This Formula 1 car has 1400 horsepower, that’s 400 MORE than the F1 cars of today.
It was all about engineers pushing machines beyond the limits of technlogy at the time, creating MONSTERS.
But they had one main issue, they LOVED to blow up.
Turbos rocked up in Formula 1 out of nowhere - let me explain. Since 1966 you were allowed to create engines in any format - as long as it was a maximum of 3 litre capacity.
And teams ran all sorts of engines, flat 4s, inline 4s, V6s, V8s, V16s - the lot.
But there was one rule they ignored. You were allowed ‘forced induction’ engines, but they had to be less than 1.5 litres in capacity.
So they WERE allowed turbos and superchargers. But nobody ran them.
You will know the magic a turbo can bring for performance already, it’s likely your road car will have a turbo. They are everywhere.
And it’s not like they weren’t popular back in the 60s and 70s either. There were road cars like the Oldsmobile Cutlass Jetfire and Chevrolet Corvair Monza Spyder were both turbocharged. And it was VERY common in the aerospace industry too.
But all of the teams elected for the simpler, and lighter format of the 3-litre, naturally aspirated engines. Many were using the Ford Cosworth DFV engine - that soon became an ICON in Formula 1. It was light, powerful, reliable and most importantly CHEAP.
📹 All source footage can be found here 👉 bit.ly/3NlNAQF
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#Turbo #Formula1 #Horsepower
1400hp is insane, it's 1500 more than my Passat.
Try turning it on
Wait you have -100 hp
It’s 1242 more than my Corolla XRS
🤣🤣🤣
You have minus 100hp?
In Adrian Newey's book he comments that all this power meant that teams didn't worry too much about aero - they could stick a big wing on and power through. You can kinda tell from the looks of a lot of the cars. But when turbos went it set the stage for aero developments to take over.
Excellent book, highly recommended
Read it once, will read it again
Just imagine neweys aero on one of those beasts of an engine
As Enzo said... aerodynamics is for people who can't build engines
Imagine the Layton house he designed with an M12 in the back.
My friend was turbo technician / engineer for Lotus in that era. He said Senna insisted on getting a fresh turbo for his last ultimate qualifying lap in the session, so they developed a procedure to swap the turbo on a hot engine during the session in the pits. Amazing to think of them replacing 1000° turbos and sending him back out in just minutes. It’s all in the margins. Always has been in F1.
That is crazy as fk
Using up more turbos in a weekend than a complete season this year.
I reckon that was achieved by using v-band clamp system?
@@AmirPomenProbably bought extra manifolds and exhausts with them, undo the oil/coolant lines, send the manifold nuts off with an air tool.. Deal with actually removing the turbo from the exhaust once it’s cooled off.
I work in oil and fuel development. Ive seen and touched ceramic engines and turbos that are so thermally efficent that you can still handle them when they are glowing orange without burning yourself.. They are still uncomfortably hot, but it doesnt burn you. Yes its a head scrambler. Everything you know says dont touch it, but you can.
Hats off to the drivers of this pre-safety era. They were daredevils and willing to seriously risk their lives to go fast.
The drivers know full-well what they're getting into, the cars have to be so light to counter the sheer weight of the balls needed to drive that fast, I say LET THEM COOK!
They were very concerned about safety in the 80's, well after the incidents of 1982 they were....they weren't very good at it, they were just learning...I'm not sure if the safety record for F1 in the 80's was due to the safety precautions or just pure luck.
Always remember that in light of these modern F1 fans that immediately crown Lewis or now Max as the greatest driver ever. Likely either one back in the day would not have lived long enough to rack up that many starts or wins. Imagine Jimmy Clark or Ayrton Senna in a current winning car? This year in particular Max V. is unchallenged, that's not great racing. Thus it cannot be considered a great accomplishment.
Here's the thing, there's plenty of safety in this era compared to the cosworth V8 era.
@@crusherbmxI bet Spa-Francorchamps had something to do with their gradual obsession over safety. Even in modern days, the track is still taxing the driver’s skills in a way others tracks struggle to do, and dont get me started on the old layout’s Masta Kink.
I always loved a quote from James Hunt regarding turbo F1 engines back in that era . "When you first hit the accelerator nothing happens , then Everything happens !"
