Lamberto Leoni at the Formula 2 Grand Prix de Nogaro (ninth), aboard his Scuderia Everest Ralt RT1 Ferrari 206 in 1977.
Ferrari entered into an arrangement with Giancarlo Martini and Giancarlo Minardi’s Scuderia Everest – originally Scuderia del Passadore and from 1975 Scuderia Everest, after obtaining sponsorship from the Italian rubber products manufacturer Everest Gomma – and another ex-racer, Pino Trivellato’s Trivellato Racing to provide 2-litre Dino V6 engines to be fitted to Ralt/Chevron chassis run by each team to bring-on young Italian drivers through Formula 2. The program ran for two years, 1977-78 with only modest success.
Martini drove March BMWs for the team, during this 1975-76 period Minardi developed a strong relationship with Scuderia Ferrari team manager – and decades later Ferrari CEO – Luca di Montezemolo. Via this connection Everest tested their cars at Fiorano, and at the end of 1975 Minardi secured a deal with Enzo Ferrari to run a Ferrari 312T F1 car to race in the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch and the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone, way back when in the days of non-championship F1 races.
The deal was reminiscent of the arrangement whereby a Ferrari 156 was raced by Giancarlo Baghetti under the Federazione Italiana Scuderie Automobilistiche (FISA) banner in 1961. Maurizio Flammini was offered the Everest 312T drive but knocked back the opportunity so Martini got the gig. With very limited practice at Fiorano he was Q13 and DNF prang at Brands, and Q10 and 10th in the rain at Silverstone. Giancarlo Minardi would of course return to F1 a decade later.
The Scuderia Everest Ferrari connections were immaculate and led to the agreement to run Dino engined Ralts in 1977. Everest ran Lamberto Leoni and Gianfranco Brancatelli in RT1 Ferraris, while to broaden their coverage, Pino Trivellato, the Chevron agent in Italy, planned to run Riccardo Patrese in a Chevron B40 Ferrari.
Ferrari F2 206 V6 engine and lineage…
The Ferrari Dino V6 family(ies) of engines were incredibly versatile, fitted as they were to single seaters and sportscars and winning World F1 Championships in 1958 (drivers) and 1961 (drivers and manufacturers). They were built in capacities of between 1.5 and 2.4-litres, with two, three and four valves per cylinder, fed by carburettors and fuel injection, not to forget the turbo-charged and experimental radial valve variants. In mid-life 2.4-litre Ferrari 246T open-wheelers – a derivative of the Ferrari 166 F2 car – won the 1969 and 1970 Tasman Cups for Chris Amon and Graeme Lawrence. Who could forget the 206/246 Dino roadies and the similarly powered Lancia Stratos, competition variants of which were winning rallies into the 1980s.
The challenge of building an engine to match the competitor set, the modern as tomorrow 300bhp Hart 420R and BMW M12/7 fours, and Renault-Gordini CH1B V6, was given to long-time Ferrari mechanic, ex-F1 chief mechanic Giulio Borsari. He was handed an all-alloy 65-degree 24-valve Dino V6 with the four camshafts driven by chains! The bore/stroke of the new Ferrari 206 was 86mmx57mm. This was achieved with a visit to the parts-bin and mating the short stroke of the 1965 Dino 166P (sportscar) with the “86mm bore of the unlamented Dino 166 1.6-litre F2 engine,” wrote Doug Nye in ‘Dino:The Little Ferrari’.
The compression ratio was 12:1, 10mm Champion plugs were used and titanium conrods. While dry-dumped, the long engine was also very tall as the pressure and scavenge pumps occupied a lot of space, while the sump itself was deeper than what had become modern practice. Ferrari claimed 300bhp @ 10,500rpm for the 120kg engine “which was outdated before it had begun to race.” Nye wrote.
Ralt RT1 and Chevron B40 Ferrari Dino 206, 1977…
The immediate concern of the Ralt/Chevron proprietor/designers Ron Tauranac and Derek Bennett was the engine installation challenges, particularly its height. Tauranac and his lads in Snelgar Road, Woking simply took the handling penalty implicit and mounted the motor as low as they could into an RT1.
Derek Bennett and Paul Owens up in Bolton thought “stuff that” and designed a 1 1/2 inch lower sump, “so that the gearbox would come down to the right level and the driveshafts could be put on at a sensible angle” wrote David Gordon in ‘Chevron:The Derek Bennett Story’. They had the sump cast and along with a new oil pump, fitted the modified engine to a B40 and headed to Fiorano to test it shortly before the first Euro F2 round at Silverstone in late February/March.
The Ferrari folk were delighted with the look of the Chevron but flipped when they saw the modifications to their engine. The Mona Lisa had been desecrated, Chevron/Trivellato were forbidden to race the car and Paul Owens copped a major pull-thru in a meeting with Mauro Forghieri and Piero Lardi Ferrari.
