DESIGN AND INNOVATION
Above: spectacular shot of the triangular-shaped 1974 BRM 201 (right). Designed in a wind tunnel, the car was aerodynamically very advanced for its time
suffered at Silverstone – a 179.8g impact the former paratrooper was lucky to survive. The car decelerated from 108mph to zero in just 26 inches. ‘David Purley was a hell of a bloke.
A very brave man. He was an extremely quick driver and totally fearless. On the morning of the accident he had had a small fire and it had been put out with an extinguisher. They’d cleaned it out but some of the extinguisher powder must have been left in there, and this got in the throttle slides. I think Dave thought the brakes had failed, but what had happened was the throttle had stuck open. Had he realised perhaps he might have been able to switch it off in time, but it ended up in a huge accident. It was awful. He was quite badly injured [he went on to race again and died in a stunt plane crash in 1985] but I think everybody agreed that the way the chassis stood up was pretty good.’
Run to the hills It’s possibly partly because of this accident that Pilbeam has become well known for the quality of the crash structures in his racecars, and he freely admits it ‘focused the mind’, something for which many a hillclimb driver should be thankful, for it was at about this time that his hill racers were beginning to make an impression. Pilbeam’s first hillclimb project was a
2.0-litre Brabham BT38 owned by Alistair Douglas-Osborn in 1975, for which he re-designed the bodywork, changed the nose and sorted the suspension. In fact, the first hillclimber to bear the Pilbeam name was the same car, though greatly modified and now packing a Cosworth DFV, which was numbered R22, the company switching to its familiar ‘MP’ prefix soon after.
48
www.racecarengineering.com • August 2011
Pilbeams went on to clinch 17 British titles on the hills and, even now when there are far fewer of them – the latest offering is the carbon monocoque MP97 – they will regularly make the Top 12 Run Off. So it’s understandable that he is best known for his hillclimb cars. ‘I have to say that most people I bump into, their first reaction is, “oh, you build hillclimb cars don’t you?” But I really would like to be known as a Le Mans car builder. To me, there are only two areas now where you’ve got design freedom – one is hillclimbing, the other is Sportscars.’ Of the latter, Pilbeam says his first
LMP2 car, the MP93, was one of the most difficult challenges he has yet undertaken. ‘When I did that I had built a few Endurance Sports Racers, SR2 and 675 cars, but that first LMP2 car with a carbon
think it’s viable.’ Note the word ‘analysis’, for it’s the
Right: Ciaron Pilbeam, Mike’s son, is following in his father’s footsteps – he currently works in Formula 1 as Mark Webber’s race engineer at Red Bull
“I would like to be known as a Le Mans car builder”
chassis was a very serious undertaking, both technically and financially. We stuck our neck out because when I decided to do it we had no customers, but it worked out alright for us. We would have liked to have gone on longer with that and done a few more.’
LMP2 is still a possibility for Pilbeam
– his cars have been out of the fray since 2007 – and he is interested in producing something for the new cost-capped regulations, if some customers come along. ‘We are certainly thinking about it. We’ve got new ideas, especially in the aerodynamics. I think we have found ways in which we can get appreciable increases in downforce without drag increase, but with just a slight trade off with c of g. We’ve done some analysis on that and we
bedrock of the Pilbeam method. Whatever the project, the approach is the same. ‘It is always to work out what’s important, whether it’s a hillclimber, Le Mans car or F1, to make them work. These days we can analyse that better than we used to. But you have to make your mind up fairly early on, on the fundamentals of what makes the car work. Someone once said that once it gets on the computer, the design should be done [Pilbeam designs in 2D and 3D CAD, but also does some ‘bad sketches’], but you have to think it out first.’
Out of the ordinary It’s perhaps because he always starts from fundamentals, making sure the numbers are right, that he has never been afraid to take on projects that are out of the ordinary. And alongside the many Formula cars – all the numbers from 1 to 4, with 5000, Renault and Atlantic thrown in – Pilbeam has designed and built Touring Cars (the MSD-run BTCC Honda Accords in the ’90s, for instance) and rally cars (including a Nissan Dakar project in 2002) and there are even quite a few road car projects – particularly with Lotus in recent years – that have boasted the MP prefix.
So the MP numbers continue to get
bigger, up to MP99 now, which is fitting for a mathematician. But he is not the only racing mathematician in the Pilbeam family as there is also son Ciaron, Mark Webber’s race engineer at Red Bull. Mike is rather proud of his son – as much for his first in mathematics from Cambridge and his Phd from Cranfield as his lofty perch on the F1 pit wall.
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