Once you hear "it needs a cast iron block" you know you're dealing with a ton of power..
Steel would be stronger unlike the statement from the presenter. However cast iron has better damping abilities than cast steel.
@@tommymaddox6785 Steel is stronger (and also not less dense than cast iron, for any practical purposes) but cast iron is much more brittle than steel. you can cold bend mild steel, roll it, knock dents out,... cast iron cracks from the stress of welding without proper heat treatment alone. So the presenter is very wrong, but you aren't correct either. But you probably didn't waste hours for it.
Did anyone notice it finished with “and I’ll catch you”. Like is he after me? Should I be afraid?
LOL SAME.
As someone who loves classic F1 I love these historic videos you guys make. Really does an amazing job of putting the viewer in that time period where we can't take things like electronics and other technologies for granted.
It would still be plenty fun to just drop the instantaneous fuel flow limit to see how much the current ICE elements could really make if fully uncorked in qualifying mode
Ferrari noises 2019 :D
remove RPM limit and fuel flow limit and I'm game... would love to see the drivers have an overboost button... just limit total fuel for race... need more Kablooeys
@@RCRitterFPV the rpm limit is (afaik) 15.000. when you look at the telemetry during a race you gonna see the drivers shifting at around 12.000rpm, so the rpm limit is not really a concern rigth now since the engines loose performence when reffing that high sadly (might be fuel economy also, but i'm not sure about that)
@@olerothemberg3869I think that’s because of fuel flow rules. From 12k-15k rpm, there’s more friction but not enough fuel to burn all the air.
@@andrewahern3730 yeah that might be. i kinda remember having read something like that some time ago
8:23 over 2000 horsepower per ton... wow
Why say over 2000, when it's more like 2300 hp/ton. That's terrifying.
@@bobbybobman3073at that point its a coffin on wheels
I'm so glad I was able to experience the amazing sounds of the Turbo engines of the 80s at the Detroit Grand Prix! The backfires, flames and the sound bouncing off the buildings of downtown Detroit!
Mine was 1985 Mitsubishi Australian GP. Fantastic 😎👍
I was in Detroit in 88. That was when F1 was spectacular. They might be turning faster lap times now but they don’t look on the edge of being out of control.
@10:07 "and i'll catch you *video ends*" ominous
Maybe I'm in the minority, but i think it would be much more exciting to have formula 1 with the current cost cap and basic major outlines for car size and weight, but allowed the teams to choose how to get the results it wants in anyway. Id love to see v10s and v12s against turbo v6s and such. Im dreaming of course but man is it a fun daydream!
Yip I'm of the same mind. Here is the box your car has to fit through. You have this much fuel per race. You have this much to spend per season. Go.
@@Firecul bingo!
I forgot a minimum set of crash safety features but I'd hope that is a given.
Yes, now that there is a cost cap, they should look at keeping other restrictions to a minimum. The cost cap will naturally limit things like fuel consumption, crashes and unreliability.
That's what WEC did (maximum downforce allowance), and it gave us the beauty that is the Peugeot. And honestly each hypercar is so different from one another. Absolutly love to see it
My dad got to see the Renaults at Watkins Glen in 77 and 78, and he said that the drivers would carry as much speed as they could through the corners, then get on the throttle and hope that the car was still pointed in the right direction coming out of the turn. He also noted that they would leave tracks on the uphill when the turbos kicked in, that's how much of a difference they made.
That turbo dog @ 4:24 thou lol
I remember the days of turbo F-1 cars, in qualifying trim they came out of tight corners like a dragster! Up at the 1986 Montreal GP Mansell and Senna were battling for the pole and the speed and sound was incredible! Between shifts there would be an explosion like a stick of dynamite 🧨!!!
❤❤❤❤❤
I got into f1 in 2014 but the 80s turbo is my favorite era. The sound is intoxicanting. The boost threshold of those days was imfamous. I heard once you get back on throttle way before you would in a normal response throttle.
This is the kind of video I absolutely LOVE from driver 61. Detailed history of racing tech development, with good storytelling and fascinating facts and context. Answering dozens of questions I didn’t know I even had! Thanks Scott and the whole Driver61 team. I’ve learned so much over the last couple years. You guys do an amazing job!
the video ending was a bit premature 😂 "I'll catch you"
I almost said out loud "But I haven't jumped-"
You can run but you can't hide.
