THE WORLD'S FASTEST GRENADES! The Story of F1's Turbo Era (1977-1988)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- Mind boggling amounts of power sent through a 1.5 litre engine, and engines that didn't last 10 miles in qualifying. The 80s really was the peak of excess, wasn't it?
But are those figures true? And how many horses were they chucking out? Let's have a look.
Enjoy! And remember to like and subscribe for more!
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I probably used injection when I meant induction.
Lol. Was it my comment that spurred this one? I do actually like your videos bruv. I don't say much, but that's cos you're usually (mostly) right...
@@LiamNI nope.
@@LiamNI “Bruv”
Toluene is great stuff for making power as long as you don't mind a little cancer. Requiring "pump gas" in F1 was the tool to kill that stuff off.
Or was it ingesting?
Between this, Group B, and Group C, the 80s were insane for motorsport.
Don’t forget Nascar going over 200mph at Daytona & Talladega
Also, the 80's gave us Slayer and Megadeth and Sepultura and the very defining foundations of the metal we have today.
The CIA also gave inner cities cocaine and crack, which isn't as cool, but i guess is first blood in the eventual war on drugs?
1980's top fuel funny cars and Dragsters were starting to really blow past many drag racing MPH and ET records while also becoming the first cars in the 5seconds then 4 and eventually 3.6second quarter miles(technically 1000ft due to the rash of blow overs that used to happen far too frequently.
Downsides were consumer cars, as the post-fuel crunch American domestic cars were so slow and ridiculously underpowered while also being the most boring vehicle design era.
Well, until our current amorphous blob vehicle design era.
@@mrterp04well said! Bill Elliott's ford thunderbird is something i would like to see!
@@MrMiD.Life.Crisis The 1985 Winston 500 was one of the most insane comeback drives ever. Winning a race from 2,5 laps down without the help of a caution and setting an (at the time) all time record for average race speed.
@@threadtapwhisperer5136 It was hardly any better in Britain and our motor industry, with Thatcher wanting to privatise everything, using the police as basically her private army for her war on the Unions, British Leyland came into existence and produced some pretty horrible cars! Horrible cuz they were hideous to look at and woefully unreliable due to the main people being out on the picket lines, looking for better pay!
It was also during this time and her continued war against the Unions where she closed all the pits (not for environmental reasons as Boris tried to claim a year or two back), forcing us to rely on cheaper foreign and often inferior coal, meaning she helped contribute to modern environmental problems by closing our pits! Plus the fact she started the Falklands War making her a war criminal! Not to mention the fact she was besties with Saville!
And I was born in 1984, the height of Group B and share a birthday with one of Rallying's biggest names!
can am series ...was ended when porsche rolled out with the 917/30 with 1000+ hp in race trim and won all in one season. or something like that....:D
The sudden inflation and petrol price hike saw that series off more than Porsche did.
I was get a chuckle when I see the Olivetti cars . . . . typewriters. Has anyone even seen one, lately?
You should also mention yhe “rocket fuel”
Awesome Simpsons refrence
Lotus beat Renault in '85. In '86 Renault had already retired as a constructor.
I believe you mean to say forced induction engine.
I originally said induction but then got myself confused.
I'm a yellow teapot,
Short and stout.
Here is my...
** Bang **
Had to giggle Daimon!
I appear to 'ave chatteauxed myself
This and the ground effect era (well they coexisted for a few years) are my favorite bits of F1 history.
just in case you haven't seen it - th-cam.com/video/QS4pejg43Ug/w-d-xo.html
I watched it on TV years ago and had it on VHS! If you've seen already, my bad for bothering you.
Hope you're good 👍
Ahhh, the days when Ferrari engines were heavy, thirsty, underpowered, went pop for fun and used eye watering fuel brews.
Looks like nothing changed
OMG, those 'fuels' could dissolve a human - like the ArkO'Covenant did in Indiana Jones.
Ferrari's turbo engine was pretty good once they worked out the lag and built a good chassis for it.
And sounded heavenly.
Thought that was Subaru in the Coloni
I tweeted Nigel Mansell a few years ago asking about that period of F1, saying how I'm amazed anyone could keep those cars in a straight line with all that power. In his reply he commented that in '85 during during practice for a GP (he couldn't rember what circuit) he pulled 6th gear (H pattern box don't forget) on the straight and he got wheel spin. He estimated he was doing close to 150 MPH at the time. 😳
A friend had a 335d BMW.....had a 'tune' on it....had BIG Pilot Sport Cups on it.....He let me drive it. I am used to lots of HP and have driven many 500-700hp vehicles over the years.....That 335d he had....I was on the highway on the north side of Houston going about 90mph and I put the skinny pedal down and about one full second later....it tried REAL HARD to get away from me....and me being the fool that I am, kept my foot in it and it fishtailed up to about 125 or so before it stopped.....because I took my foot out of it. I guess I had a look on my face as my friend, in the passengers seat next to me, was laughing like a proper hyhena......bloody hell. Imagine that with a bit more downforce at 150....oi!
Not the first time this sort of thing has happened. When Yamaha first brought the TZ750 to Daytona (1974?) they were getting wheelspin on the back straight at 180mph when drifting over the painted lines on the track.
@@ssnerd583
A hei-what?
