Sidepodcast

• Length: 4:43 
• Size: 4.4 MB 
• File: people8.mp3 
• Transcript: people8.pdf 
• Torrent: people8.torrent 

Welcome to the second series of F1 People, seven short shows brought to you by Sidepodcast, chronicling the lives of important people in the world of F1. Last time round we looked at Michael Schumacher, Enzo Ferrari, Frank Williams and others. Obviously there are more than seven VIPs in F1, and we had several comments last time round suggesting people we may have missed. Thus, F1 People, series 2, is here to expand on our list, starting with Colin Chapman.

Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman was born on the 19th May 1928, in London, where he grew up and went to University to study mechanical engineering. While he was a student, he learnt to fly and joined the Royal Air Force when he was 20. He wasn’t there for long, although the experience gave him a taste for aeronautical engineering that transferred to his love of cars. After leaving the RAF, Chapman became a member of the 750 Motor Club, a UK based racing club that specialises in Austin’s.

The first car that Chapman built was based around a 1930 Austin Seven and he named it Lotus. The car was entered into some minor races and was so successful that more versions were built. At this point, Chapman was working at the British Aluminium Company, but his girlfriend lent him the money to start up the Lotus Engineering Company. He partnered with Michael Allen and in 1953, Frank Costin joined the company to help create the Lotus Mk 8. The success of this car allowed Chapman to leave his job and work for Lotus full time. Whilst building and producing road and race cars, Chapman’s expertise was sought by Vanwall and BRM who both used him as a consultant to their racing teams.

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• Length: 3:30 
• Size: 3.3 MB 
• File: day6.mp3 
• Transcript: day6.pdf 
• Torrent: day6.torrent 

Welcome to Days that Shook the F1 World, a Sidepodcast series dedicated to bringing you some of the important dates in F1 History. We’ve looked at races and at controversies so far, and in this sixth episode, we’ll look at the disappearance of a legendary name. The date, October 22nd 2006.

Whilst the final race of an engine manufacturer may not have as much hard-hitting foundation-rocking emphasis as other specific days in Formula 1, Cosworth bowing out after almost forty years in the sport is just as important as any other headline.

Their final race came in Brazil, 2006, where Fernando’s second championship success overshadowed the exit of a supplier who had been in F1 since 1966. Back then, they entered their first season supplying no less than three teams – Stebro, Lotus and Brabham – with engines. By 1967, they were on winning form with the Lotus-Ford.

From a company that began in 1958, with Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth at the helm, the reputation for building strong race engines with high performance levels and excellent support from engineers built very rapidly.

Once they started winning, they couldn’t stop, and these following two facts can only prove what a remarkable engine it really was. Between 1968 and 1974, Cosworth engines were running the cars of every World Champion. Between 69 and 73, Cosworth engines were inside the cars of every single race winner.

Many drivers and champions attribute their successes over the years to the power in their cars, names such as Sir Jackie Stewart, Graham Hill, even Michael Schumacher.

However, as the decades wore on, the big name manufacturers began to enter and dominate the sport. Companies such as Honda, BMW and Toyota had bigger brands and bigger budgets, and teams switched allegiances all too easily.

When Jackie Stewart set up his own team in 1997, he decided to try and repay the favour to Cosworth, snapping them up as engine suppliers. The results didn’t follow, though, and after the team changed hands through Ford and Red Bull, Cosworth’s options within the sport began to run out.

In 2006, their final year, Cosworth supplied both Williams and Toro Rosso, but Williams were the first to admit it was their worst season in decades. However, not all of this can be blamed on Cosworth, as they were first on the grid to successfully make a modern V8 F1 engine rev all the way up to 20,000rpm.

Williams quickly signed Toyota as a supplier, and the fate of Cosworth appeared to be sealed. They announced that 2006 was the end for their name in the sport, and bowed out quietly in Brazil.

Afterwards, 200 staff were laid off. The company a lacked a bit of direction. The future looked bleak.

Nowadays, Cosworth say they have learnt a valuable lesson not to keep all their eggs in one motorsport basket. They are now concentrating more on the air industry with contracts including Airbus and Boeing. A return to Formula 1 is not impossible, especially as they have a homologated FIA engine sitting idle. Sadly with the wealthy domination from suppliers like Ferrari and Mercedes, that seems highly improbable.

