Alfa Romeo 185T

Alfa Romeo 185T

Alfa Romeo 185T
Constructor:	Euroracing Alfa Romeo
Designer:	John Gentry
Predecessor:	Alfa Romeo 184T
Technical specifications
Chassis:	carbon fiber reinforced plastic
Tires:	Goodyear
Petrol:	Agip
statistics
Driver:	22. Riccardo Patrese 23. Eddie Cheever
First start:	1985 Brazilian Grand Prix
Last start:	1985 British Grand Prix
Starts Victories Poles SR 15th - - -
World Cup points:	-
Podiums:	-
Leadership laps:	-

The Alfa Romeo 185T (also Euroracing 185T ) was a Formula 1 racing car that the Italian team Euroracing launched for some races in the 1985 season . He was registered for the Benetton Team Alfa Romeo . The 185T was the last vehicle to appear in Formula 1 under the brand name Alfa Romeo . He was unsuccessful in sporting terms: the team did not achieve any world championship points with him. After eight races, Euroracing replaced it with the reactivated predecessor Alfa Romeo 184T .

background

The Italian state group Alfa Romeo had been involved as an engine supplier for the Brabham team in Formula 1 since 1976 . Since 1979 , Alfa Romeo has also had a works team that was managed by the subsidiary Autodelta until 1982 and by the independent Milanese team Euroracing from 1983 . From 1983, Euroracing was responsible for designing the emergency vehicles, while Autodelta was responsible for developing the engines. Since 1983 the team has been using an Alfa Romeo 890T turbo engine developed under the direction of Carlo Chiti , which earned its drivers two second places and a total of 18 world championship points in its debut year. 1984 was less successful: the engine, which had hardly been further developed, was only competitive to a limited extent in comparison with the more modern engines from BMW or Porsche and proved to be unreliable. In 1984, the high consumption of the eight-cylinder forced the charge pressure to be limited, which resulted in a reduction in output.

For the 1985 season, in which every team now used turbo engines, Euroracing developed a new chassis with the 185T. But the combination of the chassis and the revised version of the 890T engine by Autodelta did not prove successful.

technology

chassis

The British engineer John Gentry is usually named as the responsible designer of the 185T . However, Gentry only worked for Euroracing for two months: In November and December 1984 he designed the basis for the 185T; then he left the Milan team. The Euroracing engineers Mario Tollentino and Bruno Zava then took on the detailed development of the new car .

In technical terms, the 185T was an evolution of the previous model, which in turn went back to the 183T developed by Gérard Ducarouge in 1983. The main changes of the 185T compared to the 184T concerned the suspension and the monocoque:

While the double wishbone suspension of the 184T with tension struts was taken over unchanged on the front wheels, Gentry designed a new system for the rear axle of the 185T in which the spring / damper units located transversely to the direction of travel above the differential were actuated via push rods.

Gentry designed a new monocoque made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic for the 185T that was flatter and lower than that of its predecessor. In contrast to the case of the 184T, it was made by the Milan-based aerospace supplier Monofrini. The body has been revised in some details. The modifications were based on tests in the Dallara wind tunnel .

Regardless, the aerodynamics of the 185T was just as problematic as the previous model. In order to reduce the thermal load on the engine, the engineers enlarged the radiators located in the side pods. This resulted in large-volume side pods that were moved far to the front and “countered the airflow”. In the spring, the Euroracing engineers changed the outlet openings for the cooling air. They were moved further back and enlarged. This made it possible to improve the cooling of the engine; however, the new shape of the side pods hindered the flow of air to the rear wing, so that downforce was impaired.