@@e28forever30 A "high-ena" probably from inhaling helium.
Turbos & Tantrums is a very good yt channel that deserves more attention. A video recapping each race from 1981 through the end of the turbo era. Very quality content that most of this audience might find interesting. I’m a big fan of what that guy is doing.
Thanks for the information, just subscribed to that channel 😀
Thanks. Headed over there now.
Yep. Great little channel, and worth subbing to.
Brilliant channel. I've just watched the review of 1989 season video.
The 80s were mad, Group B, Peugeot's 405km/h P88 and F1 ground effects!
have you seen the rally metro? now that was a made group B car. Think more of them ended up in trees than finishing the course.
The jag XJR-14 GTP car was basically a closed-wheel F1 car. Forgot the exact engine, but it was a NA 3.5L V6 that made max power at 11,000 rpm. Sounded absolutely glorious, the best sounding V6 I’ve ever heard (well, the Alfa 155ti touring car would give it a run for its money).
Historical notes:
Turbochargers had been used on cars since the 1962 Oldsmobile Jetfire and Chevy Corvair, a good decade and a half before the beginning of the F1 turbo era. Porsche had used twin turbos on its 1972 917/10 Can-Am car, so even its use on race cars wasn't completely new. Probably fair to say that it was still in its infancy, though.
The Spitfire, Hurricane, et al, used gear-driven superchargers. The US was the only country in WWII to have production combat aircraft with exhaust-turbine-driven superchargers, AKA turbochargers. The first, according to Wikipedia, was the B-17 in 1938. The P-38 Lightning and P-47 Thunderbolt were probably the most famous turbocharged fighters. Most planes relied on the supercharger, as turbos were still new and controls for them were more complex than the gear-driven ones.
A great book on these engines (which could still use a good copy-edit IMHO) is "The Secret Horsepower Race" by Callum Douglas. It goes into some detail regarding superchargers and turbochargers.
And don't forget the International Harvester Turbo farm tractors! They likewise preceded the F1 turbo era.
Oddly enough the first entry in an F1 World Championship race with a Turbocharged engine was in fact a Diesel. In 1952 Cummins (of truck engine fame) partnered with Kurtis Kraft (of Racecar fame) to enter that years Indy 500. Thanks to 430hp and some clever engineering it actually achieved pole position despite its immense weight, before retiring from the race due to a clogged intake.
In period footage you can just see the tires being torn to shreds through every single corner.
And the reason it got the clogged intake was that the intake was mounted at the front of the car on the underside of the nose. In other words, the car was essentially vacuuming up all the rubber shreds and dropped oil and everything stuck between the bricks it could gobble. And the reason the place was called "the Brickyard" was that it was originally paved--in 1910 with bricks. Over the years the track was paved over until it has just a yard of bricks at the start/finish line.
They had plenty of supercharged racing cars before the war and were beginning to get turbo’d cars when the war broke out and the govt banned forced induction engines on cars to reduce fuel use
A man is only as good as his turbo.
-Benjamin Franklin
Ahh the real turbo Era. The bwm's with 1500HP. The Era when anyone could go racing in F1. Not like now which is nearly impossible.
the 1500 is a myth
A few manufacturers really failed at developing reliable turbo engines, which I think is why turbo engines got banned for 1989. McLaren were arguably the best performing team over the turbocharged period from 1983 to 1988, finishing 1st or 2nd in the Constructors Championship every year, using first TAG (Porsche) and then Honda engines. It even took Honda a good few years to get their turbo engine reliable (see 1983 Williams FW09 and all Laffite's DNFs). Renault and BMW didn't have great reliability (see Piquet's title defence in 1984 - 9 DNFs out of 15 races), while Alfa and Ferrari's turbos were appallingly unreliable - Alboreto famously lost the 1985 World Championship with 4 consecutive DNFs at the end of the season, handing Prost his first title.
I wish F1 did something like this today for like 1 race a season. Letting the teams innovate is F1 necessary
Monaco. Might make it more interesting.
Innovation is what made F1, well, F1 ! That’s like cricket replacing the bat with a tennis racket. Just a bit confusing as to why they are doing this
It sucks because it means that the only time we see the cars change or see any ( minuscule ) innovation then it’s only when new regs are introduced
it'd be a non-starter. Teams aren't going to use part of their budget to design a one-off that could never be used again. If they did then we'd still have Monza-spec aero packages
Crushing innovation has ruined F1. I'm glad I lived through the 80s and to a lesser extent the 90s.
IndyCar and sports cars had done quite a bit of the legwork on making turbochargers reliable and functional.
I'd imagine running high hp almost full throttle around an oval in an indycar and running race laps around an endurance race for hours in a sportscar race is what contributed to the reliability of turbocharger tech.
Indys dont have much boost, any turbo can make it.
@@V8Lenny but in the early '70s they were running monster amounts of boost. Same thing with Can-Am sports cars. They really did do a lot of the difficult leg work and experimentation
@@Dashriprock4 yes, Indy with methanol, it is easy. But trying to compete with 3 liter NA engines with 1,5 liter engines on tight F1 tracks needed a lot of work. Indy and Can Am were using standard diesel truck turbos. F1 also in the beginning but soon they had to start experimenting with "hybrids" and then custom made turbos.
