Minardi PS04B - A Season In BOSS GP (Photo Heavy!)
Discussion
People seemed to like the thread I did in the F1 forum on V10 era tech and several have asked me to post more. This year has been crazy and I've just not had the time but as we wrapped the season up this weekend I thought a run through of the season may be of interest? So here's the behind the scenes on our 2016 Season in BOSS GP with the 2004 Minardi PS04B.
Full disclosure before we start, I have a huge amount of respect for Minardi and what they did. They cars are absolute engineers cars with details that were way ahead of the rest of the grid, it's well known the team were always hampered by a lack of budget for aero development and current engines but what they did with what they had was nothing short of staggering. For us to race these cars was a real pleasure and one of the highlights of my career. I also want to say thanks to BOSS GP for putting together such a well organised and supported championship and to the Minardi family and ex team members who helped way more than we could ever have expected or hoped. Running one of these things competitively is pretty challenging, running one with absolutely no data, no supplier support and limited spares is getting towards impossible.... but we did it
So without further ado here is 2016 for us:
In January we received the two (the only two!) PS04Bs, they were 99% complete having been used for demo and exhibition but a demo car is way different to a race car and there was a monumental task ahead getting them into a position to go racing with them.
Everything had to go back to component form to measure, inspect, test and replace as required. These are properly fast cars with huge energy everywhere on them so the risk created by assuming some aspects are good is just not worth taking:
Front end components laid out post inspection.
Front uprights stripped for inspection.
Gearbox internals pre inspection.
Several weeks later we had a car together that we were happy with mechanically, we had what we thought was a reasonable base setup and had secured enough spares to make running the cars for BOSS realistic. Spares were still really, REALLY, tight.... for example we had no spare engines, no spare complete gearboxes, only one spare set of uprights/wishbones etc. one spare set of hyds, no spare steering wheels, ECUs or major electronics in general.....
Back together awaiting first fire up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ3cEnKmm1U
First fire up and gear check.
Post fire up and gear check. A working, race'able car!
With that done we headed off to sunny Anglesey to do some installation laps and setup development.
Unfortunately snow and winds gusting to 70mph put pay to that which meant were heading off to round 1 at Hockenheim having done no testing at all!
We finished the second car with a few days spare and headed for Germany.
FP1 didn't exactly go to plan with a hyds issue causing damage to 1st/2nd gear dog, 1st/2nd gear ratio, shift fork and punching a hole through the side of the barrel. This was to be the start of our gearbox issues for the year.
Following a quick gearbox rebuild and a swap to our spare hyds set we got the car out for FP2.
It ran well! The setup wasn't great with the car massively oversteer prone at low speeds but considering we had no testing it wasn't as far off as it could be! In fact it was looking pretty competitive behind the STR1 and Jag R5
We went into Race 1 fairly confident that the car would do the distance....
To be rewarded with a P4 finish!
Quite a lot of work went on that night with the box totally stripped and inspected to find that 6th gear fork and dog ring had got seriously hot, we couldn't find a reason why and with nothing else to do the parts were changed for new and another 200ml of gearbox oil went in on the off chance we were struggling due to gearbox temps (GB operating oil temp circa 160 degrees!). We made some setup changes to try to cure the oversteer and Race 2 rewarded us with another P4:
We still had oversteer issues and it was clear it wasn't something that could be solved by tinkering with third element rates or tyre pressures. We knew the rear of the car was too stiff and this was most likely because of the Avon tyres we were running but diving straight in and making new rear torsion bars with the testing time we had available (not just physical time but mileage limits on engines and gearboxes too) was a risky move. We were tight on time to Round 2 and decided to miss this and see what we could do with regards setup and gearbox wear/temp issues as with the parts consumption rate we had we weren't going to make it to the end of the season on gearboxes so we had to address this! We did the only thing we could with our rear suspension issue and got the car on a shake rig:
Which immediately told us our suspicion regarding the stiffness of the tyre sidewall on the Avon tyre was the issue. It was way stiffer than the original Bridgestone which in turn made the rear of the car far too stiff. We tried a few third spring rates and arrived a setup that looked good on the rig.
We also took the opportunity to move to our "better" engine in the prime chassis and concentrate dev on this car with the second chassis acting as T-Car. We also made progress on our gearbox wear rate issues with an ex Minardi engineer helping us to do a deal with original oil supplier to provide the "special" oil that was run in 2004.
We left of Monza fairly confident that we had made progress and used the Minardi day at Imola to test the T-Car which hadn't run at this point. Doing three laps and collecting some valuable data for later in the season.
