ALL ABOUT FORMULA 1
REVIEWS OF ALL SEASONS
LANGUAGE
PIQUET, STEWART AND BRAHAM, THE MOST COMPLETE IN F1
As much as we like drivers, the CAR is certainly the most important part of this sport, so the driver who knows how to adjust and develop the CAR will have an advantage over the others. In Modern F1 (after 1968) we have some drivers considered to be good car makers such as: Stewart, Fittipaldi, Lauda, Andretti, Piquet, Prost, Senna, Laffite, De Angelis, Moreno, Schumacher, Barrichello, Button, etc.
But Nelson Piquet, Jackie Stewart and Jack Brabham are in a unique group of drivers who are CAR DEVELOPERS, as they made a mark by working more on the CAR than on driving, something practically non-existent in current F1.
JACK BRABHAM:
Jack Brabham, at the age of 15, worked in a mechanical workshop in Australia, and after the Second World War he decided to open his own workshop, which is where his knowledge of mechanics came from. During this period he met Engineer Ron Tauranac who years later would partner with him in command of his team from 1962 onwards. In F1 Jack overturned two paradigms:
The first paradigm, he was twice champion in a car with a rear engine, the Cooper 59/60. Changing the position of the engine to the rear changed the aerodynamics and driving position of the car and at the time many did not believe that the engine at the rear would make the car faster, hence the disruption of the paradigm within F1.
From 1961 to 1964, Jack Brabham had discreet performances in F1, did not win any races and was defeated by his teammates (McLaren in 1961 and Dan Gurney in 1962, 1963 and 1964), and in 1962 he founded his own team of F1 with Ron Tauranac, an Australian engineer he had met years before.
The second paradigm was that he was the first and only champion in a car designed and developed by him. In 1966, when the engine regulations changed from 1,500 to 3,000 cm3, he developed the Brabham car and guided the engine manufacturer REPCO in the construction of engines for its cars, using parts from street cars, such as the Oldsmobile V8 block. light alloy and connecting rods from the Daimler Majestic (Source: Book A Formula 1 Moderna pg 101), and with that the REPCO built very reliable engines and he became three-time F1 champion in 1966.
The impressive thing about Jack Brabham in the Brabham team is that he accumulated the roles of Driver, Designer and Team Leader, something that would be totally inconceivable today. "Old Jack" wasn't a genius driver like Fangio, Moss, Clark or Stewart, but he was a regular driver and very good at developing the car.
CURIOSITY: Jack Brabham raced alongside Bruce McLaren, John Surtees and Dan Gurney, and these three drivers learned a lot from him about the technical side of the cars, and the three of them were on his F1 teams (McLaren, Surtees and Eagle).
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JACKIE STEWART:
In 1964, Jackie Stewart did his first test in an F3 Cooper, beating the time of Bruce McLaren who was on the track on the same day and Ken Tyrrell offered him a place in his Formula Ford team. In the English F Ford, he was champion with a record of 7 victories in 10 races, this record lasted for many years.
In F1, he debuted in 1965 in the BRM team, giving trouble to his teammate and world champion Graham Hill. Jackie Stewart won the race in his debut year and came in a great 3rd place in the championship, showing that he had the talent to be a champion in the future.
In 1966 and 1967, the Scotsman won just one race, as the BRM car was no match for Brabham, but he evolved as a driver and in 1968 he had an excellent season, becoming runner-up in F1 for the Matra team.
At this stage of his career, Stewart benefited from the deaths of Jim Clark (1968) and Jochen Rindt (1970), and the end of the careers of Jack Brabham and Graham Hill, but we must emphasize that he was intelligent in noticing the changes that were taking place. in F1, to make the right choices in your cars.
In 1969, he realized that the Ford Cosworth V8 engines were better than the heavy and heavy-drinking Matra V12 engines and suggested changing the engine, and ended up being champion for the Matra/Ford Cosworth with great ease.
In 1971, it was the year that slick tires were introduced into F1, so Stewart turned himself into TIRE TESTING with Goodyear. These tire tests had already been used by Lotus in 1970, but Stewart wanted to check the effectiveness of these new slick tires compared to Firestone's ribbed tires. With this he gained an advantage over the other teams and became the season champion with extreme ease, this time with almost double the points of second place. The duo Jackie Stewart and Ken Tyrrell were the "thinking heads" in the team's decisions during this period. (Yearbook F1 1990 pg 53) In other words, they were the ones who directed what should be done for the development of the car.
