Michael Andretti F1 1993 back story

[Captain Ahab Jr]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

Okay, I really don't know if you're sh!#ing us or not?

If not, that's absolutely redonkulous!!

Not $hitting you, I'd never do that

This is where F1 is with the big team's, there will just as many people looking after the chassis too

Yes it is bonkers!

[astrochex]

Captain and javadog, thanks for a respectful and fascinating discussion.

[javadog]

Originally Posted by Captain Ahab Jr

Not $hitting you, I'd never do that

This is where F1 is with the big team's, there will just as many people looking after the chassis too

Yes it is bonkers!

If you think that's a lot of people you should see the number of custodial staff that is required to keep the McLaren F1 Palace as clean as Ron likes it.

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

Okay, I really don't know if you're sh!#ing us or not?

If not, that's absolutely redonkulous!!

Seriously if that is just the team that works on his engine who could keep up with all those names! I don't even know the names of all the people in accounting!

Perhaps in this age where F1 teams have become so gigantic maybe intimate knowledge of everyone on the team has become passe.

RE: The shifting thing, if someone borrowed your car and 5th was far left and down but reverse was far left and up you would probably take a sec to let them know.

[javadog]

Speaking of learning how to shift a race car ...

When AJ Foyt was asked by Preston Henn to join his driver lineup at the 1983 Daytona 24 hour race, midway through the race, Foyt sat down in another 935 in the pits to get familiar with the basic cockpit layout. Kevin Jeanette, Preston Henn's crew chief for the team, was beside him. At one point Foyt asks something along the lines of:

"This may be a stupid question, but what's the shift pattern?"

"It's like a Volkswagen."

"You think I've ever driven a Volkswagen?"

"It's four speeds in an H pattern with reverse forward and left."

"You think I'm ever going to need reverse?"

[URY914]

As the OP here I'm glad I posted this. A lot of info and debate has been shared.

[herr_oberst]

Originally Posted by javadog

If you think that's a lot of people you should see the number of custodial staff that is required to keep the McLaren F1 Palace as clean as Ron likes it.

Love him or hate him, Ron Dennis made M/P4 a shining example of what a top team in the top echelon of motorsports should look like.

[greglepore]

Originally Posted by javadog

Speaking of learning how to shift a race car ...

When AJ Foyt was asked by Preston Henn to join his driver lineup at the 1983 Daytona 24 hour race, midway through the race, Foyt sat down in another 935 in the pits to get familiar with the basic cockpit layout. Kevin Jeanette, Preston Henn's crew chief for the team, was beside him. At one point Foyt asks something along the lines of:

"This may be a stupid question, but what's the shift pattern?"

"It's like a Volkswagen."

"You think I've ever driven a Volkswagen?"

"It's four speeds in an H pattern with reverse forward and left."

"You think I'm ever going to need reverse?"

Man, if ever you are in Va. we are drinking til 2 and I'll listen to these stories.

This is the thread of a year.

[CurtEgerer]

Apparently, the various champions couldn't figure out how to shift a 911 so they had to put clutch and shifter usage stickers on the dashes of all the 73 IROC Carreras

[javadog]

That was for them boys from NASCAR. Kind of surprised they could read it...

[MFAFF]

Brilliant thread.
Fantastic to hear all the views and opinions.
Java your passion for that era of F1 is awesome... and your own favourites come through clearly and with good reason.
I lived in the US in 1993 and read that press for the season... and its perspective. To then see that same world from a very different point of view a few years later was fascinating and to see a perhaps wider view of the stories informative.

I’d simply say that without RD Mclaren would probably not have survived.... nor would the culture of F1 evolved in the direction it did largely as a response to his own biews on what was right/wrong and required to be successful.

The MTC cleaning crew is pretty well trained and do a fantastic job...a decent amount of time was spent considering how to reconcile some of the diametrically opposed demands of that project.

[javadog]

Originally Posted by greglepore

Man, if ever you are in Va. we are drinking til 2 and I'll listen to these stories.

This is the thread of a year.

Here's a little more about Foyt at Daytona in 1983...

Preston Henn was a local Florida guy that had a flea market in Fort Lauderdale, the Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop. It may not sound like much but he made a buttload of money over the years and spent a fair bit of it on sports car and offshore boat racing. In 1983, he'd entered a special Andial-built Porsche 935 in the 24 hours race, sharing the driving duties with a couple Frenchies, Bob Wollek, and Claude Ballot-Lena. Bob put the car on the pole and it was considered the adds-on favorite to win. The first part of the race didn't go so well, they got about a dozen laps down off the lead but Preston's two fine French drivers worked the car into the lead, mid-race.


Preston's 935



Foyt had been pestered by Bill France, Sr. for a while to enter the race and Foyt wasn't doing much of anything, as his dad was in the hospital dying of cancer. Foyt was sitting in his dad's hospital room and his dad got wind of France's pestering and told AJ that he should do it, go have some fun. Pepsi was the race sponsor that year and they were also sponsoring an Aston Martin Nimrod, so Foyt was partnered with Darrell Waltrip in the car. It blew up early on and Foyt had the rest of the race to wander around and spectate.


The Nimrod:




Preston had the idea to add Foyt to the driver lineup to get more publicity for his flea market. He ran the idea by his crewchief Kevin Jeanette, who was less than enthusiastic. Never mind, a deal was done and Foyt suited up. Wollek was out in the car and when he pitted, Foyt jumped in and Bob helped him with the belts. AJ left the pits, Bob turned around to take his helmet and gloves off and saw both Preston and Claude standing there, in the box. Who the hell was in the car? AJ Foyt, they said.

