Chris Amon Racing

Amon
Surname	Chris Amon Racing
Companies
Company headquarters	New Zealand
Team boss	Chris Amon
statistics
First Grand Prix	Spain 1974
Last Grand Prix	Spain 1974
Race driven	1
Constructors' championship	-
Drivers World Championship	-
Race wins	-
Pole positions	-
Fastest laps	-
Points	-

Chris Amon Racing was the name of a short-lived racing team of New Zealand racing driver Chris Amon , with whom he competed in individual Formula 1 world championship races in 1974 .

The history

According to most observers, Chris Amon was one of the most talented racing drivers of the late 1960s and early 1970s. What made him special was the fact that, despite his talent and enthusiasm, he could never win a Formula 1 race. British journalist Maurice Hamilton summed this up with the words: "Chris Amon was the best winless racing driver in Formula 1 history".

Some observers attributed this to coincidence or said that Chris Amon had had bad luck. One of the reasons for the New Zealander's failure to win was, from an objective point of view, the fact that in the second half of his career he drove for teams that were not competitively organized or used second-rate material. In the 1960s , Amon was a works driver at Ferrari , in the 1972 Formula 1 season , Amon was a works driver for the French Matra team, which had increasingly lost touch after its separation from Tyrrell and ended its factory Formula 1 involvement at the end of this season . In 1973 Amon drove for the Italian Tecno team, which competed in Formula 1 with its own car and engine under the name "Martini Racing Team". Tecno was technically and organizationally overwhelmed and could only achieve a single world championship point in 1973. Chris Amon left the team, disappointed about its lack of competitiveness, before the end of the season and contested the last two races of the year as the third driver for Team Tyrrell.

Amon had no prospect of a driver's contract for the 1974 season, so that the path to self-employment emerged as the last alternative. As early as 1972, Chris Amon had made a brief appearance as an entrepreneur. Together with Aubrey Woods, the former manager of the BRM racing team , he founded Amon Racing Engines , a company that supplied racing engines to teams in Formula 2 . In fact, few drivers sourced their engines from Amon and the operation, having turned out to be unprofitable, was sold to March Engineering at some loss . Regardless of this experience, Chris Amon decided to compete in the 1974 Formula 1 season with his own, newly founded racing team for the world championship.

The Chris Amon Racing team

Chris Amon Racing was founded in November 1973. The team had a budget of £ 100,000 at the end of 1973. This amount was essentially raised by Amon's supporter, John Dalton.

The idea of drivers getting involved with their own racing team was not new. Private drivers had been around since the 1950s, and this concept was still followed by some pilots in the 1970s. Mike Beuttler, for example, had contested almost all world championship races with his Clarke-Mordaunt-Guthrie team from 1971 to 1973 . There were also countless pilots who only registered for individual races. They all usually use customer cars from large vehicle manufacturers, namely cars from March Engineering , more rarely from Brabham , Tyrrell or (later) Williams . Chris Amon's concept, however, went further than that of pure private drivers. Unlike her, he didn't just want to compete with his own team, but also with his own, self-designed and built car. There were also role models for this idea: Sir Jack Brabham was the first racing driver to successfully drive his own car. This was followed by Bruce McLaren and John Surtees ; in the late 1970s, Arturo Merzario followed the same path - less successfully .

In the first few months, Chris Amon also planned to build a car for the Formula 5000 ; a Repco engine that was to be based on an eight-cylinder from Holden was discussed here as the engine . Larry Perkins reported that Amon was hoping to sell some Formula 5000 cars and use them to fund the running of his Formula 1 team. However, this did not succeed; Right from the start, the company lacked the financial means to develop another vehicle in addition to the Formula 1 car.

Chris Amon attached great importance to simple structures when organizing the team. In an interview with auto sport magazine in January 1974, he said: “I want my team to be as simple as possible. I don't want to spend too much time on organizational tasks; i just wanna race For that I need a good chassis, a Cosworth engine and a small, enthusiastic crew. ”Part of the company was Australian racing driver Larry Perkins , who had previously achieved some good results in Formula 3. Perkins was supposed to take on the role of a mechanic on the one hand, and work as a test driver on the other and drive the development of the car.

