DESIGN AND INNOVATION
Pilbeam’s fi rst racecar was built in 1959 for the 1172 formula. The car pictured here is the R3, the 1961 replacement for that original design
Where Pilbeam really excelled was in the construction of British hillclimbers. This is his eponymous company’s hugely successful MP88
were the fi rst to use data logging on a car. It ran off a 12v box battery, and there was a small box with the paper enclosed in it, then it had suspension sensors just like you have now – like a miniature telescopic damper that moves as the wheels go up and down. For its day it was very advanced and it did just the same things as you do now, though not quite as much. It measured suspension travel, steering angle, g forces, acceleration, all of those things, and it was developed by me and a guy from the electronics department of [BRM owner] Rubery Owen. ‘There weren’t any computers, and
that was the problem with it. It printed out on a three-inch wide strip of paper, all the traces like you see on a computer screen now, but you couldn’t record it to a computer and manipulate it. It could do about 20 minutes on track, I think. The only thing is you ended up with 200 yards of paper and you had to go over it with a ruler measuring and making a note of everything.’ In 1967 Pilbeam moved on to Lotus, where he worked under Maurice
Pilbeam’s most recent chassis, the MP97, again uses a carbon monocoque and is a development of the MP87. It’s a regular in the Top 12 Run Offs
Philippe and Lotus founder and boss Colin Chapman, who he remembers as ‘a brilliant man, but very demanding. He expected so much of everybody, there was more than one time when the team spent several days without sleep.’
Laughing gas At Lotus, Pilbeam worked on a number of cars, but one that sticks in his mind is the Lotus 56 gas turbine car, originally developed for Indy but then used in F1 in 1971 as the 56b. ‘The gas turbine had loads of power [the Pratt & Whitney
“I’m pretty sure we were the fi rst to use data logging on a car”
turbine developed 600bhp, against around 400bhp for a DFV back then] but it suffered partly from not having engine braking, but more from throttle lag, which we never entirely got rid of. So the driver
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www.racecarengineering.com • August 2011
had to apply the brakes and the throttle at the same time to try and compensate for that, which used to mean even harder work for the brakes.’ Perhaps unsurprisingly, he remembers
some spectacular tests at Hethel with glee: ‘It just used to sit there and whirr away as it went off the line. We over- fuelled it to try and get rid of the throttle lag, so there was a load of extra fuel fl ying around – and a wonderful big orange ball of fl ame would come out the back.’ The F1 56b never really lived up to
expectations, but Pilbeam also played his part in the design of a car that was to become one of the greatest Lotus F1 cars ever, the 72. ‘Colin Chapman said: “I’m going to have a think about this,” and he went away and we didn’t see him for about three weeks. Then he came back, and there was a quarter-scale drawing of the 72. He said: “that’s the idea, now make it work.” Which we did. It was his concept in the fi rst place, but there was still a lot of work to get it done.’ And it was not a simple task: ‘It was
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