Bob helps Foyt with his belts:



Did I mention that it gets dark at night in Daytona, this was before they lit the place up with a million lights and it often rains there in February? Including in 1983, a bunch.

I should also mention that a 935 was a bit of a pig to drive and typically ran a solid spool in the rear end in place of the normal differential, which did not help it's turning abilities under power. This Andial car was pretty special and the Andial boys had all sorts of neat ideas. One of them was a system that injected raw fuel into the exhaust when the driver was off throttle, to keep the exhaust temp up high and the turbo impellers spinning. This reduced turbo lag when getting back on the throttle and made the car a little more driveable. A little. Foyt had never driven a 935, but he had whipped an RSR around, in the original IROC series. It was raining when he went out.


The race was being broadcast by TBS Sports (remember them?) and they knew a story when they saw one in front of them, so they dispatched their intrepid pit reporter, David Hobbs, to interview Bob for his thoughts:



The interview went out live, so Bob F-bombed America.

In the end, Foyt did quite well, including setting the fastest lap of the team in the rain, and they won by 4 laps, two more than they had in hand when Foyt got into the car. I should point out that the team kept Bob away from AJ for the duration of the race, as Bob was in a foul mood and AJ was well known for his temper and a propensity for swatting people that got in his face.

The team, in the winner's circle, drivers in the front and crew in the back. That's Claude, in between Bob and AJ. Preston is on the right:



Bob and AJ became friends, partnering in the car three more times (2nd at the '84 Daytona 24 and 3rd at the '84 Sebring.) They also drove Preston's 962 in the '85 Daytona race, winning it also.



I was at the '85 race, providing free labor for Wayne Baker's 935 team, and when the 962's got up to speed, it was obvious that a 935 was yesterday's news.

[URY914]

And to tie the Foyt/Henn 935 back to MA, Michael drove that 935 at Sebring the next race that year. Don't who qualified it but it was on the pole. I was lucky enough to take this pic just before the start.

[javadog]

The list of drivers that drove that car is rather long, and did include both Mario and Michael Andretti. Michael drove it at Sebring with Derek Bell and John Paul Jr.

Mario and Michael did a lot of one-off rides in that era, Daytona and Sebring often had all sorts of interesting people in the race, as those two rounds are generally run before any other series was having its first races.

Other notable drivers for the car included Al Holbert, Doc Bundy, Hurley Haywood, Bill Adam, Don Whittington and Walter Brun. It only won twice and AJ Foyt was driving both times.

[javadog]

What's interesting to me is that Foyt could even fit into the car. He was a big boy and a 935 had a rather narrow seat. The "lollipop" seats fitted to the early 935s were almost painful to sit in, unless you were an anorexic female runway model.

[450knotOffice]

So, am I interpreting this right? Did nobody fully brief MA on ALL the salient points of the McLaren PRIOR to him actually driving it in anger? It almost seems like (from the way I'm reading it) he had to pry important info out of them, or learn by trial and error.

And don't tell me that's how it is or was done. F1 cars were already becoming sophisticated enough that any driver would require a FULL briefing on EVERYTHING related to that car.

Can you imagine that today? "Here ya go. Here's the steering wheel with it's myriad knobs and buttons. Play around with it out there and see if you can figure it all out. Don't break anything though. These are expensive cars."

[javadog]

Well, he clearly didn't know about the one-two upshift, from a standing start off of the grid. Maybe it had a special launch mode, like many cars do today and that's the only time it required manual intervention. The cars in that era we're fairly sophisticated, but it was all new and the controls the driver had were nothing like they are today. I can promise you that a driver of Michael's ability and experience would not have forgotten to shift the car.

Michael is a pretty straight shooter, if he said he didn't know about it then he didn't know about it.

He takes responsibility for a lot of mistakes that he made that year, but my point was simply that the press and the team put all the blame on Michael and a few people knew just how bad the car was that year. That was still the era where a few people could have significant input into the design of a car, unlike today where there may be hundreds involved. Now days, any part gets analyzed six ways to Sunday before it even makes it into metal or carbon fiber.

[greglepore]

I remember 85. I can't say I blame Bob, but AJ after all had endurance experience in the gt40s so he wasn't a left turn idiot.

I can't imagine how born again Al Holbert got on with all those drug guys-Paul, Whittington et al.

[javadog]

Here's a video that documents Michael's Canadian Grand Prix that year. The biggest problem McLaren had at that race was with the suspension, yet again, and both cars were fairly unpredictable. Suspension problems plagued the team for most of the year and unpredictable rear brake locking was one of the other big problems, although that was an offshoot of the suspension issues. Michael qualified a miserable 12th, but Senna wasn't much better in 8th, 2.7 seconds off of the pace. Montreal is a track where horsepower counts and their sizable deficit to the rest of the field really hurt them.

In the race day warm up, Michael's alternator failed and when they were starting the car on the grid for the race, the engine died because the jump start battery had shorted out and sucked the power out of the car. That killed the radio too and it took a while before the team realized that he had a problem. They got him going a few laps into the race and his times were decent, but there was no way to get into the points from that far back. Senna's car crapped out as well towards the end, with an alternator failure like Michael had that morning.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ji-5qI1ISs

[javadog]

Senna's comments, about that race:

Ayrton Senna didn’t foresee victory in Canada, despite his great wins that season.

“Podium, there’s no way.”

He was greatly disappointed with the Ford engine. Without sufficient power, he was only able to place eighth on the starting grid. He hadn’t been in this position since 1987, when he drove a Lotus.

“Second place would have guaranteed me the lead for the championship title and I had even begun to dream about it. But at F1, to dream, one would first need equipment and mine has left me walking on the track.”