The 185T was heavier than its predecessor. At the beginning of the season, his weight was 45 kg above the permitted minimum weight.

engine

For the 1985 season, the 890T engine was extensively revised for the first time since its debut. The engineer in charge was Gianni Tonti , who succeeded Carlo Chiti at Autodelta, who set up his own company Motori Moderni in September 1984 and provided an engine for the Minardi team in 1985 . Tonti replaced the Avio turbochargers in use since 1983 and supplied by an Alfa Romeo subsidiary with units from KKK , which had already been used on the first prototypes of the engine in 1981 before a corporate policy decision was made in favor of the Avio charger. In addition, Tonti revised the mixture preparation in the winter of 1984/85. First, the mechanical Spica injection was supplemented by a control system from Jofa , which analogously controlled the amount of petrol used and reduced consumption by 8 to 10 percent. Two races later, at the San Marino Grand Prix , the 890T engines of the Alfa works team received electronic gasoline injection from Bosch , which conceptually corresponded to the system used by BMW and TAG , but was at the level of development from summer 1984. Thanks to these changes, the engine could be run with 3.8 bar maximum boost pressure in qualifying trim and 3.0 bar in racing mode, according to the factory. Autodelta put the power of the engine at 900 hp in qualifying and 720 hp in the race configuration. Alfa driver Eddie Cheever thought this was exaggerated and instead assumed 850 or 700 hp. Based on this, the Alfa engine lacked up to 300 hp on the turbo engines from Honda .

production

Euroracing produced a total of three copies of the 185T. The first vehicle was shown to the public in February 1985 on Alfa Romeo's test track in Balocco, northern Italy , before being subjected to an initial functional test in Imola four weeks later . The second car was only ready for the opening race in Rio de Janeiro ; a third vehicle appeared at the San Marino Grand Prix . A 185T was badly damaged at the Canadian Grand Prix in a fire caused by an exploded turbocharger.

Races

Was disappointed with the 185T: Riccardo Patrese

The team had high hopes for the 185T; Alfa Romeo's management expected "at least one win" in the 1985 season. These expectations were not fulfilled. Riccardo Patrese and Eddie Cheever, who remained with the team as drivers, qualified almost exclusively for starting positions in the midfield until the summer of 1985; an exception was the Monaco Grand Prix , where Eddie Cheever started from fourth position. In the races, the 185T proved to be inefficient and unreliable: Cheever dropped out four times, Patrese five times. Each driver only crossed the finish line three times with the 185T without scoring points. In addition to technical deficits, there were occasional driving errors: At the Portuguese Grand Prix , the second race of the season, Cheever and Patrese collided after several attempts to overtake each other, damaging their cars and pushing Williams, driven by Nigel Mansell, out of the Run.

After the French Grand Prix in July 1985, the team abandoned the 185T. At the following race in Great Britain , Cheever initially received a version of last year's car called the Alfa Romeo 184TB , and Patrese also drove the old car from the German Grand Prix .

reviews

Gustav Brunner , 1984 at Euroracing Patreses racing engineer, criticized that the 185T had been designed “by an engine man” exclusively according to engine-related aspects. The chassis and body design are subordinate to the needs of the engine. This can be seen, among other things, in the large side pods, which destroyed the aerodynamics of the car.

Riccardo Patrese went further in his criticism. With a gap of 15 years, he described the 185T as the worst Formula 1 car he had ever driven in 2000.

In the late summer of 1985, Eddie Cheever called the car “an overweight freak”, and attempts to improve it are pointless.

Re-use

Alfa Romeo stopped Formula 1 operations at the end of the 1985 season. The development of the new four-cylinder turbo engine of the Alfa Romeo 415T type , which was to be made available to an independent team in the 1987 season, was not affected . Euroracing tested the engine on behalf of Alfa Romeo in May 1986 in a modified 185T on the in-house track in Balocco; The driver was Alfa's test pilot Giorgio Francia . In July 1986, Alfa Romeo signed an agreement with the French Équipe Ligier , which was to use the four-cylinder turbo engine in the 1987 season. Ligier finally designed the Ligier JS29 for the engine , which was first tested with the 415T in January 1987. Shortly before the first race of the season, however, there was a break between Alfa Romeo and Ligier, which was justified in the public image with derogatory remarks by Ligier driver René Arnoux about the Alfa engine, but was actually due to a political decision by the Fiat group, who had taken over Alfa Romeo in 1986 and did not need any other pillar in Formula 1 besides Scuderia Ferrari, which also belongs to the group . Alfa Romeo withdrew the engine and did not offer it to any other team. Ligier then switched to Megatron engines.

