What technologies have been 'supressed' in motorsport for being too successful?

[Nontagonist]

Hi folks, It's my first post.

I've searched the net and here on this forum and have yet to find anything approaching a comprehensive list of technologies that have been effectively banned in motorsport for being too successful.

I'm most interested in technologies that, if developed, could conceivably be used in road vehicles, not stuff that's really only useful for racing, like really low skirts on F1 cars and vacuum systems to 'glue' the car to the road.

Over the years I've repeatedly come across instances of this phenomenon - some technology gives one team a big advantage and they win repeatedly and subsequently the rules get changed to negate the advantage of the technology (or ban it outright).

I understand that those who make the rules are interested in seeing a competition not just between machines but also between drivers, and such 'disruptive' technologies tend to make the contest one-sided. Motorsport is also about developing technologies that may be widely used off the racetrack as well, so there is an argument for allowing the development to continue in competition where the best solutions will shine through.

Would you nice people like to mention specific instances of such 'disruptive' technologies?

Links to info on the net would be nice, but not essential.

Regards
Nontagonist

[D-Type]

(1) The six wheeled car with two back axles. or '2-4-0' using locomotive nomenclature

This was tried by March in 1976but they couldn't make it work because of flexing of the gearbox casing (I think). In 1982 Williams tried the same idea and produced the FW08/1 in 1982. In testing it proved successful. The FIA heard about it and promptly banned it. I thinkthe reason was less related to performance but to the 'look' of the car - they wanted F1 cars to at least vaguely resemble a normal car.

(2) Gas turbines

When a gas turbine car nearly won Indianapolis, the organisers introduced progressively more stringent rules before banning it outright. The grounds being (a) it would make all existing racing cars obsolete and (b) it bore no relationship to road cars.
In parallel, Chrysler produced 50 turbine cars which were loaned to selected motorists for evaluation. These were not a success, nor was an experimental gas turbine powered truck successful.
So I think this more a case of an unsuccessful idea rather than a good idea being banned.


In all honesty I can't think of any useful technologies that have been banned outright. What is more common is that any 'unfair advantage' is short-lived as everyone else copies it almost immediately.

[JohnMiller]

CVT?

[ensign14]

Anything that Ferrari didn't invent under the Mosley dictatorship. CVT, twin brakes, magnesium...

[grantp]

looking at it from the other direction .... ABS and traction control (and all that follows from traction control) are pretty my ubiquitous in one form or acnother on road vehciles these days but banned in F1.

[MichiB]

Active suspension was a must-have in the early 90ties to be sucessfull in F1. But it was banned because costs were to high. Also DTM was playing around with an active suspension in the 1993-Mercedes 190 E of Bernd Schneider. The car even scored a win at Singen.

But the technique was also here banned for 1994.

[ensign14]

Originally Posted by grantp

looking at it from the other direction .... ABS and traction control (and all that follows from traction control) are pretty my ubiquitous in one form or acnother on road vehciles these days but banned in F1.

Thing is, they weren't banned for being too successful, in that everyone ended up with them. So nobody had an advantage. I took the OP as being something one team had that nobody else did, that rendered things hopeless. Fan cars would be under that heading, had (a) the Chaparral actually WON anything or (b) the Brabham one actually been banned...

[chunterer]

I don't know if the twin chassis was banned for threatening to be too successful, or whether it was simply a case of nobody liking that particular brainwave of Mr Chapman's?

The FISA could at least allowed it a couple of races to see!

[fourWheelDrift]

Originally Posted by D-Type

(1) The six wheeled car with two back axles. or '2-4-0' using locomotive nomenclature.

All wheel steering was also banned after Benneton started using it, I guess that would be a 2-0-2 (wouldn't work as a locomotive). Also of course Tyrell came in with 4 wheels at the front(4-2-0) but I think that died a natural death with the rule that only four wheels were allowed coming in long after.

[Al Weyman]

My MiniFord Hotrod short circuit race car as soon as I got it sorted lol!

Seriously (although at the time it was to me) what about the vaccuum cleaner cars and the hugely high wings on the F1 and Canam cars also similar wings on the NASCAR Plymouth Superbird which still holds the outright record of a 200mph plus lap.

[wolfhound]

Moveable wings were banned for safety reasons in the late sixties as well as wheel mounting of wings although both have crept back in in recent years with DRS and so called brake ducts.

[Al Weyman]

Yes good point, whats so different now if one of those DRS flaps dont close and the car is going far too fast to take the bend at the end of the straight, surely thats why they banned them in the first place.

[grantp]

Originally Posted by ensign14

Thing is, they weren't banned for being too successful, in that everyone ended up with them. So nobody had an advantage. I took the OP as being something one team had that nobody else did, that rendered things hopeless. Fan cars would be under that heading, had (a) the Chaparral actually WON anything or (b) the Brabham one actually been banned...

Hmm, I see what you mean but most of the other bans were for ideas that were never that well proven in most cases. Or if they were obviously beneficial on the track had no evident place to add benefit on the road.

THe converse seemed to be that those things that are 'successful' on the road ultimately have a negative effect on the racing spectacle and thus are banned in order to preserve the spectacle. Supposedly.

You could argue that that is OK because the development benefits, such as they are, have been derived and deployed and any further racing development for, say, ABS, is unlikely to add much if anything to the requirements of the vast majority of road cars.

Indeed you could argue that in the case of ABS and Traction Control/Stability Control systems racing added not very much to a pre-exisiting technology when it was adopted, or at least no much that had a life back in the real world.