Anyone with an affinity for Formula 1 through the years knows that Cosworth made history, and you can’t help but feel the sport isn’t the same without them.

Thanks for listening to this episode. You can leave comments about the show, or suggestions for future topics over at Sidepodcast.com. Tune in tomorrow for the last in this series of Days that Shook the F1 World.

Theme music: Dylan in the Movies, Better Days and Causeway, Change in My Lifetime.

• Length: 4:03 
• Size: 3.8 MB 
• File: day4.mp3 
• Transcript: day4.pdf 
• Torrent: day4.torrent 

Hello everyone, welcome to Days that Shook the F1 World, a series from Sidepodcast that takes a look at some of those important days that left the sport reeling, never to be the same again. Today we’re looking at the 3rd November 1983.

Whilst advocating safety at every opportunity, the majority of people involved in Formula 1 also want more speed. That’s the aim of the game, after all - to maximise speed and beat your rivals because they haven’t found that edge within the regulations like you have.

Ground effects was one of those things.

The basic theory behind the ground effect is to create as much downforce as possible, enabling a car to go faster around corners. By making the sides of the car as low as possible, the air pressure underneath the chassis is lower than that above, which basically glues the car to the track.

Lotus were the first team to introduce the concept to the Formula 1 back in the 1970s. They were helped along by the use of a wind tunnel, which resulted in longer sidepods and consistent ride height, creating a reasonable inverse wing effect.

This effect didn’t necessarily help on the long straights, but when it came to cornering, it left the old style cars in its wake. When Lotus introduced their car in 1978, it won 8 out of 16 races, proving that the new developments would revolutionise the sport.

Other teams began to sit up and take notice and it wasn’t long before the ground effects principal was becoming ubiquitous. By 1982, there were no cars without the technology. Fast races, fantastic cornering speeds, all great stuff.

Except, the cars were inherently unstable.

The forces created by the ground effects were all well and good, if the car managed to stay stuck to the circuit, but once the effect was broken, it had potentially devastating consequences. A wing would then act as a wing should, rising up and literally flying the car off the track.

It wasn’t long before serious accidents started to happen. Drivers were often struggling to keep their cars on track during high speed cornering, and incident after incident culminated in the death of Alfa Romeo driver Patrick Depailler in Germany. Although a lack of safety fencing was deemed the reason for his death, there was no denying that the speed carried through the bend had something to do with it as well.

During this time, the two rival governing bodies the FISA and FOCA were at war, and ground effects was one of the big catalysts for their arguments. After Depailler’s death, the FISA finally forced through a new rule, stating that, whilst in the pits, cars had to have at least 6cm of clearance between their skirt and the ground. Teams very, very quickly got around this, by running their cars close to the ground out on track, and simply raising them up on hydraulics when it came to measurements in the pits. Given the ingenuity of the teams, or the uselessness of the rule, the FISA soon revoked their ruling, and allowed skirts to return to the cars.

Big mistake.

Accidents continued to occur, and although they were excused by other circumstances, they could almost always be traced back to the lower sides on the cars. Then came the tragic death of Gilles Villeneuve, and an accident later in Germany that saw Didier Pironi break both his legs in multiple places. The cause of those accidents could not be brushed aside and it was obvious something had to be done.

In November 1982, ground effects were officially banned with a more explicit rule, stating that from 1983 flat bottoms were required for F1 cars from the trailing edge of the front wheels, to the leading edge of the rear wheels.

Since then, the sport has never looked back. There’s no denying the fact that it was a brilliant piece of engineering, to get the idea off the page, out of the wind tunnel and onto the cars. But the dangers and speeds involved were just too great, and there is no question that banning the principal was the right thing to do.

That’s all for this episode of Days that Shook the F1 World. Please visit Sidepodcast.com to leave your comments and feedback about this and the other shows in this series.

Theme music: Dylan in the Movies, Better Days and Causeway, Change in My Lifetime.

• Length: 3:48 
• Size: 3.6 MB 
• File: history5.mp3 
• Transcript: history5.pdf 
• Torrent: history5.torrent 

Welcome to Sidepodcast’s History of F1. After the safety concerns of the ‘70s, the ‘80s saw many more steps forward in developmental terms.

