The Mechanic’s Tale

by Steve Matchett

  The first task that Tom turned his hand to was finding a new home for us, or at least a suitable site on which we could build a new home. And this he did with great success. The chosen land was a disused quarry in the middle of nowhere. The site was owned by the Reynard organization, which had bought it as an intended base for its own Formula One project. However, before any building work had commenced at the quarry, Reynard decided to shelve its proposed Grand Prix plans for a few more years. Walkinshaw knew of the site and of Reynard’s intended use for it, and before long the deeds of the old quarry had changed hands. Building work began as soon as the appropriate consents had been granted. The postal address of the building site was actually given as Enstone, Chipping Norton, but in reality the site is neither in Enstone nor Chipping Norton. Instead, it nestles between Gagingwell and Middle Barton, two quiet villages which had managed to avoid any sort of media attention for the last nine hundred years. Benetton Formula Ltd was about to change all of that.

  At the same time as negotiations for the new factory were under way, Tom was also sorting out the position of the team’s technical director. Exit Mr Gordon Kimball, enter Mr Ross Brawn, a man who Tom knew well and who had worked with TWR as technical director of their Le Mans, Group C, Jaguar project. Certainly, it seemed that Kimball had been given a raw deal in the few months he had been with the team, but as far as I could make out it never looked good for him. With Barnard’s swift exit it had appeared to me that the management had needed a quick stopgap and it seemed that Kimball had been just that. He was upset by his treatment but still went to the trouble of sending everyone in the team a Christmas card, pointing out that he bore no ill feelings towards the staff and wished us all the best for the future. A nice gesture from a pleasant man in a sad situation. What more can one say other than Formula One is a harsh environment?

  Next on Tom’s list was a replacement for Nelson Piquet. The logical choice was Martin Brundle, another man who Tom had worked with and again a man who would become a valuable asset. Joining Benetton from the struggling Brabham outfit was a big break for Martin, and I liked him from the first moment we met. He always struck me as being just a normal bloke, a genuine chap with no tedious pretensions in his makeup. Of course, he was also the first driver I worked with in my new role as the ‘front-end’ mechanic of a race car, and I enjoyed my time with him very much indeed. He would chat like an old friend, listen to his engineer’s advice and work hard in the car. What more can you ask from a team-mate?

  Tom was instrumental in bringing Michael Schumacher to the team, building the new factory, signing Ross Brawn as technical director and bringing Martin Brundle to us. The South African aerodynamicist Rory Byrne rejoined the team too. Rory had worked at Benetton before as chief designer, chief aerodynamicist, chief engineer, call him what you will, he got involved with everything. As soon as Barnard had been appointed to the company as technical director, I suspect Rory began to feel the carpet being pulled from underneath his feet. He left Benetton in October 1990, working instead for Reynard, drawing its proposed Formula One car which never happened; when the project was cancelled Byrne had the perfect opportunity to return to the Benetton flock. He was given the title of head of research and development, although whether this meant working alongside or underneath Ross Brawn’s leadership was difficult to say.

  I’m not entirely sure what the word maverick means, but I’d probably use it to describe Rory Byrne. He is a true character, some may even say slightly eccentric, a man who relishes his race car work with the same vigour and excitement as a young boy playing with a new train set. In qualifying sessions, I have often seen him staring at the bright, sun-filled sky, his outstretched hand trying to filter the strong light as he patiently waits for a cloud to float between the sun and the track. He wouldn’t allow the drivers to take to the circuit before this happened because he had a theory that the passing cloud would drop the ambient temperature by a degree or two, perhaps just enough to give the engine that minuscule fraction more power. And only when Rory was quite sure that the fabled qualifying cloud was in the correct position would he signal for us to quickly remove the tyre blankets and fire the engine into life.

  So, the team’s instability problems had been settled and we were now all set to start again and have another bash at the Championship. And Tom Walkinshaw had done far more for us than anybody will ever give him credit for.

  Unfortunately for us, 1992 was not to be the year Benetton would claim any championships, since Williams and their two drivers, Nigel Mansell and Riccardo Patrese, would clinch just about everything there was on offer. Over the winter Williams had continued to test and finely hone its previous year’s car, the FW14, to such an extent that they considered it unnecessary to introduce the FW15. A new car always carries an element of risk in its reliability, so Frank Williams and Patrick Head, the team’s technical director, took the decision to reissue the race team with a revised version of the 1991 car, calling it the FW14B. This would allow Williams the luxury of being able to test the FW15 thoroughly throughout the opening months of the season, and only when it had reached a stage of development and reliability to out-perform its predecessor would the FW15 be introduced into the chase for the Championship. However, the FW14B proved quite devastating and soon confirmed itself equipment enough; it remained in use from the opening round in South Africa to the closing round in Australia.

