The Brabham BT46 is a
Formula One
Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...
racing car designed by
Gordon Murray
Ian Gordon Murray (born 18 June 1946 in Durban, Union of South Africa), is a South African-born British designer of Formula One racing cars and the McLaren F1 road car. He is the founder and CEO of Gordon Murray Automotive.
Early life
Born t ...
for the
Brabham team, owned by
Bernie Ecclestone, for the
1978 Formula One season. The car featured several radical design elements, one of which was the use of flat panel heat exchangers on the bodywork of the car to replace conventional water and oil
radiators
Radiators are heat exchangers used to transfer thermal energy from one medium to another for the purpose of cooling and heating. The majority of radiators are constructed to function in cars, buildings, and electronics.
A radiator is always a ...
. It was removed before the car's race debut, never to be seen again. The cars, however, powered by a
flat-12 Alfa Romeo
Alfa Romeo Automobiles S.p.A. () is an Italian luxury car manufacturer and a subsidiary of Stellantis. The company was founded on 24 June 1910, in Milan, Italy. "Alfa" is an acronym of its founding name, "Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili." "A ...
engine, raced competitively with modified nose-mounted radiators for most of the year, driven by
Niki Lauda
Andreas Nikolaus "Niki" Lauda (22 February 1949 – 20 May 2019) was an Austrian Formula One driver and aviation entrepreneur. He was a three-time Formula One World Drivers' Champion, winning in , and , and is the only driver in Formula ...
and
John Watson, winning one race in this form and scoring sufficient points for the team to finish third in the constructors championship.
The "B" variant of the car, also known as the "fan car", was introduced at the
1978 Swedish Grand Prix
The 1978 Swedish Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held on 17 June 1978 at the Scandinavian Raceway. It was the eighth race of the 1978 World Championship of F1 Drivers and the 1978 International Cup for F1 Constructors, and the last Formul ...
as a counter to the dominant ground-effect
Lotus 79
The Lotus 79 is a Formula One car designed in late 1977 by Colin Chapman, Geoff Aldridge, Martin Ogilvie, Tony Rudd, Tony Southgate and Peter Wright of Lotus. The Lotus 79 was the first F1 car to take full advantage of ground effects aerod ...
. The BT46B generated an immense amount of
downforce
Downforce is a downwards lift force created by the aerodynamic features of a vehicle. If the vehicle is a car, the purpose of downforce is to allow the car to travel faster by increasing the vertical force on the tires, thus creating more grip ...
by means of a fan, claimed to be for increased cooling, but which also extracted air from beneath the car. The car only raced once in this configuration in the Formula One World Championship—when Niki Lauda won the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix at
Anderstorp.
The "fan car" concept was withdrawn by Brabham after one race even though the FIA had ruled it could be used for the remainder of that season. Gordon Murray, Brabham's chief designer, later said that the car was withdrawn by Brabham due to concerns from Bernie Ecclestone, the team owner. Ecclestone became chief executive of the
Formula One Constructors' Association (FOCA) in the same year that the Brabham BT46 appeared, and he was concerned that the upset from other teams over the fan car could collapse FOCA. Murray said in 2008 that Ecclestone "was working on getting his foothold in the Formula One Constructors’ Association and launching himself towards what he's doing now", with the words "what he's doing now" referring to Ecclestone's position as chief executive of the
Formula One Group
The Formula One Group is a group of companies responsible for the promotion of the FIA Formula One World Championship, and the exercising of the sport's commercial rights.
The Group was previously owned by Delta Topco, a Jersey-based company ow ...
, which he held from 1987 until 2017.
Concept
The first Alfa Romeo-engined Brabham, the
Brabham BT45
The Brabham BT45 was a Formula One car designed by South African engineer Gordon Murray for the 1976 Formula One season. In upgraded BT45B and BT45C form, it also competed in the and seasons.
Technology
The car was the first Brabham to use ...
was an overweight and bulky car, initially weighing 625 kg and as wide as was permitted under the F1 technical regulations. This was due to the difficulties of packaging the large, powerful Alfa
flat-12 engine and the fuel it required to complete a race distance. After lengthy development, it became competitive, but never won a race.
[Nye (1986) p.169] In mid-1977, Brabham designer Gordon Murray started work on the ambitious design of the BT46. It was intended to compensate for the weight of the engine and fuel and allow the Brabham team to take a large technical step forward as well as to improve safety.
