For me, the 1997 season is what an F1 car will always look like in my mind. It was my first full season. The cars were all wonderful looking with the Ferrari, Benetton and Jordan being my favourite.
Oh yes, 7 speed gearbox was quite innovative. I remember Ferrari being the only team using it in 1998, but I didn't know that it was already there in 1997. Thanks for this.
And this 7-speed gearbox came about because Schumacher wanted it, as he felt there was too little engine breaking in the V10 compared to the V12. Barnard actually wanted a 6-speed gearbox and the 7-speed gearbox is only thanks to Schumacher. This can be read with statements from Barnard himself and team members in the book by Christopher Hilton - Michael Schumacher The Whole Story.
Great video Aidan, I've always researched this car a lot and found some interesting stories. I'm Brazilian and I apologize if my comment is too long. It's years like these that showed how Schumacher was in another category compared to the other drivers. The truth is that this car, from the beginning, was always considered a design error. This soon worried Ross Brawn and Schumacher himself a lot, because they were taking more than two seconds per lap in the pre-season at Estoril. That's why, after those tests, Ross Brawn called to get Rory Byrne out of retirement, as he was taking care of his diving school in Thailand. Ross even criticized the project, saying that the car seemed to be produced by someone who "didn't even see with his own eyes what he was designing", criticizing the fact that Barnard stayed in England, instead of going to Italy to check out the project in person. However, Barnard said in an interview with Autosport magazine at the end of the year that he was unable to implement many of the things he wanted in the car. One of these things was a new transmission for the car, which had reduced weight and would bring other benefits to the balance of the car. However, Ferrari discarded the idea, due to the cost that the system would generate and "internal pressures" from Ferrari itself. They said they would use the 1996 transmission in the 1997 car. The car, according to him, began to have clear handling problems and he even changed the weight distribution of the car to try to improve its balance. And, according to him, the problem is that when the car hit the track, he was no longer involved in the project. That's why you could even see how the car's performance deteriorated sharply in some situations, with excessive wear on the tires. It was like that here at Interlagos, in Barcelona, at the Hungaroring and, even, in the final part in Jerez, when Villeneuve got close to Schumacher. 5:10 - Here it shows how huge the sidepods of the Ferrari F310B are, compared to those of the Williams FW19, which used Renault engines. Barnard criticized the fact that Ferrari used larger radiators than those used in Renault engines. This would even make French engines able to operate at higher temperatures, without compromising their power. According to the Englishman, he sent several faxes showing how much the car lost aerodynamically with the larger radiators. One of the solutions adopted by Rory Byrne, with the 1998 F300, was to divide this large radiator into two. They used this configuration until F2001. When Rory realized with the F2002 that he could improve the construction of the sidepods and allow the coca-cola area of the car to be narrowed, leaving the radiators inclined. 11:41 - Barnard explained how he created a way for the car to quickly change the car's setups, whether racing in the dry or in the rain. The system was made using two supports, which immediately adjusted the height of the car in relation to the ground. Instead of just being adjusted internally with a wrench, you could make the adjustment using a screwdriver, which activated an internal mechanism that resembled a rack. Including two reference points that gave the mechanics a base. On the rear wing, the excess holes along it correspond to the types of downforce required for each specific condition. He even developed a way to quickly change the rear wing, where it fits via four mounting points on a flexible carbon structure at the rear. But there was a catch, the installation of these wings became more complicated when they gained those large side extensions, which required the installation of extra mounting points on the chassis.
Funny neough at the hungaroring Ferrari debuted a car with a longer wheelbase (something other teams were using) and the car was also lighter then the car they started the season with. It showed promise but unfortunaterly Schumacher heavily damaged the car in practice which forced Ferrari to switch back to the older variant for the race. At first they thought they had to write off the car but they were able to repair it and it's last race was in Jerez where it ended in the sands thanks to Schumacher's dumb action.
@@Athrun82 They lost 10kg of weight in this new chassis. And the wheelbase of the car has increased due to the enlargement of the car's fuel tank. In addition, there was a strong suspicion, according to one of the Williams mechanics, that Ferrari had a front wing with more flexibility than allowed in Japan. It was in this race, in fact, that Ferrari developed a method of programming the throttle system to automatically feather periodically as the car accelerated, and so achieve the smoothest possible torque curve throughout the rev range. It was an electronic system developed in conjunction with the Type 046/2 engine upgrade, which debuted in France. This caused much discussion at the time and the FIA issued a statement saying that it would not be allowed for 1998, although controversy has always continued around the 1998 F300, the 1999 F399 and the 2000 F1-2000. Other times.
Crazy John has always been good at blaming others when his cars suck and you have to be very careful what he says. His ego is and was his biggest problem. And so when his cars have had design flaws, he has always blamed others, as he did with the F310B. The fact is that he was the chief designer of this car, which had essential design flaws. When Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne joined Ferrari on December 16, 1996/early February 1, they took over a car that had fundamental design flaws. The car's center of gravity was ridiculously high for an F1 car, partly because the engine was mounted far too high, an essential design parameter for which Barnard was solely responsible. The car was far too heavy and 20 kg overweight - which was a typical problem with Barnard's cars, the L/D ratio was far too high or rear-heavy as was the aerodynamic balance which made the car aerodynamically unstable and far too slow on the straights and the suspension geometry was a disaster as was the fuel tank which had hardly any chambers and so allowed the fuel to move back and forth far too much and unsettle the car. You can read certain things that Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne said about it in Christopher Hilton's - Michael Schumacher The Whole Story, as well as Ross's book Total Competition, and even Barnard's own biography. And these points - L/D ratio, engine mounting points, position and design of the fuel tank and fuel system (which also caused problems), weight of the car, suspension geometry are fundamental design parameters for which the chief designer is responsible and nobody else. These fundamental errors have of course become known and of course Crazy John tries as usual to blame others, which even if it were true would only mean that he did not have his people and his team under control and was not able to get the most fundamental design parameters right or enforce them. But that's exactly what a chief designer has to do. That is what he is ultimately and solely responsible for. He specifies the parameters that have to be achieved, he determines the philosophy of the car and the "values" to be achieved in terms of L/D, center of gravity, weight distribution, suspension geometry, etc. He also has to define the so-called trade-offs and solutions as to how these are to be designed and achieved. Crazy John's statements, which I have never heard from him in relation to the F310B (it seems to me to be a mixture of the "failure" with other cars, because the point with the air intakes etc. was something that was a problem years before and where he blamed the engine department with similar words...), prove nothing other than that he either tried to correct his fundamental mistakes in vehicle design (which were no wonder, because as Pat Symonds once beautifully illustrated, Barnard didn't know about essential things that F1 designers had to know anyway, especially from the mid-80s and in the 90s, and couldn't understand and carry out any calculations regarding chassis geometry, just as Willem Toet clearly stated several times that JB had no idea about aerodynamics and didn't really understand what aerodynamicists actually do, which Gerhard Berger also confirmed in his biography, the same was true for electronics, which the years of "active" cars and Barnard's disastrous designs of that time clearly show), or that he was not able to lead a design team and take control of a project. In view of the many publicly available and partially cited statements and the things written in the aforementioned books alone, one thing is clear - Barnard was a generation of "designers" who were in no way up to the demands of "modern" F1, which was all about aerodynamics, electronics and vehicle dynamics, and did not know what modern F1 cars "needed". The mistakes in fundamental design parameters of the F310B show this just as clearly as the predecessor F310, which was an even bigger disaster, just like Barnard's cars of the years before. The last time he managed a reasonably good car was with the 1990 Ferrari, which was because the "new" gearbox had so much shorter shift times, which amounted to well over 1 second over a lap. But then the time of the "big" innovations and silver bullets that JB was always looking for and to which he owed his successes was over. In general, Barnard's comments are also just plain stupid and obviously nonsensical which exposes them for what they are - cheap excuses that are also unlikely. Of course the Renault had smaller radiators! Renault was the first manufacturer in 1997 to pressurize the cooling system to 3.5 to 4 bar, which allowed a higher boiling point of the cooling water (140 degrees). The Renault engine was the only one that could withstand these temperatures, which is why it could run much smaller radiators than the Ferrari. Ferrari's engine department under Martinelli achieved these higher cooling water temperatures in 1997, which allowed Ross and Rory to use smaller radiators and a narrower Coca-Cola rear end from Canada onwards. So what Barnard is saying is as wrong as it is clearly a stupid excuse and what you are saying is also partly incorrect, even if you are right about the arrangement of the radiators on later Ferraris, which is due to Rory's design philosophy, which was already evident at Benetton, who for aerodynamic reasons always paid great attention to the Coca-Cola rear and the cooling inlets, which are a blockage area in F1 cars and therefore extremely important. The suspension itself, even if you're right about the quick adjustments, is further evidence of what Barnard had fabricated. Two springs and dampers front and rear, which was completely outdated, because people like Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne and Adrian Newey had been working for years at that time with a third damper to control heave, the so-called heave damper, and achieved a decoupled suspension, and further better control for the aerodynamics. The fact that Crazy John was still working with 2 elements in 1997 clearly shows how he was lagging behind the new, better educated and more skilled F1 engineers in terms of both aerodynamics and vehicle dynamics. This was largely due to his ego and arrogance, because where people like Rory Byrne soaked up knowledge and had the attitude that they could learn something from everyone, which they did for many years, Crazy John had the attitude that he alone knew everything and was better than everyone else since university. Which is why he stopped where others accumulated incredible knowledge. So be careful with Crazy John's statements - most of them are excuses and lies with which he wants to blame others for his own mistakes and ignorance.