The car: Amon F101

Amon F101

The concept

The 35-year-old designer Gordon Fowell , who had little experience in building racing cars, was hired as technical director . In the summer of 1973, Fowell had received an order from Tecno to design a replacement vehicle for the unsuitable Tecno PA123; this new car, called the Goral E 731, was just as hopeless as its predecessor, according to Amon, and it was only used in individual races. Chris Amon saw something positive in Fowell's lack of experience because it would allow Fowell to come up with fresh ideas without being biased. Amon's concept was to build the car outside of the house, in the workshop of John Thompson, who had already made cars for Scuderia Ferrari , Surtees and Tecno.

The implementation

Gordon Fowell designed a car for Chris Amon that was ambiguous in some ways. On the one hand it corresponded in many ways to the popular in the 1970s model of modular cars: It consisted of a square aluminum - monocoque with purchased parts, such as suspension parts from Koni, a DG-400 five-speed gearbox from Hewland and communications eight-cylinder from Cosworth . On the other hand, there were some special features that were ahead of their time:

Above all, this included the location of the fuel tank, which was located between the driver's seat and the engine. The AF101 was the first Formula 1 car with this arrangement. Until then it was common practice to position numerous small tanks around the driver. On the one hand, Fowell's concept pursued safety concerns, on the other hand, he managed to achieve a central center of gravity for the car. The AF101 was a pioneer in this regard.

The design of the air inlet of the airbox was also unusual. It was rectangular and ran across the direction of travel.

Another special feature of the AF101 in its initial form was an eye-catching double front wing: a wing with an inverted orientation was installed at the nose of the vehicle; behind it there was an additional conventional wing above the front axle. Both together should create better flow at high speeds. In fact, this concept turned out to be unsuitable: Initial test drives showed that no downforce but lift was produced at the front end. In the end, this special feature had to be removed before the first race and the car had to be equipped with a conventional front wing.

The problems with the realization

Overall, the team suffered from numerous difficulties in the first few months of 1974:

At first, the schedule set by Chris Amon could not be kept. The production of the car at John Thompson took much longer than planned. Amon had initially planned to compete with his car in the first races of the world championship, which took place in South America in January 1974. At that time, however, the AF101 was not yet assembled. The car wasn't ready for the Race of Champions in March 1974 either.

When the car was finally completed at the end of March 1974, the aerodynamics proved to be problematic. Even without the dubious double wing at the front, the AF 101 was not easy to drive. It took a number of test drives to improve aerodynamics.

Then countless reliability problems emerged during the test drives. The car was inherently unstable and various parts broke or fell off. While driving the AF 101 on the Goodwood Circuit, Amon suffered a serious accident on a high-speed lap, which he survived unscathed.

Another problem was finally the Firestone tires that Amon used: In view of the fact that Firestone wanted to withdraw from Formula 1 at the end of 1974, the further development of the tires had already ceased, so that they stood out against the competition from Goodyear , with the more successful teams were clearly inferior.

Due to the time lag, the defects and the aerodynamic problems, the team's budget was largely exhausted before the first race.

They run

The International Trophy 1974

Chris Amon Racing made his debut at the BRDC International Trophy on April 7, 1974 at the Silverstone Circuit , a race that was not part of the Formula 1 World Championship . Amon took part in qualifying and achieved a time that ultimately meant 28th place on the grid. Due to a mechanical problem that could not be resolved on site, the Chris Amon Racing Team withdrew prematurely without participating in the race.

The 1974 Spanish Grand Prix

The first report of a world championship race was made on the occasion of the Spanish Grand Prix 1974 in Jarama at the end of April 1974. During the entire race, the car tended to vibrate considerably, especially when braking and making the car almost impassable. Nevertheless, Chris Amon was able to qualify for 24th place on the grid, 3.3 seconds behind pole time, ahead of Rikky from Opel in the second factory Brabham and Tim Schenken in the Trojan . In the race, Amon retired after 22 laps. Sometimes a brake defect is reported for the failure, according to other sources a front wheel came off during the race. The Spanish Grand Prix was to be the only race the Amon AF101 competed in.

