Top: whilst working at Lotus, Pilbeam was involved with the 56 and 56b, the latter of which (shown here) made its F1 debut in 1971. The earlier gas turbine-powered 56 was developed for Indy, but never lived up to expectations
Left: 1977 F1 design, the LEC, which Pilbeam himself refers to as the R21
Above right: a 1988 design, the MP84 Le Mans SR2 / LMP675 Sports Racer
a very complex thing to build, and it was diffi cult to fi t the fuel tanks. It was not terribly practical in that way. Overall, it was a fantastic car, but when it fi rst came out, under Chapman’s direction – because I might have done the calculations but he was the boss – it was very light and, to be honest, very delicate. The whole monocoque had to be beefed up substantially after the fi rst chassis was made.’
Advanced aero By 1972 Pilbeam was back at BRM, via a stint at Surtees, but now in charge of chassis design, fi rst developing the P160 into a competitive proposition (P160d), and then designing the P201 from scratch for the ’74 season, a car that was triangular in shape and certainly aerodynamically advanced for its time: ‘The shape was derived from wind tunnel tests, where we found that when a car is running at an angle as it goes around a corner, due to the slip angles of the tyres it yaws by a few degrees. So, in effect, the
air isn’t hitting it straight on, it’s hitting it at an angle. What was happening to cars like the P160, for instance, is that you would get a pressure build up beneath the curved side. So the triangular side was meant to build up air pressure on the top surfaces, which it did reasonably well.’ Pilbeam was sad to see the end of BRM in F1 – and remains based in Bourne, Lincolnshire, today, though the old BRM factory is now a bus garage, he tells us – but it was at least the catalyst for him setting up on his own company, fi rst as a consultant – designing the Wheatcroft F2 cars amongst others – and then as a full-blown constructor. But he wasn’t done with F1 just yet, and in 1977 came the LEC.
Cool running LEC was a privateer effort for owner / driver David Purley, built at his family’s refrigerator factory on the south coast of England. ‘It was a diffi cult project in that I had an offi ce here [in Bourne] and the guys building it were in Bognor. You didn’t have computers and fax machines to send
drawings, so it was all telephones or post or going down there. Also, the guys who built it came from the LEC factory and, with possibly one exception, they had never seen a race car before.’ But surely a fridge factory can at least
“When we built our fi rst factory we also built the road, so I got to name it”
sort the cooling? ‘I did talk to them about that aspect of it, and I asked them that since they had the technical knowledge, could they help us design the cooling. They said they could help, and they came back to me and said I wanted a radiator that was about four foot square!’ The LEC CRP1 used the same aero principles as the P201, but otherwise Pilbeam says he simply tried to make an uncomplicated and reliable car. It actually led a race, in the wet at Zolder, but it’s also remembered for the huge shunt Purley
www.racecarengineering.com • August 2011 47
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100