FERRARI 126C4

The ground-effect era had left Ferrari baffled and pitched the team into a new era of catastrophic infighting. It was gleefully presided over by the Old Man himself, who delighted in sponsoring ‘creative tension’. Ground effect suited the Cosworth-powered British teams but ruthlessly exposed Ferrari’s poor understanding of aerodynamics and the unsuitability of their flat-12 engine, whose inlet trumpets projected into the space that on other cars was profitably occupied by downforce-generating venturi.

The most obvious solution amid a bout of hirings and firings was to play to Ferrari’s traditional strength, and Enzo’s passion: the engine. Embracing the turbocharging approach pioneered by Renault back in 1977 was intended to be the cure for all ills. Harvey Postlethwaite was recruited at the end of 1981 to drastically re-engineer the woeful first attempt, the 126CK, and the 120° turbocharged V6 played a part in bringing the team back into the winners’ circle.

Postlethwaite’s C2 and C3 handled far better than their predecessor and were more aerodynamically sound. These were testing times as civil war raged within the sport, and Ferrari were knocked for six by Gilles Villleneuve’s fatal accident in 1982. Yet the Scuderia came through to win the constructors’ championship in 1982 and 1983 – just not the drivers’ title.

The C3 was Ferrari’s first carbon-fibre monocoque, and Postlethwaite evolved it over the winter of 1984 to become the C4. But its main weakness – the weighty cast-iron block of the wide-angle engine – did not change. Ranged against the all-new Mclaren MP4/2, a thoroughly aero-optimised package with a tailor-made Tag-porsche turbo V6 tuned for economy as well as power, the 126C4 was found wanting. Michele Alboreto won at Zolder, but retired from eight other races, frequently due to engine failure, as Mclaren’s Niki Lauda and Alain Prost swept the board.