Engineered rule bending

[MartG]

IanUAE said:

Life Saab Itch said:

Enough to keep a DFV competitive with the 1984 turbo cars.

Didn't the FIA find some funny additives in the "water" for the water injection system as well, which also resulted in a ban?

IIRC scrutineering found that the cooling water was contaminated. I can't remember the figures, but it was something small like 1% contaminant of which 60% was hydrocarbon. FISA chose to incorrectly interpret this as 60% of the 'water' was hydrocarbon and penalised Tyrrell, when in fact something a simple as a splatter of oil on the filler cap washed into the tank when it was filled could have accounted for the tiny amoint of contaminant in the water. Tyyrell didn't dare complain though - this was in the days of Jean Marie Balestre and FISA.

[The Black Flash]

Great thread this

ISTR in the BTCC during the 90s the Vauxhalls (I think) made the car underweight, so they had to run ballast. Normally you'd place this to optimise weight distribution, but they started putting it in the rear bumper, and fixing it with breakaway bolts. One slight tap from the car behind, bye-bye bumper, and the car is suddenly many kilos lighter.
I think the number of dropped bumpers eventually gave the game away.

[CO2000]

The Black Flash said:

Great thread this

ISTR in the BTCC during the 90s the Vauxhalls (I think) made the car underweight, so they had to run ballast. Normally you'd place this to optimise weight distribution, but they started putting it in the rear bumper, and fixing it with breakaway bolts. One slight tap from the car behind, bye-bye bumper, and the car is suddenly many kilos lighter.
I think the number of dropped bumpers eventually gave the game away.

I like this one

[IanUAE]

The sam BTCC team found out that their aero kit (from bumper) that was developed in Germany was err cr@p for UK circuits. So much so they were quicker when the bumper "fell off", cue Mr Cleland monstering kerbs early on in the race.....

[The Rustman]

CO2000 said:

The Black Flash said:

Great thread this

ISTR in the BTCC during the 90s the Vauxhalls (I think) made the car underweight, so they had to run ballast. Normally you'd place this to optimise weight distribution, but they started putting it in the rear bumper, and fixing it with breakaway bolts. One slight tap from the car behind, bye-bye bumper, and the car is suddenly many kilos lighter.
I think the number of dropped bumpers eventually gave the game away.

I like this one

I like em all, I wonder if the Brits are the best benders of all...no let me re phrase that !!

Proud to be British

[snowy slopes]

Sounds about right for the Cavalier era, those things hardly ever kept hold of their rear bumpers

[mat205125]

snowy slopes said:

Sounds about right for the Cavalier era, those things hardly ever kept hold of their rear bumpers

I used to speculate that the rear bumpers were deliberately attached in such a way so that they came off easily as a car with a partially detached bumper would be shown the black flag.

I wonder whether the aero and weight reasons are just someone elses speculation ..... I can believe the aero one, however, as it is remarkable how much a trim to the lower end of a bumper can improve the handling of a car in a series where a flat floor is prohibited .... I ruthlessly cut the rear bumper of my old track day 205 to try and reduce the pillow of air under the rear boot floor where the spare wheel would normally be, and the improvement was significant at high speed (I wasn't skilled or experienced enough to think about a flat floor back in those days )

[Conian]

a BTCC cavalier with rear bumper in place.

[crxdave]

More Mr Walkinshaw, in the form of an article on the how the Volvo 850 heads were modified: http://www.clubgti.com/downloads/Volvo_850_head.pd...

[CO2000]

crxdave said:

More Mr Walkinshaw, in the form of an article on the how the Volvo 850 heads were modified: http://www.clubgti.com/downloads/Volvo_850_head.pd...

I remember getting a right telling off for videoing an open engine bay of the Volvo the day after the 94 BTTC at Knockhill, esp as I kept filming as I didn't understand him shouting in Swedish !!

[emicen]

In one of our local series, the regulations stipulate standard engines with all parts as cast but that the headgasket mating face may be machined and specifies the minimum head thickness.

Doesn't say which headgasket mating face may be machined or indeed that both can't. Queue a bit of deck skimming and raised compression.

[jayfish]

I'm sure someone here will have some details to flesh out a half remembered story about a McLaren that shed it's fire extinguisher and the inordinate lengths and cost McLaren went to to recover said 'extinguisher'

[Megaflow]

jayfish said:

I'm sure someone here will have some details to flesh out a half remembered story about a McLaren that shed it's fire extinguisher and the inordinate lengths and cost McLaren went to to recover said 'extinguisher'

I remember that. I don't ever remember reading anything about what they were trying to hide.

[CO2000]

I’m wondering what it would have been like (or currently is !) to be in the meeting where some of these ideas are first brought up & evaluated (bigger teams, esp manufacturer backed ones) Eyes darting about the room I would think

[MitchF1GTR]

Good luck if they have one of those paranoid types that'd be running around the room throwing mobile phones out the window and kicking holes in the walls to pull out wires thinking the place is bugged

[spyder dryver]

bobthemonkey said:

Does the Ilmor 500I belong here?

At the time, Indy 500 rules allowed for a maximum capacity of 2.6l for racing engines, or 3.4l if you used a single cam, pushrod block. This was to encourage use of production based blocks.

