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FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
19/05/2016

Every day I receive press releases and most are background noise; such and such a company has had record sales or has received some award. Few are relevant to my main concerns, so I was really taken to receive one from an American paint company, AERO, mentioning its involvement with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, an Indycar team.

The reason is that I have long been fascinated by details such as paint. For a start, it adds weight. From 1934 to 1937 the Grand Prix formula had a maximum dry weight limit of 750 kgs, less tyres. Both Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz ran their cars in bare aluminium to save weight and so they became known as the 'Silver Arrows'. In fact, Germany's racing colour is white, but nobody liked to point this out. German classic car enthusiasts still present pre-1934 cars in the correct livery.

Weight is one factor, sponsors are another. About twenty years ago Jordan Grand Prix was sponsored by Benson & Hedges whose packaging then was exclusively gold. One day I tipped up at Goodwood and there was a F3000 car being driven in Jordan colours and being filmed. The original gold livery had been fine in the workshop, but it was not displaying well on television.

Not only has paint to be as thin as possible, it must be easily removed. About thirty years ago McLaren began to strip paint from a car's panels so they could be repainted to pristine condition. A prized possession of mine is a mounted photograph of Alberto Ascari in his last race, Monaco 1955. Though it is in black and white, the detail is such that you can see where Luigi has touched up the Lancia's nose with a paint brush.

Incidentally, spectators in the background are protecting themselves from the sun with knotted handkerchiefs and hats made from folded newspaper - and this is Monte Carlo.

When my brother and I built a soapbox cart, it was finished with a pot of green Valspar paint because Connaughts were finished in brush-applied Valspar.

McLaren did not strip down every body. Some years ago I visited a warehouse in Woking which not only had every TAG engine not in a car, it also had the yellow and white Marlboro Lites bodywork which adorned Keke Rosberg's car for a race or two.

Paint is not a simple choice and neither is polish. Auto Glym once offered hacks a chance to have their cars shined and I took up the offer. Auto Glym claimed to have made a special polish for the McLaren F1 and its competition derivatives. I had more or less assumed that there was one big vat of polish which got poured into different styles of bottles.

The company's chief chemist put me right because ultimately the finish depends on being buffed with an electric polisher. The polisher creates heat and that is dispersed at different rates be a body steel, aluminium, or glass or carbon fibre. Therefore for optimum finish, you need a specific wax.

That makes sense and McLaren took the matter very seriously. Parked at the back of the Auto Glym factory was the front and rear bodywork of a McLaren F1 which had been supplied so that the presentation pack of polish (Auto Glym made 99) would be to McLaren standards.

One question I often asked senior designers was what criteria they employed when choosing wheels and the usual response was a blank look. We can all agree that wheels are an essential part of any car, but most F1 teams seem to be guided by the deal they can make with a supplier.

For a long time wire wheels were favourite in motor racing because they combined lightness with excellent cooling to the drum brakes. Wire wheels with 'knock off' hub spinners were the enthusiast's favourite until legislators decided they were dangerous. The great pioneer was Rudge Whitworth and Boranni wire wheels were made under licence and still bear the initials 'RW'.

Of the makers who experimented with alloy, and aluminium, wheels, the stand-out was Bugatti which combined them with knock-off hubs.

Please note that aluminium is an element, not an alloy. It is a calumny when motoring hacks confuse 'alloy' with 'ally', an abbreviation for aluminium.

Postwar, Cooper adopted aluminium wheels on its first multiple batch of 500cc racing cars. The reason was that materials were rationed, but there were scrapyards piled high with ex-military waste, among which was aluminium sheeting and also, had you a mind, Rolls-Royce Merlin aero engines.

Cooper bought seven-inch cylinder liners from marine diesel engines and sawed them up to make brake drums which were sweated within the aluminium castings. When magnesium alloys became available, Cooper used them.

Meanwhile, Jaguar launched the XK120 which, at first, was available only with pressed steel wheels. In Britain, Dunlop was the main supplier of wheels and its basic wire wheel had 48-spokes when a car like the Jaguar XK120 needed a 60-spoke wheel and had to wait until Dunlop made them.

By the way, people who chrome the spokes of their wire wheels are posers. Wire wheels fitted for action have always had painted spokes because if a car is driven hard, the spokes flex and if they are plated, the chrome cracks.

