Matra MS84

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Jackie Stewart 1969 during training for the German Grand Prix in the Matra MS84 at the entrance to the carousel

The Matra MS84 was a wheel - Formula 1 , the race car in 1969 Matra built and Tyrrell was used sporadically in the World Cup.

1969 broke the great experiment with in F1 wheel drive - seaters from. In addition to Lotus , where the 63 was developed, McLaren and the engine manufacturer Cosworth also dealt with this technology. Matra did not want to be inferior to this development and so the MS84 was built in the French factory.

The car had a space frame, the 8-cylinder DFV engine from Cosworth and a gearbox rotated by 180 degrees. The four-wheel drive came from Ferguson Research , the power distribution to the front and rear wheels was variable and at the beginning of the test drives was 25 percent at the front and 75 percent at the rear. At the end of the season only rear-wheel drive was used. At 595 kg, the car was 60 kg heavier than the MS80 used in the same year .

The first race was planned for the Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort , but when Jackie Stewart was two seconds faster in training with the MS80, the MS84 was not used for understandable reasons. Stewart drove the car in every practice session this season, but each time chose the MS80 as the vehicle for racing. The debut race for the MS84 was driven by Jean-Pierre Beltoise in Great Britain , where he finished ninth.

At the Canadian Grand Prix in Mosport Park , Johnny Servoz-Gavin achieved the only world championship point that has ever been achieved with an all-wheel-drive formula car. However, he crossed the finish line six laps behind, with the car dragging itself slowly around the course in the last few laps after a defect in the front differential. After he only drove these last few kilometers with rear-wheel drive, it remained open whether the point was actually reached with all-wheel drive. Servoz-Gavin also drove the car in the USA and Mexico and crossed the finish line well behind the winner on both occasions.

At the end of the season, Matra also saw that all-wheel drive systems in Formula 1 would not represent the drive technology of the future, and the program ended.

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