ibsey wrote:Firstly I want to thank Midgrid, Mario & The Mountain Man, for their wonderful stories. This really is fascintating stuff indeed.
I suspose you could include the Mclaren 2nd Brake pedal photograph (shot when the Mclarens retired at Nurburgring in 1997) as another spy story.
mario wrote:Speaking of copying pre-WW2 technology, I believe that there has been a long standing rumour that the V16 supercharged 1.5L engine BRM designed in the 1950's was in fact derived from an experimental pre-war voiturette car by Auto Union. As I understand it, the rumour is probably false since the engine design of the voiturette appears to actually be quite different to that of BRM's design, and simply a case of convergent design.
You might be interested to learn Mario, that I think there is more info on this subject (or at least something very simliar) in a DVD documentary called "Secret Life of F1" (which was made circa 2002). In fact you might be able to find this Documentary on utube or somewhere simliar (sorry I don't have time now to search & post a link).
IIRC, they basically say that following WW2, Britian acquired all the plans & blueprints from the sucessful pre-war German racing cars & tried to re-build them, but for some reason (can't remember what that was now) they couldn't successful re-build those cars.
Unfortantely I'll be going away (travelling) for a few months, so its unlikely I'll find much time to post here in the meantime. But keep up the great stories / posts everyone, as will def be checking up from time to time.
Take care
Ibsey
Thanks for the recommendation - I'm sure that there must be at least some extracts from that documentary on Youtube or a similar site, so I'll keep an eye out for it, because it sounds quite interesting.
midgrid wrote:ibsey wrote:Another story around the early 1980's was that Colin Chapman, asked one of his mechanics to sneak into, I think, Parc Ferme one evening (just before a GP) & photograph the Williams (which was the leading car at the time). Somehow I don't think those actions were permitted within the regulations. Unsuprisingly the next year's Lotus car turned out to look rather like that year's Williams. Anyone know of any other good F1 spy stories?
I have heard it said (but never seen the original source) that Harvey Postlethwaite, shortly before he died in 1999, admitted that he and some Ferrari mechanics had broken into the Williams garage at a German Grand Prix during this period in order to better understand what made the FW07 so effective.
Yes, I've also heard the story about Ferrari supposedly breaking into the Williams garages and copying their designs - I think that it came up in an article in The Times during the Spygate scandal, when they discussed historic examples of industrial espionage. Unfortunately, though, it might be a touch difficult to find, especially since they switched to a subscription model - though it would be very interesting to find, since it had some very interesting examples of cheating, including quite a bit of detail about Chapman and his efforts to copy the FW07.
Now, from what I remember about the article, at one particular race in 1980, Lotus were really struggling to match the times that Williams were setting during the practise session - they were several seconds a lap off the pace. Andretti was arguing with Chapman over why that was; Andretti thought that it was the rocker spring set up, and Chapman thought it was the suspension geometry.
At this point, Chapman turned to his most senior mechanic (who gave his account of events), and said to him "Go measure their car", pointing towards the Williams garage. The mechanic laughed, thinking that he was joking; that stopped when Chapman threatened to fire him on the spot if he didn't go and spy on the Williams car.
Now, as chance would have it, during the practise session Alan Jones had spun the car and hit a barrier, lightly damaging his car. The marshalls had worked quickly to drag the car back to the pit lane before returning to their posts (the session was still under way), leaving the car unattended under a tarpaulin sheet. Dutifully, he measured the suspension system and what parts of the Williams he could see, and returned to his garage, whereupon Chapman said "You idiot - why didn't you measure the front too?"
Out again the mechanic went, and started measuring the front suspension of the car - at which point, Jones, having finally made his way back to the pits, caught the mechanic red handed (and gave him a thump around the ear, I think, for his troubles). As you can imagine, that lead to slightly strained relations between Frank Williams and Colin Chapman for a few races - Jones, however, found the whole affair much funnier.
At the next race, in front of the entire pit lane, Jones called the mechanic he'd caught forwards - and presented him with a builder's rule, with the words "You can use this, but don't let me catch you again" written across it by Jones...
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