I remember when the Renault turbo first came along, I was rooting for them because it was something new and interesting, where they were taking a chance on the engine rule. In the seventies there were a lot of different experiments, the most interesting was the 6 wheeled Tyrell. It just seemed a more visible variation of methods to try to gain an advantage. Today the cars have slightly different looking sidepods. Another weird effect was when they had a "ride height" check to try to get rid of the skirts, so they put pneumatics in the suspension so that when the cars were measured before or after races, they were jacked up so the skirts weren't too low to the ground. Another fun one was the freezing of fuel when there was a limit of how much volume of fuel you could use during the race.
Some WW2 aircraft used exhaust driven turbochargers, for example the Allison V12’s in the Lockheed Lightning and the radial engine in the Republic Thunderbolt.
exactly right, the Allison worked quite well with the turbo setup, but it took up more space at that time compared to superchargers so it usually was only installed in bombers and larger aircraft successfully.
How has this guy got 85k followers? I’m 3:16 in and the inaccuracy is hilarious; let’s pretend Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and Matra didn’t build F1 engines and BMW were already supplying Brabham and didn’t test the Turbo unit alongside the DFV in practice sessions until it was ready. Cool stories bro.
Beats me. It's like he threw a dart at a board of subjects and it landed on "F1"
The racers at Indy had been working on turbocharging for a lot of years by the time the F1 guys picked it up. Bobby Unser got the first turbocharged win at Indy in 1968 and by 1972 the Offy was making 1000 hp out of 167 cubic inches. Every Indy winner after 1968 was turbocharged until the IRL mandated 4.0L NA engines in 1998.
I also have noticed that the output of the BMW 4-cylinder keeps going up and up the farther in the past it gets.
The Offys had an an en bloc head and cylinder block, they were running horrendous amounts of mechanical blower boost in the 1920s. Then we got the poverty spec of the thirties...
Nobody snuggles with Max Powers, you strap yourself in and feel the G's. Well placed reference Aidan!
Point of order - the Rolls Royce Merlin engine used in the Spitfire & Hurricane was mechanically supercharged (driven off the crankshaft), NOT Turbocharged (driven by the exhaust gases).
As to the peak power of the BMW M12/13/1T engine, the honest truth is that nobody REALLY knows how much power it was putting out when in qualifying trim, not even BMW. At the time, BMW's test dynamometer only read up to 1,100hp, which the engine was capable of producing at around 9,700rpm. As the engine redlined at 11,500rpm, there was no way for BMW to get a truly accurate figure for peak output, but people involved estimated it to be in the 1320-1370hp range.
As to why nobody's ever tested one of these engines since? Simple. They don't exist anymore. The qualifying engines were so highly stressed that they would deform the block during a "full beans" run, and as such, every quali-spec M12/13/1T was scrapped immediately after being used in anger. There are regular race-spec M12/13/1T's around, but the quali-spec engines are all gone, and it is almost impossible to make a race-spec engine into a quali-spec engine, as there were many minor differences between the two specifications, both internally and externally.
One of the most important changes was to the electronics, with a special chip needed to unleash maximum power. Without that chip (the "Hitler" PROM, as it was called), a quali-spec engine would put out around 1,050hp using the standard race PROM, and would be safe to run for roughly 150km before failure. With the "H" PROM, you got a roughly 30% increase in power, at the expense of a 90% reduction in engine life, with the engines only lasting for roughly 15km. And AFAIK there was only ever 1 "H" PROM made...
Oh, and if you were wondering, the engineers named the "H" PROM that because when it was fitted to a quali-spec engine, that engine would very briefly blitzkreig the opposition, before having a meltdown & killing itself. German humour...🤷
I'd like some sources about this famous H-PROM but nonetheless this story is hilarious, thank you !
@@aaronaaronsen3360 I first heard about the H-PROM directly from a retired BMW engineer who had been involved in the program. He also confirmed the rumor that they used old, preused blocks that were pulled from scrapped cars (mainly Taxi's) instead of newly cast blocks, as the old ones were much more stable having gone through many hundreds of heat-cycles.
Unfortunately, he denied the other half of that rumor, that the blocks were stored outdoors for 6 months & regularly urinated upon by the engine team before being built up for racing - from what he said, they rejected over 80% of the blocks that were brought in as unsuitable for the F1 program (too worn/damaged) and were constantly worried that they would run out of suitable blocks, so once they found one, it was built up immediately. Any blocks that were stored outdoors were ones that had been rejected & were waiting to be scrapped/recycled.
This was in 1992 or early 93, while his daughter was staying with my family on a work placement year at the UK branch of BOGE (since closed).
Most of the story (including the H-PROM) was confirmed by an article/interview with one of the BMW race engineers that worked with (IIRC) the Benetton team, that appeared in either Octane or Motorsport magazine circa 2004(ish).
@@gchampi2 very cool info, thanks. It's often this kind of stuff that gets lost over the years.
Also, pretty much all of the still-existing BMW F1 engines are now collector's items used for displays, and I doubt any of the owners would want to loan one out for a "send it" dyno run 😆
This channel is so bloody good. I've got one huge complaint though. The videos are too short!! 😂😂 seriously, the quality is unsurpassed. I love Formula One history, especially from the 1970's and 1980's.