Race results

season	No.	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	10	11	12	13	14th	15th	16	Points	rank
1985 Formula 1 World Championship																		0	-
R. Patrese	22nd	DNF	DNF	DNF	DNF	10	DNF	11	9
E. Cheever	23	DNF	DNF	DNF	DNF	17th	9	10

Legend
colour	abbreviation	meaning
gold	-	victory
silver	-	2nd place
bronze	-	3rd place
green	-	Placement in the points
blue	-	Classified outside the point ranks
violet	DNF	Race not finished (did not finish)
	NC	not classified
red	DNQ	did not qualify
	DNPQ	failed in pre-qualification (did not pre-qualify)
black	DSQ	disqualified
White	DNS	not at the start (did not start)
	WD	withdrawn
Light Blue	PO	only participated in the training (practiced only)
	TD	Friday test driver
without	DNP	did not participate in the training (did not practice)
	INJ	injured or sick
	EX	excluded
	DNA	did not arrive
	C.	Race canceled
		no participation in the World Cup
other	P / bold	Pole position
	SR / italic	Fastest race lap
	*	not at the finish, but counted due to the distance covered
	()	Streak results
	underlined	Leader in the overall standings

literature

• Ian Bramsey: The 1000 bhp Grand Prix Cars , 1988 (GT Foulis & Co. Ltd), ISBN 978-0-85429-617-0 (English)
• Adriano Cimarosti: The Century of Racing . Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-613-01848-9 .
• Adam Cooper: Out with a whimper . Riccardo Patrese on “The Worst Car I ever drove”. In: Motorsport, issue 2/2000.
• David Hodges: AZ of Grand Prix Cars 1906-2001 . 2001 (Crowood Press), ISBN 1-86126-339-2 (English).
• David Hodges: Racing cars from AZ after 1993 . Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-613-01477-7 .
• Pierre Ménard: La Grande Encyclopédie de la Formule 1 . 2nd edition, St. Sulpice, 2000, ISBN 2-940125-45-7 (French).
• Günther Wiesinger: “Alfa deserves nothing else” . Interview with Eddie Cheever about the Alfa Romeo 185T and the 1985 season in: Motorsport Aktuell, issue 37/1985, p. 16.

Web links

Commons : Alfa Romeo 185T  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The contemporary registration lists and most of the literature list the car as the Alfa Romeo 185T, cf. z. B. Hodges: Rennwagen from AZ after 1945, p. 14, also Ménard: La Grande Encyclopédie de la Formule 1, p. 114 f and motorsport aktuell, issues 1–3 to 25/1985. Parts of the specialist literature use the name Euroracing 185T instead, cf. z. B. Bramsey, p. 46 f.
2. ↑ Alfa Romeo belonged from 1933 to the group IRI (Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale), which was owned by the Italian state.
3. ↑ An exception were Tyrrell and Minardi, who used Cosworth naturally aspirated engines for individual races.
4. ↑ See e.g. B. Hodges: Racing Cars from AZ after 1945, p. 14.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d} Bramsey, p. 46.
6. ↑ ^{a b c} motorsport aktuell, issue 14/1985, p. 23.
7. ↑ ^{a b c} motorsport aktuell, issue 37/1985, p. 16.
8. ↑ motorsport aktuell, issue 14/1985, p. 18.
9. ↑ On the whole: Bramsey, p. 40.
10. ↑ motorsport aktuell, issue 26/1985, p. 8.
11. ↑ motorsport aktuell, issue 18/1985, p. 8.
12. ↑ motorsport aktuell, issue 32/1985, p. 8.
13. ↑ Motorsport, issue 2/2000.
14. ↑ Bramsey, S. 41st
15. ↑ motorsport aktuell, issue 15/1987, p. 23.
16. ↑ Bramsey, p. 42.