Conditions looked good and we were excited to see if our changes had made a positive difference to the car.
FP1, FP2 went very well and the car was clearly quicker and far better behaved with the oversteer issue completely resolved. Our gearbox issues had also disappeared, the box was running 30 degrees cooler than it had at Hockenheim and the wear rates were almost zero.
We were pretty confident in sending the car for Qualifying and were looking forward to some good times! In three laps we were P4 and in a good position to push for a fast time, when about 20 seconds after that one of the hose clamps retaining the lower rad transfer line failed and 6 litres of coolant at 3 atmospheres exited the back of the car in short order. The engine was cooked before it even stopped turning
Not only did we not have any spare engines but that was our good one! The only thing we could do was swap to the T-Car and transfer the setup over (not a quick job) between Qualifying and Race 1, we had 5 hours and just did it!
Formed up on the grid with slightly mismatching livery
Our efforts on setup were well rewarded as the car was quick enough to take P2 behind the STR1 giving us our first Podium! A happy team to say the least!
This also meant for Race 2 we were right at the sharp end of the grid and a long night followed to get the car repreped and ready.
We had a great start and four corners in the STR1 had an engine failure, all of sudden we were leading the race and pulling a gap from P2!
P1! Our first win!
A happy driver
And a happy team. With the points haul from the weekend we were P3 in the championship and only a few points off P2. Through a lot of hard work over the previous months we'd ended up with a competitive car that could win races. Way more important for us was the fact we had just won an FIA race with a Minardi! The first time a Minardi had ever taken P1 in an FIA championship. Over the moon didn't quite cut it and there were a few sore heads the following morning
There was a lot of work to do for Assen and with days to spare we got the damaged motor back and into chassis 2 both cars leaving for Round 3 at Assen on time. An easy setup and the no issues in FP1 or FP2 and we qualified well!
We sent the car to the grid for Race 1 hoping for another Podium, although we were up against some pretty tough competition with two faster cars around us, realistically the best we could do was a P3 unless anyone else fell off or had a mechanical issue.
Which we got! 20 more points in the bag and still only a handful behind P2 in the Championship. However the car never made it back to the pits, it had stopped on the inlap and was recovered by the safety team after a short delay. A quick investigation revealed we'd run out of air and hit the bottle pressure cut off, crossing the line with about 20 seconds running time remaining! Extremely lucky to make it but now we were an engine down again! Another late night followed with an engine change...
Only to find (at 3AM) the spare had developed a pretty serious issue with the power take off that drives the alternator and hyds pump. If we tried to run it we were either going to stop from the drive to the hyds pump failing or stop when the timing gear came apart and lunched the engine. So that was our weekend over, the only saving grace was that our closest competition had a gearbox issue following race 1 and didn't run race 2 either. Still it was pretty clear now that not only did we have no chance of a Championship win but we'd both been overtaken by the previous P4 sitter to P2! We decided at this point that if we could finish top 3 overall that would be a pretty fantastic result considering we had no chance of making the next round and this became our target going into the season finale at Imola.
A lot of work went into prep and rebuilding both engines. We were on our last hyds spares and running low on gearbox parts. Both engines came back in time and we pushed on to Imola aiming for a P3 championship finish. We were a few points ahead of P4 at this point due to the dropped round and had no realistic chance of P2. All we had to do was finish P3 or higher in one of the races and we had it in the bag.....
Conditions were mixed at Imola which made setup a challenge!
Both cars prepped and ready for action, we knew we had a pretty good chance but as always in motorsport and especially when you are running two things which originally had 150 people and £20M a year around them on way less of both things didn't go to plan.
FP1 and FP2 were great. With the motor turned up we clearly needed more aero on the car though as our trap speed showed:
Just shy of 200mph is cool though
Following a late night of prep with an aero tweak, gearbox rebuild and the revs turned up we went into Qualifying and put the car P3, exactly where we needed to be.
Everything was find post qualifying and the data showed a happy car.
We sent the car for Race 1 with no issues and waited for it to come round to the grid.....
Which it didn't, halfway around the formation the alternator had failed, reached way over 400 degrees C (the end of the alternator temp sensor calibration), melted through an oil line and set the car on fire. Luckily it wasn't a bad fire, there was no damage to the tub and the engine had retained oil pressure during but due to the alternators location beneath the heatshields and above the floor the fire had exited rearwards and melted everything around the hyds on the side of the gearbox. That was broken then! Whilst the damage wasn't too bad and we could have swapped hyds from the T-Car we had no idea now damaged some other components were and the rear wishbones and lower wing element had both gone way over temp, it's never worth risking a rear suspension failure so the T-Car was pressed into service once again with another late night of setup swap and prep.