See if you can find that video of Irvine bitching after he retires from the 1997 Luxemburg Grand Prix. He says the 310B is just a 310 with better aero but the car is still a joke to drive especially in qualifying. Aparently the engine was to high in the chassis and the centre of gravity would move around making it really unstable, it used to just understeer like crazy when it was light on fuel in qualifying trim. I tried finding the video but just cant find it on youtube.
High engine centre of mass might have suited Schumacher's style. He was probably the first driver to adopt the modern style of straightening the corner entry/exit and rotating the car mid-corner, rather than the classic racing line of taking the corner in a smooth arc. That chracteristic should make it easier to rotate the car on demand, so long as the car is well behaved enough to remain stable the rest of the time. But it would likely hurt performance through long fast corners. Would be interesting to see if that correlates with where Schumacher won that year.
Irvine was a shit driver and an even worse car setter-upper. He proved that when Schumacher broke his leg and the car fell away every race Schumacher was out. Jaguar hiring him as lead driver doomed them from the very start.
@@ibex485A high center of gravity does not suit any driver's riding style! How do you come up with something like that? A high center of gravity ensures that the vehicle has much higher load changes, which has extreme disadvantages both aerodynamically and in terms of vehicle dynamics! A car with a high center of gravity will always be slower than a car with a low center of gravity, aerodynamically worse, put more strain on the tires, slip more and have poorer traction. And by the way - an essential design parameter of ALL Ferraris since 1998 has been the lowering of the CoG every year... This would hardly be done if Schumacher's driving style required a high CoG, which as I said (sorry) is complete nonsense.
@@theiceman7590no, its a fact. Many people, including Ross and Rory confirmed that the engine was mounted too high and the CoG was much too high, what was something they did not understand how Barnard did that. It results in high load transfer, what is catastrophic for tyres, grip and traction and also aero.
97 was a weird season. Villeneuve almost throw by the window a title with the best car and got lucky to win in britain and hungary. Behind the Williams the pack was dense. The McLaren was good but not reliable, the Benetton was good but in difficulty to put temperature in the tyres especially in qualifying and the Ferrari got tyres dégradations and udersteer/stability problem. Jordan could have won in argentina (according to Jordan and Ralf), Prost in Austria without engine trouble and if course Arrows in Hungary. Bridgestone bring new tyre structure with kevlar which made a uge difference. Good year on the other hand use steel structure (this is also the kind of structure use by Pirelli when they came back in 2011 and cause a lot of trouble) and their tyres didn't got the same performance from a set to an other. The lack of quality check was really visible on some races where you can see a really performant car drop suddenly in the field after it Pit stop. The F310 (a parachute for Schumacher and a piece of junk for Irvine) was a concept which didn't work. According to Barnhard the sidepod were design to optimise the air flow at the rear but bring others problems and didn't really worked. They did a lot of work to solve problems with the F310B (the sidepod and the rear look a lot like a Benetton) but most of the problems were solved only in 99 but still got a lack of performance compared to McLaren mp4/14 At Monza Ferrari bring lighter chassis and new shock absorber. But the aerodynamical problems of the F310B were exacerbated. The car did not generate enough ground effect and they were forced to put more wing because of the fast corners. Not having fast corners Hockenheim allowed Ferrari to mask this problem and be efficient. What Schumacher did this season with this car against a really performant Williams is really impressive
Good video! 1997 is a fave car and to me the first true schumacher car and was hard to beleive he could contest for the title in it compared to what williams nr 1 driver had to drive at williams. No, you havent done a review of the mclaren 1998 car :)
11:40 I remember several teams at places like Monaco and Brazil staging personnel with phones a mile or two from the track to call the crews when rain was coming down.
I feel like until Rubens got there. Michael always got the best stuff in his cars that’s why his teammates could just never have better reliability than him. Obviously there were days when they were better than him, but the majority of the time he always finished ahead of them.
i feel like Irvines performance in 1999 was a view of what the preferential treatment Schumi got in terms of car setup and development, it is not a knock to Schumi or Irvine at all because I do believe it’s normal for championship teams to prioritize their #1 driver
@housesports000 The thing is that Irvine had arguably the best supporting teammate he could possibly have when Schumi returned after the Silverstone crash, and still couldn't get it done. He bottled his title chances big time due to his mistakes...
Merry Christmas, great vid! I loved this car, the first real season I watched F1 and this car took my heart! It was a bit of a diva, could shine on it's day, but, especially early season, munched through it's tires and gave Michael a headache. First of all Michael was a generational talent and could drive around many issues, making Irvine look like an amateur at times. Some races they couldn't get the setup on the car, late season pressure and bad decisions (nurburgring start, set up in Monza) cost them. I truly feel they didn't think they were contenders early in the season until Monaco and made bad choices, probably costing them the championship. Seeing that Villeneuve qualifying time in Melbourne probably broke them for a couple of months. The fact they came back, had such a lead mid season showed how much Williams bottled it then. You are right, both teams kind of couldn't handle the pressure. Amazing end to the year, I was thoroughly disappointed in the Jerez finale, but it was such an amazing year to get onto F1! Only 2008 and 2021 have come close since. Ok 98 & 99 were decided at the last race, but Hakkinen felt like a more deserved winner and worthy competitor to Michael. 2000 was great but it wasn't decided at the last race. Keep the videos coming, love the content and can't wait to see more videos about this era of our great sport!
5:20 removing those aero deflectors in front of the rear wheels was actually a stipulation in the regulations for '97. If you look at the '96 Williams (FW18), it had an extremely similar setup and both Adrian and Patrick Head are on record saying that these elements were actually super efficient and very useful in generating downforce.
Thats not really true. Actually the 1997 rules did only restrict the area where you could use them, what made them less effective. Thats why most teams did not use them at all, but look at the F310B in the first few races - it still had them!
Ferrari had been using 7-speed gearboxes for some time. The 640 of 1989 (with F1's first semi-auto gearbox) had 7 gears, and I think every Ferrari F1 car since (until 2014). Jordan were one of the next to switch to 7 gears (1994?). 7 gears vs 6 seemed to be a matter of team preference in the '90s (for those with semi-auto gearboxes). There doesn't seem to have been a clear performance advantage, and there must have been a small downside when it came to gearbox weight & packaging. I think Williams & Renault stuck with 6 speed gearboxes until the end of the 3L engine era, but with the V8s having less torque everyone seems to have adopted 7 gears for those.
15:20 Ferrari being off the pace in Monza was pretty much about overheating the tyres AFAIK. I can remember the Michael talking about it in interviews at the time - as soon as the track temp went past a certain point, the 310B would inevitably overheat the Goodyears.
Same thing happened in Barcelona too. Schumacher took 2nd place at the start but lost his tyres early. Oddly enough though is that Villeneuve who was supposed to be a "tyre killer" kept his tyres optimal while his teammate Frentzen destroyed his. Engineers later speculated that Villeneuves driving style actually preserved his tyres. Just goes to show how variable F1 can be
@@Athrun82 what did they have to monitor tyre temp at the time? I'm surprised how Villeneuve could keep the tyres alive but Frentzen could destroy them? Surely the team had the telemetry and could see what Jacques was doing and help his team-mate?
@@tourmaline07 What telemetry? Live tyre temp measurement is a fairly recent development in F1, there was nothing like this on the cars in the 90s. Tyre temperatures were checked in the pits with a physical probe touching the tyre surface.
nice vid again :) somehow love the 1997 season. was only 6 years old back then and i can't remember much xD but when i look back, i always wonder what Olivier Panis could have done during that season. probably something like Frentzen in 1999? maybe thats a topic you wanna share your thoughts. greetings from germany and Frohe Weihnachten
As mentioned around the middle of the video, the F310B's competitiveness varied wildly throughout the season. Some circuits they were on par with or even quicker in race trim than the FW19, others qualifying or even finishing top six was a chore.
For me 1997 was the year of downfall of Williams rather than rise of Ferrari. It's very arguable that Williams dropped in form in 1998 due to Renault withdrawal. Mecachrome engines still had about 25bhp deficit to Ilmor-Mercedes and 15bhp to Ferrari which was still manageable if aerodynamics and chassis would have been ok. However, Williams FW20 had its best performance in Hockenheim and Monza and worst in Barcelona and Monaco. So, it's not Renault, it's Newey departure that impacted the team the most.