Any chance, if you haven't done a video about it already, of doing one about Nigel Mansell's time at Ferrari?? Some of the stuff the FIA have banned in the past levelled the playing field and made racing more competitive. Other stuff they banned, like active suspension and traction control at the end of the 1993 season, just made the cars harder to drive, with tragic results....
I'm a vendor, machine /fab shop for Garrett turbo in Torrance ca. Garrett aka, Honeywell, They started supplying Turbos to Ferrari in the electric assist era. I made a temporary exhaust, to the turbo supplied in Ferrari's F1 exhaust system. The Turbo has a housing around the Turbine that was not cast but was made from sheet, stamped and fabricated Probably Inconel, maybe .040" thick. This I assume was for weight and space reductions. Anyway the reason I had to make the special plumbing was so they could put in on a gas stand test bed and spool it up to grenade. the turbo. The heavy casting seen on all turbo's has a very important reason for being massive and that was to contain the bits in a failure. Ferrari gave the turbo back to Garrett with some parts but the main bit that they wanted to check was the containment assembly. It was a Kevlar shield/blanket going around the turbo in the shape of the roll over/ induction tunnel, it would fit inside this area. The Turbo was above the engine, centered, coupled to the electric motor. The blanket was massive thick. must had been .5" thick in ply thickness. It was to kept the fragments from getting out in a RUD (SpaceX term for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly). They spooled it up on a natural gas burner stand and let it rip, in a explosion proof room. It contained the event.
Fun fact: In what situation is a Turbo used in that causes failure, the hardest application? Big open pit mines, race cars, race boats....? Answer: City busses. According to Garrett the spooling up and down all day long is the killer.
Those cars must have caused a heart attack to the drivers every time they press the accelerator pedal
Nope. They were men.
Nope. 5 seconds after they pressed the pedal.
Supercharged cars go back to Roles Royce and a 1904 V8 powered car. Likely further back then that but I haven’t found one yet.
I'm sure I've seen people claim the BMW engine was even 1600hp in qualifying trim, it was 1200 when I first read about it. I guess the phrase "the older I get the faster I was" applies to engines as well as drivers
This is when F1 really went downhill - turbos, qualifying engines and so on and so on required cash cash cash. That has ruined F1 for me - everything is corporation big money and no chance for a Colin Chapman type garagista to crash the party.
10:00 Senna was doing the throttle blip in NA go garts lonnngggg before he was driving anything with a turbo. He does it to test the traction limits of a car.
C'mon Aiden I thought you knew better than common myths :((
What a decade to be an adult and interested in Motorsport! Now you can’t smell, hear or really immerse yourself…hard to see 200 hairdryers going in circles for 2 hours
Regulating performance in F1 really is (or at least was) a game of Wack-a-Mole, especially from the late-70s until the current era.
It didn't take many years for Renault to recover most of the engine performance lost when turbos were banned. Thanks to the air spring technology they developed for their turbo engines, and fully pneumatic valves. In commentary for a 1993 race (Spanish GP iirc) Murray Walker mentions a figure of 850Bhp - very close to the peak race power from the late turbo era, and probably a better performing engine overall. And power was increasing rapidly each year as the engine technology was still far short of its ultimate rpm limits.
I remember engine guru Brian Hart writing in Autosport's 1996 F1 pre-season supplement that the FIA made a huge mistake by not banning pneumatic valve technology, as it was allowing both engine performance and costs to rapidly escalate out of control.
(If you haven't covered it already, I think the Renault V10 engine (1989-1997+) could make an interesting topic for a video. It is arguably the only F1 engine which can come close to the Ford DFV for true greatness, and was instrumental in making modern F1 what it is. From what I've read, although successful the Honda engines in the McLarens were crude, heavy and thirsty by comparison.)
I read article long time ago about this 5,5bar BMW turbo engine - there was quite well described that it had usable powerband of about 1000rpm from 10k to 11k. Everything else was just turbo lag (to be 100% accurate then it should be called "turbo threshold" ), if engine rpm fell down then it took half a lap to spool the turbo up again.
The rumors say that the BMW engine did on bench dyno about 1400hp...at least that was the limit for the dynometer...
Also there is a story where BMW E21 316 owners having their engines replaced with new so that M Division could keep the old ones that have been run in and their blocks where stressed enough to handle the extra power...the same story says that the personel kept the blocks in a backyard and they went to piss them when they needed to relieve themselves instead of just going to the toilet...they said that this technique was helping the engine blocks to become stronger...
The story at the time was they left the blocksout in the weather.
This relieves stresses on the block. When they talk about a relieved block...
There is an excellent period documentary out there that follows Cosworth building their Turbo V6 for the '86 season I believe. It's called "Turbo F1 Engines: How they started", currently available to watch on TH-cam in two parts.
Yes I have seen both videos. Too bad Cosworth got in it too late.
1300bhp and 540kg min weight = madness
You want less hp or more weight? (or testicles?)
I think one point to add that wasn't mentioned much was another reason why turbos were becoming more of a possibility, that being that electronics were becoming advanced enough that you could control fuel injection with them, which was required for the turbos as a traditional carb wasn't up to it.
Not sure what you mean by 'not up to it'. Many turbocharged engines used carburettors, especially in the 1980s, but even later on. There's nothing incompatible about carbs on a turbo engine.