What's more insane is I worked for a company that supplied some of these engines with turbos and looked at the drawings and a few samples that came in for rebuilds (historic racing series) and they were surprisingly different than what is currently used. I would love to have one on the shelf to poke around and talk about with others.
Worth noting the current gen turbos are insane on a whole nother level, I've seen those too and they basically aren't turbos, they're like an entirely new technology.
@@turbo_brian Honda's initial turbo design for their 2015 engine wasn't the normal "snail" turbo, it was elongated to reduce its diameter to help with the "Size zero" concept, so it was ICE engine designers trying to make a turbine without really knowing how to build one. After it blew up every other race they went and asked their jet engine department for help. Now it's more of a "snail" turbo, but I would love to see the complexity of it...
my mum has a turbo vw beetle with nearly 2.3 bar of boost (somehow) and she had no idea that it had it until about 4 months ago, when she mentioned not having much power when she didn't give it much throttle, but when she pressed on it a little bit more, after about a second she had a lot more power. she told this to my dad, who knows a LOT about cars (probably because he is a part-time mechanic.) and he didn't know either. they both had no clue what was going on until I (being 14 and having an obsession with F1 and WRC) mentioned the fact that it had a turbo and was having turbo lag from it's little inline 4. Good times.
One thing you need to also remember is, they were pushing 1k+ horsepower in a car that had very basic steering/gearing so it was a major handful to drive these things. They were brutes, like bucking bronco's. Absolutely LOVE the early to mid 80's cars.
These cars where insane. These drivers had to be insane to drive these monsters.
Telling everyone at the end that you'll catch them is such an Alpha move.
Awesome video - I just went to Watkins Glen this past weekend for the Sahlen’s Six Hours race. I sadly was born too late to see any F1 cars there, but I have had the privilege of seeing IndyCar there back in 2017.
When a channel knows exactly what I'm interested in!!
Thanks for that video Driver 61! Everytime good stories from that era. It's incredible how much infos and films I didn't see from that time. Good that you are here to show us.
Not only did using excess fuel cool the turbo for more power, but it could also be used to help eliminate turbo lag. Ferrari were the first to really capitalise on this (as far as I'm aware) midway through 1981 by combusting fuel INSIDE their turbo compressor to keep it spinning even when off throttle and reduce lag. Another big thing to note was that when McLaren were running their TAG-Porsche engine (late 1983-1987), they didn't run special qualifying engines like the other top teams. They'd turn up the qualifying boost pressure, but the likes of Renault (and their customer Lotus), BMW (with Brabham and later Benetton) and Honda with Williams would all run totally new engine blocks which were essentially disposable just for qualifying and could turn up the boost even higher as a result. It was therefore actually quite rare to see the McLaren-TAGs right up at the front in qualifying, even in 1984 where the car was truly dominant in races since in quali they were always at least 100 horsepower down on their main rivals. They made up for it however in race with their excellent engine management system provided by Bosch, solid reliability (though this began to waver especially in 1987 as it became clear that the engine was losing competitiveness, driving them to push it harder for more performance) and very solid power in race trim (since they ran less quali boost, this also meant they lost less power compared to their rivals going from quali to the race) One last minor thing, but the pictures you showed of the F1 car you drove around 4:40 were of the non-turbo Lotus 91 from 1982.
Catch what now Scott?
Catch YOU
Excess fuel is also used in piston airplane engines, when you operate in high power mode, the fuel system adds ca 10% more fuel than it is necessary because most full power use happens during climb - when you are slower and less air passes through the air-cooled engine to cool it down :)
Some cars do it too. My fl5 civic type r will set the AFR to 11.5:1 for WOT under boost. That means in those conditions it injects 12% more fuel than there is oxygen to burn it with.
@@ASJC27 It's the common way to reduce the exhaust gas temperature (EGT) to stay under the limit for gasoline engines. For diesel engines, as you're in excess of air, you usually reduce/limit the fuel injected to limit the temperature.
@@ASJC27 All turbocharged petrol engines in production do this. Every one.
