Niki Lauda and Mauro Forghieri, technical director of the Scuderia during the 1970s, had many discussions about how to achieve F1 glory. It’s 33 years since they won the second of their two world drivers’ titles together, and we’ve reunited the former colleagues to uncover the secrets behind this remarkable partnership
Believe it or not, there was an era when for six long years Ferrari was able to dominate Formula One without the class of Schumacher, without the constructive genius of Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne, or the rigorous organisation of Jean Todt. Before the golden age of Schumacher, the most consistent string of victories for Ferrari was during the 1970s. This was when Maranello was building the generation of 312T single-seaters, characterised by the transverse gearbox. More significantly it marked the arrival of what would remain the longest-lived and symbolic engine of the Cavallino’s history: the 12-cylinder boxer 3.0-litre engine; a powerplant born of the genius of Mauro Forghieri and for which the greatest driver was Niki Lauda. The brains and brawn of a very long string of successes in F1, Lauda and Forghieri formed an inseparable twosome at Maranello for just over four years. The supremacy of the Ferrari boxer engine characterised the entire decade from 1970 to 1980 and was to a great extent the result of their hard work.
Today Forghieri and Lauda smile when recalling those years. For one day, designer and driver came together again to share memories of those battles on the track and, above all, the unseen winter testing that helped get the revolutionary engine up and running.
Ferrari’s victorious 12-cylinder engine was a concentration of technology and represented an aboutturn for Ferrari in F1 after a dark period at the end of the 1960s. The boxer lasted for 11 long seasons on F1’s demanding circuits, more than any other Ferrari engine in the modern era. It powered nine different racing cars: from the first 312 B of 1970 to the unfortunate T5 of 1980; it also contested 155 Grands Prix enabling Ferrari to gain 41 pole positions, 37 victories, three World Drivers’ Titles and four Constructors’ titles. At least 12 F1 drivers – from Jacky Ickx to Clay Regazzoni, from Jody Scheckter to Gilles Villeneuve – drove that fabulous engine. But none of them had the success of Lauda who won 15 of Ferrari’s 37 victories with the 12-cylinder engine powering the car.
The 12-cylinder, 3.0-litre boxer was created in the winter of 1968-’69 and was a product of Forghieri’s intuition. As technical director of Ferrari, he understood that a technological about-turn was needed for the new decade and started work on the design of an engine with opposing cylinders, as it would lower the centre of gravity of the single-seater. The ‘flat’ configuration also enabled the height of the car’s drive-train to be lowered as it enabled the air to flow smoothly over the rear wing and get increased downforce, the effectiveness of which was only just beginning to be understood. Forghieri had another objective in mind in designing the new engine: to reduce internal friction to a minimum. This unfortunately led to a considerable loss of power and made the V12 of the time uncompetitive against the Ford Cosworth V8 – the strong point of which was its mechanical efficiency. As a result, Forghieri decided to design an engine with opposing cylinders – in theory a 180-degree V – with some exclusive solutions, such as four main bearings instead of the traditional seven on the crankshaft as it helped improve mechanical efficiency. This new engine immediately showed itself to be capable of reaching exceptionally high revs. ‘It was designed to reach 13,600rpm,’ explains Forghieri, ‘but the technology of the time, in particular the ignition (Dinoplex) and the mechanical injection (Lucas), was not able to sustain such high revs. So we had to restrict ourselves to what the technology allowed. Initially the engine produced about 460bhp at 11,500rpm, but by mid way through the 1970s we were achieving 530bhp at 12,500rpm.’ Today Forghieri disputes the label with which his 12-cylinder engine became famous. ‘Don’t call it ‘boxer’,’ maintains the great designer. ‘Technically it is a ‘flat’ 12-cylinder [engine] or, if you like, a 12-cylinder with the banks of the V at 180 degrees. The difference is that the corresponding connecting rods of each bank are on the same journal, so the pistons move in the same direction – while in an actual boxer they move in the opposite direction.’
Lauda intervenes. ‘I remember really very well the first time that I drove that engine,’ he says. ‘It was at Fiorano, in the autumn of 1973. Forghieri was there as were Commendatore Ferrari and his son Piero. The engine was exceptional. I came from BRM which had a 12-cylinder V engine but the Ferrari was incredible. [It was] much more driveable. [It had] much more power, much higher revs. And, above all, the noise: it was unique. Fantastic. It was a very pleasant noise. Very different from the terrible noise of the V8 Cosworth. A noise that was almost sexy. Even the vibrations were pleasant. They transmitted a sense of power.’ Forghieri retorts. ‘Yes, but Niki do you remember what you said about the car, the B3, after that first test?’ ‘Yes,’ says Lauda. ‘It had a lot of understeer…’
‘That’s right,’ states Forghieri. ‘Did you hear that? This was the early Lauda. The one who arrived at Ferrari at the end of ’73. He was technically ignorant. He could only say: “there is understeer,” or “there is oversteer”. And I told him: Niki, it’s not enough. You must be more precise and more specific.
