Return of the Turbos
When Alain Prost in a McLaren-Honda won the 1988 Australian Grand Prix at Adelaide , it marked the last time a turbocharged car would win a Grand Prix race. Or so we taught… A few days ago, the FIA mandated that in 2013, the boosted engines are back, after a 25 year absence.
Since the start of the official Formula One world championship, turbocharged cars have always been allowed to race. The “Formula” during the 1950s was 4.5 liters for non-turbo engines, with blown engines limited to 1/3 their size, or 1.5 liters. The first two championships were actually won by the Alfa Romeo 158 that had a 1.5liter, straight-8 engine, with a supercharger. But after Alfa Romeo withdrew at the end of the 1951 season, and from 1954 onwards there was a new Formula of 2.5L non-turbo or 0.75L (yes, 750cc) normally aspirated. With this new 2.5L formula in place, not one of the competitive teams chose to take the boosted path… So for the next 25 years, regular “atmospheric” engines ruled Grand Prix racing…
The French, however, had other ideas…By the mid 1970s, Renault was dominating Formula 2 racing with its 2.0 liter V6 engine. But they were not satisfied with success in the feeder series. First they had their sights on the country’s premier auto race, the 24 hours of Le Mans . The Gallic team eventually conquered their home race in 1978, with local heroes Didier Pironi and Jean-Pierre Jaussaud driving, after several years of being thwarted and frustrated by long-time nemesis Porsche. Almost simultaneously, the Frenchmen also had their sights on Formula One.
Led by a relentless technical chief named Francois Caisting, the yellow team chose a different approach in the quest for Grand Prix glory. At that time the field was dominated by the venerable 3.0L V8 Cosworth/Ford engine, used by majority of the teams. There were a couple of other options… The Ferrari flat-12, plus the Alfa Romeo and Matra V12s were all more powerful, but were also much heavier. These 12-cylinder engines also consume fuel at a much greater rate, and this further adds to their cars’ weight because they were carrying more gasoline at the start of a race. So Renault chooses to downsize their F2 engine to 1.5L, then bolt in a KKK Turbo. It could produce power that could rival (and potentially exceed) the bulky V12s yet weigh less than the Cosworth. Their first car, the RS01 (for Renault Sport 01) was so small it looked like a Formula 2 car when standing next to F1 cars of that time. Small weight plus huge power would spell success… but that would not be the case, at least not initially.
They made their debut at the 1977 British Grand Prix, with their long-time driver and 1975 F2 champion Jean-Pierre Jabouille at the wheel. The car came to a halt after only 17 laps and a lot of people in the pit lane were silently laughing at the French effort. For the next couple of races the result was more or less the same, so the opposition was left unimpressed…. But not for long.
Slowly, the yellow machine became more and more competitive. Little by little their cars were moving up the grid, and by 1979 it was regularly featuring up front. By then the team was now a 2-car effort, with Jabouille being joined by countryman and fellow F2 champion Rene Arnoux. Despite its obvious speed and competitiveness, the car was still unreliable, but JP would win the French Grand Prix at Dijon that year. The following year (1980), Arnoux would win the Brazilian and South African Grand Prix, and would lead the WDC race early on. He would soon fade from the WDC race after a series of reliability issues. Jabouille would go on to win in Austria that year, before practically ending his career in a nasty crash at the fall Canadian GP.
Renault was still far from being the title favorite, but by then they were getting everyone’s attention. Enzo Ferrari was one of them. The fabled Italian team was the first to follow Renault’s lead, and by 1981 the red cars had their own V6 turbo bolted at the back of the 126C. A few races into that season another turbo engine showed up, the Hart, at the back of the new Tolemann team. The Hart was actually an inline 4 engine that was one bank, or half, of the Cosworth/Ford DFV. Renault won 3 races that year, and Ferrari 2, but the non-turbo brigade won the remaining 10 races and both championships.
