The Tyrrell P34 design inspired two men - Robin Herd and Max Mosley, both of March Engineering, for wildly different reasons. Herd felt there was definite benefit from the Tyrrell’s 6-wheel concept but that the four-wheels-at-the-front concept was a blind canyon. He reasoned that much of a car’s drag was actually from the enormous rear tires used in the 70’s. Employing 4 small front tires on two rear axles (four wheel drive) would, in his mind, be more effective.

Max Mosley, who at the time was the money man at March, saw the attention the P34 had generated and instantly saw a publicity coup for the cash strapped (and sponsor poor) team. When Herd mentioned he had an idea for a 6-wheeler, Mosley pushed for it to be developed and thus, the March 2-4-0 was born.

But where the P34 was born ready to race, the 2-4-0 was born ready for little more than photo ops. When the car was originally debuted to the press it was little more than a mock up. However, having made the cover of Autosport, the company now put all their effort into having the car ready for the track.

One of the serious roadblocks to getting the car ready was the complicated gearbox. The original design called for a very strong bespoke gearbox which the company could not afford to develop. Practicality intervened and the car was redesigned to use as many components from the team’s 761 F1 car as possible. The gearbox was also scaled back and in the end was not as strong as intended in the original design.

Unfortunately, the gearbox failed after only a handful of laps, leaving the car powered by only a single axle. Due to rain and a wet track during testing, the car’s poor performance was masked. Further attempts to race the six-wheeler amounted to some practice runs during the 1977 Brazilian GP weekend and then the project was shelved - at least as far as F1 was concerned.

The 2-4-0 gained a second life of sorts in the world of hillclimbs. Driver Roy Lane found success by converting his March 771 to a 2-4-0 by using the original March gearbox and other 6 wheeler components.

Perhaps the greatest success (definitely the most lucrative) for the March 2-4-0 was far away from the track, the asphalt track at least. Mosley pulled off a coup by selling Scalextric (the company that popularized slot car racing) on the car and they produced a best selling 1/32 scale slot car of the 2-4-0.

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It was Shakespeare who penned, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Truer words were never spoken and history is populated with examples of good-intentioned men doing evil once they have tasted power. The annals of Formula 1 are no different.

The sport has grown from a largely amateur affair to what is now a multi-billion dollar sports entertainment enterprise. Along the way some of Formula 1’s participants have become fantastically rich powerbrokers on the world stage. Certain of these powerbrokers have done better than others and today control the sport. Of course, I speak of Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley who respectively, have gained a great deal of money and power from F1.

The contribution of both men must be acknowledged. They wrested the sport from the well attired polo club set and made it the professional motorsport showpiece it is today. That process began nearly 30 years ago but for the past 15 plus years, both have reigned unopposed, sharing near absolute power.

Increasingly its obvious that near absolute power is not enough. Yesterday, the FIA announced that it was replacing its independent race stewart, Tony-Scott Andrews who retired at the end of 2007, with three FIA nominated race stewarts. These ‘amateurs’ will come from various FIA affiliated national racing organizations.

To oversee the process and assist the nominated stewarts in their judgments, Max Mosley is assigning his official representative Alan Donnelly. Given the authority that Donnelly has in his role its not unimaginable that his guidance might carry considerable weight with the stewarts. Its also not a terribly large leap to imagine that Donnelly’s guidance is really the thinly disguised hand of the FIA President.

This reorganization of the race stewarts erodes the separation of powers (political and judicial) within the sports governing body.   Of course, the President of the FIA will point out that he has no influence over the decisions of the race stewarts - he doesn’t participate in the ‘independent’ committee.  He’s right of course, on paper he’s not part of the process.  But, one must be naive to believe this is true in practice.

Under Mosley, F1 is moving closer and closer to totalitarian rule.  The power that lies in the FIA Presidency today is as much or more than when Mosley came to office in 1991. Ironically, Mosley ran for the Presidency of FISA (eventually brought under the FIA umbrella in 1993) in response to political interference affecting a 1991 stewarts ruling.

“What happened to Ayrton Senna two years ago in Japan, disgusted me, […]That is when I realised that Fisa was not a fair organisation.”

Then FISA/FIA President, Jean-Marie Balestre was widely reported to have intervened to ensure that the race stewards disqualified Senna from the race (costing him the championship.)  Mosley campaigned on the basis that Balestre, who was also president of the FIA and of the Fédération Française du Sport Automobile, could not effectively manage all of these roles together. Mosley won by 43 votes to 29. *

18 years later, it’s all coming full circle.  The FIA President will once again have influence over not just the rulebook but how the rules will be interpreted and administered.  From the idealistic outsider who rose to power on a platform of fairness, Max has become of very thing he campaigned to defeat - a tyrant.

* From Wikipedia

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Winter testing has just gotten underway for BMW so its a bit too soon to start firing chief designers and writing off the season but their new car is not drawing many accolades from its drivers. The F1.08 finished its first day of testing in Valencia, Spain behind the 2007 BMW driven by rookie tester, Marko Asmer. Day 2 was similarly poor. Could BMW be 2008’s Team Honda - from contenders to back markers in less than a year?

Veteran driver Nick Heidfeld has been candid in his assessment of the car, describing it as suffering from a balance problem. He believes they are behind in performance relative to their progress at this time last year. There are less than 50 days left before the F1 circus arrives in Melbourne, Australia to start the 2008 season so BMW will have its work cut out for itself.

