Motor racing forces engineers to push boundaries, develop ingenious solutions, and to bend rules without breaking them. Here are five times engineers pushed those technological limits to the maximum
2. Toyota Team Europe Celica GT-Four
There are teams that decide to bend the rules, and then there
are other teams who decide to break them. Back in 1995, Toyota Team
Europe (TTE) was the latter. After the madness of the Group B era, the
FIA was determined to not let speeds get out of control. As a result, it
required the top tier cars to run restrictor plates on their turbos
reducing air intake by around 25 per cent; equating to around a 50bhp
loss at the wheels.
The clever boffins in the Toyota race department developed a genius way to bypass the seals around the restrictor. When the car was on the move, the air restrictor would move just enough to render it ineffective. When the car came to a stop, cleverly designed springs would force the restrictor back into position. The design was so beautifully carried out that the car passed numerous technical inspections before someone knew what was up. Max Mosley, the president of the FIA, said: “It is the most sophisticated and ingenious device either I or the FIA’s technical experts have seen for a long-time. It was so well made that there was no gap apparent to suggest there was any means of opening it”
The FIA may well have been impressed with TTE’s ingenuity, but it took such infringements of the rule book very seriously; TTE was banned for the rest of the 1995 and 1996 season.
Complete list (CarThrottle.com)
The clever boffins in the Toyota race department developed a genius way to bypass the seals around the restrictor. When the car was on the move, the air restrictor would move just enough to render it ineffective. When the car came to a stop, cleverly designed springs would force the restrictor back into position. The design was so beautifully carried out that the car passed numerous technical inspections before someone knew what was up. Max Mosley, the president of the FIA, said: “It is the most sophisticated and ingenious device either I or the FIA’s technical experts have seen for a long-time. It was so well made that there was no gap apparent to suggest there was any means of opening it”
The FIA may well have been impressed with TTE’s ingenuity, but it took such infringements of the rule book very seriously; TTE was banned for the rest of the 1995 and 1996 season.
Complete list (CarThrottle.com)
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