March Engineering
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Full name | March Engineering |
---|---|
Base | United Kingdom |
Founder(s) | Max Mosley Alan Rees Graham Coaker Robin Herd |
Noted drivers | Chris Amon Jo Siffert Niki Lauda Ronnie Peterson Vittorio Brambilla Henri Pescarolo |
Formula One World Championship career | |
First entry | 1970 South African Grand Prix |
Races entered | 205 (195 starts) |
Engines | Ford, Alfa Romeo, Judd, Ilmor |
Constructors' Championships | 0 |
Drivers' Championships | 0 |
Race victories | 2 |
Pole positions | 2 |
Fastest laps | 4 |
Final entry | 1992 Australian Grand Prix |
Formula One World Championship career | |
---|---|
Entrants | Tyrrell Racing, Frank Williams Racing Cars, Hesketh Racing, Williams, several minor teams and privateers |
First entry | 1970 South African Grand Prix |
Last entry | 1992 Australian Grand Prix |
Races entered | 209 |
Race victories | 3 |
Constructors' Championships | 0 |
Drivers' Championships | 0 |
Pole positions | 5 |
Fastest laps | 7 |
March Engineering was a
1970s
March Engineering began operations in 1969. Its four founders were Max Mosley, Alan Rees, Graham Coaker and Robin Herd. The company name is an acronym of their initials. They each had a specific area of expertise: Mosley looked after the commercial side, Rees managed the racing team, Coaker oversaw production at the factory in Bicester, Oxfordshire, and Herd was the designer.
The history of March is dominated by the conflict between the need for constant development and testing to remain at the peak of competitiveness in F1 and the need to build simple, reliable cars for customers in order to make a profit. Herd's original F1 plan was to build a single-car team around Jochen Rindt, but Rindt became dismayed at the size of the March programme and elected to continue at Team Lotus.
March's launch was unprecedented in its breadth and impact. After building a single Formula Three car in 1969, March announced that they would be introducing customer cars for F1, F2, F3, Formula Ford and Can-Am in 1970, as well as running works F1, F2 and F3 teams.
The Formula One effort initially looked promising, with March supplying its 701 chassis to Tyrrell for Jackie Stewart. These cars were merely a stopgap for Tyrrell, who no longer had the use of Matra chassis and were in the process of constructing their own car; March was the only option available given clashing fuel contracts. In addition, the factory ran two team cars for Jo Siffert (Porsche were paying for his drive) and Chris Amon sponsored by STP. A third STP car, entered by Andy Granatelli for Mario Andretti, appeared on several occasions. Ronnie Peterson appeared in a semi-works car for Colin Crabbe when his works Formula Two commitments allowed; various other 701s went to privateers. The team constructed ten Formula One chassis that year, in addition to Formula Two, Formula Three, Formula Ford and Can-Am chassis. Stewart gave the March its first Formula One victory, at the 1970 Spanish Grand Prix, and both Amon and Stewart took a non-championship race victory, but the works team did not win a Grand Prix. The 701 had distinctive aerofoil-profile fuel tanks at the sides of the car designed by Peter Wright of Specialised Mouldings; Wright had been involved with BRM's abortive ground-effect programme in the late sixties and later worked on the groundbreaking Lotus 78. The 701's tanks lacked endplates and skirts to help generate any meaningful ground effect. Herd (in Mike Lawrence's history of the team Four Guys and a Telephone) described the 701 as essentially a good 1969 car and not what he would have done had he been able to run a small team for a star like Rindt - the 701 was designed and built very quickly and he claims he would have built something more like the 711.
For the
The
Also, the German team Eifelland entered under its own name a 721 much-modified with distinctive and eccentric bodywork by designer Luigi Colani for its driver Rolf Stommelen. This car was extremely unsuccessful, and later reverted mostly to conventional 721 form and was used by John Watson to make his F1 debut for John Goldie's Goldie Hexagon Racing team.
March's only notable result was Peterson's third place in Germany.
In 1974, the factory team ran Howden Ganley until he left, having signed with Maki as their number-one driver. Then March ran Hans-Joachim Stuck in a Jägermeister-sponsored car and Vittorio Brambilla in a Beta Tools-sponsored car. Both drivers were exuberant and occasionally quick, but proved expensive in terms of accident damage. BMW was starting to exert pressure on March to quit F1 and concentrate on F2. Patrick Depailler took the F2 championship in an Elf-sponsored March-BMW, the marque's last title for several years as the Elf sponsorship programme and (in 1976) the arrival of Renault engines turned the formula into a French benefit. Some discontent arose in the March customer ranks in F2 since the works appeared after the first couple of F2 races with cars that differed significantly from the customer vehicles.