Engine and transmission
Alfa Romeo's sportscar-derived flat-12 engine had a capacity of 2995 cc and employed
fuel injection and
electronic ignition
An ignition system generates a spark or heats an electrode to a high temperature to ignite a fuel-air mixture in spark ignition internal combustion engines, oil-fired and gas-fired boilers, rocket engines, etc. The widest application for spark i ...
. The engine featured a cast
magnesium alloy
Magnesium alloys are mixtures of magnesium (the lightest structural metal) with other metals (called an alloy), often aluminium, zinc, manganese, silicon, copper, rare earths and zirconium. Magnesium alloys have a hexagonal lattice structure, w ...
engine block
In an internal combustion engine, the engine block is the structure which contains the cylinders and other components. In an early automotive engine, the engine block consisted of just the cylinder block, to which a separate crankcase was attac ...
with
aluminium alloy
An aluminium alloy (or aluminum alloy; see spelling differences) is an alloy in which aluminium (Al) is the predominant metal. The typical alloying elements are copper, magnesium, manganese, silicon, tin, nickel and zinc. There are two principa ...
crankcase and magnesium or aluminium
cylinder head
In an internal combustion engine, the cylinder head (often abbreviated to simply "head") sits above the cylinders and forms the roof of the combustion chamber.
In sidevalve engines, the head is a simple sheet of metal; whereas in more modern ...
s. There were four gear-driven valves per cylinder. In Formula One form by 1978 it delivered about 520 bhp at 12,000 rpm, about 50 bhp more than the
Cosworth DFV
The DFV is an internal combustion engine that was originally produced by Cosworth for Formula One motor racing. The name is an abbreviation of ''Double Four Valve'', the engine being a V8 development of the earlier four-cylinder FVA, which had fo ...
engines used by most teams, as well as a peak 324 lb-ft of
torque
In physics and mechanics, torque is the rotational equivalent of linear force. It is also referred to as the moment of force (also abbreviated to moment). It represents the capability of a force to produce change in the rotational motion of th ...
(439 N·m). However the power came at the expense of greater size, increased fuel and oil consumption and about 40 kg more weight.
The engine was also difficult to work with, with significant variations in dimensions between units.
The car used a revised and lighter version of the 6-speed gearbox designed for the BT45B. Brabham designed the gearbox casing, which was cast by Alfa Romeo and used
Hewland
Hewland is a British engineering company, founded in 1957 by Mike Hewland, which specialises in racing-car gearboxes. Hewland currently employ 130 people at their Maidenhead facility and have diversified into a variety of markets being particul ...
gears.
Chassis and suspension
The BT46 was an
aluminium
Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...
alloy
An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which at least one is a metal. Unlike chemical compounds with metallic bases, an alloy will retain all the properties of a metal in the resulting material, such as electrical conductivity, ductilit ...
monocoque
Monocoque ( ), also called structural skin, is a structural system in which loads are supported by an object's external skin, in a manner similar to an egg shell. The word ''monocoque'' is a French term for "single shell".
First used for boats, ...
featuring the
trapezoid
A quadrilateral with at least one pair of parallel sides is called a trapezoid () in American and Canadian English. In British and other forms of English, it is called a trapezium ().
A trapezoid is necessarily a convex quadrilateral in Eu ...
al cross section common to many of Gordon Murray's 1970s designs. It featured inbuilt pneumatic jacks fed from an external supply of compressed air to lift it off the ground for tyre changes during practice. It employed a very early version of the carbon brakes that were in universal use by the mid-1980s—a concept taken from the aircraft industry. The system, which Brabham had been developing since 1976, combined carbon composite brake pads with a steel disc faced with carbon composite 'pucks'.
The most radical feature of the original car was its use of flat plate heat exchangers mounted flush to the surface of the bodywork in place of conventional water radiators. The absence of standard radiators allowed Murray to compensate somewhat for the large engine and fuel tanks and produce a relatively light design with a low frontal cross section (important to reduce drag). Upon seeing pictures of the car, consultant engineer David Cox calculated that the BT46 had only around 30% of the cooling surface area required. He contacted Brabham to express his concerns. By this time the car had already run, suffering serious problems with over-heating. Cox was invited by the team to discuss his calculations, pointed out what he believed to be fundamental errors in the concept and concluded that the idea could not be made to work. The heat exchangers were replaced by more standard radiators in the nose of the car, similar to that of the BT45, compromising its aerodynamic efficiency. In addition to the question of drag the nose-mounted radiators moved weight towards the front of the car.