All of this would ignore the potential benefits of the pressurized development environment for engineers and the like that top level racing provides. But that's a rather indirect development.

My guess is that the ideas that have produced the greatest benefits outside the sport are likely to be less obvious than the visible concepts.

Engine and gearbox/transmission internals may be the place to look for the concepts (though not the execution using exotic materials!) that have been adapted and deployed more generally across automotive development. Whether any of the ideas (orther than exotic materials) have been banned by some rule somewhere is hard to tell.

The only instantly banned development that immediately springs to mind as appearing later on the roads (and therefore by implication having some possible purpose) is the double chassis. Not sure that deployment in the Discovery would have been seen as a performance positive by the originators but ...

Ther may be others but I can't readily think of them.

[Al Weyman]

Well the movable aerofoil/rearwing is certainly currently used on a few road cars.

[GORDON STREETER]

What about the DTM Merc with the "movable ballast" talk about exploiting the grey area
That was clever, just like having a sidecar passenger !

[GORDON STREETER]

Turbo's on the 1500cc F1 cars.

[Al Weyman]

In car adjustable roll bars, oh no hang on someone I race against has still got one of those!

[Nontagonist]

Originally Posted by grantp

... All of this would ignore the potential benefits of the pressurized development environment for engineers and the like that top level racing provides. But that's a rather indirect development. ...

Ther may be others but I can't readily think of them.

The discussion seems to have concentrated mainly on F1, while I (the original poster) meant all of motorsport.

Also, it is exactly this 'pressurised development environment' in a highly visible environment that I consider highly desirable from the point of view of someone who might want to develop a new technology.

I seem to recall Top Gear mentioning that the Wankel rotary engine was banned at le Mans after a couple of years of dominance. Also the recent news that Oaktec, the team running the Honda hybrid rally car, has been pressured into withdrawing from the Formula 1000 Championship because of a 19-point lead after 3 rounds of the series. (The organisers could have at least have given them the opportunity to complete a year's competition before they got kicked upstairs.)

http://www.worldcarfans.com/11106293...being-too-fast

[thebear]

NA$CAR and fuel injected engines. They are now `testing' some.

Also they were very slow to adopt E10 (10% Ethanol in gasoline).

[grantp]

F1 became a technical innovation race sooner than many other types of motorsport and of course had larger budgets as it started to expand. The rules and marketing requirements (both for the race series and the manufacturers as competitors when they were involved) of other forms of racing would tend to be a little more restrictive, at least on the international scene. Club level antics could be different but not really to the point of developing new technology. Rather a diferent way of combining stuff that was already around.

The problem comes when organisers are trying to retain some form of competitive veneer to the sport alongside a sales pitch to the disinterested public that makes a play for a claim that 'competition improves the breed'.

The Honda Hybrid rally example is slightly different in that it seems there was an agreement in place to cover the eventuality that it would become competitive and reliable to a point where it needed to look to a different class for competition. In that scenario I don't see it as something being banned or discouraged - just that having been able to use a competitive environment as a development catalyst they had succeeded and now needed to step up a class (or not, depending on how far they wish to take things). In part that would also set them new targets and so, ,presumably, continue to drive the development.

On the other hand it all sounds like an agreed press release so maybe there is less to the particualr story than we might at first assume?

[Alan Raine]

Originally Posted by fourWheelDrift

All wheel steering was also banned after Benneton started using it...

Current LMP1 Sports Car car racing Mike Newton developed a four wheel steering system on his Formula Ford Hawke in the 80's. He's in the white car behind me in this photo at Oulton Park, around about 1987. The gold coloured bars above the rear suspension are the steering arms which were activated by actuators linked to the steering wheel. Rob Wilson tested it and I believe was quite impressed, but I think the RACMSA deemed the system illegal before Mike could develop it further.



Around about the same time the Honda Prelude was sold with 4 wheel steering (was this the first production car with it?) - so Mike Newton's ideas were certainly relevant at the time.

[GORDON STREETER]

Originally Posted by Alan Raine

Around about the same time the Honda Prelude was sold with 4 wheel steering (was this the first production car with it?) - so Mike Newton's ideas were certainly relevant at the time.

As normally happens motor manufacturers jump on the band wagon at the same time , but I believe that the Prelude was the first (real) production car sold for the road with this feature.

[Al Weyman]

And did it really make it any better, just sounds like total over complexity to me and a sales gimmick never really understood the benifits in the day. Funny manufacturers are not lining up to fit it today.

[PeterMorley]

Just looking at F1 there is a reasonable list which I'm sure is incomplete:

Movable wings (Lotus)
Sucker cars (Brabham)
Ground effects (sliding skirt version at least)
Double and exhaust blown (next year) diffusers
Twin chassis (Lotus)
ABS & Traction control (except for Ferrari!)
Mass damper (Renault)
4 wheel steering (Benetton?)
4 wheel drive (Williams & March 6 wheeler version)
Split braking (McLaren)
Turbos
Various high tech materials have been specifically banned for cost & health reasons.
Some differential technologies?

Of course some of these weren't given a chance to show if they were successful or not and some have been allowed to return, so perhaps they don't count?

[graham bahr]

Originally Posted by Al Weyman

And did it really make it any better, just sounds like total over complexity to me and a sales gimmick never really understood the benifits in the day. Funny manufacturers are not lining up to fit it today.

i guess the real problem came when you applied opposite lock, the back end would try to cancel it out!