Ferrari then tested the modified engine, which performed well on the dyno under static conditions but lost power when rotated through 45-degrees, a technique used to simulate cornering loads, the pumps were not scavenging properly.
Another slanging match ensued in a subsequent meeting when Paul Owens and Dave Wilson, who spoke Italian, met again with Ferrari. The Chevron boys asserted strongly that the car wouldn’t handle properly – which was pretty much proved by the poor performance of the Ferrari engined RT1s compared with Hart and BMW powered Ralts throughout the season – while the Ferrari people wouldn’t agree to lower the engine.
“After much shouting and thumping on the table, the meeting broke up acrimoniously, with Paul declaring that Chevron were no longer interested in pursuing the project because it would be detrimental to their reputation. Although that was exactly what Paul and Derek believed, it still felt extremely strange to be telling Ferrari that running their engine could be bad for Chevron.” Gordon wrote.
The stalemate was broken when Pino Trivellato negotiated a process whereby B40s would be tested back to back at Fiorano, one fitted with the Ferrari engine in its original form and one BMW M12/7 powered. The Ferrari engined car was the slower.
While all this was going on the European F2 Championship was well underway. Rene Arnoux won the Silverstone season-opener on March 6 in his works Martini Mk22 Renault Gordini V6. Then Brian Henton won in a Boxer PR2 Hart at Thruxton, with Lamberto Leoni’s RT1 Ferrari a DNF oil pressure. Leoni failed to qualify in the following Hockenheim round where Jochen Mass’ March 722P BMW prevailed. Mass won again at the Eifelrennen at the Nurburgring in May with both RT1 Ferrari’s DNAs.
In the first ‘home race’ for the Ralts at Vallelunga, Brancatelli had his first RT1 start and finished 13th while Leoni was outted with clutch failure. Bruno Giacomelli’s works March 772P BMW won. The Pau GP was similarly disastrous, Leoni DNQ and Brancatelli DNF with oil pump failure, somewhat ironic given the Chevron-Ferrari chitty-chats taking place at the same time! Arnoux won from Didier Pironi in a Martini Renault 1-2. To make matters worse, Riccardo Patrese was one of the season smash hits aboard a Trivellato B40 BMW. Pino did a deal to get Patrese works BMW engines when the Ferrari dramas appeared impassable…
Both RT1 Ferraris finished at Mugello on June 19, in seventh/eighth Leoni/Brancatelli, while up front the top-four were Giacomelli/Patrese/Alberto Colombo/Alessandro Pesenti-Rossi. Italian drivers seemed to be doing quite well without Ferrari’s help thank you very much.
Eddie Cheever’s Ron Dennis-Project Four Ralt RT1 BMW won at Rouen from Patrese’s Chevron B40 BMW – there was nothing wrong with both chassis if a decent engine sat in the back – while Brancatelli’s RT1 Ferrari was an encouraging fourth but Leoni again was a DNQ. While the Chevron-Ferrari soap-opera continued Leoni was ninth at Nogaro in his Everest RT1 Ferrari on July 3 with Brancatelli a DNF with suspension damage, Arnoux again won.
At Enna – the Gran Premio del Mediterraneo – Gianfranco Trombetti guest-drove an RT1 Ferrari to sixth, which was frustrating for Leoni, but he was eighth in a Trivellato Chevron B40 Ferrari which finally made its race debut!
Up front Keke Rosberg, off the back of a career enhancing win at the start of the year in the competitive New Zealand Formula Pacific Championship aboard a Fred Opert Chevron, won in an Opert B40 Hart. Brancatelli was unclassified in the other Everest RT1.
Leoni’s placing was just reward as he had taken over the testing duties of the Trivellato B40 Ferrari after Patrese signed with BMW. After even more angst Ferrari “made a sump the same height as the original one we made, almost a copy of it,” said Paul Owens. “From then on we started to make progress.”
The F2 cirus then moved on to Misano for the Adriatic GP where Leoni took a sensational win (above) in the B40 Ferrari! In an ominous start to the weekend, 19 year old Elio De Angelis outqualified Lamberto in practice aboard an Everest RT1 Ferrari in his first F2 race. He earned the drive after bagging second place in the Monaco F3 GP (Chevron B38) and then a win at the F3 Monza Lottery race aboard an RT1.
Leoni was second in the first heat, then won the second and the round overall. It was a much needed victory for all concerned, Ferrari were delighted and it also proved Chevron’s stance had been correct all along. De Angelis was eighth in his F2 debut (shots below) and Brancatelli unclassified in the other RT1 Ferrari (chassis numbers RT1-65 and RT1-66 by the way).