This was really make it or break it now as we were only a handful of points ahead of P4 and another DNF/DNS would see us P5 at best! The problem was we were starting P12 due to our no start in the first race. Not an easy position to make things up from....
60 seconds before the green flag lap and we had done all we could. We'd done two out laps to check we had a working car and all was well.
Off the start we made up two places and from there went to work arriving in P4 before a safety car allowed us the opportunity to make up the gap which had opened whilst making our way past the slower cars. Following the safety car restart two cars ahead took each other off putting us P2 and with a lap to go we got news the P1 car had a 25 second penalty for missing a waved yellow, we finished a couple of seconds down on them but once their penalty was added we were P1
To say we were happy with that was an understatement. Two wins in Italy with a Minardi, made all the more special with the Minardi Family being on circuit with us at Imola and a great reward for what had been a hugely challenging season racing a car that was down on power and with two seasons less running/data compared to the competition.
Running any F1 car is never easy, running a late V10 era car that is 100% as it was in the day mechanically, hydraulically and electronically with a team that barely breaks double figures and a budget that is less than the hospitality budget most teams had back in the day is a huge challenge..... but a hugely satisfying one to succeed at as quite simply there is nothing as fast as these cars that it is possible to race as a private team or own as a private individual. The complexity, performance and ability of these cars, even at 10+ years old is quite simply mind bending.
A huge thanks to BOSS GP and their photographers for many of the photos above and it is WELL worth getting a BOSS GP race to see these cars in action. The noise, the access we can provide in the pits and the atmosphere are all way better than the current F1 paddock! 2017 is going to be a great Championship with even more F1s joining, a new tyre supplier and more races! We can't wait
Any questions as always I will do my best to answer.
Full disclosure before we start, I have a huge amount of respect for Minardi and what they did. They cars are absolute engineers cars with details that were way ahead of the rest of the grid, it's well known the team were always hampered by a lack of budget for aero development and current engines but what they did with what they had was nothing short of staggering. For us to race these cars was a real pleasure and one of the highlights of my career. I also want to say thanks to BOSS GP for putting together such a well organised and supported championship and to the Minardi family and ex team members who helped way more than we could ever have expected or hoped. Running one of these things competitively is pretty challenging, running one with absolutely no data, no supplier support and limited spares is getting towards impossible.... but we did it
So without further ado here is 2016 for us:
In January we received the two (the only two!) PS04Bs, they were 99% complete having been used for demo and exhibition but a demo car is way different to a race car and there was a monumental task ahead getting them into a position to go racing with them.
Everything had to go back to component form to measure, inspect, test and replace as required. These are properly fast cars with huge energy everywhere on them so the risk created by assuming some aspects are good is just not worth taking:
Front end components laid out post inspection.
Front uprights stripped for inspection.
Gearbox internals pre inspection.
Several weeks later we had a car together that we were happy with mechanically, we had what we thought was a reasonable base setup and had secured enough spares to make running the cars for BOSS realistic. Spares were still really, REALLY, tight.... for example we had no spare engines, no spare complete gearboxes, only one spare set of uprights/wishbones etc. one spare set of hyds, no spare steering wheels, ECUs or major electronics in general.....
Back together awaiting first fire up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ3cEnKmm1U
First fire up and gear check.
Post fire up and gear check. A working, race'able car!
With that done we headed off to sunny Anglesey to do some installation laps and setup development.
Unfortunately snow and winds gusting to 70mph put pay to that which meant were heading off to round 1 at Hockenheim having done no testing at all!
We finished the second car with a few days spare and headed for Germany.
FP1 didn't exactly go to plan with a hyds issue causing damage to 1st/2nd gear dog, 1st/2nd gear ratio, shift fork and punching a hole through the side of the barrel. This was to be the start of our gearbox issues for the year.
Following a quick gearbox rebuild and a swap to our spare hyds set we got the car out for FP2.
It ran well! The setup wasn't great with the car massively oversteer prone at low speeds but considering we had no testing it wasn't as far off as it could be! In fact it was looking pretty competitive behind the STR1 and Jag R5
We went into Race 1 fairly confident that the car would do the distance....
To be rewarded with a P4 finish!