@@theiceman7590 Renault departure played a role. But they were still fast on high speed circuits like Hockenheim and Monza. Still far from McLaren, but nowhere else Villeneuve was so close to the pole (0.5 and 0.3s gap)
Your conclusion is pretty reckless and not really correct. It's not that simple, because if you look at Hockenheim 1999, for example, where Williams was absolutely miserable in qualifying, it becomes clear how clearly the ever-increasing horsepower deficit is coming to bear. The fact that Williams then, with BMW as engine supplier, also took pole positions and fought for victories on high-speed tracks such as Monza, Canada and Hockenheim clearly shows that these tracks simply "suited" Williams. Such things are simply related to the L/D ratio of a car, which was relatively low for the Williams. The car had (the very low and flat sidewalls illustrate this design philosophy) a very low drag, but still produced a "decent" amount of downforce, which is why it generally achieved very good results on high-speed tracks. So you can't just say - they were successful at Monza and Hockenheim, on engine tracks, so the engine wasn't the problem, it was Newey... It's not that simple, because even in 1999, when the horsepower disadvantage became glaring, Williams was strong at Monza. Just as they were strong there in the BMW years. Which clearly shows that the chassis and aerodynamics were simply good on these tracks. So of course Renault's withdrawal was a huge problem for Williams, far bigger than Newey's departure, because it wasn't just a lack of horsepower but a glaring lack of important opportunities. Influencing the center of gravity, which other teams could lower far more effectively with new engines, weight and of course money, which the engine manufacturer always uses to support the teams. For God's sake, I'm not saying that Newey's withdrawal didn't matter. He did. But it certainly wasn't nearly as decisive as some people like to think, because Williams was still successful afterwards, and they were still fighting for the title in 2003, 6 years after Newey's departure. So it's by no means the case that Newey left and they crashed completely. No, they were quite competitive and in 1998 they were almost on a par with Ferrari behind McLaren. Then the gap widened until the end of 1999, which logically happens when the horsepower deficit increases and the financial support of a works partner is lacking and you have to make compromises in the design process and development and have disadvantages that a works team does not have and can draw on the full potential. And the history of Williams later serves as a prime example of this - a lack of investment in infrastructure and development left the team at the bottom of F1. And exactly the same thing happened after Renault's exit. There was a lack of money for infrastructure and development, which made huge leaps in those years and where Ferrari and McLaren, especially in the wind tunnel and simulations, were far ahead of the entire field. Williams, on the other hand, stood still until BMW got involved because they didn't have the money. The same could be seen at Benetton and both were overtaken by a team with de facto factory support in 1999 - Jordan, which didn't come from anywhere, but makes it clear how important a factory engine was, because Jordan was in fact a Honda factory team that "delivered" via Mugen in 1999 but was actually preparing its entry. When BMW joined, just as with Benetton after Renault joined, the importance was once again apparent, because both teams were on the up and one became world champion and the other at least fought for the title. So the facts clearly show that Renault's exit hit Williams very hard. Far more than Newey's departure, as well as the fact that the competitiveness in Monza or Hockenheim was based on a chassis and aerodynamics that simply suit these high-speed circuits. Newey's departure certainly weakened Williams, no question, but the lack of a works partner had far worse effects, especially at a time when huge leaps were being made in aerodynamics and simulation technology and major investments in the team and infrastructure were more essential.
@@fam.hunger5244 1999 is already a year later when all other engine suppliers got extra bhp and Supertec didn't. Furthermore, as far as I remember, Williams didn't have qualifying engines in 1999.
Thanks Aidan for another great video. Merry Xmas too If you want more behind the scenes at the red team 1992-1997 msg me as I was part of the Barnard design team … 😮
That's so cool! What do you think about RB losing Newey? Is he the genius people say he is? I'm not doubting him (what do I know, eh? Bog all!), but I have heard some say that he "runs hot & cold", so to speak. Having said that, it would be great to read an expert's opinion. 😊
Newey is a genius, his incredible designs over such a long time are testament to that. He came from an era where one person dominated the overall concept much more than is the case these days. But I’m sure he can help Aston a lot, excited to find out !
The Ferraris (M. Schumacher 9th, Irvine 10th) suffer here from an overall aerodynamic deficiency, reported since the beginning of the season on fast tracks. They generate too little ground effect and compensate for their lack of balance in fast corners with larger wings than those of the competition. In addition, according to Schumacher, the Goodyear tires overheat because of the furnace.
Aiden, have you ever seen the video montage (or at least recently) made by ITV (back in 1997). It's the greatest summary of an f1 season in a couple of minutes.
Ultimately, the F310B can be summed up as follows - an improvement on the F310, which was absolutely unstable aerodynamically because the underbody stalled in waves. For Schumacher, this was predictable due to his precision, as he could drive every lap exactly the same way like clockwork. Despite this, the F310B was a bad car with fundamental design flaws. Too high a center of gravity, too little downforce, backward suspension (no heave damper and thus decoupled suspension) and poor suspension geometry, engine mounted too high, which further increased the already too high CoG, catastrophically bad and incorrectly positioned fuel tank with far too few chambers which made the car very uncomfortable due to too much moving fuel (and which, in addition to the too high CoG, led to too high and above all uneven load changes with the corresponding effects on tire durability, temperature and grip) as well as too rear-heavy weight distribution, poorly positioned CoP, and poor and completely wrong L/D value and a car that was too heavy and over the weight limit. All of this led to the well-known problems such as massive understeer (which could only be halfway managed with an electro-hydraulic differential) tire problems, little grip and traction, uneven and too little downforce, tactical inflexibility, poor driving dynamics and a small working window for the car. As in 1996, it was an incredible achievement for Schumacher to win races with this car and even fight for the world championship. Neither Villeneuve nor Frentzen covered themselves in glory in a Williams that was actually far superior, having to tremble for the title or even finishing behind Schumacher in the actual world championship standings. Ferrari's and Schumacher's luck was the far better electronics department, which enabled an excellent brake balance system and an electronic differential that could conceal a lot, as well as the equally excellent improvement of the aerodynamics and mechanics by Ross Brawn, Rory Byrne and his team. The vehicle dynamics department set up by Ross and Rory and their work helped, as did the new simulation technology and software and Schumacher's tireless work and ability to identify areas where performance could be found. Not to mention the vast improvement of the engine by Martinelli and the homogeneous organization of a team that was created precisely because of Schumacher's interventions and demands.
A miracle that Michael could be in a title race with a car with such fundamental problems built in tbh - thanks for sharing , had no ideas about this. I suspected the car had a lot of drag in low downforce trim and struggled on tracks which needed that package . Also including tracks of high altitude - Monza , Austria , Argentina? (except for Canada/Hockenheim - might be because as you said they are stop/start circuits with few high speed turns ) also at Brazil needing to run way too much wing to overcome handling issues and Michael being a sitting duck on straights. Interesting to compare to the modern ground effect era- the Mercedes cars era had less issues then what you're describing but Hamilton had no chance of fighting for the title with them. If someone built a car today with those kinds of flaws they'd do well to be as relatively competitive as the MasterCard Lola cars then 😂
But wasn’t on the Level as the Williams Renault. The Williams as the better car Schumacher was amazing brilliant this season he had no right challenging for this Championship what a driver!
Talking about Bridgestone/GoodYear. Although Bridgestone was clearly better in 1997 in hot weather than GoodYear, few top teams were willing to switch. Only McLaren switched immediately, Benetton was a late customer, they switched to Bridgestone during winter tests. 1997 was interesting in particular thanks to this: all top teams were on GY whilst the bottom were on BS. And this helped Prost and Arrows considerably. The fact that Hill, Trulli and Panis had strong qualifyings and races is mostly thanks to Bridgestone and conditions.
I think all the top teams stayed with Goodyear for 1997, McLaren did switch early (among the top teams, they were fortunate with the timing of their Goodyear contract ending iirc) but not until 1998. Prost were the highest running team to use Bridgestone for 1997, the others were the new Stewart team, Arrows, Minardi & Mastercard Lola. Many predicted Prost would win races that year, thanks to the tyres. They had chances in Argentina & Austria, but reliability let them down. And ran out of laps chasing down Villeneuve on much faster tyres in the latter stages of the Spanish GP. But it was Hill's Arrows who came closest to a Bridgestone vistory in Hungary - something nobody expected. And even more unexpected was set to take pole at Jerez on merit in the dry, until he encountered a spun car & yellow flags.
Sorry, some of what you say here is not fully correct. To say that the F310B couldn't be more different from the F310 is, closely looked, not really correct. Sure, if you look at the car in its aerodynamic form it appears that way, but it is a further development of the F310, from which many parts and technologies have been adopted. And the F310B certainly HAD the air deflectors in front of the rear tires at the beginning of the season. Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne removed them from the car at the 1997 Canadian GP because the 1997 rule change restricted the area where they could be fitted. This made them very inefficient, which is why almost everyone else (I think Sauber and one or two other teams still used them briefly) did away with them from the start, while Barnard still fitted these now inefficient things. They were used from the launch of the F310B to the Canadian GP. The 7 speed gearbox was something Schumacher wanted and had been pushing for since 1996 after the first test - see Chritopher Hilton's Michael Schumacher The Whole Story for a timeline. In general, the F310B, Barnard's basic design, was a disaster with many fundamental design flaws that revealed Barnard's lack of understanding of modern racing cars. The engine was mounted far too high, the fuel tank was not only incorrectly positioned but also fitted with too few baffles so that the fuel moved back and forth during load changes and also led to pumping problems and a contraction of the tank (hence Schumacher's extra stop in Melbourne), the suspension geometry was catastrophic and allowed far too high load changes also due to its design with only 2 dampers (where others like Byrne and Newey had long used a heave damper and decoupled suspension) and the L/D ratio was completely off which caused too much drag and the CoG was far too high and the car was 10 kg over the weight limit and the weight distribution was far too rear-heavy. This all caused the familiar problems - tire problems due to excessive load changes, massive understeer, little grip, poor traction, low top speed, poor aerodynamics, inconsistent aerodynamics, little leeway in the set-up, etc. Only Brawn's and Byrne's aerodynamic, mechanical and constructional changes turned Barnard's disastrous design into a halfway decent race car, but it was always a far worse race car than the Williams and in large parts of the season also worse than the McLaren and Benetton, as can be seen from the fact that Irvine only finished 7th in the championship standings behind Benetton and McLaren drivers.