Yes, pretty standard in aircraft engines. I fly with a Lycoming YIO-540-exp. Takeoff is always done full rich regardless of field altitude to prevent the cylinders from overheating until we reach cruising speed and the airflow is enough to cool them. That isn’t my procedure- it is in the engine manual.
@@michaelschlachter1628 it seems your engine has an altitude compensating fuel system. Like a Cirrus SR20 with the Continental engine - anything but cruise is done full rich, even if you are 8000'. Do that in 99% of Lycos or Contis in ordinary planes and you will be glad to fly straight at that altitude :). I was mentioning the feature of many aircraft engines where the current mixture is enriched even more if you are at or very near the full throttle. I experienced throttle reducing by itself slightly on an aircraft without adjustable friction when I could not hold it by hand in the climb and the CHTs just went past 420F in a whim.
This kind of technological and technical competitiveness is what made me interested in F1. As a kid watching the F1 news analyzing each bit of design was always interesting. If F1 becomes spec series, I might stop watching it.
I’d love to see you do a series on the technical aspects and innovations of super touring cars. Lots of manufacturer involvement with big money being thrown around towards the end. I have no doubts there’d be a lot of content there given all of the different brands and models in the categories life cycle and different approaches they all took to turn road cars into fully fledged race cars.
I WISH I would have been a little older to be able to really appreciate this. I feel like I totally missed out of such a cool, analog time in racing history.
I owned a 1962 Oldsmobile Jetfire back in the late 1970's that I bought from the original owner. I remember having to check a fluid it used called "Jetfire Turbo-Rocket Fluid. Yes TURBO. It was the first American car with a TURBO. It ran good, but when gas was being rationed it was a pain. The car averaged 9 MPG so it was not to great when I had to ride 47 miles each way to and from work each day. I sold it to get a more economical car with better MPG.
This information is good to know since i am from the nineties F1 fan i didn't know about the eras before much. You did a great job with the video well done and keep ythe good work
love the clips used in this, mostly those from another documentary surrounding duckworth/ford/beatrice
I was under the impression that most who were there during the turbo period of F1 agreed that the Honda engines were the most powerful and that the qualifying engines were making around 1400 hp, while the race engines were more like 8-900.
They were THE HEROS of my youth. Saw the BMW engine some 30 years ago at the fair. This Turbo was really big!
Good to see some footage of the Benetton shown at our local track. The Benetton raced against a McLaren M8F Can-Am car. Both cars broke the outright lap record on the last lap. The Benetton had a small off resulting in the McLaren winning by under a second
I did a lot of practice in simulator until finally I managed to deal with that turbo lag. It was annoying first but now it is quite fun. In the end I do something similar to what Senna did, popping throttle to keep revs high without spinning before exiting slow corners. And that works great with weak karts too.
That last "Ill catch you" felt personal
''Thanks very much for watching and I'll catch you'' 😳
Bring this era back 😮
One of the main reasons you gotta love F1. When engineers go above and beyond around the rules. And often comes the best inventions ever that will lately improve road cars. Just art. And we do see that nowadays often too, but people quickly start hating instead of admiring it. F1 became too football alike with this new type of fans.
Thanks, man. Great video as always. 👍👌
Happy memories. Thanks for that.
Better spool the turbos or Scott will catch you.
I remember the lotus turbo lag in games, think it was project cars 2, felt like you were accelerating in reverse lol floor it and let off as the turbo kicked in or the wheels would spin 😄
Use the clutch to rev it up. Lag, what lag?!
@@bertram-ravendo it a couple of times and you’ll be asking “clutch? What clutch?”
My favorite car in project cars 1 or 2 is Lotus 98T with turbo 100% ... indeed hard to control but when you feel the car you know you can do everything!
"Thank you very much, and I'll catch you---" Feeling threatened now hahahhahahah
Had a Buick grand national in 2001ish, a v8 always got a jump on me, but you wait for the boost wave and blow by. They were amazing machines. Have a hemi charger now and recently rented an Audi rs4 I believe. It had no lag at all but made me miss that wave of power you knew was coming.
Great Job keep on doing such Great content
Saving my day from boredom, thank God.
Fascinating as always , best channel in KZhead !
