Forgotten F1 Teams – Eifelland
- Length: 3:26
- Size: 3.2 MB
- File: forgotten7.mp3
- Transcript: forgotten7.pdf
- Torrent: forgotten7.torrent
Welcome to the final episode in this Sidepodcast mini series – Forgotten F1 Teams. We’ve covered from the lows of Life to the highs of Arrows, and now it’s time to check in with our final team – Eifelland.
In your travels, you may have come across a German caravan company called Eifelland Wohnwagenbau. In the 1970s, Eifelland owner Gunther Henerici started sponsoring a couple of teams in the lower formulas, plus German F1 driver Rolf Stommelen. In 1972, Henerici decided that he’d set up his own team for Stommelen and enter the world of F1 constructors. He bought a March 721 chassis, and commissioned Luigi Colani to redesign it. This is where the fun starts.
Colani had good credentials, having designed several successful sportscars, but he didn’t necessarily have all the knowledge required to create a Formula 1 car. Either that, or he was just having a laugh. The rear wing on his design was simply an extension of the bodywork, curving upwards, with no gaps for the air to squeeze through. The front wing was just as odd, and then Colani went and installed an airbox ahead of the driver for good measure. The best bit of the car, though, was the lack of wing mirrors. Colani decided the best way for a driver to see whether he was about to be lapped was by means of a periscope mirror, starting directly in the driver’s line of vision, and extending upwards. With a V8 Cosworth engine and some Goodyear tyres, the Eifelland car was launched.
During testing, it seemed as if Colani’s idea might work, as some fast times were recorded, but the car lacked downforce, and the unusual wings were causing heating problems. The bodywork was swiftly redesigned to include a more conventional rear wing. In fact, Colani’s designs were gradually eroded from the car as more standard parts were integrated to the chassis. In the hands of Stommelen, the Eifelland only entered 8 races in Formula 1, but was respectable throughout.
The first round at South Africa saw a 13th place finish, and in Monaco, Stommelen was 10th. The car was to go no higher than 10th in it’s participation but recorded that finishing position again at the 6th round in Britain. It wasn’t until Germany, the next race, that the Eifelland suffered its first mechanical retirement, due to some electrical problems. This is pretty impressive for a brand new rookie car trying to recover from some bizarre initial designs. Notably, at several opportunities, the Eifelland showed up the works March team, proving that whatever was going on with their aerodynamics wasn’t that bad.
Unfortunately, by this time, Henerici was beginning to have doubts about the financial benefits of being involved in the sport, and he sold the caravan business to window manufacturer’s Meeth. The team turned up to Austria, racing under the name Team Stommelen. They were running in 15th before the engine gave out and Stommelen had to retire. Eifelland’s new boss wasn’t interested in racing at all, and pulled the team out before the end of the season.
The team assets were sold to Hexagon Racing, who took part in some non-championship events, and also never made their mark on motorsport.
That’s it for this show, and this series of Forgotten F1 Teams. I hope you’ve enjoyed the trip down memory lane, and I’d love to hear your feedback on the blog sidepodcast.com or via voicemail 0121 28 87225.
Theme music: Bloc Party, I Still Remember.
August 13th, 2008 at 20:36 #1 - me said:
i cannot imagine why a periscope mirror didn’t take off? that’s gotta be my favourite design innovation of all time.
August 13th, 2008 at 20:37 #2 - Ryan said:
Great podcast!
I did some quick digging and came across this link, in case anyone wanted to see the periscope mirror
http://www.research-racing.de/Eifelland1.htm
August 13th, 2008 at 20:39 #3 - me said:
i love it more and more with each passing minute!
August 13th, 2008 at 21:10 #4 - Jordan Allen said:
This trip down memory lane had so many twists and turns, ups and downs, and so many littered car wrecks that I could have sworen that I was on the Nordschleife again….
Strange, it looks likes this signpost says “Fuchsrohre”…..
