For the student of automotive history who prefers to concentrate on the technical side of the sport, surely there is no finer topic than the history of racing fuel, particularly those used for Grand Prix racing. By the 1920s, blends of Grand Prix fuel are reported to have consisted of mixtures of ethanol, benzol (a mixture of benzene, toluene and xylene) and the gasoline of the day. Later, and by the late ’30s, ethanol was replaced by the higher specific energy and increased blending...
Few who have ever witnessed a vehicle fire, let alone one in a Grand Prix machine, will ever forget the foreboding, the simple sheer terror of it all, and with it the intense heat, once alight and without proper fire-fighting equipment, as bystanders we can do very little. As a youth I still remember watching on television Lorenzo Bandini’s fiery demise at the 1967 Monaco race and Roger Williamson’s in Holland some five years later. Such images are still indelibly printed in my...
Setting aside the Yuletide festivities for yet another year, Formula One teams will now be looking towards the 2013 season and the first test session at Jerez in February. During the next couple of weeks therefore, for engine suppliers this will mean final assembly and sign-off of dyno testing of the last of the 2.4 litre V8s, since come 2014 a totally new power unit design is to be unleashed. With its new-found wish to ‘assist’ the wider automotive industry, V8 engines...