10 minute read
The Innovators
from GOODWOOD | ISSUE 22
by Uncommonly
Goodwood Festival of Speed is celebrating the masterminds of motorsport – the pioneers who dare to think differently. Here, eight well-known names choose their favourite innovators, from the early days to an electrifying future
Words by Ben Oliver
Advertisement
From its earliest days to its increasingly electric future, motorsport’s great innovators have been as important and exciting as its great drivers. They have upended conventional wisdom on how racing cars should be constructed or look, cleverly reinterpreted the rules to deliver a killer advantage, invented whole new types of motorsport and challenged existing notions of who motorsport is for.
This year the Goodwood Festival of Speed celebrates those who think differently, taking “The Innovators: Masterminds of Motorsport” as its central theme. Groundbreaking race cars from the past and present will take to the Hill, and the Future Lab and Electric Avenue exhibitions will showcase the innovations that are set to shape our automotive future on road and track.
To set the scene, we’ve asked some well-known names to nominate their favourite motorsport innovator and tell us a little about their choice. From a woman who rallied the very first car to the creator of a modern electric race series, these eight great innovators deserve recognition alongside Fangio and Moss, Schumacher and Hamilton.
SUSIE WOLFF CHOOSES BERTHA BENZ
The former Williams F1 development driver raced in Formula 3, Formula Renault and the German DTM touring car championship. She is now CEO of the Formula E team Venturi Racing “There have been many innovative, inspirational women in motorsport, but, after careful consideration, I’m going to go slightly left-field with my choice. Bertha Benz was the wife of Carl, the inventor of the car. Not only did she back him financially when few others would, but in 1888 she made the first long-distance car journey, without Carl’s knowledge and with her two young sons aboard, to prove the viability of his Patent-Motorwagen. She bought fuel from pharmacies along the way, pushed the car when it ran dry and repaired it herself by the roadside. Bertha’s 120-mile epic from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back, on rutted roads used only by horses and carriages, was essentially the first rally, and it both hastened the adoption of motoring and heralded the beginnings of motorsport. ‘She was more daring than I,’ said Carl. A true pioneer.”
Left and previous spread: Bertha Benz, wife of Carl, who made the first long-distance car journey in her husband’s pioneering PatentMotorwagen. Below left and right: Swiss engineer Ernest Henry and one of his engine designs
QUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE, GETTY IMAGES, ALAMY È OPENING IMAGE: ALAMY. THIS SPREAD: BIBLIOTH
THE DUKE OF RICHMOND CHOOSES ERNEST HENRY
Charles Gordon-Lennox, 11th Duke of Richmond, is the owner of the Goodwood Estate, founder of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Revival and Members’ Meeting, and president of the British Automobile Racing Club “For me, the Swiss engineer Ernest Henry is one of the most innovative thinkers in the history of motorsport, but still somewhat unsung. He created the first engine to combine twin overhead camshafts with four valves per cylinder for Peugeot in 1912: a beautiful, sophisticated design that made existing engines look agricultural by comparison. It allowed for higher engine speeds, and thus greater power, and was more efficient and reliable. In a seven-year period it won the French Grand Prix, the Indy 500 and the Targa Florio, as well as setting land-speed records at Brooklands, and the ‘Henry system’ has been the basis of most road and race car engines ever since. Success came young for Henry – he was only 27 in 1912 – and he remained active in motorsport for only 12 years, with little known of his later life. But as we transition away from combustion engines – in our road cars, at least – it’s right to remember the man whose ingenuity influenced so many of them over more than a century.”
MATE RIMAC CHOOSES ETTORE BUGATTI
The 34-year-old Croatian entrepreneur and engineer founded his own electric hypercar manufacturer in 2009 and supplies highperformance electric drive tech to the big carmakers. Last year the VW Group handed him majority control of Bugatti “Of course I choose Ettore Bugatti, but not purely because I’m privileged to run his company now. His Type 35 was one of the most successful racing cars in history, a marvel to look at and to drive, and his ‘Tank’ cars were among the first to experiment with aerodynamics in racing. He was obsessed with performance and technology, but also, coming from a family of artists, with aesthetics. You can see it in the whole car, and when you lift the bonnet, it is there in every detail. Racing is all about excitement, and Bugatti saw early on that if the cars are beautiful, it adds to that excitement. But he was also prepared to compromise in order to make his cars faster: the first Tank isn’t beautiful at all, but it helped spark an obsession with aerodynamic performance that lasts to this day, a century later.”