07:55 It's sad that some of the old races don't have proper conversions. Old PAL footage looks REALLY bad on TH-cam, simply because ppl don't know what they are doing. That said: even modern 1080P and higher footage often looks bad because people don't understand how codecs and TH-cam work. For example: 1080P uploads on Youtbe get encoded so bad by TH-cam that you get higher quality, if you simply upscale your 1080P footage to 1440P or 4K and watch the Footage on 1080P. Yes, upscaled 1080P->4K footage (uploaded to TH-cam) looks better when watched at 1080P, than watching the original 1080P footage uploaded at 1080P, because 1080P encoding on TH-cam is THIS BAD (even if you upload 1080P at 600mbit/s).
It’s amazing how for basically 10 years. Everyone who won the championship was either Michael Schumacher, or was being chased by Michael Schumacher. I know he gets all applauded and everybody knows his name, but I think people have fallen into the trap of thinking that he was just in a fast car. When he was so much more than that.
yes williams did test a much lower wing for monza like in 1988 germany as Villeneuve was 5th, HHF was 3rd, there was rumors that berger would replace irvine but that silly as he left ferrari because he didnt want to be schumacher no. 2
Regarding the F310B at Monza and Austria, I seem to recall that Ferrari came to Monza with a special long wheelbase version, which simply didn't work as advertised. IIRC, the idea was that extending the wheelbase would work better on low downforce, high speed track, which evidently it didn't.
That is wrong. Ferrari did not have a car with a longer wheelbase in 1997. That was 1998 when they had a short "version" of the car, and a longer one with a spacer between the engine and gearbox. The only thing Ferrari had in 1997 regarding the car was a lightweight chassis that was developed because Barnard's chassis was too heavy.
@ You are correct! I confused that with the 1998 F300, for which Ferrari rolled out a long wheelbase version at the German and Belgian GP. Indeed, their performance at Hockenheim in 98 was similarly poor, with Irvine only qualifying 6th and finishing 8th while Schumacher finished 5th after qualifying 9th.
Of course I'm right 😉 Few know more about the Ferraris of the time than I do, as I've had the honor and pleasure of talking to many of the people who built and developed these cars. Incidentally, the F300 with the long wheelbase was first introduced at Spa and had a wheelbase of 3083mm instead of 2953mm. What few people know is that the 1998 F300 was actually designed with a blown diffuser which would have given the car significantly more downforce. Unfortunately, heat protection and carbon technology was not yet at the level it was over 10 years later, when another F1 designer remembered Rory Byrne's concept and adopted it almost 1-1...
I am a JV fan but know that he had his shortcomings. According to Newey, JV was over 1s slower around Silverstone compared to Hill yet Williams hired him. My guess is Renault, Imperial Tobacco, and Bernie Ecclestone had a hand in JV getting the drive. He did well in the top car, after then...not much. I think trusting Craig Pollack with several misjudged career moves stymied his career. There was a rumor Ron Dennis was thinking about replacing DC with JV, which seems odd but intriguing. I don't think JV would have prevailed against Mika but he would have achieved more wins for sure.
Just finished Adrian Newey's book and indeed, the FW18 should (and could have) easily won 15 out of 16. Adrian admits that they screwed up huge in Barcelona...
@@AidanMillward True, that was a vicious wreck. After that, TWR/Ligier went on the decline. One of your previous videos covered the subject of Ligier, which showed that they were a good team with potential. Being French and politically connected to Jacques Cirac really began to be a liability by the mid-nineties though.
I think we should be honest here - none of the top drivers would let their opponents overtake them in the decisive race for the world championship and lose the title... Any of the top drivers would shoot him down! Otherwise they would never have got to the top! And just for your information - there were five times a situation where the two World Championship candidates fought for one position in the last race. Four times there was a crash and each time the leader in the world championship shot down the one behind! The only time this didn't happen was in 2021 - where the driver in front in the race was behind in the World Championship and would have lost if he had shot him down! This shows clearly - whenever in F1 the championship leader is ahead in the decisive race and his competitor wants to overtake him - the championship leader will rather shoot him down than lose the title! So what Schumacher did was as "normal" as it was understandable. Nokia Lauda was one of the honest ones a few weeks later when he said - Schumacher did exactly the right thing! In the fight for the title, he can't just let him overtake him in a situation like that! Button 2000 also said clearly - Schumacher did what anyone else would have done! I can't listen to this hypocrisy after all these years! Anyone who thinks a driver fighting for the championship would let his opponent overtake in a decisive race in a decisive situation instead of shooting him down because of decency, rules, honor or anything else has no idea about F1 and its drivers. The really great drivers - Senna, Schumacher, Verstappen, Clark were and are all reckless, otherwise they weren't the best. And every one of them would rather die than let their opponent become world champion on the basis of honor, distance and fairness. So Jerez 1997 is nothing more than hypocrisy and any driver who says he didn't do that is either lying or is someone who wouldn't have stood a chance anyway
Are you serious? After all the performances in which Schumacher outclassed everyone in the rain? And after everything that people who worked with him have said about it? A typical Schumacher hater who can't accept that he was simply outstanding in these conditions. And no matter how you look at it - the set-up is part of "the art" of an F1 driver. And either way - going 6 to 8 seconds faster than everyone else - that doesn't just come from a bit more downforce, as many other wet races have shown where it wasn't the case, Spa 1998 for example.
Yes I wonder why Ferrari were slow at Monza in 97 was it Lack of Power or not good over the Kerbs didn’t ride the Kerbs well. Or wrong car set up High Downforce set up
Williams was the better car. Just that operationally they were rubbish, which kept Ferrari in the hunt. Go through the season race by race, and you'll just find that Jacques was either wins or spins. Complete lack of consistency.
For me, the 1997 season is what an F1 car will always look like in my mind. It was my first full season. The cars were all wonderful looking with the Ferrari, Benetton and Jordan being my favourite.
Look like? Who cares! Just make them SOUND like that again!
Brilliant story telling Aidan. And posting on Christmas day. Outstanding 👏👍
You know you can schedule videos?
Oh yes, 7 speed gearbox was quite innovative. I remember Ferrari being the only team using it in 1998, but I didn't know that it was already there in 1997. Thanks for this.
Ferrari were the first to use a 7 speed gearbox as far back as 1989
They went back to 6 in 1992, then went back to 7 for a few races that year before they returned to 6 in 1993 again
They had 7 gears even from end of season 96. I can remeber that Schumy would win Spa and Monza in 96 with 7 speed gearbox
And this 7-speed gearbox came about because Schumacher wanted it, as he felt there was too little engine breaking in the V10 compared to the V12. Barnard actually wanted a 6-speed gearbox and the 7-speed gearbox is only thanks to Schumacher. This can be read with statements from Barnard himself and team members in the book by Christopher Hilton - Michael Schumacher The Whole Story.
@@theiceman7590 yes Alain Prost liked 6 this is in 1990 monaco gp nigel had 7, alain had 6
1997-2007 best looking best sounding decade.
Great video Aidan, I've always researched this car a lot and found some interesting stories. I'm Brazilian and I apologize if my comment is too long. It's years like these that showed how Schumacher was in another category compared to the other drivers.
The truth is that this car, from the beginning, was always considered a design error. This soon worried Ross Brawn and Schumacher himself a lot, because they were taking more than two seconds per lap in the pre-season at Estoril. That's why, after those tests, Ross Brawn called to get Rory Byrne out of retirement, as he was taking care of his diving school in Thailand. Ross even criticized the project, saying that the car seemed to be produced by someone who "didn't even see with his own eyes what he was designing", criticizing the fact that Barnard stayed in England, instead of going to Italy to check out the project in person.
However, Barnard said in an interview with Autosport magazine at the end of the year that he was unable to implement many of the things he wanted in the car. One of these things was a new transmission for the car, which had reduced weight and would bring other benefits to the balance of the car. However, Ferrari discarded the idea, due to the cost that the system would generate and "internal pressures" from Ferrari itself. They said they would use the 1996 transmission in the 1997 car. The car, according to him, began to have clear handling problems and he even changed the weight distribution of the car to try to improve its balance. And, according to him, the problem is that when the car hit the track, he was no longer involved in the project. That's why you could even see how the car's performance deteriorated sharply in some situations, with excessive wear on the tires. It was like that here at Interlagos, in Barcelona, at the Hungaroring and, even, in the final part in Jerez, when Villeneuve got close to Schumacher.
5:10 - Here it shows how huge the sidepods of the Ferrari F310B are, compared to those of the Williams FW19, which used Renault engines. Barnard criticized the fact that Ferrari used larger radiators than those used in Renault engines. This would even make French engines able to operate at higher temperatures, without compromising their power. According to the Englishman, he sent several faxes showing how much the car lost aerodynamically with the larger radiators. One of the solutions adopted by Rory Byrne, with the 1998 F300, was to divide this large radiator into two. They used this configuration until F2001. When Rory realized with the F2002 that he could improve the construction of the sidepods and allow the coca-cola area of the car to be narrowed, leaving the radiators inclined.
