I looking for literature detailing F1 development,engineering and construction in the UK. It seems as though a great majority of the teams are based in the UK as well as engine and transmission constuctors. How did this occur and what is the history of this.

If you're looking for "the origines of Formula One in the UK," you've got a lot of reading to do.

The first question is, how do you define "Formula One?"

If you mean "all Grand Prix cars," then you're talking the pre-war era, which was largely dominated by the Germans, with the French and Italians (Masseratti) trying to keep up.

The current series got started in 1950, as the "modern" World Championship. The cars back then were front-engined, rear-drive and some still had solid rear axels (think "NASCAR.")

Most of the earliest competitors were Italian -- Ferrari and Masseratti -- plus whatever pre-war machinery was available.

In the mid-40s, Mercedes got into the game with a vengeance. They built the best cars, using a desmodromic-valved, straight-eight that also showed up in their Gullwing sports cars. They dominated both Grand Prix and Sports Car racing until Pierre Leveigh's horrible accident at LeMans in 1955. After that, the company pulled out of racing for about 30 years.

Later in the 50s, teams like Tony Vandervell's Vanwall and Cooper emerged to contend for the title. Vanwall won the first championship in 1958, followed by Cooper and Jack Brabham, a year later. Interesting side note: Vandervell's first F1 cars were a collaboration between aerodynamicist Frank Costin (brother of Cosworth's Mike Costin) and Colin Chapman, later of Lotus fame. British Racing Motors, a division of the Owens Group, started aroun the same time, building complete cars.

The late 50s through to about 1970 was the era of the "garagiste," or garage teams. Almost anybody who could do metal fabrication designed and built race cars. That included Colin Chapman, Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren and Dan Gurney, among others.

Most of the cars in that era used engines and transmissions built by someone else. During the 1.5 litre era (when what was essentially Formula Two became "Formula One" to cut costs and encourage small teams, sound familiar?) the engine of choice was the Coventry Climax, mated to a Colotti or ZF gearbox.

When the FIA changed the Formula One engine limit to three litres (there's a story behind that), everyone scrambled. Brabham took aluminium Americn Buick V-8 engines sold by the "Repco" (Replacement Parts Company) of Austrailia and built cylinder engines for them, producing the engines that won the 1966 and 1967 championships for Brabham (1966) and Dennis Hulme (1967)

In 1967, Ford bankrolled Mike Costin (brother of Frank) and Keith Duckworth, who formed a company called "Cosworth Engineeering." The started off by making four-valve, twin-cam cylinder heads for Ford four cylinder engines called "FVA" (Four Valve, model A), "FVB," "FVC," etc. Then they took two of those heads and built a V-8 engine called the "DFV," or "Double Four Valve" Grand Prix engine and a legend was born.

The DFV and the Hewland transaxel were built to be used as stressed members of the chassis -- the engine was bolted to the firewall and the suspension was attached to the gearbox, as is common practice today.

When the Cosworth engines became available to everyone in 1968, it started the "British Kit Car" era. Everyone but Ferrari and BRM ran a Cosworth engine and Hewland transaxel in their own chassis. The list included: McLaren, Brabham, Lotus, MARCH, Matra (1968 and 1969) and Tyrrell, in late 1970, when the team got tired of fiddling with MARCH chassis. (Note: The "M" in "MARCH" stood for our old friend, "Mad Max" Mosley. The other partners were Alan Reese, Graham Coker and designer Robin Herd.)

The Cosworth/Hewland combination remained popular until the turbo era of 1977 to 1989. By that point, racing had become big business and the manufacturers took over.

If you're still interestted, I suggest looking for books in the library and on line. Therer is a lot of information available, if you look for it.

MARCH ... Much Advertised Racing Car Hoax....a quote from autosport in the early 70's.....