Quite a lot of work went on that night with the box totally stripped and inspected to find that 6th gear fork and dog ring had got seriously hot, we couldn't find a reason why and with nothing else to do the parts were changed for new and another 200ml of gearbox oil went in on the off chance we were struggling due to gearbox temps (GB operating oil temp circa 160 degrees!). We made some setup changes to try to cure the oversteer and Race 2 rewarded us with another P4:
We still had oversteer issues and it was clear it wasn't something that could be solved by tinkering with third element rates or tyre pressures. We knew the rear of the car was too stiff and this was most likely because of the Avon tyres we were running but diving straight in and making new rear torsion bars with the testing time we had available (not just physical time but mileage limits on engines and gearboxes too) was a risky move. We were tight on time to Round 2 and decided to miss this and see what we could do with regards setup and gearbox wear/temp issues as with the parts consumption rate we had we weren't going to make it to the end of the season on gearboxes so we had to address this! We did the only thing we could with our rear suspension issue and got the car on a shake rig:
Which immediately told us our suspicion regarding the stiffness of the tyre sidewall on the Avon tyre was the issue. It was way stiffer than the original Bridgestone which in turn made the rear of the car far too stiff. We tried a few third spring rates and arrived a setup that looked good on the rig.
We also took the opportunity to move to our "better" engine in the prime chassis and concentrate dev on this car with the second chassis acting as T-Car. We also made progress on our gearbox wear rate issues with an ex Minardi engineer helping us to do a deal with original oil supplier to provide the "special" oil that was run in 2004.
We left of Monza fairly confident that we had made progress and used the Minardi day at Imola to test the T-Car which hadn't run at this point. Doing three laps and collecting some valuable data for later in the season.
Conditions looked good and we were excited to see if our changes had made a positive difference to the car.
FP1, FP2 went very well and the car was clearly quicker and far better behaved with the oversteer issue completely resolved. Our gearbox issues had also disappeared, the box was running 30 degrees cooler than it had at Hockenheim and the wear rates were almost zero.
We were pretty confident in sending the car for Qualifying and were looking forward to some good times! In three laps we were P4 and in a good position to push for a fast time, when about 20 seconds after that one of the hose clamps retaining the lower rad transfer line failed and 6 litres of coolant at 3 atmospheres exited the back of the car in short order. The engine was cooked before it even stopped turning
Not only did we not have any spare engines but that was our good one! The only thing we could do was swap to the T-Car and transfer the setup over (not a quick job) between Qualifying and Race 1, we had 5 hours and just did it! 
Formed up on the grid with slightly mismatching livery
Our efforts on setup were well rewarded as the car was quick enough to take P2 behind the STR1 giving us our first Podium! A happy team to say the least!
This also meant for Race 2 we were right at the sharp end of the grid and a long night followed to get the car repreped and ready.
We had a great start and four corners in the STR1 had an engine failure, all of sudden we were leading the race and pulling a gap from P2!
P1! Our first win!
A happy driver
And a happy team. With the points haul from the weekend we were P3 in the championship and only a few points off P2. Through a lot of hard work over the previous months we'd ended up with a competitive car that could win races. Way more important for us was the fact we had just won an FIA race with a Minardi! The first time a Minardi had ever taken P1 in an FIA championship. Over the moon didn't quite cut it and there were a few sore heads the following morning
There was a lot of work to do for Assen and with days to spare we got the damaged motor back and into chassis 2 both cars leaving for Round 3 at Assen on time. An easy setup and the no issues in FP1 or FP2 and we qualified well!
We sent the car to the grid for Race 1 hoping for another Podium, although we were up against some pretty tough competition with two faster cars around us, realistically the best we could do was a P3 unless anyone else fell off or had a mechanical issue.
Which we got! 20 more points in the bag and still only a handful behind P2 in the Championship. However the car never made it back to the pits, it had stopped on the inlap and was recovered by the safety team after a short delay. A quick investigation revealed we'd run out of air and hit the bottle pressure cut off, crossing the line with about 20 seconds running time remaining! Extremely lucky to make it but now we were an engine down again! Another late night followed with an engine change...
Only to find (at 3AM) the spare had developed a pretty serious issue with the power take off that drives the alternator and hyds pump. If we tried to run it we were either going to stop from the drive to the hyds pump failing or stop when the timing gear came apart and lunched the engine. So that was our weekend over, the only saving grace was that our closest competition had a gearbox issue following race 1 and didn't run race 2 either. Still it was pretty clear now that not only did we have no chance of a Championship win but we'd both been overtaken by the previous P4 sitter to P2! We decided at this point that if we could finish top 3 overall that would be a pretty fantastic result considering we had no chance of making the next round and this became our target going into the season finale at Imola.
