Cotton On

Countdown to the 1991 World Sportscar Championship

A new era in sportscar racing opens at Suzuka, Japan on April 14, and a new interest is expected between Silk Cut Jaguar, Mercedes and Peugeot. With luck Walter Brun may have his Judd-powered Brun Gp C car ready, and Franz Konrad is working hard on his Lamborghini-powered contender, though their sights may be set on the European part of the programme which packs three races into the month of May, at Monza (May 5), Silverstone (May 19) and Paul Ricard (May 26).

Mercedes has a flat-12, Peugeot a V10 and Jaguar a V8, so variety will not be lacking. Add to that mixture the Judd and Cosworth V8s and Lamborghini’s Formula 1 V12 unit, and we have a recipe for competitions that will be as colourful and noisy as Grand Prix racing.

Due to Easter production schedules we are not able to publish the full list of entries, which FISA closed on March 15, but we expect there to be between 15 and 19 registered entries. On the back of the “turbo teams” (Brun and Konrad each start the season with a Porsche 962C, Tim Lee-Davey has entered two, and there will be one apiece from Antoine Salamin and the Almeras brothers), there is the potential for another ten cars at Le Mans on June 22/23, and Automobile Club de l’Ouest officials will be bracing themselves for an entry of around 30 cars.

Will FISA relent, and allow teams not registering for the World Sportscar Championship to take part in the 24 Hours? Opinions differ, but opinion is all we have. Nissan is ready, willing and able to enter three cars for Le Mans (two R90CKs from NPTI in America, one from Japan), but await the verdict from FISA with concern.

It would not be going too far to say that if Nissan doesn’t run at Le Mans this year, the chances are slim of seeing this manufacturer in next year’s WSC series either. We also gathered, in the early days of March, that Mazda’s commitment isn’t rock-solid either, and that the 3.5-litre V12 intended for 1992 is on hold.

Le Mans is the key to the whole championship, as always. The Automobile Club de l’Ouest may be forced to run a race for 30 cars this June, though they won’t like it a bit. What about 1992, though? We have to remove all the turbo teams from the equation, and their retinue for the 24 Hours.

If all goes terribly well we should have two-car entries from Nissan, Toyota and Mazda, but still fewer than 20 cars in the World Sportscar Championship, with a potential of, say, 25 cars at Le Mans.

It doesn’t take much imagination to realise that another flashpoint is approaching. There will be sounds of thunder in April, May and June, followed by wide-ranging discussions in midsummer. Group C will not reach its crisis point straightaway, but it is coming and Le Mans will be the pivot.

Further comment is superfluous at the present time, since we do not have an entry list nor any reactions from teams. Suffice it to say that well-connected people in and around the new World Sportscar Championship couldn’t raise one spark of optimism as the closing date approached. FISA should gird itself for a barrage of criticism when the storm breaks.

The show goes ahead, of course, on the assumption that even FISA wouldn’t dare enrage Mercedes, Peugeot and Jaguar in one fell swoop. Now is the time to welcome some very innovative cars which will race against each other for the first time at Suzuka.

The Cars

Peugeot 905

Having conquered the rally world with a derivation of the Peugeot 205 in 1984-85, the French company had to spend some years on the touchline deciding which way to turn when FISA banned the Group B rally cars. Mastering the Paris-Dakar Raid was a way of staying competitive, but eventually Peugeot’s management decided that sports car racing was the way to go.

Experiences with the WM-Peugeot, a completely private enterprise, persuaded motorsports director Jean Todt and Peugeot’s management that there was a great deal of prestige to be gained from winning at Le Mans, but it also showed them how not to go about things.

FISA’s decision to go for a 3.5-litre racing engine formula gave everyone the chance to start with a clean sheet of paper. The decision was welcomed by Peugeot, rather less enthusiastically by Mercedes, and with no enthusiasm at all by Jaguar, Nissan, Toyota and Mazda, but nevertheless they started to plan 3.5-litre cars in order to stay in the business of sports car racing.