Above: Ettore Bugatti. Left: his distinctive 1923 Type 32 Tank de Tours
PROFESSOR GORDON MURRAY CHOOSES VITTORIO JANO
Widely acknowledged as one of the greatest designers of road and race cars, Murray is the man behind the groundbreaking Brabham Formula 1 cars, the McLaren F1 road car and the T.33 and T.50 supercars from his latest venture, Gordon Murray Automotive “I was an engine designer before I became a car designer, and I have always been fascinated with innovations in that field. For me, the two great innovators in early motor-racing engine design were Gioacchino Colombo and Vittorio Jano. My choice, Jano, started working for Alfa Romeo in 1923. His first design was the eight-cylinder P2 racing car, followed by the sensational P3, which was not only highly successful, but also gave Enzo Ferrari his start in motor racing. After Alfa Romeo, Jano joined Lancia and designed the innovative V8-powered D50. Ferrari adopted the D50 and Jano moved to Ferrari as an engine designer. His first V12 won two sportscar championships in the Ferrari 290 MM. He later designed the Dino V6 engine, used in Ferrari’s first mid-engined road car, the Dino 206 GT. His work on early four-valve, twin-cam engines was truly innovative, and that D50 remains one of my favourite racing-car designs to this day.”
Left: Vittorio Jano (on the right) with British driver Mike Hawthorn in 1958. Above: a Jano-designed Ferrari D50
Above: Colin Chapman talks to Emerson Fittipaldi at the 1973 Swedish Grand Prix
KARUN CHANDHOK CHOOSES COLIN CHAPMAN
The former F1, Formula E and FIA GT driver is now a member of the Sky Sports F1 live coverage team. He serves on the board of directors of Motorsport UK and the FIA Drivers’ Commission “If I think of innovators in motorsport, one name jumps out immediately – Colin Chapman, the design engineer and founder of Lotus Cars. While John Barnard did great work with the carbon monocoque, the Coopers took the bold step of sticking the engine behind the driver and Adrian Newey redefined the importance of aerodynamics, Chapman’s repeated brilliance across two decades is unparalleled, in my opinion. He pushed the envelope in terms of strength and safety and, while he didn’t always get things right, his Lotus 25 and 49 are two of the most important cars in motorsport history, setting the fundamental principles on which all F1 cars would be designed. His radical ground-effect cars of the late 1970s were unbeatable, and he led the way with commercial sponsorship deals in the late 1960s. His brilliance extended beyond F1, too: all the great stars wanted to race a Lotus Cortina on their weekends off.”
SEBASTIAN VETTEL CHOOSES ADRIAN NEWEY
Now racing for Aston Martin in F1, Vettel won four successive World Drivers’ Championships with Red Bull from 2010 to 2013. He remains the youngest driver ever to win the title “I worked with Adrian for a long time and witnessed his power to innovate first-hand. He has that rare ability to think of solutions that nobody else can and to interpret the rules in a way that nobody else can see – still within the law, but giving his cars a real advantage. He’s best known for his aero innovations, but he’s also a brilliant mechanical and race engineer. He often gets to his innovations by unconventional means. They won’t always come to him at the drawing board. It’s more important for him to be in the right headspace. I don’t know how many world championships he has won over the years – we won four together. He has been around a long time, but he doesn’t seem to get tired, and his thinking doesn’t get stale. That combination of experience and the ability to find new solutions means he’s still a huge influence on our sport.”
NICO ROSBERG CHOOSES ALEJANDRO AGAG
The 2016 F1 champion is the owner and CEO of Rosberg Xtreme Racing, a sustainability entrepreneur and investor in green technologies and mobility start-ups. He is also the founder of the Greentech Festival “Alejandro founded Formula E in 2014 and has led it ever since, and in doing so has revolutionised motorsport in so many ways. He is a very bold innovator. Most importantly, he dared to think fully electric when a lot of people in the industry weren’t willing to go down that path. Both Formula E and Extreme E are completely new racing series with a new format, a new narrative and new target groups. They have helped to accelerate progress – not only in terms of technology, but in the other messages they send. Alejandro was the first to simply go ahead and set up a racing series with female and male drivers when many others were still just talking about ways to improve equality on track. He has shown us all that motorsport has the potential to change the world and make it a little better.”
Top right: F1 engineer Adrian Newey. Right: Alejandro Agag with the all-electric Spark-Renault SRT_01E
CHRIS HARRIS CHOOSES GORDON MURRAY
Before achieving wider fame as one of the three current BBC Top Gear presenters, Harris established his credentials as a motoring writer, road tester and racer of rare ability. He is a regular and very quick competitor at the Goodwood Revival and Members’ Meeting “Gordon Murray has always had that ability to make other designers scratch their heads and ask, ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ His early work at Brabham in the 1970s defined the way Formula 1 cars should look and perform, and his BT46 ‘fan car’ was simply one of the best motorsport ideas ever: a fantastic interpretation of the F1 regulations. During Murray’s time at McLaren, the team won four consecutive World Championships, and he then designed what I think is the definitive supercar – the McLaren F1. I remember the excitement of the ultimate F1 brain being applied to road cars, with a design brief as pure as those of his racing cars. He’s doing it again now, refining that recipe with the T.50 from Gordon Murray Automotive. You can reverseengineer the question of who the great motorsport innovators are, and just ask how the world of F1 – and supercars – would look without Gordon Murray. The answer is that it simply wouldn’t be anything like as exciting.”