Let us not forget the Gurney/Weslake V-12 Underfunded underdeveloped but what an engine

Grey Wolf (GW) glosses over much history of F1, which is understandable. The period between the wars in Europe featured indeed the German engineering of Mercedes and Auto Union. Those cars were also rolling advertisements for the German way of life that was ascending under the National Socialists in the '30's

Most F1 people I know would extend the period GW calls 'garagiste' through the end of the '60's, with Gurney/Eagle, Brabham, Cooper and Tyrrell.

GW alluded to the use of 'Americn'(sic)' Buick aluminum V-8. Not quite. The '60's 215 cu in/3 liter aluminum V-8 was discontinued by GM, and the rights sold to REPCO in Australia. They changed the design to cast iron, and that's the engine Brabham used. Incidentally, that block lived in Land Rovers and Range Rovers as a 4 liter unit until the late 1990's. So, when someone tells you that F1 technology doesn't translate to road cars, this is one example where road car technology transferred to F1 - and back again.

I think we're on the cusp of seeing some return to the 'garagiste' era with the new teams joining F1 in 2010. It will be interesting to see how outsiders interpret the rules and construct the chassis - if the rules ever get finalised!

OldRacer - 14 July 2009 04:13 PM

Grey Wolf (GW) glosses over much history of F1, which is understandable. The period between the wars in Europe featured indeed the German engineering of Mercedes and Auto Union. Those cars were also rolling advertisements for the German way of life that was ascending under the National Socialists in the '30's

Most F1 people I know would extend the period GW calls 'garagiste' through the end of the '60's, with Gurney/Eagle, Brabham, Cooper and Tyrrell.

GW alluded to the use of 'Americn'(sic)' Buick aluminum V-8. Not quite. The '60's 215 cu in/3 liter aluminum V-8 was discontinued by GM, and the rights sold to REPCO in Australia. They changed the design to cast iron, and that's the engine Brabham used. Incidentally, that block lived in Land Rovers and Range Rovers as a 4 liter unit until the late 1990's. So, when someone tells you that F1 technology doesn't translate to road cars, this is one example where road car technology transferred to F1 - and back again.

I think we're on the cusp of seeing some return to the 'garagiste' era with the new teams joining F1 in 2010. It will be interesting to see how outsiders interpret the rules and construct the chassis - if the rules ever get finalised!

1The Old Racer is right on all counts. First, I did "gloss over" the history of Formula one in Britain because there's so much of it; thus I hit the high points, as best I could remember them.

Second, I knew the aluminium V-8 REPCO engine had Buick origins. I forgot both that Buick no longer built that engine by the mid-1960s, and that Rover picked it up. I also knew REPCO sold the engine, but I didn't know they also made them. That makes Brabham's choice of it as a basis for his Formula One engine more understandable.

As for the "Garagiste" era (not my word, but it fits) in Formula One. That can be said to have started with John Cooper, Tony Vanderval (Vanwall) and Colin Chapman in the late 50s and contiuded through the early 1970s, with Ken Tyrrell's first Formula One cars. It was a time when anyone with a shop and some basic drafting and metal working skills could build and race a Formula One car and many did, including Brabham, Gurney, McLaren, Tyrrell Chapman, Cooper, Vanderval and a number of others you no longer hear about.

The 60s was a fascinating time when Formula One was relatively cheap, engines came from the most unlikely places (the original Coventry Climax engine ran a fire engine's water pump, for example) and you never knew who was going to build what, next.

Then along came the late 60s and early 70s, with the Cosworth DFV V-8, and the "British Kit Car" era. With a common -- and very powerful -- engine, the small teams flourished. At times, only Ferrari and BRM (with their H-16 and later V-12 engines) were the only teams not using a Cosworth. And the racing was good. It depended more on the driver's ability to make the best of his car than on engineering cleverness.

No good thing lasts forever, though. By the mid-70s, technology started taking hold, racing got progressively more expensive and teams went from being garages with some metal working tools to "factories." The cars became more sophisticated, budgets rose astronomically and some teams like McLaren and Lotus cut their participation in other series while others like BRM, Brabham and Eagle quit entirely. Still others, like Tyrrell, were sold and re-sold to a series of owners, re-named and continue to struggle on today.