11:41 - Barnard explained how he created a way for the car to quickly change the car's setups, whether racing in the dry or in the rain. The system was made using two supports, which immediately adjusted the height of the car in relation to the ground. Instead of just being adjusted internally with a wrench, you could make the adjustment using a screwdriver, which activated an internal mechanism that resembled a rack. Including two reference points that gave the mechanics a base. On the rear wing, the excess holes along it correspond to the types of downforce required for each specific condition. He even developed a way to quickly change the rear wing, where it fits via four mounting points on a flexible carbon structure at the rear. But there was a catch, the installation of these wings became more complicated when they gained those large side extensions, which required the installation of extra mounting points on the chassis.
Funny neough at the hungaroring Ferrari debuted a car with a longer wheelbase (something other teams were using) and the car was also lighter then the car they started the season with. It showed promise but unfortunaterly Schumacher heavily damaged the car in practice which forced Ferrari to switch back to the older variant for the race. At first they thought they had to write off the car but they were able to repair it and it's last race was in Jerez where it ended in the sands thanks to Schumacher's dumb action.
@@Athrun82 They lost 10kg of weight in this new chassis. And the wheelbase of the car has increased due to the enlargement of the car's fuel tank. In addition, there was a strong suspicion, according to one of the Williams mechanics, that Ferrari had a front wing with more flexibility than allowed in Japan. It was in this race, in fact, that Ferrari developed a method of programming the throttle system to automatically feather periodically as the car accelerated, and so achieve the smoothest possible torque curve throughout the rev range. It was an electronic system developed in conjunction with the Type 046/2 engine upgrade, which debuted in France. This caused much discussion at the time and the FIA issued a statement saying that it would not be allowed for 1998, although controversy has always continued around the 1998 F300, the 1999 F399 and the 2000 F1-2000. Other times.
Crazy John has always been good at blaming others when his cars suck and you have to be very careful what he says. His ego is and was his biggest problem. And so when his cars have had design flaws, he has always blamed others, as he did with the F310B. The fact is that he was the chief designer of this car, which had essential design flaws. When Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne joined Ferrari on December 16, 1996/early February 1, they took over a car that had fundamental design flaws. The car's center of gravity was ridiculously high for an F1 car, partly because the engine was mounted far too high, an essential design parameter for which Barnard was solely responsible. The car was far too heavy and 20 kg overweight - which was a typical problem with Barnard's cars, the L/D ratio was far too high or rear-heavy as was the aerodynamic balance which made the car aerodynamically unstable and far too slow on the straights and the suspension geometry was a disaster as was the fuel tank which had hardly any chambers and so allowed the fuel to move back and forth far too much and unsettle the car. You can read certain things that Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne said about it in Christopher Hilton's - Michael Schumacher The Whole Story, as well as Ross's book Total Competition, and even Barnard's own biography. And these points - L/D ratio, engine mounting points, position and design of the fuel tank and fuel system (which also caused problems), weight of the car, suspension geometry are fundamental design parameters for which the chief designer is responsible and nobody else. These fundamental errors have of course become known and of course Crazy John tries as usual to blame others, which even if it were true would only mean that he did not have his people and his team under control and was not able to get the most fundamental design parameters right or enforce them. But that's exactly what a chief designer has to do. That is what he is ultimately and solely responsible for. He specifies the parameters that have to be achieved, he determines the philosophy of the car and the "values" to be achieved in terms of L/D, center of gravity, weight distribution, suspension geometry, etc. He also has to define the so-called trade-offs and solutions as to how these are to be designed and achieved. Crazy John's statements, which I have never heard from him in relation to the F310B (it seems to me to be a mixture of the "failure" with other cars, because the point with the air intakes etc. was something that was a problem years before and where he blamed the engine department with similar words...), prove nothing other than that he either tried to correct his fundamental mistakes in vehicle design (which were no wonder, because as Pat Symonds once beautifully illustrated, Barnard didn't know about essential things that F1 designers had to know anyway, especially from the mid-80s and in the 90s, and couldn't understand and carry out any calculations regarding chassis geometry, just as Willem Toet clearly stated several times that JB had no idea about aerodynamics and didn't really understand what aerodynamicists actually do, which Gerhard Berger also confirmed in his biography, the same was true for electronics, which the years of "active" cars and Barnard's disastrous designs of that time clearly show), or that he was not able to lead a design team and take control of a project. In view of the many publicly available and partially cited statements and the things written in the aforementioned books alone, one thing is clear - Barnard was a generation of "designers" who were in no way up to the demands of "modern" F1, which was all about aerodynamics, electronics and vehicle dynamics, and did not know what modern F1 cars "needed". The mistakes in fundamental design parameters of the F310B show this just as clearly as the predecessor F310, which was an even bigger disaster, just like Barnard's cars of the years before. The last time he managed a reasonably good car was with the 1990 Ferrari, which was because the "new" gearbox had so much shorter shift times, which amounted to well over 1 second over a lap. But then the time of the "big" innovations and silver bullets that JB was always looking for and to which he owed his successes was over. In general, Barnard's comments are also just plain stupid and obviously nonsensical which exposes them for what they are - cheap excuses that are also unlikely. Of course the Renault had smaller radiators! Renault was the first manufacturer in 1997 to pressurize the cooling system to 3.5 to 4 bar, which allowed a higher boiling point of the cooling water (140 degrees). The Renault engine was the only one that could withstand these temperatures, which is why it could run much smaller radiators than the Ferrari.
Ferrari's engine department under Martinelli achieved these higher cooling water temperatures in 1997, which allowed Ross and Rory to use smaller radiators and a narrower Coca-Cola rear end from Canada onwards. So what Barnard is saying is as wrong as it is clearly a stupid excuse and what you are saying is also partly incorrect, even if you are right about the arrangement of the radiators on later Ferraris, which is due to Rory's design philosophy, which was already evident at Benetton, who for aerodynamic reasons always paid great attention to the Coca-Cola rear and the cooling inlets, which are a blockage area in F1 cars and therefore extremely important. The suspension itself, even if you're right about the quick adjustments, is further evidence of what Barnard had fabricated. Two springs and dampers front and rear, which was completely outdated, because people like Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne and Adrian Newey had been working for years at that time with a third damper to control heave, the so-called heave damper, and achieved a decoupled suspension, and further better control for the aerodynamics. The fact that Crazy John was still working with 2 elements in 1997 clearly shows how he was lagging behind the new, better educated and more skilled F1 engineers in terms of both aerodynamics and vehicle dynamics. This was largely due to his ego and arrogance, because where people like Rory Byrne soaked up knowledge and had the attitude that they could learn something from everyone, which they did for many years, Crazy John had the attitude that he alone knew everything and was better than everyone else since university. Which is why he stopped where others accumulated incredible knowledge. So be careful with Crazy John's statements - most of them are excuses and lies with which he wants to blame others for his own mistakes and ignorance.
1997 marks the end of my all time favorite cars. The cars were quick but still had a wide track and moved around a lot.
See if you can find that video of Irvine bitching after he retires from the 1997 Luxemburg Grand Prix. He says the 310B is just a 310 with better aero but the car is still a joke to drive especially in qualifying. Aparently the engine was to high in the chassis and the centre of gravity would move around making it really unstable, it used to just understeer like crazy when it was light on fuel in qualifying trim. I tried finding the video but just cant find it on youtube.
Probably just said it in the heat of the moment
High engine centre of mass might have suited Schumacher's style. He was probably the first driver to adopt the modern style of straightening the corner entry/exit and rotating the car mid-corner, rather than the classic racing line of taking the corner in a smooth arc. That chracteristic should make it easier to rotate the car on demand, so long as the car is well behaved enough to remain stable the rest of the time. But it would likely hurt performance through long fast corners.
Would be interesting to see if that correlates with where Schumacher won that year.
Irvine was a shit driver and an even worse car setter-upper. He proved that when Schumacher broke his leg and the car fell away every race Schumacher was out.
Jaguar hiring him as lead driver doomed them from the very start.
@@ibex485A high center of gravity does not suit any driver's riding style! How do you come up with something like that? A high center of gravity ensures that the vehicle has much higher load changes, which has extreme disadvantages both aerodynamically and in terms of vehicle dynamics! A car with a high center of gravity will always be slower than a car with a low center of gravity, aerodynamically worse, put more strain on the tires, slip more and have poorer traction. And by the way - an essential design parameter of ALL Ferraris since 1998 has been the lowering of the CoG every year... This would hardly be done if Schumacher's driving style required a high CoG, which as I said (sorry) is complete nonsense.
@@theiceman7590no, its a fact. Many people, including Ross and Rory confirmed that the engine was mounted too high and the CoG was much too high, what was something they did not understand how Barnard did that. It results in high load transfer, what is catastrophic for tyres, grip and traction and also aero.
97 was a weird season.
Villeneuve almost throw by the window a title with the best car and got lucky to win in britain and hungary.
