helping greatly with the fact that no car would be in the pits for a shorter time during the race that this one.
The prototype car leading the race was interesting, and one that I knew parts of very well. The front half was derived from Ross Brawn’s XJR14 Jaguar, and the rear half from a Porsche 962 amalgamated by the Joest team. A cut and shut Le Mans winner anyone?
The crack driving squad were a pair of ex F1 Ferrari pilots Alboreto, Johansson and a young lad called Tom Kristensen. Tom had driven F3 for TOM’s and I had used him to test a stillborn Toyota LMP car the previous year. He was good, very good, but I don’t think anyone had the thought at that stage he would become Mr Le Mans, with an unprecedented 9 wins!
We would win together a few years later.
Our Gulf McLaren was just one lap down on the Joest prototype at the end of the race. A GT winner yes, but just a lap away from an overall victory, the closest a GT car has ever got.
So this Macqueen got a GT win with a Gulf car at Le Mans, something ‘uncle’ Steve missed out on, but I’ll never even get close on the ‘cool’ stakes!
Just to ramp up the celebrity status a little more, the GTC team owner was a former Williams F1 team manager.
His name was Michael Caine.
Not a lot of people know that.
D
Deleted member 113659
Guest
Great stuff @Mactech. If you can increase the posts to match the 2020 F1 calendar then I’ll redirect my Sky F1 fee to you via PayPal. 
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^^ + 1. Really interesting reading your stories Mactech. Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts for us to read
Apparently this is NOT an April Fools joke - News about Bernie Ecclestone on Twitter
"She'll spend her days mushing up his food, changing his nappy and trying to get him to nod off. Then she'll see to the baby."
"She'll spend her days mushing up his food, changing his nappy and trying to get him to nod off. Then she'll see to the baby."
Maybe it wasn't Bernie??
Stratman
MB Enthusiast
F1 teams agree to look again at budget cap
Formula 1 bosses ended their crisis meeting on Monday with an agreement to look further into the issues around lowering a budget cap.
Teams had already agreed to reduce the original $175m (£142m) cap in 2021 to $150m (£122m) as a result of financial problems caused for F1 by coronavirus.
But at the meeting, the top three teams pushed back on a proposal to reduce the cap further to $125m (£102m).
And a bid to delay new rules by a further year to 2023 was rejected.
More...
Formula 1 bosses ended their crisis meeting on Monday with an agreement to look further into the issues around lowering a budget cap.
Teams had already agreed to reduce the original $175m (£142m) cap in 2021 to $150m (£122m) as a result of financial problems caused for F1 by coronavirus.
But at the meeting, the top three teams pushed back on a proposal to reduce the cap further to $125m (£102m).
And a bid to delay new rules by a further year to 2023 was rejected.
More...
D
Deleted member 113659
Guest
D
Deleted member 113659
Guest
It seems not only the Mercedes F1 team are adapting to the current situation by making needed medical products, but also their suppliers.
Whilst many in F1 are being put on furlough, my son is busier than ever overseeing a night shift machining the patterns for equipment used in intensive care.
At this time year he would normally be making patterns for the 19th iteration of Mercedes front wings, instead he is in virtual isolation producing the tools for the battle on the front line of the war against Covid-19.
F1 appears to be in pole position to have the agility, technology and capacity to produce the right parts when the country is on a 'war' footing.
Whilst many in F1 are being put on furlough, my son is busier than ever overseeing a night shift machining the patterns for equipment used in intensive care.
At this time year he would normally be making patterns for the 19th iteration of Mercedes front wings, instead he is in virtual isolation producing the tools for the battle on the front line of the war against Covid-19.
F1 appears to be in pole position to have the agility, technology and capacity to produce the right parts when the country is on a 'war' footing.
D
Deleted member 113659
Guest
Just watched a few more episodes of ‘Drive to Survive’ on Netflix. Thought it’d quench our thirst for F1.
Just made it worse.
Just made it worse.
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Given there is no F1 or any other motorsport at the moment, here is the next instalment in racing tales from years gone by for your amusement :
Le Mans and McQueen
“I don’t think there is any race driver that could really tell you why he races. But I think he could probably show you.”
Steve McQueen got it spot on, it’s beyond words, that point of driving on the limit in harmony with the machine, indescribable!
View attachment 94020
It seems there was always a passion for speed on two wheels or four with Steve McQueen, but then it does appear to have run in the family.
My great uncle Drew was a fairly handy speedway rider back in the 20’s and 30’s and made a good living in the sport. He is more famous for being the first man to climb Ben Nevis on a motorbike! On a modern machine with ‘miles’ of suspension travel and almost unlimited power, this is no longer difficult. In his day with about an inch of suspension movement it was properly Heroic.
View attachment 94012
If family rumour is true, then it seems he met his end shortly after WW2 in real Hollywood style involving boats, guns and illegal substances in the Straits of Gibraltar….
The 2-wheel fascination seemed to skip a generation with my father. In his youth he was away in India during the war playing with motor torpedo boats. But on his return his chosen mode of transport was a BSA three-wheeler. This was economical in a time of petrol rationing and allowed him to travel from Inverness to Anglesey whilst courting my mother. That’s proper dedication.