In the following year Brambilla and
In
That year Peterson scored only one other point in 1976 before being brokered back into a deal with Tyrrell for 1977. Although he felt most at home at March, it was clear that the team did not have the resources to do Formula One properly.
In the off-season of 1976-77, March engineer Wayne Eckersley constructed a rear end for the 761 chassis that had four driven wheels (designated the March 2-4-0) to Robin Herd's design. Unlike the six-wheeled Tyrrell P34, the 2-4-0 had four 16-inch driven wheels at the rear (the same size as the front wheels). The theory behind the design was that this arrangement would offer improved traction and reduced aerodynamic drag (compared to the Tyrrell, which used ultra-small front wheels and normally sized rears). The chassis was tested at Silverstone circuit in early 1977 by both Howden Ganley and Ian Scheckter but the project was curtailed in favour of further development of the conventional chassis. The car made March more profit than many of its successful racing cars as it was licensed by Scalextric and became one of their most popular models. The 2-4-0 rear end was later used in hillclimbing by various drivers including Roy Lane.
A token F1 effort with Rothmans sponsorship was run in 1977 for Alex Ribeiro and Ian Scheckter, but nothing worthwhile was achieved. Yet, as the works were fading from F1 the 761, by virtue of being cheap, simple and readily available, became the tool of choice for privateers, notably Frank Williams who after his acrimonious split with Walter Wolf needed a car to get back into racing before his own vehicle was ready.
At the end of the
From 1978, March concentrated on Formula Two, running the works BMW team. A 781 chassis was occasionally campaigned in the minor
Ground effects came to F2 in 1979 but were widely misunderstood; for a while it looked like Rad Dougall in the Toleman team's conventional 782 would beat not only Brian Henton in Toleman's own car but also March's new 792 to the title. In the end, however, Marc Surer prevailed for the works.
1980s
In 1981 March made a half-hearted and ill-financed effort to return to F1, building cars that were little more than heavy and insufficiently stiff copies of the Williams FW07 for Mick Ralph and John McDonald's RAM Racing. The car was driven initially by Eliseo Salazar, but he soon quit for Derek Daly to take over. The team acquired a major sponsorship deal from Rothmans in 1982, but the money came too late for Herd or Adrian Reynard (who was working as chief engineer) to improve the performance of the cars. In 1983, McDonald started building his own cars and March was left outside F1 once more. The RAM-March effort was at armslength from March proper, with the cars being built at a separate factory and the only real link with March being Robin Herd
During this phase, March Engines (a separate company within the group) undertook a number of bespoke customer projects - a highly modified BMW M1 (which was highly unsuccessful but provided some input into the later GTP/Group C cars) and an equally unsuccessful Indycar (the Orbitor) based around the 792 chassis.
March's attention in the early 1980s was mainly split between F2 and breaking into the
An important sideline appeared when
In 1982, Corrado Fabi took March's last Formula Two title; the formula was being increasingly dominated by the works Ralt-Hondas. March abandoned the Formula Three market at the end of the 1981 season; they had enjoyed periods of dominance in the category, but this had faded in favour of Ralt, though. The margins on an F3 car were low and the factory could be more productively occupied building F2s and Indycars.
The new Formula 3000 in 1985 gave March much more success for the first few years of the formula, with Christian Danner being the first champion in a March chassis. He was followed in 1986 by Ivan Capelli and in 1987 by Stefano Modena. These early F3000s were little more than developments of the 842 F2 car (as were the Japanese F2 cars in 1985-86). In 1986, the 86G was modified into the BMW GTP by BMW North America for use in the IMSA GT Championship, but saw little success. Meanwhile, March became by far the dominant marque in Indycar racing, reaching the point where 30 out of 33 starters in the Indianapolis 500 were Marches. Into the late 1980s, the F3000 programme started to be eclipsed by Lola and Ralt, and was virtually obliterated by Reynard Motorsport's entry to the market.