Behind the Williams the pack was dense. The McLaren was good but not reliable, the Benetton was good but in difficulty to put temperature in the tyres especially in qualifying and the Ferrari got tyres dégradations and udersteer/stability problem. Jordan could have won in argentina (according to Jordan and Ralf), Prost in Austria without engine trouble and if course Arrows in Hungary.
Bridgestone bring new tyre structure with kevlar which made a uge difference. Good year on the other hand use steel structure (this is also the kind of structure use by Pirelli when they came back in 2011 and cause a lot of trouble) and their tyres didn't got the same performance from a set to an other. The lack of quality check was really visible on some races where you can see a really performant car drop suddenly in the field after it Pit stop.
The F310 (a parachute for Schumacher and a piece of junk for Irvine) was a concept which didn't work. According to Barnhard the sidepod were design to optimise the air flow at the rear but bring others problems and didn't really worked.
They did a lot of work to solve problems with the F310B (the sidepod and the rear look a lot like a Benetton) but most of the problems were solved only in 99 but still got a lack of performance compared to McLaren mp4/14
At Monza Ferrari bring lighter chassis and new shock absorber. But the aerodynamical problems of the F310B were exacerbated. The car did not generate enough ground effect and they were forced to put more wing because of the fast corners. Not having fast corners Hockenheim allowed Ferrari to mask this problem and be efficient.
What Schumacher did this season with this car against a really performant Williams is really impressive
An unexpected Christmas gift 🎁... Thank you! Happy Christmas
Mad lad posting on Christmas. Merry Christmas Aidan to you and yours!
Merry Christmas Aidan! 1997 truly had the last attractive cars (although I like the silly aero cars of 2006-2008.)
5:38 - You've made my Christmas, It sounds fantastic
Good video! 1997 is a fave car and to me the first true schumacher car and was hard to beleive he could contest for the title in it compared to what williams nr 1 driver had to drive at williams.
No, you havent done a review of the mclaren 1998 car :)
Thank you. I feel 8 again just refeeling these moments with crazy accuracy. Thank you. Merry Christmas
awesome video, about a great season, and interesting car
11:40 I remember several teams at places like Monaco and Brazil staging personnel with phones a mile or two from the track to call the crews when rain was coming down.
In my opinion, the Ferrari 310B has to be one of the best looking F1 cars from the 1990s.
The fact that nobody talks about the forbidden book called The Gilded Nexus of Prosperity speaks volumes about how people are stuck in a trance
still gutted irvine didn't get a win in a ferrari until his 4th season with ferrari while schumi already had 14
I feel like until Rubens got there. Michael always got the best stuff in his cars that’s why his teammates could just never have better reliability than him. Obviously there were days when they were better than him, but the majority of the time he always finished ahead of them.
“ B “ rated driver
i feel like Irvines performance in 1999 was a view of what the preferential treatment Schumi got in terms of car setup and development, it is not a knock to Schumi or Irvine at all because I do believe it’s normal for championship teams to prioritize their #1 driver
He could've won in Japan in 1997
@housesports000 The thing is that Irvine had arguably the best supporting teammate he could possibly have when Schumi returned after the Silverstone crash, and still couldn't get it done. He bottled his title chances big time due to his mistakes...
As a Bottom fan. Merry Chrismas and all that bollocks Aiden!
Great video again!
Merry Christmas mate!
Merry Christmas Aidan,and I love these retrospective videos on the Ferraris. If you are buisy until new year,then have a happy new year ;)
Merry Christmas, great vid! I loved this car, the first real season I watched F1 and this car took my heart! It was a bit of a diva, could shine on it's day, but, especially early season, munched through it's tires and gave Michael a headache. First of all Michael was a generational talent and could drive around many issues, making Irvine look like an amateur at times. Some races they couldn't get the setup on the car, late season pressure and bad decisions (nurburgring start, set up in Monza) cost them. I truly feel they didn't think they were contenders early in the season until Monaco and made bad choices, probably costing them the championship. Seeing that Villeneuve qualifying time in Melbourne probably broke them for a couple of months. The fact they came back, had such a lead mid season showed how much Williams bottled it then. You are right, both teams kind of couldn't handle the pressure. Amazing end to the year, I was thoroughly disappointed in the Jerez finale, but it was such an amazing year to get onto F1! Only 2008 and 2021 have come close since. Ok 98 & 99 were decided at the last race, but Hakkinen felt like a more deserved winner and worthy competitor to Michael. 2000 was great but it wasn't decided at the last race. Keep the videos coming, love the content and can't wait to see more videos about this era of our great sport!
12:57 no, Villeneuve won in Brazil and Argentina back to back.
It pointless - Aidan’s attention to detail is going down with each video that he makes.
@@vladimirk9584 I do pointed.
5:20 removing those aero deflectors in front of the rear wheels was actually a stipulation in the regulations for '97. If you look at the '96 Williams (FW18), it had an extremely similar setup and both Adrian and Patrick Head are on record saying that these elements were actually super efficient and very useful in generating downforce.
Thats not really true. Actually the 1997 rules did only restrict the area where you could use them, what made them less effective. Thats why most teams did not use them at all, but look at the F310B in the first few races - it still had them!
@@fam.hunger5244 Yes, poor wording on my part.
When the subtitles for the V10 soundtrack are “music” and “applause”. Damn right!
Thanks for the memories... 🎤🎶🎵
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanuka, or whatever you celebrate, to everyone. Here's to a fantastic new year to everyone! 🎇🥂🍾
Ferrari had been using 7-speed gearboxes for some time. The 640 of 1989 (with F1's first semi-auto gearbox) had 7 gears, and I think every Ferrari F1 car since (until 2014).
Jordan were one of the next to switch to 7 gears (1994?). 7 gears vs 6 seemed to be a matter of team preference in the '90s (for those with semi-auto gearboxes). There doesn't seem to have been a clear performance advantage, and there must have been a small downside when it came to gearbox weight & packaging. I think Williams & Renault stuck with 6 speed gearboxes until the end of the 3L engine era, but with the V8s having less torque everyone seems to have adopted 7 gears for those.
prost liked 6 monaco 1990, prost had to use nigel mansell car had 7
15:20 Ferrari being off the pace in Monza was pretty much about overheating the tyres AFAIK. I can remember the Michael talking about it in interviews at the time - as soon as the track temp went past a certain point, the 310B would inevitably overheat the Goodyears.
Yeah , that year on a few occasions the 310B would pretty spectacularly blister the Goodyears , Hungary being the worst example
Same thing happened in Barcelona too. Schumacher took 2nd place at the start but lost his tyres early. Oddly enough though is that Villeneuve who was supposed to be a "tyre killer" kept his tyres optimal while his teammate Frentzen destroyed his. Engineers later speculated that Villeneuves driving style actually preserved his tyres. Just goes to show how variable F1 can be
@@Athrun82 what did they have to monitor tyre temp at the time? I'm surprised how Villeneuve could keep the tyres alive but Frentzen could destroy them? Surely the team had the telemetry and could see what Jacques was doing and help his team-mate?
@@tourmaline07 What telemetry? Live tyre temp measurement is a fairly recent development in F1, there was nothing like this on the cars in the 90s. Tyre temperatures were checked in the pits with a physical probe touching the tyre surface.
@wellend89 fair enough , I'd wondered if they had sensors on the car for that back then.
Merry Christmas Aidan! 🎄
nice vid again :) somehow love the 1997 season. was only 6 years old back then and i can't remember much xD but when i look back, i always wonder what Olivier Panis could have done during that season. probably something like Frentzen in 1999? maybe thats a topic you wanna share your thoughts. greetings from germany and Frohe Weihnachten
As mentioned around the middle of the video, the F310B's competitiveness varied wildly throughout the season. Some circuits they were on par with or even quicker in race trim than the FW19, others qualifying or even finishing top six was a chore.
Yeah sometimes it was clearly the 4th best car.
For me 1997 was the year of downfall of Williams rather than rise of Ferrari. It's very arguable that Williams dropped in form in 1998 due to Renault withdrawal. Mecachrome engines still had about 25bhp deficit to Ilmor-Mercedes and 15bhp to Ferrari which was still manageable if aerodynamics and chassis would have been ok. However, Williams FW20 had its best performance in Hockenheim and Monza and worst in Barcelona and Monaco. So, it's not Renault, it's Newey departure that impacted the team the most.
Wouldnt it be Renault's departure in that case if they were just a little bit behind in the high speed tracks? Although its hard to tell in reality.