[Henry, Alan (1985) ]
Brabham, the Grand Prix Cars
p. 171 – 179 Osprey
Racing history
The BT46 debuted at the third race of the 1978 season, the on 4 March 1978, with the revised nose-mounted radiators. The cars were immediately competitive, although reliability was suspect.
After the winning debut and subsequent withdrawal of the BT46B “fan car” at the Swedish Grand Prix (see below) the Brabham team completed the season with the standard BT46s. Niki Lauda winning the in the standard car, albeit after
Mario Andretti
Mario Gabriele Andretti (born February 28, 1940) is an Italian-born American former racing driver. One of the most successful drivers in the history of motorsports, Andretti is one of only two drivers to have won races in Formula One, IndyCar, t ...
and
Gilles Villeneuve
Joseph Gilles Henri Villeneuve () (January 18, 1950 – May 8, 1982) was a Canadian racing driver, who spent six years in Grand Prix motor racing with Ferrari, winning six races and widespread acclaim for his performances.
An enthusiast of ...
were penalised a minute for jumping the second race start after
Ronnie Peterson
Bengt Ronnie Peterson (; 14 February 1944 – 11 September 1978) was a Swedish racing driver. Known by the nickname 'SuperSwede', he was a two-time runner-up in the Formula One World Drivers' Championship.
Peterson began his motor racing caree ...
’s fatal accident at the first start.
The BT46 appeared for the last time in the Formula One World Championship at the first round of the 1979 season in the hands of
Nelson Piquet
Nelson Piquet Souto Maior (, born 17 August 1952) is a Brazilian retired racing driver and businessman. Since his retirement, Piquet, a three-time World Champion, has been ranked among the greatest Formula One (F1) drivers in various motorspo ...
. Niki Lauda also used the car to qualify for that race, as the new BT48 was proving troublesome, although he did race the new car. Piquet retired on the first lap after a multi-car collision that wrecked the BT46.
Concept
Lotus had introduced the concept of
ground effect to the Formula One world championship in with their fast, but not always reliable,
Type 78.
Peter Wright and
Colin Chapman
Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman (19 May 1928 – 16 December 1982) was an English design engineer, inventor, and builder in the automotive industry, and founder of Lotus Cars.
In 1952 he founded the sports car company Lotus Cars. Chapman ...
had discovered that by carefully shaping the underside of the car, they could accelerate the air passing under the car, thereby reducing the air pressure under the car relative to that over it and pushing the tyres down harder onto the track. The increased downforce gave more grip and thus higher cornering speeds. Ground effect had the great advantage of being a low
drag solution, unlike conventional wings, meaning that the increased cornering ability was not compromised by a decrease in straight line speed. In Lotus ironed out the reliability problems and further developed the concept from relatively simple sidepods with a wing profile into full
venturi tunnels under the car. As soon as they appeared at
Zolder
The Circuit Zolder, also known as Circuit Terlamen, is an undulating motorsport race track in Heusden-Zolder, Belgium.
History
Built in 1963, Zolder hosted the Formula One Belgian Grand Prix on 10 separate occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, ...
, the black and gold
Type 79s of
Mario Andretti
Mario Gabriele Andretti (born February 28, 1940) is an Italian-born American former racing driver. One of the most successful drivers in the history of motorsports, Andretti is one of only two drivers to have won races in Formula One, IndyCar, t ...
and
Ronnie Peterson
Bengt Ronnie Peterson (; 14 February 1944 – 11 September 1978) was a Swedish racing driver. Known by the nickname 'SuperSwede', he was a two-time runner-up in the Formula One World Drivers' Championship.
Peterson began his motor racing caree ...
outpaced the opposition by a comfortable margin.
[''Brabham and the fan car'' http://www.forix.com/8w/fancar.html Accessed on 11 March 2006]
It had not been clear to other designers just what Wright and Chapman had done with the Type 78, but by early 1978, Gordon Murray had grasped how the Lotus design was achieving its remarkable levels of grip. He also realised that the
Alfa Romeo
Alfa Romeo Automobiles S.p.A. () is an Italian luxury car manufacturer and a subsidiary of Stellantis. The company was founded on 24 June 1910, in Milan, Italy. "Alfa" is an acronym of its founding name, "Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili." "A ...
flat-12 engine used by Brabham that season was too wide to permit the
Venturi tunnels needed for really significant ground effect. At Murray's instigation, Alfa went on to produce a V12 engine for the 1979 season. In the meantime, Murray's idea was to use another way of reducing the pressure underneath the car. In 1970 the
Chaparral 2J "sucker car" had proved significantly faster than its opposition in the North American
Can-Am sportscar series. The 2J had two fans at the rear of the car driven by a dedicated
two-stroke
A two-stroke (or two-stroke cycle) engine is a type of internal combustion engine that completes a power cycle with two strokes (up and down movements) of the piston during one power cycle, this power cycle being completed in one revolution of ...
engine to draw large amounts of air from under the chassis, reducing pressure and creating downforce. It had suffered from reliability problems with the second engine before being banned by the sporting authorities.