August 13th, 2008 at 21:40 #5 - Steven Roy said:
Well done Christine. No-one was expecting Eifelland. It may have been odd but at least it showed the level of innovation of the time and the amount of variety in car design.
I look forward to the follow up series and can’t wait for you to do Andrea Moda.
August 14th, 2008 at 13:24 #6 - Graham said:
Thanks for this mini-series, excellent as usual.
The experimentation that was so much part of the 1970s added to another dimension to the sport. It also got me thinking, especially after reading David Coultard’s comments (http://www.planetf1.com). The way the FIA F1 rules are structured at the moment there is very little scope for innovation. If the FIA is really committed to ‘greening’ the sport, and I think they should be, then they need to re-focus the rules. KERS may be a good idea but it is probably not the only one. Following on from DC’s comments on banning refueling the FIA should progressively reduce the fuel allowed each year to encourage more efficient engines and promote the introduction of alternates to the current internal combustion engine as the only power source.
Or am I just a babbling idiot?
August 14th, 2008 at 13:58 #7 - Steven Roy said:
You have to be careful with reducing the fuel Graham. In principle you are right but in the 80s they tried that and a lot of races turned into economy runs. Drivers were literally sitting watching a fuel flow guage in their cokpit to see how fast they could go. It was deadly dull. F1 priority should be to provide exciting racing. All the rest is just window dressing.
August 14th, 2008 at 14:00 #8 - Alianora La Canta said:
I look forward to the follow up series and can’t wait for you to do Andrea Moda. {Steven Roy – 2 comments ago}
That would be great, though everyone remembers Andrea Moda for how awful they were…
August 14th, 2008 at 20:16 #9 - Alex Andronov said:
I do believe there is something to be said, just about, for the FIAs suggestions on KERS. Basically the only way you’ll get them to do anything green is if you let them go faster than they can now. I wonder how important the rev limiter is to this. If they were unlimited then it would be almost impossible to allow the cars to go faster on KERS in some kind of controlled way…
August 15th, 2008 at 11:24 #10 - Graham said:
Steven Roy, I did not think about just doing economy runs we definitely do not want that. I wonder if slowing down the fuel feed rate from the fuel rigs would encourage greater fuel efficiency without slowing down the action. In any case not allowing teams to change their engines seems counter productive to me.
August 15th, 2008 at 11:27 #11 - Alianora La Canta said:
Update: I’ve just received my post. I got an E for AS Spanish (not brilliant, but I’m happy to have passed) and the September issue of F1 Racing.
That’s me happy for a while
August 15th, 2008 at 11:37 #12 - me said:
yay and yay. well done you.
haven’t received our f1r yet. don’t forget to look out for scott’s question.
August 15th, 2008 at 11:54 #13 - Kris said:
Thanks for the link, Ryan: – some pictures were exactly what I needed to see there… – wonderful as your description was, Christine, there are some things that need to be seen to be believed…
August 15th, 2008 at 12:05 #14 - Alianora La Canta said:
What question did Scott asked? It’s not been printed under the name he uses in this forum. One thing I will say from the questions is that there appear to be some people really envious of Vijay. I’m trying not to read the answers until I read the bit of the magazine that comes before them, but some of the questions were just so bizarre in the context that I couldn’t resist…
August 15th, 2008 at 12:07 #15 - Christine said:
Didn’t Stuart say letter rather than question?
August 15th, 2008 at 12:08 #16 - me said:
erm, something for barrichello maybe?
August 15th, 2008 at 12:10 #17 - Steven Roy said:
KERS doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. I have written about this on a few sites so anyone who has read my views before would be as well skipping this.
To be fuel efficient and environmentally friendly in a road car the last thing you do is arrive at a hazard and jump on the brakes. You should anticipate the situation and ease of the throttle and let the speed decay. In cities it is inevitable that a lot of braking will take place for every litre of fuel burnt however on a motorway the brake:fuel ratio is practically zero. So instead of KERS cutting CO2 it is increasing it because more fuel is being burnt hauling 40 or 50 kg of KERS and ancilaries. They may eventually get to 20 kg in F1 but they won’t on the road.