Didn't Keke Rosberg once say of the turbo cars and the lag "When you press the gas pedal, nothing happens. And then, everything happens".
Some other numbers from Berger's 218.6 mph trap speed at Monza in 1986: 1350 bhp, boost flashed at over 5.0 bar. All from a 1.5 liter four banger.
And about 3 seconds of turbo lag.
@@l228spn Not at Monza. By 1986, throttle lag had been smoothed out of a lot of the engines.
@@l228spn agree with Paul O, lag had been dramatically reduced by the latter years of the turbo era, although it suits reminiscing drivers of the period to maximise their heroics at the wheel.
@@neilturner6749 it may have been "dramatically reduced" by the end of the era, but physics are still physics, there would have still been noticeable lag. That little 1.5L engine may have been revving quite a lot, but it still takes a lot of air to spin a turbo enough to flow 1,000HP worth of air, and these turbos were manufactured before CFD existed and before a lot of modern machining tech, so the compressor and turbine wheel designs are nowhere near as good as we have now. Consider the lag and powerband width of a 1,000HP Supra or Skyline GT-R, most of which are redlined around 9,000rpm, then remember that they are running nearly DOUBLE the displacement.
@@jsquared1013 most Supra and Skyline guys dont know how to match turbo to engine. They use 80mm compressors and barely make 1000 hp. Those F1s had 71-72mm singles (BMW) and made 1300 hp. And yes, they were custom made for them.
Who doesn't love these old turbo? Btw, turbo were used in ww2 as well. Planes like the P 38 and P 47 used turbo on top of driven supercharging. Complex but highly effective.
The Alison of the P-51A and P-38 didn't use a supercharger . It was a single stage 2 speed turbo . The PW double wasp used in the p-47 was also only a turbo but had water and ethanol injection to the turbo to increase performance for 20 seconds at a time with enough for 4 applications in the header tank . If you ran the water/ethanol injection for more than 20 seconds it went through a significant emotional event .
Of note the Douple wasp could hit 2,300 hp without the water injection . With water injection it could just about hit 2,500hp at 23,000ft .
@@edmundscycles1 I'm afraid I need to contradict you here. IIRC, the Allison and 2800 had an integrated single stage supercharger supplemented with turbos in the P38 and P47, respectively. This was a way to get high altitude performance a single stage SC could not provide. The only Allison 1710 I am aware of without a supercharger in aircraft use are the B models for airships.
@@EffequalsMA ahh yes just seen that the supercharger was effective up to 11,000ft
@@edmundscycles1 Turbochargers date from 1905 and supercharging aircraft engines dates from WW1(1915). The DII Mercedes engine even had experimental FOUR stage supercharger installed. They were mostly gear driven centrifugal compressors, so, similar to a turbo but just replacing expanding exhaust gases with a gear drive.
@@EffequalsMA yes if memory serves me right the "blower" off the Bentley was nicked off an old RR aero engine from ww1 .
I am old...i am so old..my father took me to F1 races at Mosport.That being said,i've watched many decades of F1.Good ole CBC here in Canada showed them all,usually with Jackie Stewart as guest presenter.AND..the turbo era was the most bland boring era of F1 ever,except the first year when they all blew up..that was actually fun :P
I should clarify..i consider the turbo era to being when Ferrari etc joined Renault.
Always thought the planes you mentioned were supercharged, not turbo charged.
Generally speaking the British engineers preferred what we today would call superchargers and the American engine manufacturers preferred turbochargers, although as WW11 progressed, there were many exceptions and crossover combinations used.
Road and Track tested a Benetton B186 in 1987, their 1986 car with a BMW engine, and they rated it as 900 BHP in race trim and 1100 BHP in qualifying trim, but I remember an article from 1986 where they tried to estimate HP based on speed and they suggested up to 1300. These are ALL guesses by the way, but the point I'm making is this was the claims made in period, because yes, there is an exaggeration factor over time...
Maybe an anecdote also contributed to that. I read somewhere that when asked about engine power, they said they don't know. And when asked again, they elaborated that their engine dyno could handle up to X horsepower so they could never go to full engine output there.
I saw the turbo cars when they raced in Adelaide back in 1986. At the time they were the F1 cars of the day, of course we had no idea what the future held. I wish I'd understood the significance of exactly what I was witnessing at the time. Those cars were just wild, and whilst I can appreciate the speed of the modern era the cars are somehow less unhinged. Those 1980s turbo cars were about as controllable as a feral tomcat with two dicks. A whole lot of hissing and snarling, very sharp claws and chock full of hate.
They had WAY less downforce, so they were much more "lively"
@@jsquared1013 Yeah that too. Aero counts for a lot, especially when your engine is capable of 1100 hp and the power arrives like a switch. Egads.
An NA engine runs at 1 bar, atmospheric pressure. If you’re only running 14 PSI that’s the same at NA, no?
Depends where you're measuring from. Do you mean 14PSI from 0 or 14PSI on top of atmospheric pressure? It's confusing as hell because i've seen both used.
Most of the time when discussing turbocharged (and supercharged) engines, people use gauge pressure, which is pressure above atmospheric. Some technical regs and engineering documents use absolute pressure, which is often clarified early in the document itself, but rarely noted when those docs/regs are quoted again down the line by other people, which is where I think the confusion comes from. Unless otherwise specified, you can usually assume they mean gauge pressure.
