13 1995 Mclaren F1 GTR-BMW V12
It says something when you make a road car so good that, despite your intentions and almost as a matter of inevitability, it becomes a racer. And then claims considerable racing success including the ultimate accolade of Le Mans 24-Hour victory. The Mclaren F1 is such a car.
Mclaren’s genius designer Gordon Murray, rather fed up with Formula 1, while waiting for a plane home from a grand prix pitched to boss Ron Dennis the idea of making the ultimate road car.
Murray can be said to have achieved just that, and the Mclaren F1’s BMW V12 engine is absolutely in keeping with the perfection. Murray insisted on a naturally-aspirated engine, wanting to avoid a turbo’s potential unreliability and reduced driver control.
But Murray also wanted racing pedigree from his engine partner: Isuzu was passed over on that basis; Honda, Mclaren’s famous
F1 affiliate of the age, passed up the chance to get involved. That left BMW’S M division, headed by legendary Paul Rosche.
Murray wanted 550bhp and 250kg of weight. He got from BMW 627bhp and 266kg, from a 6.1-litre all-aluminium V12 which also boasted 480ft lb of torque. And its shattering engine note, an inimitable piercing wail, was another thing in keeping with the car that is almost too good to be true.
BRM’S V16 grand prix engine was quite a marvel of technical development when it was designed by a team headed by Peter Berthon in 1947. As a 1500cc supercharged unit revving to 12,000rpm, it was an absolute screamer but it was also very complex and inherent reliability issues prevented it from ever achieving its full potential.
With at least 600bhp on tap, it was enormously powerful for its time and tests suggested that it could have been revved to 14,000 to deliver over 750bhp. But the engine was ill-starred from the start and suffered many failures including cracked cylinders and piston failures.
The V16 was used by the works squad from 1950 onwards and showed flashes of great potential, particularly when powering Juan-manuel Fangio. But reliability thwarted an engine that, when running cleanly, makes a truly incredible noise as the revs climb higher and higher.
One of the two surviving V16engined Type 15 BRMS was owned by Nick Mason and after he demonstrated it at Silverstone one day, I asked him what it was like to drive the V16 in anger.
He smiled and said: “I think I was rather more driving it in fear!” But even driven in fear, it made a noise that would melt most modern noisetesting equipment.
Half a century ago, the shrieking Matra V12 engine was one of most sonorous and unmistakable engines in international racing.
The high-revving V12 delivers a stunning noise when driven in anger and, thankfully, a few examples still run in the occasional race or demonstration. Listening to a Matra V12 remains one of the best aural experiences available in motorsport and recent demos at Goodwood have been simply exquisite.
The French company decided to use motorsport as a promotional platform and after initially using Cosworth and BRM engines, funding from Elf allowed Matra to build a V12, three-litre grand prix engine in 1968. That was a year after the all-conquering Cosworth DFV first appeared.
With around 450bhp on tap, it was in the power ballpark but when Matra told Ken Tyrrell that his team would have to use its V12 engines in his Matra F1 chassis for 1970, he switched to the fledgling March concern so that Jackie Stewart could race with a Cosworth DFV.
However, the Matra engine enjoyed some grand prix success through the early 1970s and proved its durability by powering works Matra sportscars to three back-toback Le Mans wins in the early 1970s. It was a fine engine and it makes a glorious sound.
The Japanese love affair with Le Mans is well documented, with high profile efforts drawing admiring glances but ultimately coming up short. All that changed in 1991 when Mazda and its ear-splittingly gorgeous 787B finally conquered the twice-round-the-clock race with Volker Weidler, Bertrand Gachot and Johnny Herbert driving.
Remarkably, the unique Mazda Wankel powerplant had first run at Le Mans in 1970 and the twin -rotary motor, equivalent to almost two litres, was mated to the back of a Levi’s-supported Chevron B16 chassis. Belgians Julian Vernaeve and Yves Deprez made it to the four-hour mark when the motor let them down.
That was it for a decade before Mazda appeared again with the RX-7 model at La Sarthe in 1980 with a 1.2-litre twin rotary in the IMSA class, finishing seventh in the division behind machines like the Porsche 935 and the BMW M1.
Mazdaspeed had been behind the RX-7 programme covertly, but the Group C Junior division tempted it with a 717C model, using a twin-rotor 1.3-litre engine. Twelfth place was the class-winning result with the all-japanese driving crew of Takashi Yorino, Yojiro Terada and Yoshimi Katayama, while the British lineup off Jeff Allan, Steve Soper and James Weaver finished 18th and second in class.
The 757, and later the 767B, which can be termed as a direct predecessor to the 787B, took a hat-trick of IMSA GTP class wins over the latter part of the decade using the R26B engine, which was a 2.6-litre, 700bhp powerplant.
It was 1991 when the miracle happened. The 787Bs were brand new for the 24 hours and two of them were entered alongside an older-spec 787. The wining car qualified a lowly 19th, but the nimble machine was about to be pushed to its limits. Buoyed by strong reliability in pre-event tests and superb fuel consumption from the Wankel