March 772

[allenbrown]

Ted, can you fill in its history since Stuart Lawson had it in 1981? It's been associated with Christian Fischer and Bengt Ernryd in posts above but maybe it's now possible to put together a complete history.

[Ted Walker]

No problem Allen there is a large history file with it.

[driftwood]

It was never impounded by the police,only the Swiss Court same concept!!

[Ted Walker]

Not really Driftwood

[Chris Townsend]

BTW Ted, when are you going to post the history file on the 772?
I thought I'd better return this thread to relevance before the headmaster comes down on us...

Chris

(Yes, too right Chris; 11 completely off topic posts removed - that'll teach me to stop checking so regularly! - JT)

[Ted Walker]

Chris as soon as I go and collect it from its owner.

[allenbrown]

I'm going to double post this as it might be a 772 or a 772P:

Autosport 21 Apr 1983 p44: Basil Pitt "has acquired the ex-Alan Harper March 772P" for the 1600cc class.

There is a picture and although the nose looks 772P-ish, the sidepods look 79B-ish. Do we know about Alan Harper owning a 772 or 772P?

Steve - are you in contact with either gentleman?

[driftwood]

THIS MAY BE 772P r3 THIS CAR IS PROBABLY THE PETER BLOORE BUILT CAR THATS STILL IN HILLCLIMBS TODAY

[driftwood]

772P1 was in Uk racing libre
772P2 was in usa by now so it leaves the 3rd unofficial 772p car that was on the hills

[Ted Walker]

There seems to be some confusion over 772 and 772P !!!! The 772P was a NARROW tubbed car that used a 752TUB ,whereas the 772 was a WIDE tubbed car.making them easy to spot in photos.

[allenbrown]

There's no confusion Ted. Drifty reminds us of the difference frequently. The photo of Pitt's car is head on and it's hard to tell whether it's a wide or narrow tub.

[Dan Rear]

772P built on 752 tub? Are you sure Ted, surely they were built on 77B-type tubs.

[Simon Hadfield]

To sum up, the 752, 762 and 772 are all basically the same car, and all by March's heady standard fairly average. The 772P was based on the 712 type of car/monocoque that had previously been so successful.

[Chris Townsend]

Dan

77Bs were built on F3 tubs, so probably rather too lightweight for F2. I thought that the first 772P used a 742 tub but as Simon says all [except I think the 772] were pretty interchangeable. One of the points about the 772P was that having sold a bunch of cars with new style wider tubs, the works went back and engineered something quicker around the old style. [Much as they re-engineered their cars in 1974 when they realised it didn't work with the 1974 spec tyres, having sold about 30 customer versions...]

Chris

[Simon Hadfield]

The 712 (and all of its derivatives), the 722 (and all its derivatives), the732 (and etc) and the 742 (etc) are basically all the same animal. This fact was used early on in historic racing to "mickey mouse" 712s from all sorts of the above. It also explains why in the period one type of car could morph so easily from one type of March to another. The only real difference between them is that some works and favoured customer cars got better quality aluminium in the construction of their tubs. In 1975 the first major change came with the 752 tub. The "coke bottle" shaped tub had the deformable structure contained within the tub structure for the first time, and used castings at the rear of the tub to take the loads of the now wider based engine frames. This had the added benefit of allowing far easier conversion to F1 and F5000 (a fact that has also been used in Historic racing!) This monocoque was then also used for the 762 and 772 cars, and their bigger brethren, before as discussed above they reverted to the earlier construction for the 772P. Then following a short flirtation with the "Superform" bulkhead shaped tubs for the 78 and (formula two excepted) 79 customer cars the needs of ground effects and ever shorter build numbers meant ever more varied designs. Up untill the end of 79 the real genius was that many of the basic building blocks of construction, internal tub dimensions, wheel offsets, hub designs etc very rarely change, so as with Rons cars many of your last years (or maybe even earlier) spares would still fit, or to put it another way your libre or hillclimb car was a pretty simple build..... Just going off to see if my anorak still fits......

[Chris Townsend]

Chassis numbers given by Autosprint for March 772s at Vallelunga 15 May 1977 and I tend to think that their reporter was reading plates that day, given the changes from earlier races on other cars in the field

Pesenti-Rossi 772-7
Mantova 772-10
Colombo 772-8
Zunino 772-6
Ribeiro 772-5 Hart described as Giacomelli's car earlier in the season

Chris

[allenbrown]

Very useful. Fortunately, it largely confirms what we had except for the '772-10' on Mantova's car. Presumably the journo improvised whne he realised he was looking at a 762 plate on a 772.

Allen

[Steve Wilkinson]

Originally Posted by allenbrown

Very useful. Fortunately, it largely confirms what we had except for the '772-10' on Mantova's car. Presumably the journo improvised whne he realised he was looking at a 762 plate on a 772.

Allen

Maybe the 762 was "refreshed" at the March factory and "acquired" a 772 plate in the process?

Funny things tend to happen when Max Mosely is around!

[allenbrown]

It was covered on page 1 of this thread Steve. The 772 wore a 762 plate after a rebuild.

[Chris Townsend]

Originally Posted by allenbrown

It was covered on page 1 of this thread Steve. The 772 wore a 762 plate after a rebuild.

I think this is perhaps, what really happened

Mantova already owned 762-14 at the end of 1976, which he had bought from Pesenti-Rossi. He enters a 762 but DNAs at both Silverstone and Thruxton 1977. He's a DNS at Hockenheim having made a mess of what is entered as a 762. He DNA's at Nurburgring, and then shows up at Vallelunga with 772-10.

If the March records are right he writes off 772-4 at Hockenheim, not the 762. I guess that this car appears only briefly before then, having perhaps been Brancatelli's car at Thruxton.
772-10 is a rebuild of bits of 762-14. I suspect that 772-4 carried its plate and got sold off, as a 762, to a privateer.
I have very few real chassis observations for 1977, so Vallelunga is invaluable and I shall be investing in some more Autosprints asap to see what they say about Misano, Mugello and Enna. Does anyone have German magazines from this period?

Chris

[Andrew Fellowes]

Most of you will have seen this photo on the Brabham BT36 thread, but I'll post it here anyway in case someone can help.

These side pods I understand are March 772, apparently attached by means of a metal frame clipped onto the chassis.

My guess is that it was after June 1980 but I can't be sure about that, so I have no clues to offer at all.
Were these type of pods superseded by later ones, making them easily available?
Would these then have been cast offs? or are they from a crashed car?
What series could it possibly have been used in? Hill climbs perhaps?

http://www.oldracingcars.com/Images/...st01-1000x.jpg

Andrew

[Chris Townsend]

Andrew

They certainly look like March 772 pods.
Two were sold new to France in 1977 and another probably joined the party in 1978. All were used on the mountains. [It's a bit of a misnomer to call the French events hillclimbs!]

Most of those cars had long lives in those events, so even by the mid 80s a 772 would still be around. Also, they tended to get new bodies, so a pair of old pods could easily be discarded and used to "refresh" an even older Brabham.

Chris

[Simon Hadfield]

Except the 772 doesnt have sidepods, what you see on a 772 are the actual aluminium tub sides (usually painted)

[Andrew Fellowes]

So Simon what's your take on these, are they just March look-a-likes 'cause I assume (but perhaps Ted or Matthew will tell us) that they contained the original Brabham fuel tanks?

[Simon Hadfield]

No March that I recognise, could be French possibly or home built (no compound curves!)