Think how much CO2 is generated making the KERS, fitting it to the car, mining and transporting the raw materials etc and imagine how hard and how often you are going to have to brake to get close to being CO2 positive. McLaren originally came up with KERS to gain performance in F1 not to save the planet. Max is using it to look green not to be green.
Max recently said that he couldn’t imagine anyone would be building a car in ten years that was not recovering heat from its brakes. Hands up everyone who thinks their brakes produce more heat than their engine. Nobody? Just Max then. Imagine how much waste heat there is from an engine on a four hour motorway journey compared to waste heat from the brakes. Every engine in every car is pouring out masses of waste heat that Max thinks is OK but the insignificant amount of heat from the brakes….
Graham,
I want pit stops banned to improve the racing but if teams were forced to haull all that extra fuel from the start they would be more inclined to try to reduce fuel consumption. I am sure they do that anyway. Personally racing is racing and nothing to do with saving the planet. All the green stuff is window dressing. Honda have their carefully cultivated green image and they made a big deal of gaining ISO 14001 certification. At the same time they are running 4 wind tunnels. How can you run 4 wind tunnels and claim to be green? How can you run 4 wind tunnels and be so slow?
August 15th, 2008 at 12:11 #18 - Steven Roy said:
Well done on the pass Ali.
August 15th, 2008 at 12:24 #19 - Alianora La Canta said:
Didn’t Stuart say letter rather than question? {Christine – 4 comments ago}
Silly me – I’ve found the letter now. Bottom-right hand corner of the main cluster. And the reply is pretty amusing, albeit not the one I was expecting (I’m trying not to ruin the surprise for those wanting to buy their copy through the shops).
August 15th, 2008 at 12:24 #20 - Alianora La Canta said:
And thanks for the congratulations, Steven
August 15th, 2008 at 12:58 #21 - Stuart Codling said:
Well done on the pass, Ali. Not sure if I’d want to trust exam results to the post where I live, though!
August 15th, 2008 at 15:19 #22 - Jordan Allen said:
Steven. In prinicpal you are correct about KERBS not being green, however, I do see the 50 kg of KERBS being used to offset the mass of lead being used as ballast on each wheel to being the F1 car up to the minimium weight limit, as well as the secondary function to supply some mecanical grip to the car.
As the KERB’s is installed, no race engineer is going to make the car any heavier than it needs to be, so a removal of the same weight of lead ballast will be taken out of the car. If everything’s perfect, The Weight and balance of the car will still be the same and there is a slight 0.001% performance gain caused by the using the power stored in the KERB’s that Max makes so much about.
In the case of Panda racing, can I call myself a heretic and say we can get rid of a lot weight by removing the baby panda?
August 15th, 2008 at 15:47 #23 - Steven Roy said:
The point I was trying to make Jordan is that KERS is supposed to be road relevant and F1 is supposed to be developing it to help get it on road cars faster. If FI is going to develop something green why choose to develop something that will cuse more CO2 production on a lot of journeys?
August 16th, 2008 at 00:03 #24 - Alianora La Canta said:
Because Max is more bothered about F1 looking green than being green.
August 16th, 2008 at 00:05 #25 - Alianora La Canta said:
In the case of Panda racing, can I call myself a heretic and say we can get rid of a lot weight by removing the baby panda? {Jordan Allen – 3 comments ago}
You can say that, but given that the panda is supposed to be in a TARDIS when fitted to the car (otherwise it’ll break the dimensional restrictions apart from anything else), the weight is irrelevant. Whatever’s in the TARDIS will exert its pulling power while still weighing no more than the minimum plausible and legal weight for an F1 engine. (It’ll also look like a standard F1 engine).