In later life he would become chairman of the BSA Front Drive club and own a number of 3 and 4-wheel BSA’s.
View attachment 94013
Some old Jag prototype fronts up to my father's extremely rare BSA T9
My mother tells me that as a toddler I could name all the cars we would see long before I could name all the family. At school I formed the model car club and persuaded the woodwork teacher to allow us to build a slot car track on four 8 x 4 boards stored in there. The cars I built were sold on to other club members to fund my next build. I was writing articles for Model Cars magazine in my early teens.
In 1966 I was an exchange student in the Loire Valley almost within earshot of what was going on a few miles north in Le Mans. The closest I could get was to look at the GT40 model kits in the shop windows in Saumur, but I did win the North West area slot car championship with my Gulf Mirage in 1968.
I had simply no idea that I would end up actually working within motorsport and could only dream of going to Le Mans….and watch ‘uncle’ Steve’s movie.
As it turned out, I would run cars or teams at Le Mans on 16 occasions between 1986 and 2008 resulting in 8 class wins, including 3 overall victories.
After running Toyota’s 3.5 atmo cars at Le Mans in the early 90’s I was also called on to engineer their Super Touring Carinas. Under an agreement with TOM’s Toyota, I was also allowed to subcontract out to engineer the Gulf McLaren cars in sportscar races and at Le Mans to keep my sportscar knowledge up to date. In 1997 I joined the team on a full-time basis as head of engineering.
That year we were running three of the ‘long tail’ McLaren GTR cars in Gulf livery. They would run in the GT class just behind the open top sports prototype cars.
View attachment 94014
Things didn’t really go that well in practice and although the cars were largely reliable and on the pace of the other GT cars, it seemed unlikely we would be able to challenge the prototype cars on shear pace. Then we lost a car to an oil fire out on the circuit. This one got so hot that even ‘big’ John Nielsen could not get the car back and when we did see the car it was obvious from the look of the well burnt carbon tub that the car would not be making the race. A pressurised BMW oil fitting on the engine had cracked as sprayed the exhaust system. Given there was no time prior to the race to design, manufacture and test an alternative part, BMW’s answer was to fit new ‘zero mileage’ parts to the race engines.
For most of the McLaren cars in the race this was a fix, unfortunately the car I was engineering ended like this. That’s 2 out of 3 roast Gulf Mclarens.
View attachment 94015
Gutted dosen’t really cover it, but on the positive side it did free me up to devote more time to the 41 car which was making it’s way to the front of the field in a steady but unspectacular fashion. Drivers Raphanel, Gounon and Olofsson were driving swiftly, staying out of trouble and more importantly, staying out of the pits. Their average time in the pit road was only just over one minute each hour.
I then had time to look at the strategy for that car and found that if we were careful we could complete the race without changing a single brake component for the whole race. A first on a carbon braked car. By getting the drivers to adjust the brake balance a few percent for and aft we could use all the available brake…and finish.
A quick measurement each time the wheels were changed lost us no time as the car was being fuelled, then I would work out the balance setting for the next stint.
View attachment 94016
When Gordon Murray designed the centre driving position in the road going McLaren, I’m sure he wasn’t thinking of the great benefit it would have when the car went racing. The fact you could get a driver out one side whilst the following driver got in the other was helping greatly with the fact that no car would be in the pits for a shorter time during the race that this one.
The prototype car leading the race was interesting, and one that I knew parts of very well. The front half was derived from Ross Brawn’s XJR14 Jaguar, and the rear half from a Porsche 962 amalgamated by the Joest team. A cut and shut Le Mans winner anyone?
View attachment 94017
The crack driving squad were a pair of ex F1 Ferrari pilots Alboreto, Johansson and a young lad called Tom Kristensen. Tom had driven F3 for TOM’s and I had used him to test a stillborn Toyota LMP car the previous year. He was good, very good, but I don’t think anyone had the thought at that stage he would become Mr Le Mans, with an unprecedented 9 wins!
We would win together a few years later.
Our Gulf McLaren was just one lap down on the Joest prototype at the end of the race. A GT winner yes, but just a lap away from an overall victory, the closest a GT car has ever got.
View attachment 94019
So this Macqueen got a GT win with a Gulf car at Le Mans, something ‘uncle’ Steve missed out on, but I’ll never even get close on the ‘cool’ stakes!
Just to ramp up the celebrity status a little more, the GTC team owner was a former Williams F1 team manager.
His name was Michael Caine.
Not a lot of people know that.
Lovely story. Fascinating stuff. I miss racing so much.
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- Joined
- Feb 22, 2010
- Messages
- 5,688
- Location
- Stirling, Scotland
- Car
- E55 AMG W211, E250 Sport W212, (and some Imps)
Virtual F1 on just now, good idea, at least it is something to watch although I've had to record now as wife took over tv. ;(
Stratman
MB Enthusiast
As long as he doesn't keep posting enormous oversized pictures of his certificates...
OP
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British Grand Prix fans unable to attend race if goes ahead; French GP called off
F1 is ramping up plans for a July season start, after the French Grand Prix was called off and Silverstone confirmed no fans will be allowed if the British Grand Prix takes place.
Dryce
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So the warning in the thread title may come true this year - and we may actually have posts that contain race spoilers.
Here's hoping.
Here's hoping.
