British GP swag now on the F1 store! Until Monday you can use F130 for 30% off. Exclusions Apply and other legal stuff.

I still can't believe they had these 1200 BHP engines. Just imagine, 1300 BHP engines. It must have been like stepping on a bomb, throttling a 1500 BHP engine. Why were these 1700 BHP engines so powerful anyway? Kudos to BMW for designing a 2000 BHP engine. No wonder the lap records were so low with 2500 BHP on tap.

German coal was so poor as coal that it leant itself to being used as synthetic oil. The chemical put in the rocket fuel was the same additive that went in to C3 and C4 fuel for the luftwaffe. I'll have to dig through a load of old research papers from the end of the war and see if I can find the name of it

My favourite Charlie Whiting quote, refering to his time at Brabham, "We never had a legal car" ...it takes a cheater to catch a cheater...

I love how people think octane means more explosive when it actually means the opposite

“A small amount is a big amount in Formula 1” this quote should go on your head stone because it is flawless.

Your definition and understanding of detonation is wrong. Detonation is where the fuel air mixture in the cylinder ignites without the spark plug firing, and before the plug fires, usually well before top dead centre. This causes the pressure in the cylinder to be at maximum while the piston is still on it's compression stroke. Generally detonation is caused by too much pressure in the cylinder, which causes the charge to become very hot and spontaneously combust. The octane rating of a fuel is essentially a rating of how resistant too knock, or detonation it is. 99 octane will put up with more pressure and heat before it combusts than 95. it has nothing to do with left over fuel in the cylinder . .

Detonation is when the air fuel mixture in the cylinder explodes before the spark plug sets it off. It happens when the temperature inside the combustion chamber are too high for the fuel being used

Brabham was what I term a "1.5" car team. The second entry was superfluous. Patrese's reliability was atrocious.

Still, Furious Facist Fighter Fuel would be a brand name one would remember.

Such a gorgeous car and an insane engine. I had a BMW 320i in high school in 83 and remember being so excited that Nelson Piquet won with “my” engine 😂

Hey I feel proud knowing you used my BT52 pic of Patrese's car at the 1983 Detroit Grand Prix garage at

FYI; the Methylbenzene that they used, is also known as Toluene, and is one of the T's in T.N.T. So potent stuff and good and burning quickly.

That turbo and ground effect period between 1978 and 1988 is arguably the most interesting era of F1 on the engineering front. F1's not even my primary racing series of choice but being able to go back to that era and watch a race at Monza or Hockenheim would be the dream, even if I need to wear a Hazmat suit and armor to protect myself from fumes and debris.

My grandfather used to work for a large Chemical Company in the United States in the 70's. this company produced propylene oxide among other high-test fuel additives. He had a friend that worked at the local military base. he would slide some 110 or higher octane fuel under the fence every so often. This fuel would go in the race car on Saturday nights and it's safe to say he went through many a big block Chevrolet engine. but while it lasted that car was setting track records whist being a bomb on four wheels😂

"A problem that is looked upon ... with great fondness".

The merlin was supercharged, it didn't use exhaust gas to drive the compressor (that would be a turbocharger). The exhausts on the merlin simply pointed backwards in the airflow to add direct thrust to the plane.

2 things.

I have a pic of the BT-51 i can show you, it was what Murray called a "pit stop" car with an undersized fuel tank and pneumatic, on board jacks and looked like a slimmed down BT-50. And not all of the 80's turbo's suffered as badly as the BMW did with lag, the fact is the inline 4's only used one big turbo where the V6's used two of different sizes. Honda actually had a inter-cooler bypass that sent boost directly to the engine at lower RPM the slowly phased in the longer inter-cooler path as revs rose. And the secret ingredient was

I was at the Long Beach Grand Prix from 1979 to 1983. I loved the looks of the Brabham BT52. All of the cars were looking the same with the side pods for ground effects, I was so happy to see them disappear, and the cars started to look unique again. That is one BIG gripe I have about so much of top tier racing, they all look the same.