Peugeot made their announcement in November 1988, putting André de Cortanze in charge of the technical team. De Cortanze was once a professional driver himself, teamed with Patrick Depailler in the somewhat feeble Alpine-Renault sports-racer in 1968 (the first year of the 3-litre prototype/5-litre stockblock formula), and he was later the chief engineer on Renault’s sports car programme.

Jean-Pierre Boudy, formerly Renault’s chief engine designer, joined Peugeot at the same time as de Cortanze, in 1983 and was closely involved in the rally and raid programmes before sitting down to design the 3.5-litre V10 engine. Jean-Claude Vacaud is in charge of chassis design, responsible for the neat composite materials monocoque constructed by Dassault aerospace, and the curvaceous stying was penned by Gerard Weltier, Peugeot’s chief stylist who was the ‘W’ in WM.

The Peugeot’s credentials are excellent, and the 905 was a credit to the French manufacturer when it first appeared at Montreal last October. Keke Rosberg made full use of the 12,000 rpm available to him to bring a new sound to sports car racing. The nimble, shrill Peugeot made the Mercedes C11 look like a truck, although the tables were turned in the high-altitude race in Mexico City, where even Antoine Salamin’s Porsche made the 905 seem slow past the pits.

Peugeot’s own longitudinal six-speed gearbox has been very troublesome, and M Todt admitted that seven boxes broke in a recent test at Jerez. The parent group, PSA, has made its resources available to Todt and it will surely be only a matter of weeks before the transmission problems are cured.

The engine has been extremely reliable almost from day one, and during the winter the power has been raised by 10%. From what, to what we are not told exactly, but as 600 bhp was the ball-park figure in Montreal, then 660 bhp is acceptable now. Remember, this is on strictly controlled fuel, better than a premium commercial grade but well short of the so-called rocket fuel that’s used in Formula 1, boosting power levels to a rumoured 700 bhp.

Keke Rosberg, the lead driver easily lured from his bored life of retirement, knew how much work had to be done on the 905 to make it competitive. The car was prone to porpoising, an aerodynamic phenomenom noticed on the straights, particularly when the undertray isn’t correctly designed. Tim Wright, ex-McLaren engineer, was hired last November to solve the problem but even now he admits that the 905 still isn’t quite right. Just the same, the second evolution car has lapped the Ricard circuit in 1min 11.3 sec, 1.3 secs quicker than the 905 was going before Christmas.

Improvements will be due to a combination of the increase in power, the reduction in weight, and an impressive 20% reduction in the Cx figure (frontal area x drag). A factor of 20% seems almost too good to be true, but Wright observes, “Not if you consider what we started with.”

The 905’s weight has been reduced from 840 kg initially to 810 kg in Mexico, and M de Cortanze predicts that the race cars built for the European races in May (Monza on May 5, Silverstone on May 19 and Ricard on May 26) will weigh 760 kg, or a comfortable 10 kg above the minimum. Four-wheel steering is allowed for in the design, but only the front wheels are steered at present through an hydraulic power-assisted system.

Joining Rosberg in the team are his co-driver, Yannick Dalmas, World Champion Mauro Baldi and his co-driver, Philippe Alliot. Jean-Pierre Jabouille remains on strength as a test driver and consultant, and will compete at Le Mans, and Pierre-Henri Raphanel has also been signed for Le Mans.

If tests in the next couple of weeks show that the gearbox problems are cured, or under control, M Todt is likely to decide to run three cars at Le Mans, and in that case the names of three more drivers will be announced shortly. It doesn’t seem very likely that Peugeot will win the 24-Hour classic this year, against last year’s heavy, but suitable “unlimited” Group C cars.

Victory could go to a Jaguar XJR-12, a Mercedes C11, perhaps a Nissan if the Japanese are allowed in, even a Porsche as an outside chance. . . . but none of them will be allowed anywhere near Le Mans in 1992 if FISA has anything to do with it, and Peugeot’s management certainly has its sights on a 24-hour victory in 1992, or 1993.

Mercedes C291