Then it was off to Estoril where the Martini V6s did a Pironi/Arnoux 1-2 with Leoni the best of the Ferraris, he was ninth in the B40 Chevron, while De Angelis was out with suspension damage on lap two, with Brancatelli a DNQ.
For the final Euro F2 round Giancarlo Minardi pursuaded Pino Trivellato to lend him Leoni’s B40 Ferrari for Elio de Angelis to drive at Donington on October 29. That all came to nothing when the car jumped out of gear and hit a concrete retaining wall. Repaired overnight, the car wasn’t as quick as the day before, with Elio finishing tenth. Up front, Bruno Giacomelli indicated his intent by winning in the new – very fast – March 782 BMW.
Reno Arnoux won the championship for Martin Renault with his team mate Didier Pironi third, while Eddie Cheever was second in a Ralt RT1 BMW. Leoni was the best placed of the Ferrari powered drivers with nine points in 11th place.
Chevron B42 Ferrari Dino 206, 1978…
The Minardi/Everest Ralt Ferrari deal ended at the end of the year but Trivellato continued the Chevron Ferrari program with De Angelis as driver into 1978. Scuderia Everest also ran a Chevron B42 Ferrari for Beppe Gabbiani.
Bruno Giacomelli dominated the season in the superb March 782 BMW – an all new March F2 design, the first in years – and the Chevron B42, a best-seller with 21 chassis built, took its share of wins as well despite the tragic loss of founder and guiding light Derek Bennett after injuries sustained in a hang-glider accident claimed him on March 22.
Elio only had five races with the Ferrari 206 V6 engined B42, for two DNFs and three placings – none better than tenth – then gave up the unequal struggle and fitted a Hart 420R. Gabbiani ran in 11 of the 12 rounds for three DNQs, three DNFs with his best in the other rounds a fifth at Vallelunga – elbowing Rosberg off the track in the process – and seventh at Thruxton. The Argentinian, Miguel Angel Guerra ran one of the cars in the last five events for a best of seventh at Donington.
Giacomelli won the championship in fine style on 78 points from Marc Surer in another works March 782 BMW with Derek daly third in a Chevron B42 Hart. The Ferrari engined Chevron B42 drivers were 14th and 20th – De Angelis and Gabbiani.
After such an appalling season of reliability and results, Ferrari canned the project. And that seemed to be the end of it, but Giancarlo Minardi and Ferrari were drawn to each other…
Minardi 281 Ferrari Dino 206, 1981-82 …
On his inexorable rise to the top echelon of motor racing Minardi was after an unfair advantage to take his F2 team above the BMW M12/7 ruck, his mind turned to the Ferrari Dino 206 which had caused him so much pain a few years before. Surely with a little development it could be a winner…
Before too long, Minardi had done a deal with Enzo Ferrari and a truckload of engines, parts, patterns, drawings and much, much more were on their way to to Minardi HQ in Faenza. The project to squeeze more power from the old-gal was given to chief mechanic, Bertoni Tonino di Piangipane together with engineers Giacomo Caliri and Luigi Marmiroli. They managed to extract 325bhp from it, a little more than the BMW.
Miguel Ángel Guerra debuted the Minardi 281 Ferrari during the 1981 GP dell’Adriatico, Misano, finishing 13th. In 1982 Paolo Barilla practiced the 281B Ferrari, but raced a 281B BMW at Thruxton in April, then raced the Ferrari engined car at the next round on the Nurburgring to 15th.
At Mugello Sigi Stohr had engine failure after 2 laps…and that really was it for the incredibly long-lived Ferrari Dino V6, a shortage of funds made it untenable to fight the good fight against the thoroughly modern Honda V6 fitted to Ralt and Spirit chassis.
Of course those with a keen interest in Minardi – and who didn’t love the little guys that always punched above their weight – know the ‘Bromance’ between Minardi and Ferrari still wasn’t over.
Giancarlo Minardi negotiated the use of the Ferrari Tipo 037 3.5-litre 65-degree V12 – shown below during the 1991 US GP weekend – for the M191 F1 car designed by Aldo Costa and raced with some success by Pierluigi Martini – Giancarlo’s nephew – Gianni Morbidelli and Roberto Moreno throughout 1991. Pierluigi’s pair of fourths in San Marino and Portugal were the best results of the season.
Credits…
Daniele Arfelli, Ferdinado Minardi, MotorSport Images – Ercole Colombo, f1forgottendrivers.com, ‘Dino:The Little Ferrari’ Doug Nye, Autosprint, Alain Simmonel, F1prints, Legends Automotive, G Gamand
Tailpiece…
Leoni aboard his RT1 Ferrari at Thruxton during the B.A.R.C. 200 in April 1977, DNF with falling oil pressure after only nine laps, the popular winner was Brian Henton in a Boxer PR2 Hart 420R.
It certainly looked the goods…
Finito…
primotipo... 