The contemporary
Tyrrell 008
The Tyrrell 008 was a Formula One car manufactured and raced by the Tyrrell Racing Organisation team during the 1978 season. Driven by Didier Pironi and Patrick Depailler, it achieved several podium finishes including a win at the 1978 Monaco Gr ...
designed by
Maurice Philippe
Maurice Philippe (30 April 1932 – 5 June 1989), also known as Maurice Phillippe, was a British aircraft and Formula One car designer.
Philippe designed his first car in 1955, called the MPS (Maurice Philippe Special), while employed developin ...
had been built with a small fan fitted at the rear and driven from the engine's crankshaft. Ostensibly to act as an extractor fan for the radiators, which were mounted underneath the car, the fan had the side effect of its operation providing a modicum of downforce. However, in testing, the system was found to not be particularly effective. The car overheated, partly as a result of the size of the fan which was limited by the amount of space available. The fan concept was abandoned in favour of conventionally mounted radiators. Nevertheless, Cox, who was present at the tests and saw potential in the idea if properly developed, informed Murray of what Tyrrell had attempted.
Cox produced the overall layout for the car, utilising the cooling properties of the fan to be able to argue that this was its primary purpose, thus satisfying the regulations. Gordon Murray designed a version driven by a complex series of
clutches running from the engine to a large single fan at the back of the car, anticipating problems caused by the momentum of the fan during gear changes, although in practice these were not required. Therefore, the faster the engine ran, the stronger the suction effect. Like the Lotus, it had sliding "skirts" that sealed the gap between the sides of the cars and the ground. These prevented excessive air from being sucked into the low pressure area under the car and dissipating the ground effect. There was a rule banning "moveable aerodynamic devices", but the fan also drew air through a horizontally mounted radiator over the engine. Using a fan to assist cooling was legal—Brabham had used a small electric fan to this effect on the BT45Cs at the South American races at the start of the year—and Brabham claimed that this was the primary effect of the new device. These claims were lent some legitimacy by the cooling system issues that had affected the original design at the start of the year.
[Henry, Alan (1985) “Brabham, the Grand Prix Cars” p. 181-183 Osprey ]
The cars were modified BT46s—chassis numbers BT46/4 and BT46/6. Modifications to implement the fan concept were quite extensive—involving sealing the engine bay as well as adding the clutch system and the fan. They were designed and tested in some secrecy. Brabham's lead driver, Niki Lauda, realised he had to adjust his driving style, mostly for cornering. He found that if he accelerated around corners, the car would "stick" to the road as if it were on rails. This had the side effect of exposing the driver to very high lateral acceleration, which would become a major problem in the ground effect era. In his autobiography, Lauda described the car as being unpleasant to drive due to the lateral loads and reliance on aerodynamics over driver skill. He realised early on that the rate of ground effect development meant that in the future, every driver would be exposed to such g-loading while behind the wheel of such a car, and the physical effort needed to drive the cars would leave the drivers exhausted by the end of the races.
Racing history and aftermath
The two modified cars were prepared for the Swedish Grand Prix at Anderstorp on 17 June 1978, for Niki Lauda and John Watson. When not in use, the fan was covered by a dustbin lid, but it soon became clear what the modified Brabham was intended to achieve: when the drivers blipped the throttle, the car could be seen to squat down on its suspension as the downforce increased. Lotus driver
Mario Andretti
Mario Gabriele Andretti (born February 28, 1940) is an Italian-born American former racing driver. One of the most successful drivers in the history of motorsports, Andretti is one of only two drivers to have won races in Formula One, IndyCar, t ...
said "It is like a bloody great vacuum cleaner. It throws muck and rubbish at you at a hell of a rate". Murray says that this was untrue: "The fan couldn't spit anything out the back because the fan efflux
xit speed XIT may refer to:
*XIT (band), a Native American rock group
* XIT, a name briefly used by the 1960s English pop group Consortium
*XIT Ranch
The XIT Ranch was a cattle ranch in the Texas Panhandle which operated from 1885 to 1912. Comprising over ...
was only 55 mph. Besides the radial fan would have sent any stones flying sideways".
