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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Max Mosley has seen the light…or jumped on the budget capping bandwagon. In either case it looks like F1 is going to follow other major league sports by trying to manage how much teams can spend to win. No specific details have been released but according to Autosport.com it is known that engine costs, marketing and promotion and team principle salaries will not be part of the cap.

The F1 fraternity has 1-2 years to work out the system but you can believe that the devil will be in the details. F1 teams are notorious for finding loopholes in technical regulations and they will no doubt expend huge amounts of money and energy looking for ways around the budget cap. Its just in their nature.

Interestingly, Ferrari initially opposed the idea of budget caps and may still be against the idea. They were in favor of other cost saving initiatives like capping the number of wind tunnels a team could have. Ferrari are the only front running team with just one wind tunnel while Williams, Honda and McLaren all have two. Convincing the Italian marque to change its position could not have been easy and its possible that concessions needed to be made to get them to agree to a cap -or still need to be made.

An early suspicion is that driver salaries will quickly fall under the ‘marketing and promotions’ umbrella and be exempt from the cap. Its easy to imagine Kimi Raikkonen or Lewis Hamilton being paid a pittance to drive but millions to be in ads, to wear team logos and to attend sponsor events.

Its too soon to say how serious Formula 1 is about a budget cap but like the ‘green’ movement, there is a lot of political mileage in the idea. Getting rid of the perception that F1 is about how much money you spend can only be a good thing for the sport’s image.

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