The 1980s saw the introduction of turbocharging, which is another banned technology that took the forefront of a lot of the team’s attention. The Lotus team were concentrating on the ground-effect principle, whilst Renault re-entered F1 in with the first ever turbo. The technology was new, quick and exciting, but there were reliability problems, and the Renault did not finish an entire race distance until a year after the introduction.

1980 saw the first big disagreement between the two main F1 governing bodies, FISA and FOCA. The power struggle resulted in the Spanish Grand Prix being boycotted, and to avoid such situations in the future, the first ever Concorde Agreement was drafted up in 1981.

1980 also saw Team Williams dominating with their driver Alan Jones, whilst Ferrari were struggling with their own turbocharged car.

Despite the emergence of the turbo technology, Cosworth engines still dominated the grid, with 11 teams under their power in 1982. Turbos continued to improve, but Ferrari suffered more problems, this time with their drivers. Didier Pironi and Gilles Villeneuve were under team orders that Villeneuve should be given preference. Pironi overtook him at the San Marino GP, and Villeneuve decreed he would never speak to his team mate again. This turned out to be tragically true, when Villeneuve was killed whilst qualifying for the Belgian GP. The accident was terrifying, with the Ferrari skidding across the track and throwing the driver from the car, into the sand.

More accidents occurred this year, with Ricardo Paletti, a little known driver in a little known team Osella, killed at the start of the Canadian Grand Prix. He was coming through from the back of the grid, unaware that Pironi, in the Ferrari, had stalled at the front. Pironi also suffered from leg injuries in practice later that year, which put an early end to his racing career.

McLaren brought out a turbo powered car, steered by Alain Prost and Niki Lauda, and in 1984, the team won 12 out of 16 races, and took a record number of points to win the title. Lauda actually pipped Prost to the driver’s title, by only half a point. Hang on, half a point? This was due to the Monaco GP that year being stopped because of a massive thunderstorm. Half points were awarded to teams and drivers.

Ayrton Senna joined McLaren in 1988 and took the championship in Japan, despite a deciding race that saw him stalling on the grid. 1989 saw Senna and Prost in-fighting after a broken agreement about not challenging each other on the track. Senna overtook Prost and the pair fell out, and later in the season, the pair collided and went off track. Prost took the championship, whilst Senna’s superlicense was revoked, causing him to comment on the manipulation that may have been happening behind the scenes.

Turbo charged engines were banned in 1989, but a couple of years earlier, another major piece of technology was beginning to take shape. 1987 saw the one year that Williams took the crown from seven McLaren titles. But it was Team Lotus that introduced the new “active suspension”, that was computer controlled. This technology was the turning point of the sport - from normal-ish cars into more technologically complex machines.

That’s all for this episode of Sidepodcast’s History of F1. Next time we’ll take a look at the 1990s, where it was all about two very different but brilliant drivers.

Theme music: Friction Bailey, Hope in my History.

• Length: 3:49 
• Size: 3.6 MB 
• File: history4.mp3 
• Transcript: history4.pdf 
• Torrent: history4.torrent 

Welcome to Sidepodcast’s History of F1. So far we’ve travelled from the 1900s through to the end of the 1960s, and seen the Formula 1 World Championship begin to take shape, and some of the legendary drivers stamp their mark on it. Now we take a look at the 70s where safety concerns and car development were top of everyone’s priority list.

In 1970, the revolution of aerodynamic engineering began to take place. It started with the creation of wings, which meant more downforce for the cars. Essentially this meant they had more grip and could coast round corners much faster than previously. In the early days, the wings were not fastened particularly securely, and it wasn’t unheard of for them to fall off at unexpected moments. After a few too many accidents, wings were banned for a short time.

The early 70s saw the rise of a new star for Lotus, Emerson Fittipaldi, a young man from Brazil who won his first race in 1972. The rivalry between he and Jackie Stewart meant that the next four championships were alternated between the two of them, until Stewart retired in 1973. Stewart almost made it to the 100 Grand Prix mark, but gave up one short of the feat. Why would you do that?

In 1975, Ferrari began to make their comeback – despite the fact that the season was littered with protests about driver safety. In the Spanish race, a car came off the track and actually hit the crowd, killing four people, and causing some drivers to refuse to continue to participate.