Aaaaah. Those were the days. There was nothing more exciting than seeing Ayrton Senna in qualifying at the wheel of a Turbo -- insane driver using insane power. And I never was a Senna fan. Matter of fact . . . the era of disposable turbo qualifying engines and qualifying tires (and for the most part, qualifying CARS) was an amazing time for F1. Absolutely over the top. In a very good way.
Audi could supposedly tune up the 2.1L I5 in the later Quattro rally cars to 1000 hp, but the car was underivable, and probably wouldn't have lasted very long if it was. They may have used these settings at Pikes Peak, where the altitude robs the engine of 25% of its power from start to finish (power was already reduced due to 9000 ft elevation at the start line), and the run only lasted 10 minutes.
Lancia said they could also tube their Delta S4 engine to hit 1000 hp, but it certainly wouldn't have lasted very long. Even putting out less than 500 hp, most of the engines in Group B were good for one rally before needing a complete teardown. Maybe two; the engine in the Ford RS200 needed a rebuild after 10 hours of competition.
There's a fantastic old BBC documentary on youtube about the development of turbo engines & the ford one in particular - search for 'Turbo F1 engines - How they started, part 1'
The B-17 Flying Fortress and P-38 Lightning were some of the Turbo's first major production applications. The US Army Air Force decided in the late '30s that Turbos were the way to go after General Electric - yes, the lightbulb people - demonstrated one on an aircraft, and the Lightning and P-47 were designed with them as part of a requirement - the only reason the P-51 Mustang had a supercharger instead was because it was designed at Britian's request. GM would later introduce turbos on the Corvair and the Oldsmobile Jetfire road cars in the early '60s...before dropping them like they were hot, and turbo Offenhausers started appearing alongside Cosworth DFXs at Indianapolis in the mid to late '60s and became a staple of USAC and later CART competition. So they'd been around by the time Renault started developing them for F1...but when you've got F1 money...whooooboy.
Great book (no longer in print, I believe, but a great read if you can find it) on this topic is Ian Bamsey's The 1000 BHP Grand Prix Cars. Covers the entire turbo era of F1. Lots of great technical info and interviews with various players (including drivers) from that era.
Alan Henry’s The Turbo Era has a permanent place on my bookshelf, as it’s a brilliant summary of the time in F1.
I have both of those books.
Im sure the information within is much more accurate than much of what you read on the internet.
I’d love to see you cover or talk about some dragsters and their drivers, a group of drivers who strap themselves into a car with over half the f1 grids worth of power behind them. Or for another cool fact when the NHRA goes to vegas or Charlotte for the 4 wide events those starting lines have more total power than the f1,f2 and f3 grids combined.
At first I was going to comment that your last sentence didn't sound right, so I looked it up, and holy smokes. I guess I was thinking about the Alcohol cars or another class that was around 4,000HP to 5,000HP, but nope: Top Fuel and Funny Car are both around 11,000HP 😮😮
I remember Autosport in 85-86 giving the power output of each teams engines as part of their F1 coverage. I remember them stating that BMW having some 1220 for qualifying, and about 1000 for the race. The McLaren's TAG engine's put out 960 hp in both qualifying and race trim.
My abiding memories of the 80s turbo era was seeing the first puffs of smoke and then a few laps later the big plume of smoke from the exhausts as the turbos eventually failed and wrecked the engines and of course the resulting fire if the engine wasn't shut down in time.......Ah good memories! 😂😂
Usually a couple of corners later...
A point to mention is that qualifying engines were essentially banned in 2004 when an engine was supposed to last an entire race weekend, not that hot qualifying engines were a thing anymore, but the whole idea of forcing the teams to get more mileage out of an engine had a huge impact on performance. 2004 cars held records for over 10 years, because in 2005 the engines had to last 2 race weekends....and now it's sometihng like 3 engines per 20+ race season....I guess what I'm hinting at is a story on the various successful and more often than not, unsuccessful attempts to slow down F1 cars.
I know you said the number of the bmw engine kept growing in power as decades passed, but I would like to refer to a comment Murray Walker made at the 1986 Adelaide GP where he said and I quote "the tremendously powerful 1350hp in qualifying trim, bmw powered benetton". So I have a feeling thats where the outrageous numbers came from. Where he heard these numbers I don't know but the video is on youtube named 1450bhp f1 bmw turbo 🤦🏻♂️ (100hp more than claimed). Still a bonkers era and I love it!
While current F1 cars are at similar power levels to the 80s turbo cars, they are also about 200kg heavier. I can see why Lauda ended up calling them "those stupid turbo cars."
I suspect skill sets are similar today, for different reasons, but the sheer nerve has to go to the old squad. Imo.
1983 BMW used illegal fuel needed for the large 4 cvlinders. Damples taken at Monza disappeared 1080 hp on the dyno in 1986, said the test engineer, but the teams modified the ECU 1982 constructors' was the first title in F1 won with a turbo. By Ferrari. Drivers' went to Keke due to the tragedies of Gilles Villeneuve and Pironi.
