The Innovators

20/01/2012

In my last piece I made the point that the first team to heat tyres was David Purley's Lec outfit in 1977. Mike Earle, later of Onyx GP, was the guy who thought of an insulated cabinet into which hot air was pumped by from fan heaters via donkey dick, the technical name for that flexible tubing.

Nobody did anything about it until Robert Synge's Madgwick Motorsport who ran Maurizio Sandro Salo in FF2000 in 1984. Robert has reminded me that Madgwick first used it at Donington and after the first lap, 'Morris' was 100 yards clear of Mauricio Gugelmin, who was destined for Formula One.

Neither cabinet was very sophisticated, or expensive, but they both worked. Formula One was slow on the uptake.

It is the same with slicks. The American outfit M & H Tyres, which used to supply some Formula Two teams, originally made slicks for dragsters. Slicks were all the rage in British karting as early as 1961. Karts were supplied with ribbed tyres but when they wore down, you sent them away to Blue Peter remoulds and they came back as profiled slicks, complete with holes to show depth of wear. They cost thirty shillings a cover, one pound fifty in today's money.

My guess is that the idea came from America which was the first country to really sort out karts. It took mainstream racing a long time to work out that, in the dry, a slick tyre put more rubber on the ground.

Then there is the matter of disc brakes. The initial advantage of a disc brake is the dissipation of heat. The idea goes back to 1902 and Frederick William Lanchester who used copper pads on iron discs on Lanchester cars. Copper was chosen because of its ability to dissipate heat, Lanchester did not have a brake pad industry. Roads were then largely unsealed and the gunge from the roads caused an unacceptable rate of wear although the brakes were effective.

Different types were tried in aviation where the compactness and lightness of the unit was an important factor.

Jaguar and Dunlop tend to get the credit for developing the automotive disc brake in collaboration Stirling Moss drove a C-type fitted with Dunlop discs in the 1952 Mille Miglia though this was not widely reported at the time. Jaguar proved the case for caliper discs by finishing 1-2-4 at Le Mans in 1953 and would not allow Dunlop to supply anyone else which is why Aston Martin had to stick with drums until their supplier, Girling, developed their version.

A form of disc brake, however, was designed by the great Harry Miller for his 1938 Gulf-Miller Indycar. These did not use calipers, but other discs, a sort of clutch in reverse. A similar system was offered as an option by Chrysler on its Imperial model, 1949-53.

Postwar, small American company, Crosley, made cars with a four-cylinder ohc 722ccc engine which formed the basis of many a Class H special in SCCA racing. Crosley's Hot Shot model of 1949-50 was fitted Goodyear-Hawley 'spot' disc brakes, a spot brake was like putting your thumb on a vinyl record, These brakes tended to lock and were replaced by Bendix drums, but Crosley remains the first company to fit disc brakes to a production car.

Palmer spot discs, taken from light aircraft, were fitted to some Cooper 500cc cars and the rarely seen HRG Twin Cam. The late Alan Brown tested the HRG in period and spoke highly of it.

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