In 1973, for the first time he had tough opponents in the title fight, such as Emerson Fittipaldi and Ronnie Peterson, so much so that it was Stewart's most difficult title. Lotus started better, but then the Scot worked on his Tyrrell and helped by the various reliability problems in Fittipaldi's car during the year, the Scot became champion with extreme regularity and a record number of points in F1 (71 points).
Stewart was champion for the Matra and Tyrrell teams, which had fewer resources than the "bogeymen" Ferrari, Lotus, BRM and Brabham, a feat considered impressive to this day and in this aspect it can only be compared to Nelson Piquet when he won two titles for Brabham.
NELSON PIQUET:
Nelson Piquet has one of the most fantastic careers in history, he started as a mechanic at the CAMBER Workshop in Brasília, alongside Roberto Moreno and Alex Dias Ribeiro (all three reached F1). In the base categories (Formula VW, Super V and British F3) he disassembled and assembled his cars himself, something very rare in world motorsport, which is why he attracted the attention of the big teams.
Piquet's racing career was not approved by his family, so he raced with name "Piket" on his helmet so as not to give any clue to his family that he was racing. He had already used trickery since the beginning of his career.
In 1971 he was Brasilia kart champion and in 1972 he was champion of F VW division 4.
In 1974, he was winning the F Super V, but in the last race of the year his throttle cable broke with 3 laps to go. Nelson lost his cup because of a miserable accelerator cable... he was in 3rd place because of that break.
CURIOSITY 1: In 1974, Piquet slept in the pits of his F Super V team. One night, he jumped from his pit to the pit of Ingo Hoffman's team, opened the engine of his opponent's car, to check if there was anything different from Ingo's engine. Then he assembled the engine, without anyone realizing he had carried out the inspection.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UJfS7WvD0Y (Uncensored Program)
Still in 1974, an unofficial F1 race took place after the GP Brasil, this race took place at the Brasília autodrome and Piquet worked as a mechanic's assistant at Carlos Reutemann's Brabham, a driver who would be his opponent in F1 in 1981 (see photo below) . The world turns around!
Piquet in Brabham pit in Brasilia in 1974
In 1975, he was the fastest driver in the F Super V with several poles and fastest laps, but without money to buy new parts, he abandoned the races and ended up in an unfair 14th place in the championship, Francisco Lameirão was the champion.
In 1976 the F Super V changed its name to Formula VW 1600, but the cars remained the same, and Nelson Piquet this time did better and ended up becoming the category champion with 6 victories during the season.
CURIOSITY 2: During this period, there was the case of the race in Cascavel (PR), in which Piquet's Kombi that was transporting his Formula fused its engine on the road. To continue the trip, Piquet had to dismantle the engine of the Formula, put it in the Kombi to get to the place of the race. In another Piquet race in Belo Horizonte (MG), he used the engine from the Beetle of Dona Clotilde, Alex Dias Ribeiro's mother who had left the car at the CAMBER workshop to have the brakes checked, with this engine he won the race and returned the car to its owner on Monday. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UJfS7WvD0Y (Uncensored Program)
Moreno and the Kombi that served as Piquet's hotel Piquet in the F Super V 1976
In 1976, a game of tennis changed the fate of his automobile career, Piquet met lawyer Eduardo Caio da Silva Prado, director of the companies ARNO/BRASTEMP. Talking to him, he got sponsorship to go to Europe the following year and try his hand at Formula 3. (Source: The trajectory of a Grand Champion pg 33)
In 1977, Piquet purchased a March 773 F3 from Alex Dias Ribeiro to participate in the European F3 championship. In the 3rd stage of the championship, in Zandvoort, his car overturned after being touched (see below), but without any consequences for the Brazilian. At the end of the year, Piquet came in a great 3rd in the championship with two victories. As he himself worked on his car, this caught the attention of Jack Brabham who recommended it to Bernie Ecclestone.
Image reproduced from Canal Cultura Automotiva Brasil (The Trajectory of Nelson Piquet)
In 1978, Piquet became British F3 champion with 13 victories in the year, a record equaled by Ayrton Senna in 1983 and beaten by Jan Magnussen in 1994 with 14 victories. During this period, Piquet created a way to regulate the distribution of the brakes from inside the car and invented a way to warm up the car before the starts, he placed the car inside a tent with the stove, with this device he was able to heat up the engine and especially the tires, as a result of which he had an advantage at the starts and won races.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akyxR6cq58g (CANAL PELAS PISTAS) and
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oNTw_5aiwI&t=2789s (Piquet Interview 03/11/2021)
This English F3 championship, won by Piquet, was very competitive, as many drivers who reached F1 raced, including: Derek Warwick 2nd, Chico Serra 3rd, De Cesaris 7th, Johansson 8th, De Angelis 11th, Prost 13th and Mansell 19th place.