@@theiceman7590 Renault departure played a role. But they were still fast on high speed circuits like Hockenheim and Monza. Still far from McLaren, but nowhere else Villeneuve was so close to the pole (0.5 and 0.3s gap)
Your conclusion is pretty reckless and not really correct. It's not that simple, because if you look at Hockenheim 1999, for example, where Williams was absolutely miserable in qualifying, it becomes clear how clearly the ever-increasing horsepower deficit is coming to bear. The fact that Williams then, with BMW as engine supplier, also took pole positions and fought for victories on high-speed tracks such as Monza, Canada and Hockenheim clearly shows that these tracks simply "suited" Williams. Such things are simply related to the L/D ratio of a car, which was relatively low for the Williams. The car had (the very low and flat sidewalls illustrate this design philosophy) a very low drag, but still produced a "decent" amount of downforce, which is why it generally achieved very good results on high-speed tracks. So you can't just say - they were successful at Monza and Hockenheim, on engine tracks, so the engine wasn't the problem, it was Newey... It's not that simple, because even in 1999, when the horsepower disadvantage became glaring, Williams was strong at Monza. Just as they were strong there in the BMW years. Which clearly shows that the chassis and aerodynamics were simply good on these tracks. So of course Renault's withdrawal was a huge problem for Williams, far bigger than Newey's departure, because it wasn't just a lack of horsepower but a glaring lack of important opportunities. Influencing the center of gravity, which other teams could lower far more effectively with new engines, weight and of course money, which the engine manufacturer always uses to support the teams. For God's sake, I'm not saying that Newey's withdrawal didn't matter. He did. But it certainly wasn't nearly as decisive as some people like to think, because Williams was still successful afterwards, and they were still fighting for the title in 2003, 6 years after Newey's departure. So it's by no means the case that Newey left and they crashed completely. No, they were quite competitive and in 1998 they were almost on a par with Ferrari behind McLaren. Then the gap widened until the end of 1999, which logically happens when the horsepower deficit increases and the financial support of a works partner is lacking and you have to make compromises in the design process and development and have disadvantages that a works team does not have and can draw on the full potential. And the history of Williams later serves as a prime example of this - a lack of investment in infrastructure and development left the team at the bottom of F1. And exactly the same thing happened after Renault's exit. There was a lack of money for infrastructure and development, which made huge leaps in those years and where Ferrari and McLaren, especially in the wind tunnel and simulations, were far ahead of the entire field. Williams, on the other hand, stood still until BMW got involved because they didn't have the money. The same could be seen at Benetton and both were overtaken by a team with de facto factory support in 1999 - Jordan, which didn't come from anywhere, but makes it clear how important a factory engine was, because Jordan was in fact a Honda factory team that "delivered" via Mugen in 1999 but was actually preparing its entry. When BMW joined, just as with Benetton after Renault joined, the importance was once again apparent, because both teams were on the up and one became world champion and the other at least fought for the title. So the facts clearly show that Renault's exit hit Williams very hard. Far more than Newey's departure, as well as the fact that the competitiveness in Monza or Hockenheim was based on a chassis and aerodynamics that simply suit these high-speed circuits. Newey's departure certainly weakened Williams, no question, but the lack of a works partner had far worse effects, especially at a time when huge leaps were being made in aerodynamics and simulation technology and major investments in the team and infrastructure were more essential.
@@fam.hunger5244 1999 is already a year later when all other engine suppliers got extra bhp and Supertec didn't. Furthermore, as far as I remember, Williams didn't have qualifying engines in 1999.
The 1997 had very bizarre parity at times - kind of like 2024.
Thank you for the entertainment through the year and may you and your's have a merry christmas and a happy new year!!!
Merry Christmas, Aidan.
Thanks Aidan for another great video. Merry Xmas too
If you want more behind the scenes at the red team 1992-1997 msg me as I was part of the Barnard design team … 😮
That's so cool! What do you think about RB losing Newey? Is he the genius people say he is? I'm not doubting him (what do I know, eh? Bog all!), but I have heard some say that he "runs hot & cold", so to speak. Having said that, it would be great to read an expert's opinion. 😊
Newey is a genius, his incredible designs over such a long time are testament to that. He came from an era where one person dominated the overall concept much more than is the case these days. But I’m sure he can help Aston a lot, excited to find out !
The Ferraris (M. Schumacher 9th, Irvine 10th) suffer here from an overall aerodynamic deficiency, reported since the beginning of the season on fast tracks. They generate too little ground effect and compensate for their lack of balance in fast corners with larger wings than those of the competition. In addition, according to Schumacher, the Goodyear tires overheat because of the furnace.
Aiden, have you ever seen the video montage (or at least recently) made by ITV (back in 1997). It's the greatest summary of an f1 season in a couple of minutes.
Merry Christmas, Aidan!
The 1997 grid has from front to the back of the grid, the best looking F1 cars ever. Even the Mild Sevel Minardi's looked nice to look at.
Good car and tyres with weak Hart V8 engine.
Ultimately, the F310B can be summed up as follows - an improvement on the F310, which was absolutely unstable aerodynamically because the underbody stalled in waves. For Schumacher, this was predictable due to his precision, as he could drive every lap exactly the same way like clockwork. Despite this, the F310B was a bad car with fundamental design flaws. Too high a center of gravity, too little downforce, backward suspension (no heave damper and thus decoupled suspension) and poor suspension geometry, engine mounted too high, which further increased the already too high CoG, catastrophically bad and incorrectly positioned fuel tank with far too few chambers which made the car very uncomfortable due to too much moving fuel (and which, in addition to the too high CoG, led to too high and above all uneven load changes with the corresponding effects on tire durability, temperature and grip) as well as too rear-heavy weight distribution, poorly positioned CoP, and poor and completely wrong L/D value and a car that was too heavy and over the weight limit. All of this led to the well-known problems such as massive understeer (which could only be halfway managed with an electro-hydraulic differential) tire problems, little grip and traction, uneven and too little downforce, tactical inflexibility, poor driving dynamics and a small working window for the car. As in 1996, it was an incredible achievement for Schumacher to win races with this car and even fight for the world championship. Neither Villeneuve nor Frentzen covered themselves in glory in a Williams that was actually far superior, having to tremble for the title or even finishing behind Schumacher in the actual world championship standings. Ferrari's and Schumacher's luck was the far better electronics department, which enabled an excellent brake balance system and an electronic differential that could conceal a lot, as well as the equally excellent improvement of the aerodynamics and mechanics by Ross Brawn, Rory Byrne and his team. The vehicle dynamics department set up by Ross and Rory and their work helped, as did the new simulation technology and software and Schumacher's tireless work and ability to identify areas where performance could be found. Not to mention the vast improvement of the engine by Martinelli and the homogeneous organization of a team that was created precisely because of Schumacher's interventions and demands.
A miracle that Michael could be in a title race with a car with such fundamental problems built in tbh - thanks for sharing , had no ideas about this. I suspected the car had a lot of drag in low downforce trim and struggled on tracks which needed that package . Also including tracks of high altitude - Monza , Austria , Argentina? (except for Canada/Hockenheim - might be because as you said they are stop/start circuits with few high speed turns ) also at Brazil needing to run way too much wing to overcome handling issues and Michael being a sitting duck on straights.
Interesting to compare to the modern ground effect era- the Mercedes cars era had less issues then what you're describing but Hamilton had no chance of fighting for the title with them. If someone built a car today with those kinds of flaws they'd do well to be as relatively competitive as the MasterCard Lola cars then 😂
Such a change between the 96 and 97 car. My boy went on a diet
I miss the old buss top.
Mentioning drooping noses and the adult toy nose on a Caterham appears in nightmares again.
The 1997 Ferrari was a big improvement from the 1996 Car.
But wasn’t on the Level as the Williams Renault. The Williams as the better car Schumacher was amazing brilliant this season he had no right challenging for this Championship what a driver!
Merry Christmas 🎄
Talking about Bridgestone/GoodYear. Although Bridgestone was clearly better in 1997 in hot weather than GoodYear, few top teams were willing to switch. Only McLaren switched immediately, Benetton was a late customer, they switched to Bridgestone during winter tests. 1997 was interesting in particular thanks to this: all top teams were on GY whilst the bottom were on BS. And this helped Prost and Arrows considerably. The fact that Hill, Trulli and Panis had strong qualifyings and races is mostly thanks to Bridgestone and conditions.
Panis on Bridgestone tyres would have won a few races in 1997 if it weren't for his accident in Canada
I think all the top teams stayed with Goodyear for 1997, McLaren did switch early (among the top teams, they were fortunate with the timing of their Goodyear contract ending iirc) but not until 1998.
Prost were the highest running team to use Bridgestone for 1997, the others were the new Stewart team, Arrows, Minardi & Mastercard Lola.
Many predicted Prost would win races that year, thanks to the tyres. They had chances in Argentina & Austria, but reliability let them down. And ran out of laps chasing down Villeneuve on much faster tyres in the latter stages of the Spanish GP. But it was Hill's Arrows who came closest to a Bridgestone vistory in Hungary - something nobody expected. And even more unexpected was set to take pole at Jerez on merit in the dry, until he encountered a spun car & yellow flags.
Sorry, some of what you say here is not fully correct. To say that the F310B couldn't be more different from the F310 is, closely looked, not really correct. Sure, if you look at the car in its aerodynamic form it appears that way, but it is a further development of the F310, from which many parts and technologies have been adopted. And the F310B certainly HAD the air deflectors in front of the rear tires at the beginning of the season. Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne removed them from the car at the 1997 Canadian GP because the 1997 rule change restricted the area where they could be fitted. This made them very inefficient, which is why almost everyone else (I think Sauber and one or two other teams still used them briefly) did away with them from the start, while Barnard still fitted these now inefficient things. They were used from the launch of the F310B to the Canadian GP. The 7 speed gearbox was something Schumacher wanted and had been pushing for since 1996 after the first test - see Chritopher Hilton's Michael Schumacher The Whole Story for a timeline. In general, the F310B, Barnard's basic design, was a disaster with many fundamental design flaws that revealed Barnard's lack of understanding of modern racing cars. The engine was mounted far too high, the fuel tank was not only incorrectly positioned but also fitted with too few baffles so that the fuel moved back and forth during load changes and also led to pumping problems and a contraction of the tank (hence Schumacher's extra stop in Melbourne), the suspension geometry was catastrophic and allowed far too high load changes also due to its design with only 2 dampers (where others like Byrne and Newey had long used a heave damper and decoupled suspension) and the L/D ratio was completely off which caused too much drag and the CoG was far too high and the car was 10 kg over the weight limit and the weight distribution was far too rear-heavy. This all caused the familiar problems - tire problems due to excessive load changes, massive understeer, little grip, poor traction, low top speed, poor aerodynamics, inconsistent aerodynamics, little leeway in the set-up, etc. Only Brawn's and Byrne's aerodynamic, mechanical and constructional changes turned Barnard's disastrous design into a halfway decent race car, but it was always a far worse race car than the Williams and in large parts of the season also worse than the McLaren and Benetton, as can be seen from the fact that Irvine only finished 7th in the championship standings behind Benetton and McLaren drivers.