That leads us to today. Budgets are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. That money pays for factories employing hundreds of people, half of them devoted to finding more sponsorship money. And the endless research, exotic materials and expenses of today's racing. The technology -- what the teams let you know about -- may be fascinating, but it just ain't racing as I remember it.

I think that was Gilles Villeneuve (Jacques' dad) who had that magnificent end-of-race dice with Rene Arnoux at Dijon. But that wasn't Gilles's only great drive. He also won the 1981 Spanish Grand Prix by 0.22 seconds, having "held up" the entire field for 66 laps. Driving that long with everybody else on your tail takes some talent, too. 66 laps is a LONG time to go without making a mistake that lets another car past.

If you want to go even farther back, look at the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix[, in which Sterling Moss, driving Rob Walker's Lotus-Climax defeated the mighty Ferrari team of Richie Ginther (second place), Phil Hill and Wolfgang "Taffy" Von Trips (who crashed two laps from the end) and lapped everybody else in the field at least twice.

Moss preferred driving British-built and/or privately entered cars when possible (which definitely hurt his career) never won a world championship, but he had some great drives. He knew how to "carry" a sub-standard car becauase he was very, very good.

GreyWolf74 - 16 July 2009 08:07 AM

I think that was Gilles Villeneuve (Jacques' dad) who had that magnificent end-of-race dice with Rene Arnoux at Dijon. But that wasn't Gilles's only great drive. He also won the 1981 Spanish Grand Prix by 0.22 seconds, having "held up" the entire field for 66 laps. Driving that long with everybody else on your tail takes some talent, too. 66 laps is a LONG time to go without making a mistake that lets another car past.

If you want to go even farther back, look at the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix[, in which Sterling Moss, driving Rob Walker's Lotus-Climax defeated the mighty Ferrari team of Richie Ginther (second place), Phil Hill and Wolfgang "Taffy" Von Trips (who crashed two laps from the end) and lapped everybody else in the field at least twice.

Moss preferred driving British-built and/or privately entered cars when possible (which definitely hurt his career) never won a world championship, but he had some great drives. He knew how to "carry" a sub-standard car becauase he was very, very good.

No, not the only great drive, but one where the performance of the cars (renault's) were predicted to complete domination, JV changed that notion...

speedsense - 16 July 2009 11:24 AM

GreyWolf74 - 16 July 2009 08:07 AM

I think that was Gilles Villeneuve (Jacques' dad) who had that magnificent end-of-race dice with Rene Arnoux at Dijon. But that wasn't Gilles's only great drive. He also won the 1981 Spanish Grand Prix by 0.22 seconds, having "held up" the entire field for 66 laps. Driving that long with everybody else on your tail takes some talent, too. 66 laps is a LONG time to go without making a mistake that lets another car past.

If you want to go even farther back, look at the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix[, in which Sterling Moss, driving Rob Walker's Lotus-Climax defeated the mighty Ferrari team of Richie Ginther (second place), Phil Hill and Wolfgang "Taffy" Von Trips (who crashed two laps from the end) and lapped everybody else in the field at least twice.

Moss preferred driving British-built and/or privately entered cars when possible (which definitely hurt his career) never won a world championship, but he had some great drives. He knew how to "carry" a sub-standard car becauase he was very, very good.

No, not the only great drive, but one where the performance of the cars (renault's) were predicted to complete domination, JV changed that notion...

Point well made. Villeneuve's drive was fabulous not just becaue he overcame the Renaults power adavntage, but its aerodynamic one as well. The Ferrari 312T4 was still powered by the Flat-12 engine, which was much wider and lower than the Renault's turbocharged V-6. Since this was the beginning of the "Ground Effects Era," that wide engine intruded into the side pods' tunnels, reducing their efficiency. (This problem was so bad that when the 312T5 ran at Montreal, Villeneuve qualified, but his team mate, 1979 World Champion Jody Schecther, did not.)

So, not only was he down on power, he probably had less aerodynamic grip, too.