FERRARI F1-87
Hampered by troubled development and Maranello politics, yet it was the last F1 Ferrari founder Enzo saw win...
“Since his cars were so directly an extension of [Enzo] Ferrari’s own being, to admit fault in them was to admit fault in himself. That was something he could not do. As I look back, all my years at Ferrari seemed to be a macabre dance, by everyone concerned, to avoid blame. The mechanics, the engineers – yes, even the drivers. No one wanted to be stuck with mea culpa.”
Phil Hill’s words, in the seminal text Ferrari: The Man, The Machines, edited by Stan Grayson, could be applied to any era within Ferrari’s long and tumultuous history. But perhaps none more so than the three febrile years preceding Enzo Ferrari’s death in the summer of 1988.
The ‘Old Man’ spent a lifetime playing both his underlings and men of higher power off against one another but, as his health faded, the political manoeuvrings within his orbit grew more brutal. The casualties included longtime engineering guru Mauro Forghieri, designer of more than one title-winning Ferrari in the 1970s and father of the venerable flat-12 engine which powered Maranello’s cars throughout that decade. He fell out of favour and was banished to R&D – not for the first time in his Ferrari career – ahead of the 1985 season.
Harvey Postlethwaite, whom Enzo recruited in 1981 to sharpen up chassis design, wherein Ferrari was manifestly lagging, assumed overall technical responsibilities but the uptick in performance was brief. Michele Alboreto pushed Mclaren’s Alain Prost hard for the championship in 1985, only to suffer a costly slump in reliability over the final races.
1986 was a washout owing to retirements brought on by failures of a frustratingly unmanageable kind: one-off breakages of ancillary components caused, most likely, by the artisan nature of Ferrari manufacture. Many parts were hand-made and they lacked consistency and interchangeability, cut and beaten to fit as they might have been in Enzo’s father’s workshop at the turn of the 20th century.
But this was a truth which could not be spoken at Maranello. Enzo politics also foiled pragmatism in the engine bay; to limit the rampant horsepower gains in the turbo era the FIA placed greater limits on fuel tank sizes, reducing the permitted volume from 220 litres to 195. But just try explaining to the ‘Old Man’ that his precious engines needed to be less powerful…
Many problems in the world can be obviated by throwing people and money at them, and to this end Ferrari recruited Jean-jacques His from the Renault engine programme and embarked on a prolonged courtship to bring the visionary engineer John Barnard to Maranello. In this latter endeavour Enzo was only partially successful, for while Barnard was at loggerheads with Mclaren boss Ron Dennis over issues relating to control and money, he could not be persuaded to relocate from Surrey at any price. Eventually Barnard signed up on the promise that he could direct design operations from a new facility near his Godalming home, that he would have control over the engine department, and that he would be answerable only to Enzo himself.
On track, Stefan Johansson hauled the tardy and unreliable F1-86 to four podium finishes, Michele Alboreto to one.
As Enzo and his attendants performed their contractual dance
“GUSTAV BRUNNER WAS REDEPLOYED FROM THE STILLBORN INDYCAR PROJECT TO PRODUCE A CLEAN-SHEET F1 DESIGN FOR 1987”
with Barnard over the summer of 1986, a human sacrifice was required to atone for the state of affairs on track. Postlethwaite had proved himself an astute politician, as well as a capable engineer, but his authorship of the car put him in the firing line, even if the root cause of the failures lay elsewhere.
He was duly shuffled to the sidelines, and Austrian engineer Gustav Brunner was redeployed from the stillborn Indycar project to produce a clean-sheet F1 design for 1987.
There was change in the engine bay, too, for here also the blame game had run rampant over preceding seasons as Ferrari’s own electronics specialists came under fire, along with the work of turbo supplier KKK. Once installed at Maranello, Jean-jacques His made detail improvements to nuances such as the compression ratio of the 120-degree alloy-block V6, but its lack of torsional stiffness – both in the block and its mounting to the car’s tub – required a new approach from the ground up. Contrary to modern practice, Ferrari continued to use a subframe to mate the engine to the chassis, though this battle would ultimately be Barnard’s to fight.
The all-new V6 had to comply with the FIA’S latest measures to control power: mandatory pop-off valves to limit boost to 4.0bar. Cast from iron rather than aluminium (using expertise from Teksid, another Fiat-owned company), the new 1.5-litre lump carried over the 120-degree engine’s bore and stroke dimensions but at the narrower angle of 90 degrees. Thin walls and rigorous design enabled it to come in at a similar weight to its predecessor, and a new engine-management system – a hybrid of Weber and Magnetti-marelli components including a multi-coil ignition setup – promised greater fuel efficiency.
Enzo himself was moved to remark upon the engine’s frugality at launch, for it was the first Ferrari race engine to consume less than 200g of fuel per brake horsepower per hour. Quoted maximum output was 880bhp, though the company would later claim that development took it to 960bhp in qualifying trim during its service life.
