4 Fast but unreliable Racecars

In the world of racing in order to win a team needs many things, good drivers, a good team of engineers, proper managment and most importantly a good car. It’s not just having a fast car that matters, an important factor in all of this is reliability. As the popular saying goes “To finish first you must first finish” and while many of these cars were capable of wining races, what they lacked was the ability to finish them.

Lancia LC2

1983 Lancia wanted to have a factory backed effort into the World Sports Car Championship. In order to compete they had to build a car complying to Group C regulations. So they created a successor for their Group 6 LC1 that would be built according to Group C regulations.

It was called the LC2 and since Lancia was owned by the Fiat group at the time, Lancia got the engine developed by Ferrari, a 2.6 Liter twin turbo V8. The engine was relatively small and turbocharged because of the fuel regulations in Group C which meant that Lancia would need a fuel efficient engine. The chassis was designed by Abarth and Dallara and it featured an aluminum monocoque and carbon fibre bodywork. Over the years the Lancia had its engine increased in displacement to 3 liters and in 1984 there were some changes to the aerodynamics of the car. However, none of this helped with the LC2’s main problem, it’s reliability

The LC2 was a monstrously quick car, in its first race at Monza in 1983 which was the first round of the World Sports Car Championship it took pole position by nearly a second over the Porsche 956. But in the race the car suffered from tyre problems and it ended up 12 laps behind the winning Porsche. The car suffered with severe tyre and reliability issues and they even had to change tyre supplier from Pirelli to Dunlop and still they couldn’t finish till the 5th round of the season. There was also a privateer Lancia LC2 which managed to finish races but suffered reliability problems in almost all of them. The car ran at a European Endurance race at Imola where it managed it’s first win and it finished the season with 2nd placed finishes at Mugello and Kyalami. In the end Lancia finished the season with in 2nd place in the constructors championship but they only managed 32 points to Prosche’s 100.

The car ran till 1986 by Lancia and was used by privateer teams till 1991. But in its time all of the reliability issues hindered it massively. It was amazingly fast in qualifying qualifying almost 4 seconds faster than the Porsche 956 at the 1000km of Monza. But in its entire racing history it only managed to win 3 times but managed to get 13 pole positions, it suffered from all sorts of issues form Engine and transmission failures to wheel bearing and fuel pump failures.

In 1986 the Lancia was no longer competitive against the Porshce Team that now used the 962C, LC2 wasn’t faster than the Porsche anymore and neither was more fuel efficient and certainly not more reliable, Lancia pulled the plug on the LC2 project to focus on the World Rally Championship.

Renault RS10

The turbo-era F1 cars were brilliant machines, they produced upwards of 1000hp and looked absolutely brilliant. And it was Renault that had pioneered turbo chargers into F1 cars with the RS01. But most of the turbo-era Renault’s were nightmarishly unreliable and they soon got the name around the paddock of the “Yellow Teapots” because they usually ended in a cloud of smoke.

While the first turbo Renault, the RS01 is certainly worth a mention, it only got 1 pole position and never won due to poor reliability. It was it’s successor, the RS10 that was fast enough to challenge the front-runners but also suffered from major reliability problems.

The RS10 was the car that made other teams realize that turbochargers were the way to go in F1. While there were rules for turbo cars to run , no one apart from Renault used a turbocharged engine, especially after having seen the RS01 exploding at almost every possible opportunity, none of the teams were very interested. They all continued the use of 3.0 liter naturally aspirated engines.

The RS10 had a 1.5 liter twin turbocharged engine. The car was introduced at the 1979 Monaco Grand Prix but the race ended rather unspectacularly with both Jean Pierre Jabouille and René Arnoux ending in retirement. Unfortunately the car was still very unreliable but as the season went on other teams started to notice the speed of the Renault and how well it did.

The car managed 5 pole positions over the course of the 1979 season and 1 win. It was the first ever turbo car to win a race and the win was really rather special as it came at the French Grand Prix at Dijon. Jean-Pierre Jabouille, a French driver winning the French Grand Prix while driving for a French team with a French engine, sponsors, fuel and even French tyres. But over the course of the season the car was still painfully unreliable with Arnoux retiring 5 times and Jabuoille retiring 6 times and they finished the season in 8th and 13th respectively.

But while the Renault was unreliable it is considered to be one of the most revolutionary F1 cars ever built as helped in starting F1’s turbo era. Although it is intresting to note that while Renualt’s successors to the RS10 were slightly more reliable and got more wins, Renault themselves never managed to win a single championship during 80s turbo-era.