‘Lauda changed during that long winter of 1973-1974. We worked all day at the track, with him and Regazzoni at Fiorano. [We were] driving, developing and sorting out the racing car from nine in the morning until eight in the evening. Very often Niki was driving in the pitch black,’ says Forghieri with a wry smile. ‘At that time in Fiorano there was a system of 29 photocells on the circuit that showed the intermediate times between each corner. A forerunner of the modern telemetry. From today’s point of view it was a rudimentary system, but it enabled us to understand whether you were driving well or badly: if you got a corner wrong and where. While Regazzoni went away when he had finished testing, Lauda got hold of that long printout of intermediate times and spent hours analysing it to understand where he could improve. This is why he became such a great driver. Do you remember Niki?’ ‘Yes, I remember,’ replies Lauda. ‘I also remember that I had blisters on my bottom from driving so much.
However Mauro understood immediately what the problem was with that Ferrari: the weight distribution. So he opened up the body and moved the weight forward. From that moment the Ferrari B3 became very strong. And in ’74 I won two races with the B3. And I still complained about the understeer.’ Then the 312T arrived in 1975. The perfect singleseater. The car that gave Lauda and Ferrari their first world F1 title of the decade. ‘The T was a developed B3,’ recalls Forghieri. ‘We worked very hard to improve the roll centre and the aerodynamics. And the transverse gearbox, the reason for the letter T, enabled us to completely eliminate the imbalance in the drive-train and optimise the weight distribution. This made it a winning car.’ ‘The engine and gearbox of that racing car were fantastic,’ admits Lauda, ‘but I also remember that the T had exceptional handling. It was much easier to drive. And in the wet it gave an incredible feeling. That year I won many races. Except for the debut in Spain – at Montjuich – where I had an accident.’ ‘Some accident,’ interjects an ironic Forghieri.
‘That time you and Clay were on the front row and you crashed into each other at the first corner!’ ‘Yes, but it wasn’t my fault,’ retorts Lauda with wounded pride, ‘it was Andretti who hit me, while under braking, making me crash into Regazzoni.’ This is the sort of banter that sums up the relationship between Forghieri and Lauda during their racing years: great respect and collaboration but also great quarrels, followed unfailingly by sincere reconciliation. ‘I remember one discussion in particular,’ says Lauda. ‘[It was] in Barcelona, when in testing he criticised me – telling me that my trajectory in the corners was not accurate. Offended, I replied: ‘who told you this?’ And do you know what he said to me? That it was his wife’s doctor who told him that he had seen me driving badly in a corner! What kind of opinion could that be?’ Forghieri, however, is quick to jump to Lauda’s defence about his actions at the infamous Japanese GP, at Fuji, in 1976. It was the race in which Lauda withdrew because of excessive rain: a decision that ultimately led to James Hunt winning the World Drivers’ Championship and which upset many Ferrari fans, despite Lauda returning so soon after the dreadful accident at the Nürburgring in which he almost died.
‘What happened that year at Fuji is very clear,’ remembers Lauda. ‘That Sunday it had rained all day – the track was flooded and everyone agreed not to race, to delay the start. However the race director forced us to start, maintaining that otherwise it would have become dark and it would not have been possible to finish the GP. In my opinion you could not race. Therefore I told everyone that I would do just one lap and I would then stop. And everyone agreed to do that, even [Emerson] Fittipaldi.’
‘It’s true,’ comments Forghieri. ‘I went to each of the drivers on the grid and everyone agreed that they would stop immediately after the off. Then when they started their engines and lowered their visors, the drivers forgot their intentions and carried on with the race. All except Niki who stopped in the pits as expected. For me everyone plotted against us.’ At the time, and in order to defend Lauda from repercussions, Forghieri was prepared to tell a lie and pretend there was a technical fault in order to rescue his driver from the ensuing press coverage about how a World Championship could be lost in such an extraordinary way. But Lauda was not ashamed and wanted to tell the truth. His gesture led to all sorts of disputes. Especially in Italy. The mouthpiece of the popular dissent against the Ferrari driver, who had thrown away a world title when all he needed was a place at Fuji, was the magazine Autosprint. It launched a press campaign with a disparaging cartoon in which Lauda was depicted as a rabbit – an allusion to his (alleged) cowardice. ‘What did I think at that time?’ says Lauda, indignantly. ‘It is very easy: all the rest of the world, and especially the magazine Autosprint, understood nothing about the true reason why Ferrari lost the World Championship. Today I would take the same decision because on that day it was impossible to drive. But none of the critics, starting with the elderly Sabbatini who was the director of Autosprint at that time, really asked themselves why it happened. All they wanted to do was to get me.’ ‘And to get me,’ adds Forghieri, ‘because Ferrari read Autosprint and believed what Sabbatini wrote…’ ‘However I must admit,’ adds Lauda, ‘that in those races at the end of ’76 I was different. The accident two months before had left its mark on me. I felt I was in difficulty. Only by the first races in 1977 did I start to feel like I did before the accident. And I won the World Championship back.’
Published on The Official Ferrari Magazine issue 8, March 2010
PUBLISHED IN HOME, RACES BY ALBERTO SABBATINI ON 06.25.2011
Credit: Ferrari S.p.A. (www.ferrari.com)
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