Having a diesel truck with a big turbo, the VGT design really is one of the best adaptations to happen to the turbocharger. My truck is 6.6L, I could only imagine spinning up the same size turbo with 1.5L🤯 Also I wonder if they ever thought of running methanol to cool those motors back then. Like diesel it has more BTU's and burns slower and cooler. I'm guessing though because it used twice as much👀
I'm guessing you've got a Duramax?
@@zakvilanilam3388 yes. Nothing special, but it'll scoot
Methanol burning slower means it's automatically out of the window
@@kristoffer3000 yeah I was thinking about that, but methanol injection at least. It's cooling benefits have to be applicable in some significant way.
wasn't there a time when they ran methanol? was it around this time? top fuel doesnt even have a water jacket because they dump fuel in to keep it cool. its effective.
“However the engineers got clever” These guys are incredibly talented … Always pushing the rule book !! Great stuff .!
Oh my god, that Renault turbo was as big as a Leopard 2 tank turbo. And this monster of an engine pushes 60 tons over 1500 HP.
Great video! Thanks
1985 Ayrton Senna's Lotus 97T (with Renault-Gordini F1 V6 Turbo engine) was accredited in Monza's saturday qualifying session of about 1470 HP!!! Engine was made to last about 3 to 5 laps and then swapped!
Good old toluene. Another good one is xylene. You can buy that as paint thinners from the hardware. Much cheaper than octane booster and has incredible knock resistance
Fun fact that the bmw 4cil used old blocks(from dtm maybe?). If a block had any “bubble” on the casted metal it would have already cracked in the past, so an old block meant it was good/strong to handle the boost
No, the block came from the 2002 road car, it was first used as the base for BMW's F2 engine in the early 1970's. They found that the blocks had to have at least 60K km of use to be seasoned enough to stand up to racing stress. Later the race shops started artificially seasoning blocks for racing use.
@john jones I did read that they were seasoned outside and to speed up this process the blocks were urinated on by employees. A sterling effort by Team BMW.
@@astonzappa That's kind of an urban motersports myth, they were outside because the race dept initially was buying the cores from wrecking yards, the second part sound completely made up. The seasoning process has to do with how many heat cycles the block had gone through which tempers and stabilizes the metal, a fresh unit didn't have the integrity for a strong foundation.
@@johnjones928No, that’s a myth like all other nonsense related to that engine. Source: a bmw F1 guy (can’t remember his name) from that era on Die alte Schule podcast.
@@johnjones928 By urinating on the blocks as they sat outside
10:00 "Thank you very much for watching and I'll catch you" Thats sounds very ominous 😳
Like Porsche in the early 1970s, F1 in the 1980s thought every problem should be solved by adding more horsepower. Bonkers. Awesome video! Cheers 🍺
10:06 @driver61 what do you mean your gonna catch me haha
You won't catch me! 😂😂😂
I wonder why the top speeds weren't closer to 300mph, especially on fast circuits. 1450hp at 600kg cars.
Great videos love it 👍
1300-1400lb stick shift go cart with 1400 hp these guys 👑
Toluene came from the fuel volume limit. It's energy density and knock resistance made up for its slow burnrate. They had to heat it before getting to the injectors...
The acceleration and speed were out of this world. 🔥🏎
He briefly alluded to them at the end without naming them, but the pop-off valves were hilarious, the sound they made
"I'll catch you!" Is that a threat? I don't know whether to be excited or not.
I am glad to know you will catch me!
Best F-1 times ever for the ones who love seeing engines at their very best...!!
That was super quick turbo charged narration
"It's likely your road car has a turbo" Wishful thinking on my behalf, I appreciate it.
This makes me think of Murray Walker and James Hunt on Rene Arnoux’s excuse about the N/A vs turbo cars at Monaco 89
And all I can say to that is Bulls*it.
"Want a turbocharger?" "Bigger" "Want a turbocharger?" "Bigger!" "Want a turbochager?" "BIGGER!" "Want a turbocharger?" "B I G G E R !" "Do you want. A turbochager?" "Yes"
"thanks very much for watching, and I'll catch you" - ominous words of parting.
as far as piston engines go, aerospace was practically centuries ahead of the automobile industry by the time they stopped using them. i mean, how many auto engines do you know use water injection to improve horsepower by at least 25%. they used it to cool the turbo, yes, but in the double wasp plane engine from late ww2; water injection was used like nos is used in a car to gain an immediate huge leap in horsepower, water was literally pumped right into the combustion chamber.