While development of the previous two Ferraris had focused on weight distribution, to calm twitchy handling, aerodynamic performance had suffered as the chassis structure was beefed up. Aero efficiency was among the other factors dictating the change in engine layout, and it also spelled the end for the transverse gearbox philosophy. A longitudinal transmission facilitated narrower bodywork at the rear, profitably reducing blockages and turbulence between the rear wheels. Barnard’s Mclaren MP4/2 family had demonstrated the advantages of cleanliness and tight packaging in this area and, though he arrived after the F1-87 had been drawn, Barnard would contribute further developments here.
Brunner spared no efforts in reducing the frontal area of the F1-87, narrowing the nose, the mirrors and air inlets, and removing the portly bulge behind the driver’s head. He also redrew the sidepods and suspension, returning at the rear to the pullrod layout which had been dropped for the F1-86.
Barnard, not a man who relished taking up others’ work, had little interest in the F1-87 – the most charitable thing he would later say is that there were elements he would have done differently – but he was to be quickly disabused of the notion
that he could focus on setting up his UK office and drawing an all-new car for 1988. The all-powerful Italian media had christened him – the magician – and it was expecting the technical enchantments to commence immediately.
Political expediency therefore dictated that Barnard become embroiled in development of the F1-87. He did not think much of the car or its designer; and Brunner, for his part, did not think much of the brusque manner in which Barnard imparted this intelligence. By the end of the 1987 season Brunner was exploring opportunities elsewhere.
Relations between the British and Italian wings of the Ferrari empire continued to be fractious. In Maranello, Enzo’s illegitimate son Piero Lardi Ferrari was empire-building in the hope of succeeding his father when the time came, and he saw the Anglicisation of Ferrari’s engineering efforts as an insult to the company’s traditions. Barnard noted instances of pointless sabotage: rent on the new design office in Shalford was paid late, items dispatched to Italy were claimed to have not arrived, or to have been damaged in transit.
As well as being a racing car, then, the F1-87 was also a political grenade. Out of the box it was quick, but not as quick over a single lap as the Williams FW11B or Lotus 99T, nor as consistently rapid over a race distance as the latest Mclaren. It was understeer-prone and unreliable – the former of which could be addressed through development, the latter rather less easy to pin down. As ever at Ferrari, responsibility for poor reliability was laid at the door of the car’s designer even if the root cause was slack manufacturing practice.
New recruit Gerhard Berger finished fourth in the season opener at Jacarepaguá, while Alboreto was classified eighth after spinning off. Both drivers complained of indifferent handling. A Barnard-steered suspension, braking and aerodynamic update was introduced at the San Marino Grand Prix, where Alboreto was third. At Monaco a late engine failure on Alain Prost’s Mclaren promoted Alboreto and Berger to third and fourth, but the Italian then retired from the next 10 races and he joined his national press in pointing the finger at the team’s superstar designer. Momentum began to gather around a narrative – encouraged by Piero Ferrari – that it had been a waste of time setting up in the UK when the team had enough facilities at its disposal within Italy.
The working relationship between Alboreto and Barnard, strained at the best of times, effectively ended when Alboreto vented spleen to a reporter from L’equipe, likening the
Shalford arrangements to a brain surgeon attempting to perform an operation down the telephone. This incendiary quote resulted in Barnard being hauled in front of an impromptu press conference at Hockenheim, where a day later both cars retired from the race.
Next time out, at the Hungaroring, Berger qualified on the front row but retired with a broken differential. Three rounds later he led the majority of the Portuguese Grand Prix, only to spin on worn tyres and finish second to Prost. These examples sum up Ferrari’s season in microcosm.
After all the tumult, development turned the F1-87 into a winner as Berger dominated the Japanese GP from pole position and followed that up with victory in the seasoncloser in Adelaide. This should have been the end of the road for this car but Maranello politics had put the brakes on Barnard’s planned V12-powered successor: all the windtunnel time had been allocated, on Piero Ferrari’s sayso, to an entirely different project led by Postlethwaite.
To the surprise of many, Barnard emerged the winner from the ensuing bust-up and Piero was exiled from the race operation. It was too late for the V12 car – that would have to wait another year – so an evolution of the F1-87 contested the 1988 season. If the Italian media hoped the final races of 1987 would provide a form guide, unfortunately Honda and Mclaren had a riposte in store.
Enzo Ferrari would not live to see his beloved cars win again – though they would, at Monza, just three weeks after his death. Driving chassis 102, pictured here, Berger led an emotional 1-2 finish in front of the tifosi after Ayrton Senna’s dominant Mclaren tangled with a backmarker. It was the only race Mclaren failed to win that season. On this day of all days, no one within the Ferrari firmament would be called upon to utter a mea culpa…
“POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY THEREFORE DICTATED THAT BARNARD BECOME EMBROILED IN DEVELOPMENT OF THE F1-87. HE DID NOT THINK MUCH OF THE CAR OR ITS DESIGNER”