Brabham BT55
 A collection of Brabham racing cars from the 1980s. In front a BT56 from 1987, behind a BT55. |
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| Constructor: |
 Brabham
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| Designer: | Gordon Murray | ||||||||
| Predecessor: | Brabham BT54 | ||||||||
| Successor: | Brabham BT56 | ||||||||
| Technical specifications | |||||||||
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| Chassis: | Monocoque made of CFRP | ||||||||
| Engine: | BMW M 12/13 1.5 liter R 4 turbo |
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| Wheelbase: | 3408 mm | ||||||||
| Weight: | 555 kg | ||||||||
| Tires: | Pirelli | ||||||||
| Petrol: | Castrol | ||||||||
| statistics | |||||||||
| Driver: | 7. Riccardo Patrese 8. Elio de Angelis 8. Derek Warwick
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| First start: | 1986 Brazilian Grand Prix | ||||||||
| Last start: | 1986 Australian Grand Prix | ||||||||
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| World Cup points: | 2 | ||||||||
| Podiums: | - | ||||||||
| Leadership laps: | - | ||||||||
| Status: 1986 season end | |||||||||
The Brabham BT55 is a Formula 1 racing car of the team Brabham Racing Organization , which in the 1986 season was used. Riccardo Patrese , Elio de Angelis and Derek Warwick drove the car developed by Gordon Murray .
The BT55 caused a sensation because of its extremely flat design, which promised high contact pressure with low air resistance , but could not meet expectations and only achieved two points in the entire season. Technical problems very often led to the breakdown of the vehicles, and Elio de Angelis died on May 15 of that year after an accident on the test track at Le Castellet .
background
Brabham, a traditional racing team that was competitive but not constant in terms of performance in the mid-1970s, had become a top team again around 1980 thanks to the vehicles designed by Gordon Murray and the talent of driver Nelson Piquet and won the drivers' championships in 1981 and 1983 respectively. World Championship.
Since 1982, the team beyond working with the German engine suppliers BMW together and put the turbo engine of the type M12 first exclusive one. This engine was both a curse and a blessing for the team: On the one hand, this engine was one of the most powerful of its time and was able to prove its performance with Piquet's driver title in 1983. On the other hand, over time its weaknesses were clear: The engine lacked durability, also a high fuel consumption presented (whereas the FIA -Reglement the amount of fuel per vehicle more and more limited) and a poor pulling power ( turbo lag ) out.
Correspondingly, the performance of the vehicles used by Brabham in the 1984 and 1985 seasons continued to decline, and the racing team fell behind, especially since the engines from Honda , TAG / Porsche and Renault used in the vehicles of the competing teams were constantly being developed and also as V-engines with biturbo already had fundamental technical advantages over the BMW unit designed as an in- line engine .
technology
To counteract the stagnation, the team and Gordon Murray decided to take a radically different approach to the design of the vehicle for the 1986 season. The basis on which this happened was the finding that after the ban on the use of the ground effect , Formula 1 vehicles generated most of their downforce via the rear wing . Gordon Murray himself explained the origin of this idea that on the Brabham BT52 , which was used in the 1983 season, no additional downforce could be generated with a further enlargement of the rear wing, which is why the path to the rear wing itself should have been included in the considerations. Investigations in the wind tunnel led to the result that a laminar flow to the rear wing with as little interference as possible could optimize its use. For this reason, the vehicle to be developed, the BT55, should be designed as flat as possible.
To achieve this, the comparatively large BMW engine had to be modified. Corresponding dimensions could be achieved by turning the entire engine block by 72 ° on its side. In this way, the desired flat chassis could finally be constructed, which was only approx. 80 cm high and thus saved approx. 30 cm in height compared to its predecessor, the BT54 . The modified engine was also connected to a special 7-speed gearbox from Weismann, which, according to engine engineer Paul Rosche, was only available very late. As in the previous seasons, the vehicle had tires from Pirelli .
Further implications of the low design were the long wheelbase (approx. 40 cm longer than the BT54) and the unfamiliar position of the cockpit: the drivers practically lay on their backs, had to press their chins on their chests to be able to see forward, and could hardly move their arms to steer. Riccardo Patrese complained after test drives that he could hardly breathe in this position.