Ferrari 512 S

In 1970 Ferrari wanted to beat the dominating Porsche 917 in the world of sportscar racing. However the Porsche had exploited loopholes and had more time to develop their car over Ferrari. But despite this Ferrari did build a challenger and it was called the 512 S. Enzo Ferrari had to sell half of his company to Fiat in order to get the funds to be able to develop the car. The car had a V12 engine that produced over 540hp but was slightly difficult to cool in comparison to the Porsche 917’s air cooled flat 12. And the Ferrari had a slightly heavier chassis since it was made out of steel and aluminum compared to the alloy chassis of the 917. But despite all of this, the match-up seemed pretty fair, but Ferrari was soon to realise the fatal flaw of the 512 S, it’s reliability.

To start with, Ferrari already had an issue on their hand and that was the fact that they didn’t have any experienced sportscar racing drivers, their main drivers were Clay Regazzoni and Jacky Ickx, who also had their F1 duties to oblige to. The some of the other drivers they picked to race as many races as possible in the World Sportscar Championship were Ignazio Giunti, Peter Schetty, Nino Vaccarella and Arturo Merzario who were very good but Giunti and Merzario were participating in the F1 season and the drivers weren’t as experienced with sportscars as the Porsche drivers.

As the 1970 World Sportscar Championship begun it was already evident that the Ferrari was unreliable. With the 512 S suffering from weak suspension as well as transmission problems. The Ferrari’s first win came in the second round at the 12 Hours of Sebring with Ignazio Giunti and Nino Vaccarella driving the winning car. The car did pretty well in most of the qualifyings but it never quite had the speed of the Porsche 917 and its reliability problems didn’t help its cause. These reliability issues were highlighted at the second last round at Le Mans where the Ferraris were running just as fast if not faster than the Porsches. But in the race not a single one of the 4 Ferraris managed to finish with the first one retiring at lap 7 and the last one by lap 142.

Porsches won 9 of the 10 rounds of the World Sports Car Championship and after this season Ferrari abandoned its factory efforts for the 512 S and decided to build a new prototype.

McLaren MP4-20

In 2005 McLaren had almost everything they needed to win a world championship. They had quite possibly the best driver on the field back then, Kimi Räikkönen and they had the fastest car on the grid and yet they couldn’t win and that attributes to the shocking reliability of the McLaren MP4-20.

The car was designed by Adrian Newey and featured a number of interesting body parts due to the 2005 rule changes, it had a smaller wheelbase, a smaller rear wing and diffuser and featured some interesting wings to the back of the air intakes for downforce to make up for the downforce it lost due to the 2005 regulations. The car was also running on Michelin tyres which was good since the Bridgestone runners suffered hight tyre wear.

The car had a 3.0 V10 Mercedes power unit which was quite possibly the most powerful engine on the grid but also incredibly unreliable. Räikkönen was no stranger to unreliable McLarens because in his first season with McLaren in 2002 he failed to finish 11 times and it wasn’t much better in 2003 either while he suffered fewer retirements but his engine failed at the European Grand Prix where he was leading from pole position and as a consequence of this he lost the title to Micheal Schumacher by just 2 points. But after a dismal 2004 season, Juan Pablo Montoya joined McLaren for 2005 and with the incredibly fast MP4-20 and good driver pairing it seemed like it was finally going to be a season where McLaren might win.

Unfortunately it was to be another season with reliability problems for McLaren. The car was fast but unreliable at testing in Jerez and things weren’t much better for the rest of the season. The car started the first few rounds with issues in races but by the third round in Bahrain it already had a podium. But at the San Marino Grand Prix Räikkönen suffered his first retirement of the season after having qualified on pole position while Alonso won the race. But Räikkönen hit back after getting pole position at both the Spanish and Monaco Grand Prix and winning both of them but certain victory escaped him after he suffered a suspension faliure at the last lap of the European Grand Prix. He managed another win at the Canadian Grand Prix before the USA Grand Prix where both the McLarens and all the other Michelin runners pulled out due to the tyres exploding at high speeds. A string of podiums followed for Räikkönen before another retirement from the lead this time at the German Grand Prix. He then won the Hungarian, Turkish and the Belgian Grand Prix. But despite all of this Alonso managed to seal the title at the Brazilian Grand Prix with a 3rd place finish with Räikkönen in 2nd. But even after this Räikkönen managed a spectacular victory at the next race at the Japanese Grand Prix winning from 17th on the grid.

It wasn’t just Räikkönen who had terrible luck, teammate Montoya while never a title contender owing to the fact that he couldn’t participate in the Bharain and San Marino Grand Prix, still had reliability issues with him not being able to finish 5 races and hence couldn’t get enough points for McLaren to be able to challenge Renault in the constructors championship either.

In the end the McLaren was considered to be the faster car over the Renault. The McLaren had more total wins as well, with 7 wins for Räikkönen and 3 for Montoya compared to the 7 for Alonso and 1 for Giancarlo Fisichella. But poor reliability meant that McLaren in the end lost both the championships to Renault.

But the McLaren MP4-20 would forever be considered as one of the fastest F1 cars never to win a championship.