6 wheel F1 car

[ak]

I was watching speed TV last night and they were doing a history on Monaco race which showed a 6 wheeled F1 car from the 70's, shown here

http://www.f1nutter.co.uk/tech/6wheels.php

Does anyone have more info on this car and how it performed? It looks kinda funny but interesting.

 

[Todd McKelvie]

You must be young! I remember seeing it when I was a kid. I think there were 2 and they ran for about 2 or 3 years. If i remember correctly, they did fairly well.

 

[whiteNSXs]

Wow, that brings back a lot of memories. I must be getting old. Ken Tyrrell, Ronnie Peterson, Tamiya models, etc.
Steve

 

[SoCalDude]

I was watching speed TV last night and they were doing a history on Monaco race which showed a 6 wheeled F1 car from the 70's, shown here

http://www.f1nutter.co.uk/tech/6wheels.php

Does anyone have more info on this car and how it performed? It looks kinda funny but interesting.

I remember that Tyrell. Really cool looking and really unsucessful as well. I thought it only ran for a year.

 

[Shumdit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrell_Formula_One

 

[NSXGMS]

That was experimental automotive engineering at it's finest!

Goes to show you how far auto technology and engineering strategy/approach has come in the last 30 years.

Reading that wikipedia article reminded me of how unsafe F1 cars were at the time. Crashes and deaths all the time.

Seriously, it's ridiculous how safe F1 cars are today. Really amazing. People forget that so much F1 technology is safety. And the cars have never been faster--and safer. You can thank the FIA for that. When you watch the old Niki Lauda/Jackie Stewart-era footage you can see how squirrely those cars were--perfect example is Lauda's Nurburgring crash. You'd never see an F1 car break loose like that today.

 

[Hugh]

Talk about memories. I was a young kid at summer camp in Switzerland and remember a race or maybe an exhibition they had up the mountain into our town. I think it was Crans-Montana. I think Jody Scheckter was driving the 6 wheel Tyrell.

"It first ran in the Spanish Grand Prix in 1976, and proved to be very competitive. Both Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler were able to produce solid results with the car, but while Depailler praised the car continually, Scheckter realised it would only be temporarily competitive. The special Goodyear tyres were not being developed enough by the end of the season.

The P34's golden moment came in the Swedish Grand Prix. Scheckter and Depailler finished first and second, and to date Scheckter is the only driver ever to win a race in a 6 wheeled car. He left the team at the end of the season, insisting that the 6 wheeler was 'a piece of junk!'"

 

[britlude]

I thought it only ran for a year.

as with most things that cause a stir, the rules are changed to outlaw such 'experiments', especially when they started to sort the teething problems!

just, suffice to say, when there were 2 tyrrell P34's at the monaco historic GP last weekend (20/21 May 2006) they finished 1st and 3rd!

http://www.acm.mc/gphm/gphm_main.php ( go to 'Grand Prix Historique' picture galleries)