Brands Hatch, June 7th 1978. From the pitlane observes Gordon Murray his latest creation, the Brabham BT49B, passing by. It is a very expensive but necessary jump to overcome the gap to the dominating Lotus 79.
Murray is the ‘out of the box’ thinking designer at Brabham. He already created the BT 42 with his remarkable triangular monocoque and the BT44, which was good for some race wins in 1974 and 1975. But in those years Ferrari had the most dominant car. Team boss Bernie Ecclestone thought that the Italian dominance came from the power of the Ferrari engine, the flat V12. He rustled a deal with Alfa Romeo to provide him with their 12 cylinder engine, coming from the Tipo 33 sportscar. But this engine is heavy, unreliable and uses to much fuel. So for the last two years, there were no wins for the Brabham team.
The 1977 championship is again a Ferrari year. But Murray noticed that the fastest car is the Lotus.. Colin Chapman has created the Lotus 78, a revolutionary wing-car, that is glued to the tarmac. Lotus only loses the championship because Mario Andretti has too much crashes, the Cosworth engine is not totally reliable and the side skirts needed further development. Murray does not know exactly how this wing car works. But he started to create a lighter, smaller Brabham despite the large Alfa engine.
For 1978, Colin Chapman comes up with the revolutionary perfect Lotus 79. When Murray sees the car for the first time, he realizes how the wing car works. The reversed aircraft-shaped wing design in the sidepods makes the air that flows through it getting more speed and the skirts underneath create a sort of vacuum-effect under the car. This keeps the car stable on the ground. The problem is that the large Alfa engine in the back of the Brabham is not ideal for a wind flow design. Ecclestone gives Carlo Chiti the order to create a new engine !
The championship year starts with the BT45C and later the adapted BT46 with revolutionary heat-exchanger panels laid out on the slanted sidepods and a regular radiator located in the front nose-section of the car. Because of that, the Brabham has the tendency to understeer, but new boy Niki Lauda manages a top three in the first five races. The Brabham is quick, but the engine keeps overheating. But, The Belgium GP at Zolder is the first GP for the Lotus 79. In the race, Andretti and Peterson leave all other competitors way behind.
But at that time, nobody knows about Murray’s plan. His concept is not new. In 1968, Jim Hall, the owner of Chaparral received an envelope with the drawing from a racefan. He designed a car with a ventilator in the back that sucked all air from underneath the car. For the Canam season 1970 (where nearly everything is allowed), the Chaparral 2J has two ventilators in the back, both driven by a separate engine. This amazing looking car is fast, but the ventilator engines have the tendency to break down. Before it could get solved, it became forbidden.
Murray said afterwards that he was not inspired by the 2J, but only wanted to place the radiators in another position to optimize the weight balance. But when looking again at the FIA reglementation, he stumbled on article 37. This article stated that you may construct a ventilator on the car with the sole purpose of cooling the car/engine. What if he places a large cooler on the back of the car, what if it is an official cooling device and what if it by accident sucks all air from under the car ?
Constructing two new cars in the middle of the season costed a lot of money. Bernie Ecclestone does not like to spend money, but beginning a small revolution in the paddock is worth a lot.
The small front nose section of the BT46 is used again and a flat triangular radiator is placed horizontally on top of the engine, which increased his efficiency. This all shifts the gravity point of the car and is a good excuse for the installation of an extra ventilator, because the engine needs extra cooling. The Brabham team hopes that the FIA-officials will not realise that the ventilator is ten times larger than required for the cooling. Instead,.
The propellor of the ventilator is not driven by a separate engine but through a complicated system that connected the fan to the lower shaft of the gearbox and incorporated no less than four clutches, it was powered by the Alfa Romeo engine. If the Alfa makes 12000 revs/min, then the propeller makes 7900. That meant around 30 brake horsepower went to the fan rather than to the wheels. But that was an acceptable trade-off because the downforce and corner-speed gain were worth significantly more lap time. To create a maximum vacuum, flexible side skirts are constructed all along the engine compartment and beyond the rear axle. The whole engine bay was sealed, so that air couldn't be drawn through the engine and break the low pressure area beneath the car.. A thermodynamic specialist, David Cox, has calculated that the propeller must have seven blades and calculated at what angle in order to create optimal rotation speed.
The first run of the BT46B is at Alfa’s test circuit in Balocco. The true problem appeared in Brands Hatch, a few days prior to the Swedish GP. After five laps, the propeller blades broke into little pieces, so Murray decided a new magnesium construction had to be made. The flexible side skirts also posed some problems; they had to be reinforced at the bottom because of too much and too fast wear. The drivers, John Watson and Niki Lauda had to adapt their driving style. The car had the tendency to understeer and when they went off the accelerator, the engine revs went down, but also the speed of the propeller, releasing the vacuum-effect. So they had to add throttle to counteract the understeering when entering a corner. In his book “To Hell and Back,” Lauda reckoned the fan car “unpleasant to drive.”
