Gustav Brunner

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Gustav Brunner (born September 12, 1950 in Graz / Styria ) is a former Austrian Formula 1 designer.

Career

Designed by Gustav Brunner: The RAM03 by the RAM Racing team (1985)
Ferrari F1 / 87 (1987)
Minardi PS01 (2001)
Toyota TF102 (2002)

Beginnings

Brunner was already active in motorsport in 1970. He worked as a designer at McNamara Racing in Lenggries. The chief designer was Jo Karasek from Vienna. McNamara was a former American GI who was stationed in Bad Tölz and built his racing team in Lenggries . His wife Bonnie was the wealthy daughter of a US newspaper publisher, who probably contributed the money. Were built at that time seaters for Formula V and Formula Ford , and Ford Capri Touring Car and Indy 500 race car for Mario Andretti . McNamara's customers included Niki Lauda , Helmut Marko and Helmut Koinigg .

formula 1

From 1978 Brunner was active in Formula 1 . He became known through his work at ATS , where he supported Nigel Stroud in the development of the ATS HS1 . After he left the team, Gustav Brunner took over the position of technical director. During this time he designed the ATS D3 and the ATS D4 with Tim Wardrop . However, the vehicles did not meet the expectations placed in them. Nevertheless, he gained a reputation for building good chassis with little financial means . Peter Sauber later said : "If it was a question of building a Formula 1 car in the jungle with the resources available, I would bring Brunner."

After a one-year break, Brunner returned to ATS, where he used modern composite fiber technology to manufacture the chassis for the D6 and D7 for the first time . Due to the lack of reliability of the BMW turbo engine and the less than satisfactory results, Brunner left the ATS team again.

In the early 1980s Brunner designed several racing cars for the Formula 2 team Maurer Motorsport , which were able to achieve some successes with the drivers Stefan Bellof and Beppe Gabbiani .

After Maurer stopped racing and had meanwhile worked as a development engineer for Riccardo Patrese on his Alfa Romeo , Brunner switched to the British RAM Racing team. There he developed the RAM 03 , which despite a good chassis could not exploit its full potential due to financial bottlenecks.

The team was disbanded at the end of the 1985 season and Gustav Brunner received an offer from Scuderia Ferrari to develop a chassis for the Indianapolis 500. But since this project was not carried out, Brunner shifted his work to the construction of the Ferrari F1 / 87 for the season 1987. Ferrari then hired the star designer John Barnard .

In the fall of 1987, Brunner returned to Günther Schmid, who had founded the RIAL team. Andrea de Cesaris was able to take a good fourth place with the Rial ARC1 at the 1988 USA Grand Prix in Detroit. But even the good results did not prevent another argument with team boss Günther Schmidt.

Gustav Brunner left the team again and went to Zakspeed and became race director there. Here he developed the Zakspeed 891 , which used a new and unproven eight-cylinder engine from Yamaha . After the team had only qualified twice in the whole of 1989 , Zakspeed stopped racing at the end of the year. For the 1990 season, Brunner moved to Leyton House , whose co-owner he became in late 1991. Here he celebrated his greatest success with second place at the French Grand Prix in 1990 by Ivan Capelli .

After the March team, which emerged from Leyton House in 1992, ceased operations, Brunner moved to the Italian racing team Minardi , for whom he designed the Minardi M193 in 1993 , a very compact, effective racing car that was the only vehicle in the 1993 season without active suspension started.

After only one year at Minardi, Brunner became Head of Research & Development at Ferrari, but returned to Minardi in 1998, where he became known for unconventional detailed solutions and the no-frills design with the underfunded team.

From 2002 to 2005 he worked as Technical Director at Toyota . In the course of an internal power struggle, Toyota fired him due to the lack of success. As a result, Brunner sued the Cologne labor court in 2006 for outstanding wage payments. Against the background of the allegation that Toyota Racing used Ferrari simulation software, both parties to the dispute avoided disclosing technical details.

Teams

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. “It's not just money” of March 12, 2002 at stern.de
  2. ↑ www.autosport.at
personal data
SURNAME Brunner, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian Formula 1 designer
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Graz