A lot of work went into prep and rebuilding both engines. We were on our last hyds spares and running low on gearbox parts. Both engines came back in time and we pushed on to Imola aiming for a P3 championship finish. We were a few points ahead of P4 at this point due to the dropped round and had no realistic chance of P2. All we had to do was finish P3 or higher in one of the races and we had it in the bag.....
Conditions were mixed at Imola which made setup a challenge!
Both cars prepped and ready for action, we knew we had a pretty good chance but as always in motorsport and especially when you are running two things which originally had 150 people and £20M a year around them on way less of both things didn't go to plan.
FP1 and FP2 were great. With the motor turned up we clearly needed more aero on the car though as our trap speed showed:
Just shy of 200mph is cool though
Following a late night of prep with an aero tweak, gearbox rebuild and the revs turned up we went into Qualifying and put the car P3, exactly where we needed to be.
Everything was find post qualifying and the data showed a happy car.
We sent the car for Race 1 with no issues and waited for it to come round to the grid.....
Which it didn't, halfway around the formation the alternator had failed, reached way over 400 degrees C (the end of the alternator temp sensor calibration), melted through an oil line and set the car on fire. Luckily it wasn't a bad fire, there was no damage to the tub and the engine had retained oil pressure during but due to the alternators location beneath the heatshields and above the floor the fire had exited rearwards and melted everything around the hyds on the side of the gearbox. That was broken then! Whilst the damage wasn't too bad and we could have swapped hyds from the T-Car we had no idea now damaged some other components were and the rear wishbones and lower wing element had both gone way over temp, it's never worth risking a rear suspension failure so the T-Car was pressed into service once again with another late night of setup swap and prep.
This was really make it or break it now as we were only a handful of points ahead of P4 and another DNF/DNS would see us P5 at best! The problem was we were starting P12 due to our no start in the first race. Not an easy position to make things up from....
60 seconds before the green flag lap and we had done all we could. We'd done two out laps to check we had a working car and all was well.
Off the start we made up two places and from there went to work arriving in P4 before a safety car allowed us the opportunity to make up the gap which had opened whilst making our way past the slower cars. Following the safety car restart two cars ahead took each other off putting us P2 and with a lap to go we got news the P1 car had a 25 second penalty for missing a waved yellow, we finished a couple of seconds down on them but once their penalty was added we were P1
To say we were happy with that was an understatement. Two wins in Italy with a Minardi, made all the more special with the Minardi Family being on circuit with us at Imola and a great reward for what had been a hugely challenging season racing a car that was down on power and with two seasons less running/data compared to the competition.
Running any F1 car is never easy, running a late V10 era car that is 100% as it was in the day mechanically, hydraulically and electronically with a team that barely breaks double figures and a budget that is less than the hospitality budget most teams had back in the day is a huge challenge..... but a hugely satisfying one to succeed at as quite simply there is nothing as fast as these cars that it is possible to race as a private team or own as a private individual. The complexity, performance and ability of these cars, even at 10+ years old is quite simply mind bending.
A huge thanks to BOSS GP and their photographers for many of the photos above and it is WELL worth getting a BOSS GP race to see these cars in action. The noise, the access we can provide in the pits and the atmosphere are all way better than the current F1 paddock! 2017 is going to be a great Championship with even more F1s joining, a new tyre supplier and more races! We can't wait
Any questions as always I will do my best to answer.
Firstly, this is truly interesting, I was not even aware that this type of racing existed.
Many questions;
I assume at a qualified although Amateur level? Or?
What is the appx cost of running one of these for a season, I assume you all work for the fun of it / as a hobby rather than a paid team?
Did you all buy the car together as a team or is it one persons from a collection or?
what else were you racing against, all the same era F1 cars?
And most importantly, are you planning to do it again?
Many questions;
I assume at a qualified although Amateur level? Or?
What is the appx cost of running one of these for a season, I assume you all work for the fun of it / as a hobby rather than a paid team?
Did you all buy the car together as a team or is it one persons from a collection or?
what else were you racing against, all the same era F1 cars?
And most importantly, are you planning to do it again?
chrisga said:
Do you know whether there are any plans to hold any rounds in the UK?
Great read by the way - thanks for sharing!
BOSS are trying but it is difficult due to noise restrictions and circuit costs. Also the UK is a bit of an unknown, in Europe we are getting 50K+ spectators at some rounds which obviously subsidizes via ticket costs. In the UK we'd probably get 5K on a good day....Great read by the way - thanks for sharing!
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