It is June 14th 1978 when the BT46B is unloaded from the Brabham truck. Everybody is suspicious. Nobody can see the ventilator because of a large dustbin hiding the propeller.
But in their first runs In Balloco an Brands Hatch, Murray discovered that the biggest problem was sealing the sideskirts. In his book, he stated: “We could tune how hard it pushed into the ground because if you had too much spring on the skirts the sacrificial wearing strip would wear out before the end of the race, and you’d had it, basically. If you had it too loose, the suction from the fan working on the inside of the skirt would lift them up and you would lose the seal.” The drivers would know if the skirts were damaged. If they turned into a corner and lost suction, they would go straight on. So he installed an altimeter from an old aeroplane in the cockpit and a tube on the front. An altimeter just reads static pressure and local pressure and the tube measured the riding wind. All the drivers had to do was to see if the needle was in a green zone when entering the corner; red zon meant that the pressure was gone.
Incidentally, when the fan car went for its first circuit scrutineering, Ecclestone didn’t want anyone seeing it ‘bobbing’. Brabham team mechanics Herbie Blash and Charlie Whiting were told to stand chatting either side of the car with their feet tucked underneath, holding the skirts up and thus neutralising the fan’s effect.
Suspicion creates protest. Some teams consider the ventilator illegal, but Murray can convince them it is only a cooling device. There should be no worries, because Ecclestone had already informed the CSI of the plans and they had agreed. The Swedish organisation could demonstrate a fax from the CSI. And they had to keep Ecclestone as a friend, if they wanted to organise any other F1 race. But Bernie had put a lot of effort, energy and money in gaining the absolute power in the F1 world and constructing the Formula One Constructors Organisation(FOCA). And here he has to face up to Ken Tyrrell, John Surtees, Teddy Mayer, Frank Willams and of course Colin Chapman. They are furious and demand direct exclusion of the BT 46B from racing. When Ecclestone threatens with legal action, it goes quiet. He also instructed his drivers not to drive up to full speed in the training sessions. So after the first day, John Watson is on P04 and Lauda is P08.
But the effect of the ventilator is no secret. In the pitlane, when the engine is revved up, you can see the car being sucked to the ground. Chapman ordered Andretti to put a complain to the officials, saying the car is throwing up gravel and debris. Murray reacts that the ventilator turns at 55 miles/h and the blades are so constructed that nothing can gets through. Chapman and the other FOCA teams then used a secret weapon direct into Ecclestone’s heart. They said to Bernie, that if the car turns up at the race, he can no longer represent them. That is language Bernie understands. He made a deal with Chapman : the BT49B will only be racing in the next three races. But now Gordon Murray is not amused, throwing away half a million pounds. But Bernie thinks about the bigger picture. An again he ordered his driver not to go up to maximum speed during qualifying and he send them off with full tanks. So they got to second and third on the grid.
But, after all it is only on Sunday morning that both cars are allowed to race. The ‘vacuum cleaner’is considered legal.
Mario Andretti, on pole-position, starts fat. But, unlike the previous race in Zolder, there are two Brabham-Alfa that can follow. John Watson spins, but Niki Lauda stays 32 laps behind the Lotus. Even when Pironi’s Tyrrell spoils oil on the track, the Brabham stays on his rails. When Andretti misses a breaking point, Lauda squeezes past him and goes off into the lead. Mario tries to follow, but blows up his engine. Lauda has now more than one minute advantage over Patrese and crosses the finish line as the ultimate winner. First win also for Brabham under Ecclestone and the first for Alfa Romeo since their come-back.
Three days later, it was the last day for the BT49B. Colin Chapman still wanted to protest the car. After an extra FOCA meeting, some elements of the ventilator were considered not complying to the FIA-regelemntation and further development of the ‘fan car’ would lead to inadequate safety on certain circuits. The new rule said that the BT49 was illegal and should be banned from further racing. Murray found it very sad. His construction was put in a dark garage by all other teams.
But Murray explains in the book “One Formula 50 years of Car Design” that he already had drawn a new fan car, the BT 47 before there were rule changes ! Instead, Murray penned the Brabham BT48 for the 1979 season.
For the record: While the fan car only raced once, it did also compete in a time trial event at Donington Park on June the third 1978. This was actually the competitive debut for the car. It was one of just five cars entered for the non-championship Gunnar Nilsson Memorial Trophy. That wasn’t enough for a race, but the cars ran in what was effectively a glorified qualifying session. Nelson Piquet drove the car and finished fourth in an event won by Williams driver Alan Jones. James Hunt (Wolf), Mario Andretti (Lotus) and Rupert Keegan (Arrows) were the other competitors.