CURIOSITY 3: In the base categories, tire pressure was the secret to generating good car performance during races, so as not to copy the tire pressure of his car, Piquet dismantled the pressure gauges and bent the pointers with the aim of informing your opponents of the wrong pressure, a very "Brazilian way" trick.
In 1978, in his first F1 test at Silverstone with a McLaren M23, he impressed the team's engineers with the way he handled the car. He requested 6 modifications to the car and each one caused an improvement in performance. (see reproduction below). He was just 0.7s slower than Patrick Tambay who trained with the more modern McLaren M26 and with softer tires on the same day as the Brazilian. This showed that at this stage of his career, Nelson already had a lot of knowledge of mechanics.
Source Jornal O Globo 07/21/1978 pg 26 Piquet at Ensign in 1978
Piquet debuted in F1 in 1978 with the Ensign team, then he did 3 races for McLaren and was then invited to race for the Brabham team.
In 1979, at Brabham Piquet began to understand how Niki Lauda communicated with engineers to pass on information about the car. After the Austrian's departure from the Brabham team, Piquet remained as the first driver with the entire team structure to himself and formed a brilliant duo with Designer Gordon Murray.
The Brazilian spent part of his time at the Brabham factory trying to understand how the integration of the parts ofthe car (engine, chassis and aerodynamics), in addition, he and Murray were looking to implement improvements to the car around the "loopholes" in the regulations. Both working together improved the car from 1979 onwards.
The Brabham was one of the first cars to have adjustments for the stabilizer bar, turbo pressure, brake distribution per axle, which was a suggestion from Piquet that he himself had used in English F3. This possibility for the driver to change the settings inside the car helped the Brazilian win two world titles.
CURIOSITY 4: Piquet brought the distribution adjustment of the brakes from the English F3 to Brabham in F1, in the Canal "Pelas Pistas" podcast Nelsinho Piquet explains. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc2K8DrDNCE)
In 1980, Williams was the car to beat, as it was the car that most dominated the GROUND EFFECT during the period, but Nelson Piquet and Gordan Murray's Brabham did some work and pushed the championship decision until the last races, but Alan Jones from Williams was the champion and the Brazilian was runner-up.
In 1981 Piquet was champion for the Brabham team competing against two excellent drivers (Carlos Reutemann and Alan Jones) in Williams, the best car of the season, at a time with little telemetry, where the driver made all the difference in the setup and development of the car.
In 1982, it was the transition from Ford Cosworth engines to BMW Turbo at Brabham and from the Belgian GP 82 Piquet started to develop the new engines for the following season. An important detail, in 1982 Murray, watching the Indy races, thought it would be interesting to do a refueling stop in F1 (pit stop), to this end, Piquet suggested the introduction of pre-heating tires, as he himself had already done in English F3, with this the car would leave the pits with warm tires and would not waste time to warm them up.
In the English F3, 1978 season, Piquet had invented an interesting trick: before the starts, he placed his car under a tent with a stove so the tires could stay warm, which gave him an advantage over his opponents. Regarding PIT STOP in F1, this device had already existed since the 50s but was used sporadically, Murray and Piquet started to use it more frequently, as a tactic to win races.
With Piquet's suggestion, between 1982 and 1983, Gordon Murray created a cabinet heated by hot gas that heated tires at the bottom of the pits (not to be confused with an electric blanket, which was an evolution of Piquet's initial idea and was introduced by Lotus in the 1984 European GP).
Below are links to videos of Piquet reporting on heating tires, he never mentioned an electric blanket.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNc0JovVCm8&t=1772s (Video Channel On the Tracks, at 22 minutes tells the story of tire heating)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1DLT1cMcHo (Piquet gets emotional when telling his high school story)
Gordon Murray's drawing of the tire warmer he created. (Reproduced from CANAL AUTOMOBILISM BRASIL, source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0U4NPrxTT4A and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0U4NPrxTT4&t=1195s (at 22 minutes)).
In 1983, in addition to tire heating, PIT STOP and other improvements to the car, Brabham hired experts responsible for the rocket fuel used in World War II to formulate a special gasoline for Brabham's BMW engine. (Source: Anuário AUTOMOTOR 2013 pg 26 to 27)
In other words, the tricks created by Piquet and Murray plus the new gasoline were fundamental for the Brazilian to win this season's title. From the Austrian GP onwards, Brabham was the team that scored the most points (35 points for Brabham against 22 for Renault and 21 for Ferrari), showing the clear evolution of the car.