Cooper and Connaught competition cars had aluminium or alloy wheels from the start, and Dunlop made alloy wheels which were fitted to the Jaguar D-type and Lister-Jaguars. Lotus used alloy wheels on its first single-seater, the Mk 12 of 1957. The unpaid volunteers who aided Colin Chapman had no idea how to design a wheel and so went to the company that made them for Cooper. The company would not reveal Cooper's secrets, but allowed the guys from Lotus access to their scrap pile. They looked at the rejects, understood why some wheels had been deemed failures, and so designed the famous Lotus 'wobbly' wheel.

Porsche never used wire wheels. One reason may have been that they could not import them in the 1950s, but BMW had showed they were not necessary in 1937 with the 328. You could have perforated (for cooling) metal wheels with 'knock off' hubs. We are talking cross-ply tyres and they needed a certain 'whip' in either the chassis or the wheel.

About thirty years ago a club racer was killed at Silverstone when his Frazer Nash rolled. In its day the 'Nash had a perfect balance between a simple chassis which had some give in it, cross-ply tyres, and stiff metal wheels. A popular club racer died because he had fitted modern radial tyres which proved to have too much grip as the car turned in for a corner.

In 1958 Vanwall appeared at some races with wire wheels at the front and alloys at the back. The plot was that the front wheels flexed and the rears didn't.

Eventually F1 cars grew fat tyres and there were pit stops involving changes of tyres. I asked leading designers how they chose their wheels, like did they weigh candidates, or test them for strength? None of the above, the team owner had usually done a deal with a supplier.

Today, sub-contractors associated with a team are granted certain levels of status, like 'supplier' or 'partner'. The status is dependent on what they bring to the party. What they receive, which is normally access, is finely graduated.

A paint company prompted this piece and top teams look for every advantage whether it is saving weight or saving money. This wasn't always the case and Alistair Caldwell once told me this story about the 1967 Italian GP.

'Bruce (McLaren) had a new BRM-engined car, the M5A, which was going pretty well. Then we got a message from the organisers saying our car should be painted green since it had been made in England. We'd sprayed it red because that's the colour we'd had in the workshop.

'We said we would and then forgot about it. Then they came again and were more insistent. We went to a local accessory shop and found cans of the most hideous lime green you can imagine. We were going to spray everything, suspension, wheels, everything in bright green.

'Then the organisers told us not to bother. Bruce was third fastest in practice so was on the front row. A red car was on the front row and that was the main thing.'

A few months later, Lotus cars were no longer green with yellow stripes they were red, gold and white and were entered by Gold Leaf Team Lotus. Soon afterwards, McLarens were orange because of a deal with Reynolds Aluminium and orange is still associated with McLaren GT cars.

Mike Lawrence.

Learn more about Mike and check out his previous features, here

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READERS COMMENTS

 

1. Posted by TecnoFormula1, 10/10/2016 8:21

"Bit late, but just had to comment that McLarens being orange had nothing to do with Reynolds Aluminium...
The Reynolds deal was being put together in late 1968, whereas McLarens had or course been running orange M6As all through 1967. The orange was - I think - purely and aesthetic choice... Bruce digging the color of High Dibley's Lola T70."

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2. Posted by Editor, 25/05/2016 14:09

"@ Bender6

Have to say you're being a little unfair to Ron.

He is very mindful of the fact that Bruce McLaren set up the team, and has never tried to play down the team’s history… far from it.

One of the most evocative sights at the MTC is Bruce’s first racer, a little old Austin, which Ron went to great pains to find and purchase.

"

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3. Posted by Bender6, 25/05/2016 8:33

"Pretty sure Ferrari were traditionally scarlet, but changed to red for a sponsor. I just wish Maclaren would go back to papaya orange, but Ron hates it, reminds him Bruce set up the team, not him methinks."

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4. Posted by GrahamG, 23/05/2016 16:04

"If anyone wants to see the Grand Prix Auto Union "Silver Arrow" in action come to Shelsley Walsh on 16/17 July when (we hope) Hans Stuck will be driving it up the hill in celebration of last time it was here ... driven by his equally famous father"

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5. Posted by Teardrop., 20/05/2016 22:56

"A few things that people must remember, Its the paint that Crosse's the line first.
Painting a race car is art form and not an engineering solution. bearing in mind you can double the weight of a component on todays F1 car just by painting it. there are specialist paint company's out there that work on light weight paint. Teardrop paint sprayer to the fast and famous. "

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6. Posted by Paul C, 20/05/2016 3:13

"In conclusion sponsorship money talks, tradition walks sometimes. Ferrari keeps its national colors but Ferrari is Italy. Good for Ferrari."

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7. Posted by Willie, 19/05/2016 16:32

"Years ago, I started reading PitPass because of Mike's articles. I've certainly missed seeing much of him recently -- hope he's more productive again, soon. "

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