Ferrari driver Niki Lauda won five races and had nine pole starts to take his first championship. He went on to win two more. The next year, 1976, Lauda was involved in a horrific accident at the Nurburgring, which saw his car burst into flames. Lauda suffered facial burns and inhaled toxic gases, so much that he was not expected to survive. However, Lauda did manage to pull through and was miraculously driving again only six weeks later. The Nurburgring track was taken off the calendar, but returned in a dramatically altered and much shorter state.

Niki Lauda’s main competition came in the form of James Hunt, a British driver for McLaren. He won the 1976 championship, but only just. Lauda was leading the championship by 3 points in the last race, but had to retire after torrential rain. That handed the championship to Hunt, who finished the race in the terrible weather, without knowing where he had placed or if he had clinched the title.

Lauda reclaimed the crown the next year in 1977, despite quitting the team with two races to go. The team calculated the position he needed to finish in to claim the title – 4th – at the US Grand Prix, and Lauda delivered and then joined Bernie Ecclestone’s Parmalat Brabham team.

In development terms, the cars began to sport air boxes above their heads to increase flows around the engines. Engineers changed their titles to designers, and began to increase their knowledge of aerodynamics. The cars began to take shape, using a streamlined body and undertray developments to the downforce and speed things up. There developments were called “ground effects” and impressed a lot of the drivers.

They were not without their problems though, because the new developments meant the setup of the car was incredibly important. One tiny degree the wrong way would mean the cars were unstable and ultimately not race worthy. F1 became a highly sophisticated balancing act. Eventually, the effects were banned in 1983, to make F1 more about driver skill and less about car setup.

That’s all for this episode of Sidepodcast’s History of F1, join me for the next instalment were we look at the 1980s.

Theme music: Friction Bailey, Hope in my History.

• Length: 3:21 
• Size: 3.2 MB 
• File: history3.mp3 
• Transcript: history3.pdf 
• Torrent: history3.torrent 

Welcome to Sidepodcast’s History of F1. The last episode focused on the early years of the World Championship, and the emergence of some new champions. Now we’re going to have a look at the 1960s, a decade that began to see the drivers taking attention away from the cars.

The 1960s in Formula 1 saw great changes afoot, both in developmental technologies and the teams that gained the benefits from them. Team Lotus was the dominating force of the decade, and Jim Clark was the driver of the early 1960s who really could get the most out of the car. Lotus were the first team to demonstrate the monocoque, which is the idea of the car being made up of one singular chassis, with the driver perched in the middle. When rear engines made their debut in the 60s, it was clear that F1 was a step ahead of other motorsports.

Jim Clark was not short on controversy, being involved in a fatal accident at Monza in 1961, that claimed the life of Wolfgang von Trips. The championship was handed to American Phil Hill, who was racing in the Ferrari. In 1962, Clark instigated a fierce battle with Graham Hill, but he eventually lost the championship, just barely, due to an oil leak early exit from the lead of the final race. Clark won the championship in 1963 and 1965, after taking maximum points throughout the championship for both season. He would quite often take the entire month of May off, and therefore miss the Monaco Grand Prix, preferring to head to the States and compete in the Indy 500. It was a good choice though, as he became the first British driver to win it.

In 1965, he led every lap of every race he completed – a stunning achievement – and he broke all manner of other records, including most career victories from Fangio. He took the record during the early races of the 1968 season, but his career was short-lived. A couple of months later, Clark took part in an F2 race at Hockenheim, and died after crashing into the trees. The accident is still rather mysterious and unexplained.

Graham Hill was more than happy to continue the British dominance after Clark’s death, and he took the 1968 title in a Lotus, fitted with the new Ford-Cosworth engine. The car was also notable for having the first sponsorship and logos appear on the exterior – how different F1 would be without those!

But Hill himself was soon surpassed by Scotsman Jackie Stewart. He was something of a protégé of Jim Clark’s, as it was he who arranged for Stewart’s very first test drive. Jackie Stewart went on to break his mentor’s career victories record and took three World Championships between 1969 and 1973.

Jackie Stewart’s most memorable win was at Nurburgring, for the German Grand Prix. There was awful rain that day but Stewart kept his head and outpaced the second place driver by over four minutes. That’s an incredible lead and you wouldn’t find anything like that in modern F1.

That’s it for the 1960s, in the next show we’ll move on to the 1970s, a decade where safety concerns became paramount.

Theme music: Friction Bailey, Hope in my History.