In 1984, Brabham's BMW training engine was the most powerful in F1, Piquet took 9 poles, but in the races his engine did not have the reliability necessary to face the McLaren/Porsche of Lauda and Prost, but the Brazilian still won two races.
In 1985, Brabham's Pirelli tires were less competitive than Goodyear and Michellin, there was nothing the Brazilian could do, yet he won a race and transferred to the powerful Williams at the end of the year.
In 1986 Nigel Mansell surprised Piquet and was the first teammate to give the Brazilian a hard time, especially when the Englishman used the Brazilian's setup, which is why Piquet started to hide the Leão's setups, and with that he won races and closed the gap to Mansell, but at the end of the year Nelson lost the title by just 3 points.
In 1987 Piquet had an accident in San Marino, was admitted to hospital and after that he clearly lost speed (around 0.6s). But he knew how to compensate for this lack of speed with extreme regularity combined with the development of Williams' active suspension, as he saw that he could have an advantage over Nigel Mansell, as the Englishman refused to develop this equipment and raced with conventional suspension. With this, the Brazilian managed to become world champion, even though he was slower than the Lion. Developing cars is something that has always been present in Piquet's career.
CURIOSITY 5: In the 1987 German GP, Piquet arranged with one of the mechanics to have Mansell's radio placed in his ear. When the Brazilian found out that Williams was going to call the Englishman for the pit stop, he entered the pit in front of the Leão and as a result the Englishman had to do another lap with worn-out tyres. Piquet ended up winning this race thanks to his trickery.
In 1988 and 1989, there was nothing to do, as the Lotus car was very bad and the English team no longer had the structure of a large team. Senna had also suffered at Lotus in 1987, without a reasonably good car, no one can perform miracles in this sport...
In 1990 Piquet joined English designer John Barnard's Benetton team. The Brazilian realized that the Ford Cosworth V8 engine used less gasoline and the car preserved its tires better than the competition, so he could start lighter than McLarens and Ferraris, with this he could "get the trick" of not stopping in the pits , the opposite situation he did in 82 and 83 at Brabham. As a result, he had a great season, placing 3rd overall in the championship, only behind Senna and Prost, two of F1's greatest geniuses. This shows how Piquet knew how to exploit the car's advantages, even at 38 years old.
In 1991, Piquet, still at Benetton, won the Canadian GP, and at the end of the year, in the 5 races he did with Schumacher at Benetton, the Brazilian lost in the front starts (1x4), but defeated the German in the front finishes (3x2 ) and in points (5.5 x 5).
In 1991 Schumacher was undoubtedly a freshman, but we cannot forget Piquet was at the end of his career at 39 years old, so both were even in technical terms, so it is a good comparison criterion. This shows that Piquet at his peak would be at a level close to Schumacher and consequently other great drivers in the history of F1.
WHY WAS PIQUET THE MOST COMPLETE DRIVER IN F1?
Nowadays, the pilot has to concentrate 90% on piloting, which can be internalized through simulators. But in the 70s and 80s, the driver needed to be much more complete to achieve success in the category.
The driver had to know how to adjust the car, know how to talk to the engineers, develop the car, use intelligence in strategies, avoid accidents, withstand pressure to manage a championship. He won titles competing against Alan Jones (81), Reutemann (81), Prost (83 and 87), Senna (87) and Mansell (87), two geniuses and three excellent drivers.
Piquet, already at the end of his career in 1991, defeated one of the fastest drivers of all time, the brilliant Michael Schumacher, in points and in front finishes in the 5 races they did with the same equipment at Benetton.
Piquet was fast, cerebral, understood the technical aspects and knew how to develop the cars, he won 3 titles in the 80s which was perhaps the period of greatest driving difficulty in the history of F1, as the engines had enormous power, with turbo lag , no electronic aids, different types of tires and telemetry was still in its infancy.
Currently, pilots are almost exclusively concerned with driving and testing in simulators, Engineers do the tuning work on the car and the pilot sporadically suggests some change in the set-up. That's why this feature of Piquet, Stewart and Brabham is very rare these days.
For everything he has achieved in his career, even though he is less GENIAL in terms of driving than Fangio, Clark and Senna, Piquet is at the top of the list as one of the most complete drivers of all time, alongside Stewart and Brabham.
Gordon Murray shares this opinion: "The fastest driver I worked with was Ayrton Senna, but the most complete was Nelson Piquet." Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzFm8oADBPI (Canal Enerto).
Piquet himself shares this idea: "I never thought I was the fastest of the fastest, but I knew how to make the car faster. I always thought I was more successful." Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oNTw_5aiwI&t=2789s (Interview Piquet 03/11/2021 at 2 hours and 54 minutes)