However, the writing was on the wall. The following season, 1982, the previous year’s champion, the Brabham team made their own switch to turbo power courtesy of the 1.5L BMW inline 4 engine, again via the Formula 2 route. It was actually based on the production M12/M13 engine that can be found on the top of the line 3-series road cars. At that time the turbo engine’s main Achilles heel was its (lack of ) reliability, and the Ford-powered cars would take advantage of this on numerous occasions. But Ferrari was able to solve this issue quickly, courtesy of water injection, and the team won the constructor’s title that year. They should have won the drivers title as well but its 2 drivers’ careers ended during the 82 campaign, with Gilles Villenueve being killed at Zolder and Pironi nearly amputated after a nasty accident at Hockenheim. At the time of his accident, Pironi was leading the WDC race by a good margin, and most of the 5 races left are to be run on “power” circuits like Hockenheim, Osterreichring, and Monza , the title was virtually in the bag. In his last 7 races Pironi was on the podium 6 times, the only occasion he wasn’t was at Canada when his car, in pole position, stalled at the start. He was then hit from behind by the Osella of young Ricardo Paletti, who was killed shortly thereafter. Clearly, the time of the turbos have arrived. The British kit car teams that long have relied on the DFV power plant rushed to have their own turbo partner. After Brabham got BMW, Williams got Honda and McLaren commissioned Porsche to design a turbo engine for their own use. Lotus became a Renault customer team, later to be joined by Ligier and Tyrrell.
By 1983 the turbos would win all but 3 races – the twisty street circuits of Long Beach , Monaco , and Detroit being the only wins for the atmospheric engine. The following season, despite the refueling ban that was supposed to slow down the turbos, the remaining non-turbo teams were annihilated, despite Stefan Bellof in a Tyrrell nearly winning at Monaco and teammate Martin Brundle at Detroit . In 1985, Tyrrell was the only remaining non-turbo team, and by mid season they would switch to Renault turbo power. In its last few races, in 1985, the non-turbo Ford/Cosworth V8 was a painful sight, usually filling up the last grid spot and finishing races 5 laps or more behind the winner. In its final race at Austria , Brundle’s 012 was the only car that did not make the 26-car grid. He would have been allowed to start as the 27th (and last) car, but the mighty McLaren team vetoed their participation, citing that Brundle would get in the way once he would be lapped by Lauda and Prost in their McLaren-Porsches. This, despite Ken Tyrrell fitting a tractor-grade rear-view side mirror in the Englishman’s car. Ron Dennis was not impressed.
1986 was an all-turbo year. Not a single non-turbo engine even bothered to show up at any of the 16 races. By then Renault have pulled out as a works team, but the groundwork of the turbo technology has been laid out. However, the next year (1987), due to spiraling cost, some teams like Tyrrell and Lola, would switch back to non-turbo power. By then the engine size for non-turbos was bumped to 3.5 liters, but they were still no match to the boosted engines. A separate championship called the Jim Clark trophy for drivers was even established for these teams but it garnered little interest for fans, if any at all. Pop-off valves, boost limits, as well as a further reduction in fuel capacity were done to slow down the turbos, to no avail. By 1988 there were only a handful of turbo teams – McLaren, Ferrari, Lotus, and Arrows, plus small teams Zakspeed and Osella. But they still dominated, winning everything in sight. For 5 consecutive years the turbo cars would win every race. So for 1989, turbo engines were all together banned indefinitely. In a few years time, 2013, they will be back.
The apparent logic upon the turbo engine’s return was its fuel efficiency, fuel economy even, done for all these environmental brouhaha we see all the time nowadays. But since when was Grand Prix racing all about fuel economy? Motor racing is all about going fast. Putting fuel restrictions would slow down the racers, but each team/driver would still try to find a way to be faster than the other, and this usually involves consuming more fuel. Even during the time when refueling was banned, from 1984-1993, conserving fuel will not win you races and championships. Initially (1984-85) the Porsche V6 was far and away the most fuel efficient amongst the turbos, and after that the Honda V6 got the edge in the fuel efficiency stakes. Yet during all that time, their non-turbo counterparts were consuming much less fuel, but it bought them little success. Even before entering Formula One in 1954, Mercedes toyed with the idea of using a 0.75L supercharged engine, but their research showed that it would consume 2-3 times more fuel compared to its normally-aspirated counterpart. So they went for a 2.5L normally aspirated engine instead. In a nutshell, fuel economy and Grand Prix racing just don’t belong in the same sentence.
For the past couple of years the F1 cars had a green stripe to indicate which tire compound they are using. The green color was used to show environmental awareness, but it’s all lip service. Whether the tires have green stripes, or yellow, or pink, or none at all, they will leave the same “footprint” in the environment. Ditto the engine Formula. No matter what it is, engine builders would try to find a way to generate more power. Furthermore, despite their lowly fuel consumption ratings, there are only 24 F1 cars and even if you combine all the fuel these cars use during the season, just a day in Manila’s traffic congested roads will result in the road cars collectively wasting more fuel. If Formula One wants an environmental image, it better think of other ways.