During World War II the US used turbosupercharging on the B-29 and P-47. Today we call it turbocharging. It allowed the planes to reach high altitudes to avoid some of the flak and some less powerful German and Japanese fighters. The P-47 was more about speed and it was very complex with twin wastegates and ducting with intercooling.
Could you create a video about Rene Arnoux? He is one of the sole drivers of the era (which aren't Prost, Senna or Lauda) that just stay in my head but I don't know why anymore...
With Keke Rosberg I don't have any idea how he won his championship. Same for Jody Scheckter.
And I just really like your rambling Mr.Millward! And I feel like there's a little bit too little videos about those other drivers of the Era.
Roseburg won because Villeneuve was killed that year.
Regarding the 1980's *_TURBO MADNESS_* you didn't cover one aspect of Horsepower explosion & that is; *FUEL*
I went to the Adelaide Grand Prix in 1986 and I was confused by this acrid smell coming from the Formula-1 cars. Long story short; Teams were no-longer running Petrol/Gasoline. They'd switched to a much higher Octane product; *_TOLUENE_* !!! Petrol/Gasoline has anywhere from 98 to 110 Octane, while Toluene has 121 Octane. So, basically; More Octane = More Powah! Combine this with Forced Induction (Turbo/Supercharger) & you've got yourself a right, little _Pocket Rocket_
The 70s are my favourite era of F1 from the engineering side. Tall airboxes, the DFV's best years, sidepod mounted radiators, all sorts of different front and rear wings, ground effect, and of course turbochargers!
Well you called it with the BMW power figures. It’s 2024 and people are clickbaiting “this car produced 1500 horsepower”
ah yeah good old times of qualifying spec fuel that if leaked a drop it would evaporate before hitting the ground. So they kept it cooled until they couldn't anymore (also for volumetric reasons)
Ah “THE TURBO ERA” the final years of “JOHN PLAYERS SPECIAL” “BLACK AND GOLD”!!!!
Ford and Cosworth also tried to build an inline 4-cylinder turbo for this era. 4 cylinders equalling much lightness. They couldn't get the engines to not rip themselves apart, though, and switched to an underperforming V6 configuration. I have no idea what wizardry BMW had to do to get theirs working reliably
Let’s be honest, it’s a miracle any drivers at all made it out of F1’s turbo era alive. Imagine being strapped inside the equivalent of a jumbo go kart with body panels with 1300 hp.
Indy cars were using turbo Offenhausers years before turbos came into F1 - Bobby Unser won the 1968 Indy 500 with a 2,75 Offy turbo
Re boost. For anyone interested, Richard Holdener on his channel does extensive testing of engines particularly turbo engines. He has indeed found that 1 Bar increase does very closely approximates double the horsepower. For example a 300 hp engine becomes 600hp with boost of 14.5psi. This is shown so many times as to be thoroughly predictable.
Supercharged engines don't produce double since the blower is slaved to the crankshaft and each rotation of the blower yields a known amount of volume, and blower pumping losses are greater, and due to the slaved nature of them the boost they produce actually degrades with altitude increase - (which is why aircraft often had 2 speed superchargers for high and low altitude).
Turbos free spool so they can keep producing boost and although it drops off with altitude too it has high excess capacity and is easily able to compensate for example if a turbo at 1 Bar might have a capacity of 1.5 Bar and as altitude increases then the capacity drops to 1.2 Bar still allowing the full 1 Bar.
You can do this with blowers but because they don't free spool the drive ratio has to be increased adding to even greater pumping losses - all of which has to be paid for in fuel and therefore weight of course.
Well I saw NHRA shorten the tracks, they really didn't have any choice they could not stop the missiles in the available space or keep the pieces out of the stands. It was wild to watch those turbo F1 cars go (I was physically at one of the races) but it really was not very good racing. At that point in time NASCAR was more entertaining, even with the rules so jimmy around that every race was close. At least one team could win by outthinking ad out-driving the others not just by not blowing up.
I just discovered you today (19, Nov 2022). I'm really enjoying your content!! Greetings from the USA.
Supposedly, the BMW 4cyl engine blocks were hand-picked from crashed saloons and left outside for 24 hrs. To get some rust on the block surfaces to aid in the production of power from turbo.
Now, now... Any depiction of Mike the Bike that does not mention the TT comeback with Ducati in the late-1970s is stunningly incomplete.
1980's anti lag...not a problem...fit a spark plug and a fuel injector in the exhaust manifold and ignite it in between shifts, that'll sort it, none of that electric turbo malarkey.
What bin were these engines lobbed into?
A biffa bin. Although other large refuse disposal solutions are available.
I do wonder how powerful the Turbo hybrid era engines of today could get if we went back to pre 2022 fuels and party mode with no fuel flow limit the fact they get over 1000hp with said restrictions is pretty amazing
Regarding the original turbo engines I think the FIA simply went on an acid trip in the 1980s regarding the crazy turbos group B and group C
Your knowledge isn't quite a complete as I believed I thought that the turbo rule that was in place in the 50s/60s was common knowledge lol 😂
Known as turbo *normalizing* (*normalising*..hehe) in the air. Turbo *charging* down here on terra firma. Just nerd stuff nomenclature (which most of us are 😅)
Remembered dad had a blast watching F1 in this era, and always up early in the morning on Sundays, coverage of the European races started at this time in N.America. Turbo was one of them, I am sure.