Possibly the best looking from that season.
F310B allways one of my favourite F1 cars ... ✌
07:55 It's sad that some of the old races don't have proper conversions. Old PAL footage looks REALLY bad on TH-cam, simply because ppl don't know what they are doing. That said: even modern 1080P and higher footage often looks bad because people don't understand how codecs and TH-cam work. For example: 1080P uploads on Youtbe get encoded so bad by TH-cam that you get higher quality, if you simply upscale your 1080P footage to 1440P or 4K and watch the Footage on 1080P. Yes, upscaled 1080P->4K footage (uploaded to TH-cam) looks better when watched at 1080P, than watching the original 1080P footage uploaded at 1080P, because 1080P encoding on TH-cam is THIS BAD (even if you upload 1080P at 600mbit/s).
The Jordan 197 (which I think was a better car relative to its competitors than the 198 despite not winning any races) also had a 7-speed gearbox.
It’s amazing how for basically 10 years. Everyone who won the championship was either Michael Schumacher, or was being chased by Michael Schumacher. I know he gets all applauded and everybody knows his name, but I think people have fallen into the trap of thinking that he was just in a fast car. When he was so much more than that.
You should really tuck those curtains behind the radiator, buddy
@@rajjy1976 don’t even need the heating on in this room
5:33 Didnt Jordan used 7 speed geargbox in 1995?
Yes, they did.
yes williams did test a much lower wing for monza like in 1988 germany as Villeneuve was 5th, HHF was 3rd, there was rumors that berger would replace irvine but that silly as he left ferrari because he didnt want to be schumacher no. 2
Regarding the F310B at Monza and Austria, I seem to recall that Ferrari came to Monza with a special long wheelbase version, which simply didn't work as advertised. IIRC, the idea was that extending the wheelbase would work better on low downforce, high speed track, which evidently it didn't.
That is wrong. Ferrari did not have a car with a longer wheelbase in 1997. That was 1998 when they had a short "version" of the car, and a longer one with a spacer between the engine and gearbox. The only thing Ferrari had in 1997 regarding the car was a lightweight chassis that was developed because Barnard's chassis was too heavy.
@ You are correct! I confused that with the 1998 F300, for which Ferrari rolled out a long wheelbase version at the German and Belgian GP. Indeed, their performance at Hockenheim in 98 was similarly poor, with Irvine only qualifying 6th and finishing 8th while Schumacher finished 5th after qualifying 9th.
Of course I'm right 😉 Few know more about the Ferraris of the time than I do, as I've had the honor and pleasure of talking to many of the people who built and developed these cars. Incidentally, the F300 with the long wheelbase was first introduced at Spa and had a wheelbase of 3083mm instead of 2953mm. What few people know is that the 1998 F300 was actually designed with a blown diffuser which would have given the car significantly more downforce. Unfortunately, heat protection and carbon technology was not yet at the level it was over 10 years later, when another F1 designer remembered Rory Byrne's concept and adopted it almost 1-1...
i appreciate the images
Merry Christmas! Thanks for the great content. Here’s to 2025
One of Schumacher’s best seasons.
I am a JV fan but know that he had his shortcomings. According to Newey, JV was over 1s slower around Silverstone compared to Hill yet Williams hired him. My guess is Renault, Imperial Tobacco, and Bernie Ecclestone had a hand in JV getting the drive. He did well in the top car, after then...not much. I think trusting Craig Pollack with several misjudged career moves stymied his career. There was a rumor Ron Dennis was thinking about replacing DC with JV, which seems odd but intriguing. I don't think JV would have prevailed against Mika but he would have achieved more wins for sure.
Aiden, your "To Do List" for videos must be about 3 pages by now.
Yes, please do the McLaren 98 video!
My dream is an epic 5 way Ham Lec Nor Pia Ver battle. In reality one constructor will probably run away with it
Thanks
Happy Christmas! 🎄
Monaco 97 very wet race I remember it vaguely.
David Coulthard won 97 Australian gp and 2003 Australian GP.
Hi Adrian I have just watched a TH-cam video called what happened to Juju Noda. Could you do a female F1 driver episode?
Just finished Adrian Newey's book and indeed, the FW18 should (and could have) easily won 15 out of 16. Adrian admits that they screwed up huge in Barcelona...
So one takeaway I've realised from this video, Olivier Panis in the Prost had a really good season for a midfield team in this year....
@@swinny5797 up until Montreal…
@@AidanMillward True, that was a vicious wreck. After that, TWR/Ligier went on the decline. One of your previous videos covered the subject of Ligier, which showed that they were a good team with potential. Being French and politically connected to Jacques Cirac really began to be a liability by the mid-nineties though.
Schumacher so good in the Wet.
Schumacher was so strong at Montreal and Mangy Cours. He has won Montreal 7 Times he has won Mangy Cours 8 Times!
97 is the last F1 Championship I remember.
Schumacher drive Brilliantly in 1997! I didn’t like what he did at the end hitting Villeneuve.
Drove
I think we should be honest here - none of the top drivers would let their opponents overtake them in the decisive race for the world championship and lose the title... Any of the top drivers would shoot him down! Otherwise they would never have got to the top! And just for your information - there were five times a situation where the two World Championship candidates fought for one position in the last race. Four times there was a crash and each time the leader in the world championship shot down the one behind! The only time this didn't happen was in 2021 - where the driver in front in the race was behind in the World Championship and would have lost if he had shot him down! This shows clearly - whenever in F1 the championship leader is ahead in the decisive race and his competitor wants to overtake him - the championship leader will rather shoot him down than lose the title! So what Schumacher did was as "normal" as it was understandable. Nokia Lauda was one of the honest ones a few weeks later when he said - Schumacher did exactly the right thing! In the fight for the title, he can't just let him overtake him in a situation like that! Button 2000 also said clearly - Schumacher did what anyone else would have done! I can't listen to this hypocrisy after all these years! Anyone who thinks a driver fighting for the championship would let his opponent overtake in a decisive race in a decisive situation instead of shooting him down because of decency, rules, honor or anything else has no idea about F1 and its drivers. The really great drivers - Senna, Schumacher, Verstappen, Clark were and are all reckless, otherwise they weren't the best. And every one of them would rather die than let their opponent become world champion on the basis of honor, distance and fairness. So Jerez 1997 is nothing more than hypocrisy and any driver who says he didn't do that is either lying or is someone who wouldn't have stood a chance anyway
I thought the 1996 car was gorgeous and aggressive
!
Schumacher got the most out of all the F1 cars he drove. And especially this one.
Please do the 1997 and 1998 McLaren cars
Schumacher was unlucky in 1998 crashing into the back of David Coulthard at a very wet Spa.
The rain meister.... Always knew that was fluff.
Are you serious? After all the performances in which Schumacher outclassed everyone in the rain? And after everything that people who worked with him have said about it? A typical Schumacher hater who can't accept that he was simply outstanding in these conditions. And no matter how you look at it - the set-up is part of "the art" of an F1 driver. And either way - going 6 to 8 seconds faster than everyone else - that doesn't just come from a bit more downforce, as many other wet races have shown where it wasn't the case, Spa 1998 for example.
The Williams was the better car, it was the extraordinary talent of Schumacher that kept him in the fight
Schumacher was brilliant in the 97 Ferrari.
the mp4-13 is very much like the mp4-4 everybody wasnt looking at mclaren then they pulled a flanker out
"Le Ralf"
lol
Marri Crimmas Hayden!
A Shame Schumacher didn’t win the 97 or 98 Championships. Or both.
Eddie Ervine did a good Job at Ferrari.
Yes I wonder why Ferrari were slow at Monza in 97 was it Lack of Power or not good over the Kerbs didn’t ride the Kerbs well. Or wrong car set up High Downforce set up
You love that 1997 Williams don't you?
can you make a video about formula palmer audi please
And A1GP, birthplace of Hulkenberg
Yes the 97 Ferrari was a good looking F1 Car.
Williams was the better car. Just that operationally they were rubbish, which kept Ferrari in the hunt. Go through the season race by race, and you'll just find that Jacques was either wins or spins. Complete lack of consistency.
God Bless VRC
I've always wanted to see a low nose '96 F310 without that bulky cockpit protection design and fat engine cover.
Schumacher won back to back Races.
Handling problems.
🎁
97 Ferrari car was reliable.
damn