In total, over 117,000 hours of work are said to have gone into the development of the BT55 by February 1986 and costs of £ 6.8 million were expended. The engine output was estimated at 900 hp in racing and 1050 hp for the qualifications. The designers hoped for high cornering speeds and a maximum speed of almost 400 km / h from aerodynamics and the low center of gravity.
Sponsors and livery
Like all Brabham vehicles of the 1980s, the BT55 was mostly painted in dark blue and white. A noticeable element that was also found on the following BT56 is a windshield made of transparent dark blue plastic.
The main sponsors at BT55 were the Italian office equipment manufacturer Olivetti and the clothing company Emporio Armani . There were also sponsor stickers from BMW, Castrol and Pirelli.
The 1986 season
After two disappointing seasons in 1984 and 1985, Nelson Piquet , who had consequently failed to defend his title, left the team and moved to Williams . Riccardo Patrese returned after two rather unsuccessful years at Alfa Romeo and became the new No. 1 driver in the vehicle with starting number 7. The second cockpit was occupied by Bernie Ecclestone's team with the Italian Elio de Angelis , who had previously raced several times for Lotus was able to win, but had to leave this team after a season as a teammate of Ayrton Senna , because Lotus did not want to afford two top drivers in the long run.
The first races of the season were sobering; up to the Monaco Grand Prix , where Patrese was able to qualify as 6th, double-digit starting positions were the rule for the team. In addition, the cars retired six times in the first four races with defects, and Riccardo Patrese was able to score a point in Imola alone , although he was lying before the finish line due to lack of fuel.
Three days after the Monaco GP, test drives took place at the Paul Ricard Circuit , during which Elio de Angelis suffered a serious accident. When approaching the fast combination of curves "Verriere", the rear spoiler failed and his vehicle got out of control, rolled over and caught fire. In view of the reduced number of marshals for these test drives, it took some time before de Angelis could be freed from the vehicle, and the rescue with a rescue helicopter was also delayed. De Angelis died the following day, May 15, 1986, at the age of 28 as a result of smoke inhalation. As a consequence of this accident, the Le Castellet racetrack was significantly shortened for the French Grand Prix of that year, so that the accident site was no longer passed.
For the following race in Belgium , Brabham entered with only one vehicle ; a successor was only found at the Canadian Grand Prix in Derek Warwick, who had remained without a cockpit after a disappointing previous season at Renault. The BT55, on the other hand, could not prove itself in the following races, although, surprisingly, Patrese was able to score another point on a street circuit at the US Grand Prix in Detroit . On the other hand, the team's confidence in the new car sank to such an extent that three weeks later, Patrese was sent into the race again with the BT54 from the previous year at the British Grand Prix . However, Warwick was able to leave him well behind in qualifying, and Patrese retired in the race with engine problems.
In the remaining races of the season, however, no point placements were made. Patrese even dropped out in every race and was classified 13th in Mexico after a spin only because of the distance covered. Warwick, on the other hand, only finished just behind the points in Germany , but was unable to compete in the following race in Austria after a defect in Patrese's vehicle, which he had to give his BT55 to, and was eliminated in the remaining races of the season out.
If anything, the BT55 could indicate its potential through qualification placements alone. In Hockenheim Patrese was 7th and in Austria 4th, and in Monza Warwick again achieved 7th place. The best combined result of the two drivers in this respect was the race in Mexico, in which Patrese came in 5th and Warwick qualify for 7th place on the grid and, among other things , were able to leave vehicles from McLaren , Ferrari , Lotus and Benetton behind them that were now considered to be superior . Later, however, Warwick retired due to an engine failure and Patrese four laps before the finish due to a driving error; both drivers had been in 5th place at the time of their retirement.
Evaluation and problems
High expectations were set for the new BT55, but on the whole the vehicle was disappointing, although Gordon Murray's basic concept was confirmed: The aerodynamics of the BT55 combined high contact pressure with low air resistance and therefore allowed very high speeds. Derek Warwick achieved the highest speed recorded there at 344 km / h in Austria , and the Brabhams were among the fastest cars in the field on other fast routes such as the Hockenheimring and Monza .