March began a new Formula One program in 1987 with the
In April 1987, March went public. Herd remained the biggest shareholder, and a block of shares was made over to key employees who had stayed with the company through thick and thin. March Group plc was initially valued at £14.5 million. But things were not going well in America, and when the dollar plunged against the pound that market dried up. In other formulae, too, March was no longer flavour of the month. Taken out of the hands of the racers, the company went downhill. The situation was resolved in early 1989 when Akira Akagi's Leyton House bought March Racing, including both the F1 operation and F3000 production facilities, leaving Herd to embark on other ventures.[7]
1990s
March concentrated on high-value partnership deals, such as Porsche and Alfa Romeo Indycar (the Porsche deal led to some success; the Alfa project was unsuccessful), consultancy work on the Panther Solo supercar, composites, and wind tunnel businesses. The wind tunnel was a disaster, with the insulation being far too efficient - it was effectively a pressure cooker that generated useless results and this destroyed the competitiveness of various teams that used it, including Lotus. The economic downturn of the late 80s affected March's market severely and the management recognised that they were producing poor customer cars; the logical move was to merge with Ralt, with March becoming the brand for industry partnership deals, leaving Ralt to look after the production categories. This duly took place, although the businesses were never efficiently integrated.
Leyton House Racing
The F1 team raced as Leyton House Racing in 1990 and 1991, acquiring Ilmor V10 power. The team nearly caused a massive upset at the 1990 French Grand Prix with Capelli and Gugelmin capitalising on their superior aerodynamics and smooth race track to attempt the race on a single set of tyres while everyone else stopped for tyres mid-race. Engine problems claimed Gugelmin and slowed Capelli allowing Prost to slip by with three laps left. By the end of 1991, Akagi was immersed in the Fuji Bank scandal and Leyton House withdrew from racing. The team was bought by Ken Marrable, an associate of Akagi, and resumed the name March for the 1992 season but with little funding and results fell far short of expectations. The Leyton House Racing operation closed down as the team (now unconnected to the March group) attempted to assemble a project for the beginning of the 1993 season.
Demise
A complex series of buyouts and sales saw the March group (now essentially a financial services outfit) divest itself of its racing interests; after a management buyout, March and Ralt were subsequently sold to Andrew Fitton[citation needed] and Steve Ward in the early 1990s. Fitton later wound March up and Ward continued Ralt at a lower level. In the late 1990s the engineering assets of March were sold to Andy Gilberg. This consisted of over 30,000 engineering drawings and design rights for the customer cars, works F1 cars from the 1970s and other projects produced at the Murdock Road facility. These records are currently available to car owners, racing services providers and historians through www.marchives.com.
2000s
March Racing Organisation Ltd made an application to compete in the
Car designations
March's cars generally followed a simple designation scheme in which the first two digits correspond to the year (69–91), and the third digit or letter corresponds to the formula. Some peculiarities emerged, which are documented below. There were some minor exceptions to these rules, for example xx5 designated both some very early Formula B/Atlantic cars, some early F5000s and some early 2-litre sports cars.
- Formula One – 701-781, 811-821, 871-881. Subsequent March F1 cars took the CG prefix after Cesare Gariboldi, a Leyton House March team manager who was killed in a road accident in 1989:[10] CG891, CG901, CG911. Note that, during 1972, three distinct F1 cars appeared: 721, 721X (low-polar-moment) and 721G (F2-based). At the start of the 1987 season, the team ran the 87P/87B, a hybrid F1/F3000 car.
- Formula Two – 702-842. Japanese F2 cars in 1985-86 were designated 85J and 86J. A 772P appeared in 1977 based on an old Atlantic chassis as a prototype for the 782.
- Formula 3000 – 85B - 89B
- spaceframe and a monocoque, these were designated 713S and 713M.
- Can-Am/Interserie Group 7 – 707, 717, 817, 827, 832, 847
- 2-litre sports prototypes – 73S - 77S; Sports 2000 81S-84S
- IndyCar/Champcar– 81C - 89C. Bespoke cars for Porsche took the 89P and 90P designations; bespoke cars for Alfa Romeo took the 89CE designation.
- Formula 5000 – 72A - 76A
- Formula Atlantic – 73B - 79B
- Formula Ford (UK) – 708 - 718
- Formula Ford (US) – 709 - 729
- Formula Renault – 75R
- 92S. 'N' and 'S' designations used for Nissan cars.
