F1 Car With Fan On Back
If youre looking for an example of the ingenious and outlandish thinking that f1 breeds then the brabham fan car remains a stand out example forty years after it appeared.
F1 car with fan on back. Niki lauda and john watson at the wheel of the brabham bt46b. The original f1 a car many thought to be a bit of an aerodynamic disaster. Called the bt46b the fan car was introduced during the 1978 season in response. It may have only raced once when it won but the story of its development and demise as told by its designer gordon murray illustrates the creativity inventiveness and politics of formula 1 in the 1970s.
It was a vacuum cleaner basically so there you go. The brabham was a crude device said murray. The b variant of the car also known as the fan car was introduced at the 1978 swedish grand prix as a counter to the dominant ground effect lotus 79. However the most striking difference between the f1 and the t50 is that the new car comes with a giant fan on its rear end and that its blades spin at 7000 rpm at full power.
The bt46b generated an immense amount of downforce by means of a fan claimed to be for increased cooling but which also extracted air from beneath the car.