Driving these things seems similar to race drivers talking about rs 500 sierras saying the turbo came on like a light switch and a lot of good drivers ended up facing the wrong way as the turbo came on
Scott: "Thanks very much and I'll catch you" Me: "You won't catch me, I have a 1400hp!"
"(...) often resulting in smashed con-rods and metal smashing through the crankcase" -> "it's not good" haha killed me
Kinda surprised how long it took turbos to make it into F1 considering the success Porsche, BMW, etc had already seen for years before in Le Mans and other events And they were running big boost way before Renault
Money like always. Turbos were expensive back then and the unrealiability that came with it would make the teams spend even more money. BMW used junkyard 3 series blocks for their qualifying engines and they would literally last 1 lap at full power and blow up right after lol
@@Barbosa81 yeah I'm thinking more like the 935 and 2.1 Carrera rs turbo which won 24h le mans back in 1974 so had good reliability most times. Bmw also had the twin turbo CSL in 1976, except in that case the issue was the transmission grenading from the turbo torque TBF I think those qualifying engines ran at something like 4 bar and 1400bhp which is bonkers
I'm also thinking about the Saab 99 Turbo which came out in 77-78. I know we are talking massively different numbers and this is only a production car with 140 hp, but what made it special was the reliability. They invented the wastegate at Saab. I also find it odd that they were not running turbos in F1 at the time already. Probably the amount of power that limited them and nobody was ready for testing it out and risk their reputation. I'm thinking that Le Mans probably was much safer to try things out because of the lower status.
They should bring back active suspension. Modern ground effect with active suspension would be fantastic
senna really used turbos to the limit his style of throttle while going through the corner made him so great
Epic video, even though the outro was cut ("in the next one")
Going into a race weekend with 4 engines or more. Crazy.
As a racing driver, Scott wrung out milliseconds off of the laptime. As a KZheadr, Scott struggles to push the video duration past the ten minute barrier.
Gotta get popcorn whenever Scott says "Let me explain"
Is that the back straight at Baskerville raceway in Tasmania at 7:57 of that video? Looks identical
I was a pit lane flaggie and 2nd Medic at the AGP. The toluene smell emitting from the exhausts was unmistakable. And yes, the lag was bad. Nothing, nothing, nothing, noth...ROCKET!!!!!!
I've always loved the smell of aromatics. Too bad they're so toxic...
love the classic ADELAIDE footage along with the recent motorsport festival footage too ling live " The Grand Finale " of 1995 attendance of 520,000 !
Megatron!!🔥🔥🔥
I only drove an old Porsche 911 Turbo. Boy, widow maker is quite the feeling you get, when you get hit by the power in a curve when it’s raining. 😅
I’ve watched the duckworth turbo doc at least 5 times cool couple of clips of it in here
The boost they were pushing though these power units for the time was insane. During the first Turbo erea I was in my Teens . So most of the tech was over my head. But last year I visited an amazing Collection of Cars Planes and Trains while doing a Tour of Germany Sinsheim Technik Museum. They have an impressive collection of Race cars and Formula cars along a ton of other stuff.but they had a Zakspeed F1 car they also ran an inline 4 , 1.5 ltr Turbo they had a static engine on display along with the amount of boost off the top of my head 3.4 bar around about 49.35 PSI lord knows what the qualifing Boost was been run from the Likes of Honda or BMW . As for in the wet their is a scary incar video filmed during practice back in the 80's with a camera on the cars at that time cameras were only allowed to be used on cars during free practice . Those films were made for ELF fuels using at the start Renault F1 cars , but they were later released as a 2 part VHS collection and much later on DVD as the Laps of the Gods collection.some laps are more demo runs but there are a few were the driver is really pushing the car and you can really see how violent these cars all or nothing power band was.
Nice end to the video 😂
Indycars have been running turbos for years
Ford Benetton -88 with full power (qualifying power) did 0-402 m in 6.7 S and 270 km/h. It´s very impressive.