Borgward-Kuhnke-Lotus

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A lotus 18

Borgward-Kuhnke-Lotus (also: BKL or BKL ) was a German motorsport team led by Kurt Kuhnke (1910–1969) that started a Lotus 18 with a Borgward engine in several races in the early 1960s .

The Lotus Borgward

The BKL team's emergency vehicle was a Lotus 18. Developed in Great Britain in 1959, the vehicle was the first racing car designed by Colin Chapman to feature a rear mid-engine. It is considered a milestone in motorsport history: it was extremely light, concentrated the masses in the middle of the vehicle and was easy to adapt to different engines. The 18 was made in around 150 copies and was reported by some drivers in Formula 1 , Formula 2 and Formula Junior from 1959 .

The German automobile manufacturer Borgward had developed a four-cylinder engine with 16 valves for use in racing in 1957. The engine, known as Borgward 30 , developed around 150 hp and is considered in the literature to be an "extraordinary engine" by the standards of the 1950s. The Borgward 30 was used in different chassis in European hillclimb races in 1958 and 1959 ; In addition, there were assignments for the British Racing Partnership (BRP) team in Formula 2. BRP driver Stirling Moss won four races in the Formula 2 championship with a Cooper-Borgward in 1959.

In the summer of 1962, the German racing driver Kurt Kuhnke took over two Lotus 18s that had previously been used in Formula 1 by Wolfgang Seidel . Seidel had reported the cars with four-cylinder engines from Coventry Climax . However, in autumn 1962 Kuhnke replaced the British engines with the Borgward 30. Both the car and the engine were considered obsolete in 1963, four and six years after their conception. Independently of Kuhnke, South African teams also developed combinations of the Lotus 18 and the Borgward engine; they ran in several South African races in the second half of 1962.

Races

1963

The first Formula 1 race to which Kuhnke's Lotus Borgward racing cars were registered was the Rome Grand Prix in May 1963, which was not part of the Formula 1 World Championship . The drivers were Kuhnke and Ernst Maring . Neither driver qualified for the race.

Another announcement was made about the Solitude Grand Prix in July 1963, also a race without a world championship. Kuhnke and Maring qualified to participate in the race. Kuhnke retired on the first lap due to an engine failure. Maring crossed the finish line in 16th, but was lapped nine times by the winner Jack Brabham (on a Brabham BT3 ).

Two weeks later, Kuhnke registered his Borgward Lotus for the German Grand Prix , the sixth round of the Formula 1 World Championship in 1963 . It was the team's first and only report about a world championship run. Kuhnke needed eleven and a half minutes for one lap in qualifying training at the Nürburgring , almost three minutes more than the fastest in training, Jim Clark in the factory - Lotus 25 . Kuhnke missed qualification by more than a minute.

A week later, Kuhnke and Maring appeared with their Borgward Lotus at the 12th Kanonloppet in Karlskoga , Sweden , a race that was held according to Formula 1 rules, but was not part of the world championship. Maring qualified tenth out of 15 participants. In the first run he crossed the finish line in tenth place, in the second run he retired prematurely due to a driving error.

1964

In the following year, BKL only entered both Lotus-Borgward for the Solitude Grand Prix. The drivers were Maring and the German helicopter pilot Joachim Diel, who here under the pseudonym “J. Parker ”. Maring finished the race, in which he had been lapped four times, in tenth and last place. Diel, on the other hand, was one of seven drivers who retired shortly after the start in an accident on a wet track.

There were no other missions by the BKL team.

literature

  • David Hodges: Racing cars from A – Z after 1945. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-613-01477-7 .
  • David Hodges: A – Z of Grand Prix Cars 1906–2000. 1st edition, London 2001, ISBN 1861263392 (English)
  • Mike Lawrence: Grand Prix Cars 1945-1965 , Motor Racing Publications 1998, ISBN 1899870393 (English)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the nomenclature cf. Lawrence: Grand Prix Cars 1945-65, p. 199.
  2. ^ Hodges: Racing Cars from A – Z after 1945, p. 145.
  3. ^ Ménard: La Grande Encyclopédie de la Formule 1, S: 353.
  4. ↑ Lawrence: Grand Prix Cars 1945-65, p. 199.
  5. ↑ Lawrence: Grand Prix Cars 1945-65, p. 199.
  6. ↑ Entry on the Grand Prix of Rome 1963 on the website www.formula2.net (accessed on September 6, 2012).
  7. ↑ Entry on the 1963 Solitude Grand Prix on the website www.formula2.net (accessed on September 6, 2012).
  8. ↑ Lawrence: Grand Prix Cars 1945-65, p. 199.