Just really enjoyed the horsepower extrapolation segment!
I have *not* enjoyed watching JPM's records fall to cars using a battery (er um power store)
4:00 Aiden wtf a supercharger is not a turbocharger, not sure why you referenced that.
And if you *are* just refering to general forced induction, the previous sentence doesn't make sesne; superchargers have been used in cars as long as in planes. No hate, just critiquing 😅
This graphic designer thinks the late 70's and early 80's Renaults were some of the best-looking in F1 history :o
Quality Stuff, Mr. Millward - well Researched imo.
9:00 lol I had a similar argument about group B, some guy claimed the Delta S4 ran 600hp on stage and occasionally 1014hp lol. The 1000+ was during a engine dyno test, and the 600 is closer to 480-520...
Gotta love how the number just go up and up
I remember hearing 600+bhp back then for the s4 delta.
Dad was a peugeot dealer so we were following the wrc quite closely. We were seeing reports of 500+ from the 205t16 in evo form.
Given the T16 started with around 380, and then a bunch of ex renault f1 guys dropped into the team, 500 didnt seem outside the realms of possibility. Ergo i could well believe somewhere around 550 for the S4.
Toivenen said it was too fast. Rohrl thought the evo2 quattro was too fast.
Vatenen said suck it up ya wusses. Lol
@@sugarnads yeah in race trim 550ish seemed to be the max in the '86 delta
@@AmbientMike From what people who were at Lancia at the time have said, the engine in the S4 would make around 630bhp fairly reliably and consistently, but that was towards the end of the 1986 season and obviously they didn't run the car at that power level nearly all the time, but more around 520. However, they had to run with trying to make more horsepower in order to defeat Peugeot for the championship, as the 205 T16E2 was a far more sorted car than the S4. (EDIT I hate typing stuff on the phone) Now, I've heard from Markku Alén that towards the end of 86 they were throwing all the horsepower they could make teetering at the edge of reliability that the road surface and tires could handle, so take that for what you will, since it's Lancia we're talking about :) Could be 480 or 630 or Luigi went for an extended lunch, forgot to adjust the wastegate and it's 350...
Incidentally, the thing about the Peugeot being able to do more with less advertised horsepower played out in Rallycross after 1986, with Matti Alamäki with a 205T16"E2"* allegedly making far less than 600bhp beating guys like Martin Schanche with who knows how much more power. Alamäki also ran a Lancia Delta S4 prior to the Peugeot, but it according to him it was far too fragile.
*So, Jean Todt gave Alamäki and I forget who in the French Rallycross championship access to the Peugeot Sport parts vault (think Pikes Peak and all that), so in reality the E2 was more like an E3 or an E4.
I started watching F1 at the Monaco GP in 1989, so just missed the end of the turbo era. Reading about it, and watching videos like this as well as all those classic F1 races from the 80s, makes me feel like I was born too late and missed something pretty special. (Speaking of which, I was actually born on the same day the photo in the thumbnail of this video was taken!)
The turbo engines gave F1 one of its most distinctive eras, and although we’ve had turbo engines/power units back again since the start of 2014, they’ve been so much more homologated and have lacked the raw spontaneity of the 80s ones, so it doesn’t feel the same to watch as F1 in the 80s must’ve felt, IMO.
I started to watch F1 in 1981 which was when Australia first had TV coverage. My first GP was 1986 where I was on a coach trip from Perth to Adelaide (it was a 36 hour trip to the Barossa Valley and a further 5 or 6 hours to Adelaide). I managed to do the same trip in 1987 and 1988.
I moved to the UK in 1989 and went to many races all over the world. I think the early 1990s was an interesting period as it included Ferrari V12s which sounded great. Quite often Alesi and Berger were the first out of the pits. You could hear the V12s shriek around parts of Monza and Spa.
I was getting a bit bored of F1 and then I saw Mansell's Williams at Montreal go through the esses in 1991 (close to where the pits are now) and the speed and change of direction was something else.
My last race was in 2009 though.
Mario committed himself to working the development of the Lotus ground effects cars and got his title. Then Lotus kinda went off the rails.
I started watching F1 in 1984 and watched it constantly until the end of the 1999 season. Then I would watch the odd race and take a passing interest in it, but nowhere near as much as before.
From the days when a quali engine was binned, to the days where a team wiping the dead bugs off the nose of the car earns a 3 grid spot penalty.
A massive change since the original turbo days is the fuel allowed.
there's a cavate withe the amount of power now vs then as now its a combined combustion hybrid power vs then it was all combustion hence why the thermal efficany an there for mpg has gone up so much for not much diffrent power out puts also turbo tech has come on so far since then that the lad is way lower than it use to be then ad in the hybrid an u have pretty much full power from the moment u stamp on the throttle.
bentley had supercharged cars in the 1920's :)
There's Charged. Then Turbocharged. And then there's Turbrocharged.
What I take from this, as I usually do, is that FIA are just fun police.
Welded shut waste gates lunacy pure lunacy engine life rated in minutes not hours
Is it strange that when I see a 4 cylinder BMW block, I have the urge to piss? #IYKYK
Proof that turbo F1 cars can be cool. But why not just put turbos on the 3.0 V10s? 🙂