  Throughout the racing season, during our evening breaks for dinner, I used to drink my coffee strolling up and down the pit-lane, occasionally chatting with other mechanics, mostly just observing other teams at work. Watching how other teams operate and how their set-up procedures differed from Benetton’s was a practice taught to me by Nigel Stepney. He used to say that it was important to keep an eye on what everyone else was doing; you never know, their system may be simpler or quicker or lighter than our own. All the teams constantly watch each other, all on the lookout for any slight advantage that they can employ themselves. The clearest example of this is the teams’ pit equipment, much of which is copied and recopied from team to team: air-jacks, quick-lift jacks, overhead gantries, banners, even the design of the litter bins. Benetton stipulated the use of clear plastic bin liners in its garage because they look smarter than black or grey ones when the top of the bag hangs over the rim of the bin. Now Benetton has gone a stage further and completely redesigned the bin, so the liner is no longer visible at all. Can you imagine Benetton Formula even contemplating trying to qualify its cars for Sunday’s Grand Prix, knowing that the whole world can see the top two inches of its bin liner? That’s Formula One, though, always pushing forward!

  In sharp contrast, the Williams garage always looks like a garage: clean and tidy, of course, but, nevertheless, a garage, not an operating theatre. A few simple banners, airlines, tools. I somehow doubt that Frank would have any strong views on what colour his plastic bags were; I rather imagine his thoughts on the matter would be something along the lines of ‘Who cares what colour the bin liners are, let’s just win everything and go home.’

  The FW14B was a fully ‘active’ car, meaning that its suspension movements were controlled by a sophisticated, computer-controlled system using high-pressure hydraulic fluid to control the mechanical handling of the car. The system that everyone else was using, known as ‘passive’ suspension, relied on teams having to carry a huge range of fifty or so progressively stiffer springs, twelve or more different ratings of roll-bar, three different types of bump-rubbers and a myriad of different specification dampers to each race. Then we, the mechanics, would be constantly changing them and resetting the ‘roll’ and ride-height throughout the two days of practice and qualifying, until a reasonable balance was achieved (then, as likely as not, we would alter it again on the grid and go back to the original settings we had on the car when it left the factory).

  Apart from the massive amount of work it creates for the mechanics, the disadvantage of a passive suspension system is that the performance from the su
spension is relatively limited. Along the straight sections of the circuit a car needs to feel very stiff, at other times it needs to feel softer, more roll is desirable for some corners, less for others. But with a passive set-up – despite all the options stored in the garage – there can only be one choice of set-up on the car at any given time. This single set-up obviously becomes a compromise of the best options for all the different sections of the circuit.

  However, an active system is altogether different, and regardless of its initial added complications, once the system is up and running it is a dream to work with. First, there is no need to carry any of the vast array of parts. The onboard computer processor and hydraulics can reproduce the entire range of changeable suspension options, the desired settings merely programmed into the controller by the engineer before the car leaves the pits. Stiffer, softer, more roll at the rear, less at the front, whatever the driver and the car are happiest with, it is just a matter of changing the software settings. Wheel speed sensors feed information to the controller to allow the suspension to automatically adjust to the velocity of the car, and ride-height sensors detect any suspension movement such as bumps and dips in the track, or any undesirable acceleration squat or nose pitching on braking. The controller is constantly fed with information and is constantly adjusting the actuators and rate of fluid flow to the four corners to guarantee the car maintains its optimum trim. On the fast straights the rear ride-height is slightly lowered, just enough to stall the efficiency of the floor’s diffuser, which reduces the car’s downforce at a time when it is not wanted and is merely limiting top-end speed. As the car approaches the corner and begins to decelerate, the rear ride-height is picked up again, bringing the diffuser into play and restoring the available downforce to its maximum.

  In-car adjustable wings are banned in Formula One (which would be the technically correct way to alter downforce settings on the circuit) but the versatility of active suspension can go some way towards replicating the same effects. When reliable and functioning correctly, active suspension is brilliant, lending the car all the poise and grace of a prima ballerina. Engineering excellence. However, when it’s not reliable and the systems are functioning incorrectly, it is, quite simply, bloody terrible. Either it’s spraying the mechanics with boiling oil at pressures of 2500psi and more, or else the car just sits in the garage violently shuddering and shaking, refusing to listen to any sort of electronic reason. Worse still, if it decides to fail while the car is actually pounding around the circuit, it could just give up altogether and flop to the ground, dumping the car and driver to the tarmac (which at speeds approaching 200mph can be a mite disconcerting).

  Sipping my coffee, I often used to pause outside the Williams garage, and during 1992 I found it fascinating to watch the three cars going through their exercise programmes. Whenever an active component is disconnected or replaced on the car, the hydraulics have to be purged of air; known as bleeding, this process requires a flushing-rig to be connected into the car’s system. The rig uses its own high-pressure pump instead of the car’s own engine-driven pump, which will obviously not work without the engine running. The flushing-rig also contains a reservoir of hydraulic oil to allow the car’s system to be replenished. With the rig connected, the suspension is then worked up and down throughout the full range of its possible travel, as this will gradually persuade any trapped air to find its way round the system and out to the rig. This process can sometimes take as long as half an hour, so to avoid wasting the mechanics’ time while they waited for the car to be bled, Williams had written a ‘bleed’ programme for the onboard controller. While the mechanics sat down to dinner, the three cars would be left alone to run through their stretching exercises. Up, down, up, down. Squat to the right, up, down. Squat to the left, up, down. And again, up, down. In the gloom of the pit-lane, with no one else around, the whole thing had a strange, almost surreal air to it, like the toys coming to life in The Nutcracker. As I watched from the obscurity of the darkness, it felt as though the cars would instantly fall still and silent as soon as a Williams mechanic walked back in the garage. Whoops! They nearly caught us that time! To me, the FW14B seemed like the ideal race car. I have never worked on one, but from what I could see and discover, it must have been close to mechanical perfection.