On the other hand, the main problem was the engine technology: the modifications for use in the BT55 made the BMW unit not more reliable, but rather even more vulnerable. In the narrow chassis, the cooling of the engine was insufficient, so that the high temperatures led to rapid wear and tear and increased consumption of gasoline and engine oil. Gordon Murray reports that the oil temperature was consistently 30 to 50 percent higher than the BT54. The supply of the latter was also made significantly more difficult by the inclination of the engine. A similar effect affected the gearbox, in which the lubricating oil was exposed to centrifugal forces when cornering. In this way, Gordon Murray concluded, the actual power output of the engine fluctuated greatly. Another indication suggests that the engine has already lost up to 300 hp, depending on the outside temperature, due to the problems with cooling.
The weight distribution was also disadvantageous in view of the long wheelbase. In corners and when accelerating, traction decreased, which made the vehicle unpredictable and hampered the Brabham drivers on slower stretches. Ultimately, this was a vehicle that failed on fast routes because of its unreliability and on slower routes because of its disadvantageous driving behavior. The final assessment by Gordon Murray was that the vehicle had taken too big a step in too short a time and that the BT55 would have needed around six months of further development before it was used for the first time.
Team boss Bernie Ecclestone blamed Gordon Murray solely for the failures, whereupon he left the team and went to McLaren instead . The McLaren MP4 / 4 , which was used with great success by this team in 1988 , is sometimes viewed as a descendant of the BT55 and Gordon Murray himself was also quoted as saying that he switched to McLaren at the end of 1986 to "make the BT55 work" . In addition, detailed solutions such as B. the Weismann gearbox tailored to a low positioning of the engine has been taken over directly. However, Jo Ramírez , then coordinator of the McLaren team, and Steve Nichols , the chief designer of the MP4 / 4, contradict this representation. Nichols in particular emphasizes that the design of the MP4 / 4 is a further development of the previous year's MP4 / 3 , and the obvious changes were mainly due to the fact that the smaller Honda turbo engine used in the 1988 season and the reduced amount of fuel for turbo Vehicles would have made a much flatter design possible than the MP4 / 3 with the Porsche TAG engine built into it.
At the end of the 1986 season, BMW announced its factory withdrawal from Formula 1. The remaining stock of M12 motors was then bought up by Jackie Oliver and used by the Arrows and Ligier teams in the following season under the name Megatron . This did not apply to the tilted engines ordered by Brabham, which were used in the following year by Brabham in the more conservative Brabham BT56 , which was designed by Murray's successor Sergio Rinland . Although this vehicle was apparently more balanced than the BT55 and achieved a podium position in the 1987 season with Riccardo Patrese and Andrea de Cesaris , who joined the team for Derek Warwick , it was even more frequent overall.
Results
| year | team | engine | driver | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4th | 5 | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14th | 15th | 16 | Points | rank |
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| 1986 | Brabham |
BMW M12 / 13 turbo engine |
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2 | 9. | |
| Riccardo Patrese | DNF | DNF | 6th | DNF | 8th | DNF | 6th | 7th | DNF | DNF | DNF | DNF | DNF | 13 | DNF | ||||||
| Elio de Angelis | 8th | DNF | DNF | DNF | |||||||||||||||||
| Derek Warwick | DNF | 10 | 9 | 8th | 7th | DNF | DNS | DNF | DNF | DNF | DNF |
| Legend | ||
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| 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 |
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| () | Streak results | |
| underlined | Leader in the overall standings | |
literature
- Peter Higham: Formula 1: Car by Car 1980-89. RACE POINT PUB, London 2018, ISBN 978-1-91050-523-6 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Gary Watkins: The origins of McLaren-Honda's greatest racer. In: autosport.com. August 23, 2017, accessed September 6, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Ferdinand Bauer: Tiefflug , ACM-Echo 2/1986, p. 31, accessed on December 8, 2016
- ↑ a b c d e f eliodeangelis.info: The 1986 Brabham BMW ( Memento of October 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) , accessed on December 8, 2016
- ^ A b Dylan Smit: Turbo Tragedy - 1986 Brabham BT55 , carthrottle.com, accessed December 8, 2016
- ^ GP Mexico 1986 - race result. In: motorsportarchiv.de. Archived from the original on February 10, 2015 ; accessed on December 11, 2018 .