Formula One results
Results achieved by the 'works' March team.
Season | Entrant | Car | Tyres | Engine | Drivers | Constructors Championship |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1970 | March Engineering | March 701 | F | Cosworth DFV | Chris Amon Jo Siffert |
3rd (48 pts) (see Note 1) |
1971 | STP March Racing Team | March 711 March 701 |
F | Alfa Romeo Cosworth DFV |
4th (33 pts) | |
1972 | March Racing Team | March 721 March 721X March 721G |
G | Cosworth DFV | Ronnie Peterson Niki Lauda |
6th (15 pts) (see Note 2) |
1973 | March Racing Team | March 731 (actually rebuilt 721G) | G | Cosworth DFV | Jean-Pierre Jarier Henri Pescarolo Roger Williamson |
5th (14 pts) (see Note 3) |
1974 | March Engineering | March 741 | G | Cosworth DFV | Hans-Joachim Stuck Howden Ganley Vittorio Brambilla Reine Wisell |
9th (6 pts) |
1975 | March Engineering Beta Team March Lavazza March |
March 751 March 741 |
G | Cosworth DFV | Lella Lombardi Vittorio Brambilla Hans-Joachim Stuck |
8th (7.5 pts) (see Note 4) |
1976 | March Engineering Beta Team March |
March 761 | G | Cosworth DFV | Ronnie Peterson Hans-Joachim Stuck Vittorio Brambilla |
7th (19 pts) |
1977 | Team Rothmans International Hollywood March Racing |
March 761B March 771 |
G | Cosworth DFV | Ian Scheckter Alex Ribeiro Hans-Joachim Stuck Brian Henton |
NC (0 pts) |
1981
|
March Grand Prix Team | March 811 | Cosworth DFV | Eliseo Salazar Derek Daly |
NC (0 pts) | |
1982
|
March Grand Prix Rothmans March Grand Prix Team LBT Team March |
March 821 | Cosworth DFV | Raul Boesel Jochen Mass Rupert Keegan Emilio de Villota |
NC (0 pts) | |
1987
|
Leyton House March Racing Team | March 87P (1st race only)
March 871 |
G | Cosworth DFZ | Ivan Capelli | 13th (1 pt) |
1988
|
Leyton House March Racing Team | March 881 | G | Judd | Ivan Capelli Maurício Gugelmin |
6th (22 pts) |
1989
|
Leyton House March Racing Team | March 881 March CG891 |
G | Judd | Ivan Capelli Maurício Gugelmin |
14th (4 pts) |
1990 | Competed as Leyton House Racing | |||||
1991 | Competed as Leyton House Racing | |||||
1992
|
March F1 | March CG911B
|
G | Ilmor | Paul Belmondo Karl Wendlinger Emanuele Naspetti Jan Lammers |
9th (3 pts) |
- Note 1: 1970 total includes points gained by Jackie Stewart, Johnny Servoz-Gavin and François Cevert in Tyrrell Racing Organisation entries
- Note 2: 1972 total includes points gained by Team Williams Motulentry
- Note 3: 1973 total includes points gained by James Hunt in a Hesketh Racing entry
- Note 4: 1974 total includes points gained by Penske Carsentry
Bibliography
- Four Guys And A Telephone, Mike Lawrence, MRP
- March: The Grand Prix and Indy Cars, Alan Henry, Hazleton
References
- ^ "March 711 Cosworth". Retrieved 14 June 2022.
- ^ "March-Ford 711". 5 December 2010. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
- ^ "March 711". 9 December 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
- ^ "March 711". Retrieved 14 June 2022.
- ^ "March 711-2 F1". Retrieved 14 June 2022.
- ^ MrViniciusf11995 (21 November 2012), gp do brasil 1988 completo (Brazilian Grand Prix 1988 Complete), archived from the original on 1 May 2014, retrieved 20 March 2016
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Motorsport Magazine. Retrieved 18 August 2021.
- ^ Alexander, Earl (30 May 2009). "A return of March to Formula One". f1-live.com. Racing-Live. Archived from the original on 5 June 2009. Retrieved 30 May 2009.
- ^ "F1: March And Brabham Submit Entries For 2010". The Motor Report. 9 June 2009. Retrieved 2 November 2011.
- ^ Smith, Damien (February–March 2013). "Hand of the Creator". Road & Track. 64 (6): 64–69.