The question is, can they get back on track? Fundamental problems were discovered with the Honda design last winter and the team nearly self destructed in its efforts to solve the problem. Experienced designers were sacked and at one point nearly everyone’s head was potentially on the chopping block. Can BMW stay focused and find a solution quickly enough to avoid falling to the midfield?

The answer is yes, probably. Nothing is ever certain in F1 but the team have a solid infrastructure, a state of the art wind tunnel and the budget to find their way forward. They also have two competent pilots in Heidfeld and Robert Kubica who know what they need from an F1 car to be competitive.

Waiting for BMW to stumble are Renault and WilliamsF1. Both teams are hungry, have at least one top driver, and know how to win in F1 - something BMW still needs to accomplish. There is no taking prisoners in F1 - just ask Honda. For all their recent success, BMW could find itself being mauled by rivals it easily had the measure of last season.

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After reading Max Mosley’s most recent interview on Formula1.com I have a real craving for waffles. I have no idea why. Maybe its because when an organization like the FIA fines one team 100 million dollars for stealing intellectual property, lets another IP thief off with a warning and then declares that the next team caught will get the boot, I think, “what a bunch of wafflers!”

McLaren is a racing team that builds a few very exclusive cars. They couldn’t afford to walk away from F1, or worse, get kicked out when they were found to be in possession of Ferrari data so they accepted the fine, ate some crow and were allowed to stay and play the game. When Renault were found to be in possession of McLaren data however, they got a mild slap on the wrist. Why? Because Renault is a car manufacturer that owns a racing team. One is vulnerable, the other is not.

Max can’t wield the heavy stick with the car manufacturers because he needs them to stay in the sport - now more than ever. F1 isn’t particularly healthy at present and he can’t afford to drive competitors away or simply kick them out of the sport. Under Mosley’s cost cutting formula, its now too expensive for new replacement teams to come into the top tier of racing - just ask Dave Richards who owns Prodrive - a very successful motosports company that was suppose to be starting in F1 this year but shelved the project over costs and instability in the rules.

Publicly, Max is talking tough but in the board room, he must be navigating a political minefield. McLaren was a convenient whipping boy and their case got the message out to the other teams about cheating. To the casual observer maybe it even looks like the FIA have their house it order.

I believe the opposite is true and it would only take a similar confrontation with Ferrari to prove how weak the FIA’s position is - despite the constant hyperbole in the press. Would the FIA threaten Ferrari with expulsion for any reason, real or imagined? No! At best the public would get a whitewash, a la the Renault incident and at worst, a pathetic excuse about how none of the rest of us really understand the sport or the rules.

A new season is almost upon us and I look forward to a feast that includes fairness, and competitive spirit, not waffles or sour grapes. Now pass the syrup, Max.

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With every new car launch in 2008 comes another explanation from Team ‘X’ of the intricacies of their ‘revolutionary’ aerodynamic developments. Press releases and technical analysis from trade journalists are the stuff that only a PhD in physics could truly understand or appreciate. To the casual observer or even a long time follower of the sport, the placement of tiny winglets and computer designed aero-foils is about as interesting as Grade 9 calculus.

“Does it have an extra wing? -No…”

“Is it turbo-charged with an afterburner? - No…”

“Does it have an engine for each wheel? - No…”

“Then what makes it different?”

Probably nothing as far as anyone outside of F1 is concerned.

It’s often been said that if the paint schemes on modern F1 cars were stripped off, most fans would not be able to tell the difference between a Ferrari and a BMW. New ideas are quickly copied (or stolen) by the other teams’ designers and eventually car design becomes a very homogeneous genetic soup. Nowadays, its more evolution through cloning than by innovation.

It wasn’t always so stale. In the 60’s and 70’s there was an explosion of new ideas and ‘outside the box’ thinking. Lotus designer Colin Chapman introduced both the monocoque chassis and ground effects to grand prix racing. The designs proved so successful that they are de rigueur to F1 design more than a quarter century later. However, equally creative ideas like four-wheel drive, and dual chassis’ proved to be evolutionary dead-ends and were abandoned. Darwin would be proud.

Standing out as the ultimate in new thinking was a car so wildly different from what had come before that it is, even today, an instantly recognizable icon of 70’s racing - the Tyrrell P34. Designed by Derrick Gardiner, the idea of four small front wheels instead of the normal sized two was envisioned as a way to reduce the drag on the car (smaller tires created a smaller frontal area) while maintaining the same amount of rubber making contact with the track.

The car’s unveiling in 1976 was greeted with gasps of astonishment by the press and it is still regarded as one of the most radical cars ever produced in the history of Formula 1. More astonishing is that this apparent albatross in design was competitive and successful straight away.

Building on a string of points scoring finishes and podiums, the Tyrrell Team quickly achieved the perfect race result when teammates Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depallier finished 1-2 in the 1976 Swiss Grand Prix. Sadly, this early glory was the high water mark for the car and it never won another race. Tire development on the car’s tiny 10-inch wheels proved too costly for the Goodyear Tire Company and the entire concept eventually had to be abandoned in 1977. The FIA killed the 6-wheel concept for good in 1983 when it mandated that race cars could only have four wheels.

Still, the P34 has remained an icon to F1 enthusiasts. It’s a testament to the adventurous thinking F1 used to embrace. Sadly, it also a reminder that as the rules have become more comprehensive and restrictive, innovation has slowly been squeezed out of the sport.

The P34 is not the last word on radical experimentation however. Before the door was shut on 6-wheel race cars, two other notable attempts were made to harness the power of six; the March 2-4-0 and the Williams FW07B/08B.

Stay tuned for Success on 6 Wheels Pt II

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