Eagle Mk1
Notable drivers | Dan Gurney Phil Hill Bruce McLaren Dan Gurney Bob Bondurant Ludovico Scarfiotti Richie Ginther Al Pease | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Debut | 1966 Belgian Grand Prix, Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. | ||||||||
First win | 1967 Belgian Grand Prix | ||||||||
Last win | 1967 Belgian Grand Prix | ||||||||
Last event | 1969 Canadian Grand Prix | ||||||||
| |||||||||
n.b. Unless otherwise stated, all data refer to Formula One World Championship Grands Prix only. |
The Eagle Mk1, commonly referred to as the Eagle T1G, was a
Design
A highly successful motor racing driver in many disciplines, Dan Gurney had been driving in Formula One since the late 1950s. While driving for the Brabham works team, he joined with a group of prominent motor racing figures and financial backers in the United States, including Carroll Shelby, to found All American Racers. This effort was largely backed by the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, in an effort to challenge Firestone's longtime dominance of American open-wheel racing. Inspired by the performance of Jack Brabham and Bruce McLaren's own teams, AAR decided to enter Grand Prix racing. Then as now, the main engineering hub for Formula One manufacturers was in the United Kingdom, so AAR set up a subsidiary team known as Anglo American Racers which, while registered in the USA, was based in Rye, East Sussex, UK and named in deference to the cars' British Weslake engines. The cars were built in Santa Ana, California, USA by the All American Racers team.
To achieve AAR's dual aims of winning in both Formula One and
The design of the Mk1, and its Indy sister design the Mk2, closely followed the 38, with a
that had powered the previous year's Indy 500 winner (Jim Clark, in the Terry-designed Lotus 38).While driving for the British Racing Motors (BRM) Formula One team in 1960, Gurney became acquainted with BRM engineer Aubrey Woods, who then moved to Weslake Engineering. Through Woods, Gurney became aware of a Weslake engine research project funded by Shell Oil. This two-cylinder, 500-cc test engine produced impressive horsepower, and Gurney extrapolated the test engine's output to a 3-liter, V12 Grand Prix engine, potentially putting out up to 450 horsepower, and he commissioned Weslake to build the engine.
While five Mk2 chassis, complete with four-cam Ford V8s, qualified for the
Three Mk1 chassis were produced with the original aluminium construction, but the fourth incorporated advanced and exotic metal alloys. This included extensive use of titanium for many of the componentry, and a high percentage of magnesium sheet in the monocoque panelwork. Owing to its novel construction materials this car, chassis number 104, was referred to as the Ti-Mag Car. Gurney was well aware of the risks involved in driving a car made from such flammable materials. After witnessing Jo Schlesser's death in a magnesium-fuelled fireball during the 1968 French Grand Prix, Gurney compared racing in 104 to "driving a Ronson cigarette lighter".[5]
Race history
The Eagle Mk1 made its race debut at the
For the 1967 Formula One season the Climax-engined chassis 101 was sold to Canadian driver Al Pease, and all AAR chassis ran as Eagle-Weslake machines. The season proved to be intensely frustrating for all concerned. Although Gurney and sometime teammate Bruce McLaren managed to qualify the Eagle-Weslake cars in the front two rows of the grid on no fewer than eleven occasions from the season's eleven Grands Prix, only two cars finished a race. That both of these finishes were in podium positions highlights the raw speed of the Eagle Mk1. AAR's first major race win came in the 1967 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, with Gurney taking the aluminium-chassis 102 to victory in this prestigious non-Championship season opener. 104 was introduced at Zandvoort, the Netherlands, early in 1967; the lightest and fastest of the Eagle Mk1 vehicles, it was with this car that Gurney scored the team's only Championship victory: the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix.
By 1968, and despite increasing success in their native series, Anglo American Racers were starting to run short of funds. Development of the Eagle Mk1 was halted as the team ploughed what little funding it had into the design of its successor, the projected Mk6. Nevertheless, Gurney persisted with the older car for the first half of the
The last appearance of an Eagle Mk1 in a Formula One race was when Pease privately entered 101 for the
Formula One World Championship results
(key) (results in italics indicate fastest lap)
Year | Entrant | Engine/s | Tyres | Driver | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | Points | WCC |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1966 | Anglo American Racers
|
G | MON | BEL | FRA | GBR | NED | GER | ITA | USA | MEX | 4† 0 |
7th† 13th | |||||
Dan Gurney | Ret† | 5† | Ret† | Ret† | 7† | Ret | Ret | 5† | ||||||||||
Phil Hill | DNQ† | |||||||||||||||||
Bob Bondurant | DSQ† | Ret | ||||||||||||||||
1967 | Anglo American Racers
|
G | RSA | MON | NED | BEL | FRA | GBR | GER | CAN | ITA | USA | MEX | 0† 13 |
12th† 7th | |||
Dan Gurney | Ret† | Ret | Ret | 1 | Ret | Ret | Ret | 3 | Ret | Ret | Ret | |||||||
Richie Ginther | DNQ | |||||||||||||||||
Bruce McLaren | Ret | Ret | Ret | |||||||||||||||
Ludovico Scarfiotti | Ret | |||||||||||||||||
Castrol Oils Ltd. | L4
|
G | Al Pease | NC† | ||||||||||||||
1968 | Anglo American Racers
|
Weslake V12 | G | RSA | ESP | MON | BEL | NED | FRA | GBR | GER | ITA | CAN | USA | MEX | 0 | NC | |
Dan Gurney | Ret | Ret | Ret | 9 | Ret | |||||||||||||
Castrol Oils Ltd. | L4
|
G | Al Pease | DNS | ||||||||||||||
1969 | John Maryon | L4
|
F | RSA | ESP | MON | NED | FRA | GBR | GER | ITA | CAN | USA | MEX | 0† | NC† | ||
Al Pease | DSQ† |
† Climax-engined results. All other results are for Weslake-engined cars.
Name confusion
Although commonly referred to as the T1G (and chassis 101 as the T1F), Dan Gurney has stated that this was never the car's official designation.
References
Footnotes
- ^ "Eagle Westlake T1G". F1Technical.net. Retrieved 27 March 2013.
- ^ "Eagle Eye: The Eagle Gurney-Weslake F1 Effort". Archived from the original on 2012-10-22. Retrieved 2012-08-10.
- ^ Penske achieved a victory at the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix having raced with an American licence, but the car was built at the British base in Poole. Though American-owned, the British-based Shadow achieved a victory at the 1977 Austrian Grand Prix having raced with a British licence.
- ^ Matthew Freudenberg, "Negative Gravity: A Life of Beatrice Shilling", Negative Gravity: A Life of Beatrice Shilling
- ^ a b Zimmermann, J. 2007. The Eagle was grounded. Motor Sport, LXXXIII (March 2007)
- ^ "Eagle 68/69 'Mk 5'". OldRacingCars.com. Retrieved 6 October 2011.
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-0-7603-1219-3.
- ISBN 978-1-85960-655-1.
Online references
- Eagle Mark I Weslake history and photos at Ultimatecarpage.com
- Eagle T1G statistics and information at ChicaneF1.com
- Eagle-Weslake history at ddavid.com Archived 2012-10-27 at the Wayback Machine
- Eagle overview at allF1.info
- Official Gurney-Weslake home page
External links