  The year 1992 was to be Mansell’s great one too, the year he would finally win the Drivers’ Championship. He was a different man that year, one who had obviously decided that it was going to be now or never. He knew that the Williams car was leagues ahead of the opposition, and that it would give him a major advantage over any attempt by Senna to thwart him. He had shed many of his surplus pounds in the gym and emerged from hours of rigorous training looking trim, alert, determined and committed. There was to be no stopping him, not this time. He secured his Championship in quite unbelievable style too: fourteen poles, nine victories, and three second places. That was it! No other placings at all; if he wasn’t on the first or second step of the podium he didn’t finish the race at all.

  Patrese finished second in the Drivers’ Championship, but regardless of picking up a useful ten points for winning the Japanese Grand Prix he still finished the season fifty-two points behind his team-mate. Williams claimed their fifth Constructors’ Championship too, sixty-five points clear of McLaren’s second place, a staggering demonstration of what a committed team and two equally committed drivers are capable of.

  Our car, the B192, pleasantly surprised me. It was, of course, no match for the Williams (no other car on the planet was a match for the Williams) but I had genuinely expected to find that the new Benetton was no more than an evolution of the old B190, with scant regard shown to anything connected with Barnard or his car. Perhaps if Rory had been left to his own devices that would have been the case, but now with Ross Brawn on board, things would never be as they once were. The order of things was different, we were once again on the move. The old Benetton regime had come and gone; the Barnard era had come and gone too; now we were entering our third generation and this was to be the team that would win the World Championship. Looking at the B192, it is easy to see a similarity in aerodynamics with the B190, and as Rory had been deeply involved with the drawing of both chassis that’s no great surprise, but there were some aspects of the 1992 car which were taken and reworked from Barnard’s B191 – the lifting of the nose profile, for example. Ross, in contrast to his colleague, is far more of an engineer than an aerodynamicist. He had studied the merits and the faults of Barnard’s mechanical designs and had incorporated several of these ideas into our new car.

  The earlier Benettons (pre-Barnard) tended to be big, bulky affairs, which sported huge slabs of coolant radiator. Everywhere one looked there seemed to be scores of small brackets and clips and brackets on other brackets; the front wings and their end-plates were made up of countless interchangeable spacers to allow the wings to be set to different specifications. On the rear wing, support wires would stretch from the wing, pass through the bodywork and be fastened to turrets on the gearbox. Whenever the bodywork needed to be removed (which was each and every time the car returned to the pits) the support wires needed to be disconnected first. On the B190, the rear brake ducts were cumbersome one-piece things, without split-lines (as opposed to being separate halves which could then be bolted together). They were probably quite efficient in the wind tunnel – as there were no bolt heads to interfere with air-flow – but to install or remove them from the car meant that the mechanics had to unbolt and remove the entire ‘upright’ and drive-shaft assembly from the car. If the duct had been a two-piece design it could simply be assembled around the drive-shaft, leaving everything else in place. As it was, this almost Dali-esque one-piece duct turned what could have been a five-minute job into a potential half-hour epic! It seemed to me that the design of the early Benetton cars showed little to no interest in their serviceability; the priority was all aerodynamic.

  Now, some may argue that it doesn’t matter that the mechanic
s had to remove the drive-shafts to change the ducts. Who cares? After all, the mechanics are there to work on the cars; if it takes them six times as long to finish the job because of a particular design, so what? They choose to work on the cars, so let ‘em work! Well, my riposte is this: what happens if the brake duct needs changing with ten minutes to go in qualifying? It’s been tipping down all afternoon, the driver has posted a slow lap-time because of the rain and on returning to the pits the mechanics notice the duct has been smashed by a stone, leaving most of it lying out on the circuit somewhere. However, the rain has now stopped, the track is rapidly drying and the qualifying times are tumbling. The driver needs to get out again or his pathetic-looking lap-time will see him starting the Grand Prix from the very back of the grid. Yes, he could use the spare car or his team-mate’s race car, providing they haven’t been shunted, of course, but the fact remains that, for want of a bit more practicality, the car has been put out of commission. And if the duct needed changing on the grid, then forget it! It would have to be bodged up with tape and ty-raps. Formula One cars must be designed so that they can be worked on as quickly and as easily as possible. Wherever it is practically possible, all jobs must be able to be completed in twenty-five minutes – the time the teams have with their cars on the grid – for Sod’s law decrees that it is always going to be then that the damn things will let go.