[Lovell (2004) p.103] The legality of the cars was soon protested, but they were allowed to race. They qualified second and third behind championship leader Andretti. In the race, Watson spun off on the 19th lap. Once the slower
Didier Pironi dropped oil onto the track and with both major front-runners out of the race, the remaining Brabham was in a class of its own, seemingly unaffected by the slippery surface. Lauda passed Andretti around the outside of one of the corners, who dropped out shortly afterwards due to a broken valve, and went on to win by over half a minute from
Riccardo Patrese
Riccardo Gabriele Patrese (born 17 April 1954) is an Italian former racing driver, who raced in Formula One from to .
He became the first Formula One driver to achieve 200 Grand Prix starts when he appeared at the 1990 British Grand Prix, and ...
in an
Arrows.
There was uproar from rival teams, who saw the "fan car" as a threat to their competitiveness. Lotus immediately started design work on a fan version of the 79.
Bernie Ecclestone, owner of the Brabham team, had also been secretary of the
Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) since 1972 and became its president during 1978. According to Ecclestone's biographer Terry Lovell, the heads of the other FOCA teams, led by Colin Chapman threatened to withdraw their support for Ecclestone unless he withdrew the BT46B. Ecclestone negotiated a deal within FOCA whereby the car would have continued for another three races before Brabham would voluntarily withdraw it.
However, the
Commission Sportive Internationale intervened to declare that henceforth fan cars would not be allowed and the car never raced again in Formula One. The car was not considered to have been illegal when it raced however, so the Swedish Grand Prix win stood. The two converted chassis were returned to standard BT46 configuration for the next race.
A BT46 competed in 'B' specification once again in 1979 in the
Gunnar Nilsson
Gunnar Axel Arvid Nilsson (20 November 1948 – 20 October 1978) was a Swedish racing driver. Before entering Formula One, he won the 1975 British Formula 3 Championship.
Nilsson entered 32 Formula One Grand Prix races, qualifying for all of t ...
Trophy race at
Donington Park. This was an event held to raise funds for the Gunnar Nilsson Cancer Fund. Originally intended as a non-championship Formula One race, without FIA sanction it was instead run in a
time trial In many racing sports, an athlete (or occasionally a team of athletes) will compete in a time trial against the clock to secure the fastest time. The format of a time trial can vary, but usually follow a format where each athlete or team sets off at ...
format, with victory going to the fastest single lap recorded. As it was not an FIA event, the car's illegality was not a factor. Nelson Piquet drove, coming fourth of the five cars competing.
BT47
Murray had designed a car for the 1979 season called the BT47 that had a
Chaparral 2J-type box rear end with twin variable geometry fans on the rear to maximize ground effect. The car was never built due to the FIA closing the loophole in the regulations for the 1979 season.
relevant quote appears at 0:23:28
Brabham BT46C
Concept
Another variation on the theme was produced later in the season. Like the BT46B, the BT46C removed the radiators from the front wing assembly leaving a clean aerodynamic wing and moving the centre of gravity further back again. The standard radiators were replaced by units from a Volkswagen Golf[''Brabham Alfa Romeo BT46']
Accessed on 30 June 2006 mounted behind the front wheels out of the airstream in a region of positive pressure.[Henry, Alan (1985) “Brabham, the Grand Prix Cars” p. 189 Osprey ]
Racing history
The BT46C only ran in practice for the 1978 Austrian Grand Prix. The drivers complained of reduced revs and straight-line speed. It was not used in the race and did not appear again.
Formula One results
( key) (results in bold indicate pole position; results in ''italics'' indicate fastest lap)
This total includes points scored by the BT45C car Brabham used during the first two races.
This total includes points scored by the BT48 & BT49 cars Brabham used for the rest of the season.
See also
* Chaparral 2J—An earlier example of a race car that used a fan for downforce
* Lotus 88
The Lotus 88 is an innovative Formula One car designed by Colin Chapman, Peter Wright, Tony Rudd and Martin Ogilvie of Lotus in an effort to maximise the downforce produced by ground effect. The Lotus 88 made its debut at the first practice ...
Citations
References
*Paul Haney, Jeff Brau
Inside Racing Technology
TV Motorsports
*
*
*
What I'd Do Differently: Gordon Murray
{{good article
Brabham Formula One cars
1978 Formula One season cars
1979 Formula One season cars
Cars powered by boxer engines