Ilmor however, went and produced a custom pushrod racing V8 in complete secrecy, with a near 200bhp advantage over the rest of the field. This was a custom engine for a single race, and the engine was banned for the following year.

Not bending the rules though. Merely exploiting them.

[Life Saab Itch]

jayfish said:

I'm sure someone here will have some details to flesh out a half remembered story about a McLaren that shed it's fire extinguisher and the inordinate lengths and cost McLaren went to to recover said 'extinguisher'

Was that something to do with the Belgium 1998 crash? When the marshals were handing out bits of car to the crowd in the grandstands?

[richb77]

No way in the leagues of the big boy tails...

A know someone that used to run avgas at his club racing series (bikes). 100ron stuff.

Inspection would be cursory for safety as it was only club racing. It did explain why he in an orange bib (rookie) kept on trouncing the others on the straights but he never got caught out.

[Allyc85]

I believe one of the front runners in the BTRDA rally championship was accused of runnning Moto Gp fuel and an over sized turbo restrictor in his Focus this year. Never heard any more on the matter, and the better man won any way

[Slippydiff]

Rude-boy said:

daveake said:

I was thinking that too . I was told that the FIA guy only figured it out after he accidentally dropped it and heard the mechanism ping inside.

Dave

Had a conversation with Mike Garton about this.

He’s opinion was that it was one of the best bits of engineering that he’d ever inspected, legal or otherwise.

I also believe that the ‘we found it when the part was dropped’ excuse was not entirely accurate. I have heard it said that a disaffected TTE employee alerted the FIA to the fact that this part might not be in strict compliance and TTE were advised by the FIA that they had received this allegation and would be inspecting the air intake and turbos carefully at the next opportunity. One might believe that TTE were so sure that their design would never be found that they didn’t bother to do anything about it.

This would tie in with why Toyota had the book thrown at them and because they had obviously gone to so much trouble, and expense, to cover it up. Authority to do this would have to have come from the very top in Japan, not just from TTE.

Your source is correct The ST205 was a dog (and a slow one at that). Anyone watching the car's debut on the '95 Monte could see it was slow (something like a second a kilometer, though despite this Juha Kankkunen finished 3rd, albeit 4 minutes behind the winner)

Realising the car was hopelessly outpaced the engineers took it upon themselves to improve the car's power.
A TTE employee told me the dyno rooms were locked to all except the engine development guys, and that a lot of the dyno testing was done at night when all the other employees had gone home.

The car strangely gathered pace as the season progressed ...... and even won in Corsica .......

But Toyota weren't the only team getting constructive with their interpretation of the rules.

Check out the rear floor section of a works Group A Escort Cosworth, you'll find the whole thing is a couple of inches higher than the equivalent road car, Ford struggling to gain some much needed suspension travel with what was by then a hopelessly outdated rear suspension design.

Ralliart's Galant had four/rear wheel steering as part of it's standard spec. It was homologated with the same.
When the scrutineers asked to see it in action, the technicians had left all the Rose joints loose to leave a degree of movement in the rear wheels .......

turbotim43 said:

TankRS said:

as far as i know its never been confirmed or proven, but in the Group B and later Group A Lancia Deltas, there were reports of it having Nitrous plumbed in, but hidden through parts of the rollcage and the use of a 'dummy' fire extinguisher bottle in the co-drivers footwell.

but then again it could just be one of those, 'it must be cheating' acusations due to the cars being so good

Brother in law watched Lancia changing the "fire extinguishers" on these during the RAC rally and my brother met a team member some years later who also confirmed they were running nitrous

The drivers who witnessed the aftermath of Henri Toivenen's fatal crash inn Corsica reported the accident looked closer to that of a plane crash than that of a car. I think it safe to say Cesare Fiorio has Henri Toivenen's blood on his hands

Martin Sharp joined the Lancia team on the RAC rally when they were using Delta's (not sure if it was the 8v non arched cars or 8V/16v Integrales) but he too commented on the fact that Lancia were changing fire extinguishers at service areas at the end of every day. He even went so far as to question why they were doing as much in the article he wrote. Safe to assume to he know exactly why, but didn't want to be seen as the whistleblower.


Another Lancia incident on the '92 Monte. Sainz and Auriol are locked in battle in which Sainz appeared to have the upper hand.
At the final service the Integrale is driven in sounding "normal". Having been serviced it leaves sounding distinctly "different".
An engineer from a rival team (not TTE) notices an interesting "trumpet" left in an engineers workstation.
Closer (discrete) inspection shows it to be an "insert" for the turbo restrictor. Machined with such a fine lefthand thread (assumed) that it was indistinguisible when assembled. The LH thread would have stopped the FIA scrutineers trying to undo any insert whilst inspecting said restrictor.

Auriol won the event, Sainz was left shocked by the Frenchman's pace over the final stages .......

Lancia also stood accused of fabricating fuel sampling tanks with separate compartments for FIA sanctioned fuel and illegal fuel.

And one final piece of "rule bending". The cubic capacity of those wonderful 2.5 Alfa Romeo 155 V6 TI DTM cars was, I'm assured by someone well versed with the team, rather larger than the size specified by the sport's governing body ........