The team did not compete at the Belgian Grand Prix in Nivelles-Baulers .

The 1974 Monaco Grand Prix

The next message came about the Monaco Grand Prix . The team had modified the car considerably in the past four weeks. There were some stiffeners in the car that were supposed to soften the vibrations; a new front wing was also installed and the position of the radiators was changed. Chris Amon qualified for 20th place on the grid, one position behind Jacky Ickx, who drove a factory Lotus, and ahead of Graham Hill in his Hill-Lola. The team did not take part in the race itself. The wheel hub was still a problem for the car and the team could not rule out the possibility that a wheel would fall off again during the race due to the defective hub. In view of this, an accident in the race could not be ruled out, especially in the narrow streets of Monaco. Amon wanted to avoid this - and a possible expensive repair as a result - in view of the difficult financial situation, so he withdrew the team before the race.

The 1974 German Grand Prix

The next race for which Chris Amon Racing appeared was the German Grand Prix on the (old) Nürburgring . The car had again been modified in some areas; in particular there was another new front wing. First, Chris Amon registered himself as a driver. Despite illness, he took part in Friday training and achieved a lap time of eight and a half minutes; so his deficit on the future pole of Niki Lauda was almost one and a half minutes. On the Saturday before the race, Amon's health deteriorated, so he passed the car on to Larry Perkins . Perkins failed to qualify; he was by far the slowest of the timed practice. His gap to Niki Lauda's pole time was 45 seconds; Perkins didn't qualify. As both drivers (with the same car) completed timed laps on different days, Chris Amon Racing appears in the statistics of this race with two drivers.

The team again skipped the Austrian Grand Prix .

The 1974 Italian Grand Prix

Chris Amon registered his team again for the Italian Grand Prix . The AF101 now had a fifth different version of the front wing. In qualifying he was penultimate, 5 seconds behind Lauda's pole time; Only Leo Kinnunen was slower in the private surtees of the AAW Finland Racing Team .

After that, Chris Amon Racing closed its gates forever. The team had gone bankrupt and Amon saw no way to keep racing.

After the end of the team

After the end of his own racing team drove Chris Amon in the Formula 1 1974 season two races with BRM in 1975 then two races with the Ensign team, for which he denied in 1976 almost the entire season. Amon drove his last race for Walter Wolf Racing at the end of 1976 .

Larry Perkins appeared in 1976 with a car called Boro 001 for the Dutch team HB Bewaking Systems (Formula 1) in Formula 1, before he made individual attempts to qualify in 1976 for the traditional team BRM, which was in the process of being dissolved.

The AF 101 was never used again in a Formula 1 race. The car still exists. It was restored a few years ago and now takes part in historic races.

Chris Amon's analysis

Regarding the motivation to set up your own team and the team's problems, Amon said in April 1998:

"After 11 frustrating years in Formula 1, I knew exactly what to ask of a racing car. I wanted a bespoke car and let Gordon Fowell implement my ideas. But the project turned out to be too ambitious for my financial means. I was sure my testing experience would be enough to develop the car properly, but whenever I tried to drive it, something broke. (...) When I drove the car for the first time at Goodwood, I remembered The same thing happened at Silverstone. Some other parts also fell off. I just had to sit in the car and something fell off. (...). It was a high-tech company that we ran in a garage If we had tried something more down-to-earth, we could have been more successful ".

A few years earlier, Chris Amon was quoted as follows: "My car was the only racing car that never won a cent of entry or prize money". That may have been true at the time; later years, however, were to produce cars whose hopelessness was more obvious than that of the AF101.

literature

Eoin S. Young : Forza Amon! A Biography of Chris Amon. Haynes Group, 2004, ISBN 1-84425-016-4 .
Adriano Cimarosti : The Century of Racing. 1st edition, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-613-01848-9 .
David Hodges : Racing cars from AZ after 1945. 1st edition, Stuttgart 1993
Heinz Prüller : "Bang and Fall: Big ideas burst like soap bubbles - the flops of Formula 1", in: auto motor und sport 6/1987.
auto sport April 1998: Interview with Chris Amon.