British GP, Brands 1970
A winning racing cars performance is greater than the sum of its individual components, said items often of great engineering beauty…
The left front corner of the 1970 F1 Ferrari 312B is a good example of an exquisite bit of a very cohesive design which was quicker than the ‘sum total of its bits’.
I wrote an article about this car, a personal favourite a while back, click here to read it;
https://primotipo.com/2016/02/26/life-is-all-about-timing-chris-amon-and-the-ferrari-312b/
So, what have we got?
The upright is fabricated rather than cast, the neat bracket to pick-up the steering arm has a few pick-ups indicative of a bit of experimentation.
The brake caliper is Girling’s, the F1 grid that year split between Girling and Lockheed as suppliers. The disc itself is 10.5 inches in diameter and is cast iron, the use of composites still a decade or so away.
I’ve a feeling Bruce McLaren may have introduced braided steel ‘Aeroquip’ lines for fluids into F1 via his exposure to them in his US Can Am campaigns, his ’66 M2B F1 car certainly had them. Ford fitted them to their Indy Ford V8 engines provided to Lotus from 1963 but Chapman didn’t quickly adopt them for brake and clutch lines in his cars. By ’70 they were F1 passe as here on Forghieri’s Fazz.
The aluminium disc bell, drive pegs for the wheels and centre-lock hubs finish a luvverly, competitive bit of Maranello kit…
Credit…
GP Library, Racecar Engineering
Click on this link for an interesting article on contemporary F1 Cars Braking Systems;
http://www.racecar-engineering.com/technology-explained/f1-2014-explained-brake-systems/
Nico Rosberg, Mercedes F1 W06, Mexico GP practice 2015 (Clive Mason)
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