The #F1 Bar Exam: 12 December 2013

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Welcome to another edition of TheJudge13 F1 Bar Exam.

Since John is out of town, the F1 Bar exam comes from the Fat Hippo this week.

Last week’s question(s): Can you name the car (team and model) in the picture. Can you also name the year(s) in which it was raced and who the racing drivers were. Also, how many constructors points was scored in the year(s) the car was raced?

The answer(s) John was looking for were: The car in the picture is the Arrows A8 which the Arrows team used to compete in the 1985 and 1986 Formula One seasons. It was powered by the BMW M12 turbocharged engine looked after by Swiss engine guru Heini Mader.

The car made its debut at the 1985 Brazilian Grand Prix with drivers Gerhard Berger and Thierry Boutsen. Berger moved to Benetton in 1986 and was replaced by Marc Surer. After the first 5 races Surer was replaced by Christian Danner who drove the remainder of the season.

The A8 placed 8th in the 1985 Constructors’ Championship on 14 points which included a podium finish for Thierry Boutsen at Imola where he placed 3rd but was later moved to 2nd when winner Alain Prost’s McLaren was disqualified for being underweight. This proved to be the A8’s high point as it was never again driven to a podium finish.

Arrows and the ageing A8 could only place 10th in the Constructors’ Championship final standings in 1986 with Christian Danner scoring a point for 6th place at the 1986 Austrian Grand Prix.

While Heini Mader did a good job in maintaining the team’s BMW engines, they lacked the power of the same engines powering the Brabham and later Benetton teams as those particular engines were continually maintained by BMW, giving them access to new parts, information and factory backed development that Mader did not have. This was shown in the results as the Arrows-BMWs rarely out-qualified or out-raced the Brabhams or Benettons.

Well done to : Joe Papp (who’s answer was so comprehensive it is used almost verbatim as the published answer), The 13th Duke and Jim Charlesworth

This week’s question(s): 

This week we don’t have a false-color picture, mainly because the Hippo’s fingers are way too thick to operate a graphics program. Instead we’ll do a little association game. Which team ran a car that looked like that:

385_dc912a25

When and how long did they run it, with which drivers and who came up with the idea?

Please provide your answers in the field below.

17 responses to “The #F1 Bar Exam: 12 December 2013”

  1. I’m confused as to why this car is the A8 and not the A9. All the other pictures on the internet of the A8 show a much wider nose in the front and the pictures of the A9 show the very narrow nose. Looking at the races from Austria and Hungry in 1986 where the A9 was raced both show the A9 looking like the car pictured. The car retired from both races and there are good pictures showing it.

    Also, the wide red stripe across the front and going down the side seems to me to be distinctive for the A9.

    I did an internet search for the picture:) I could only find it at one website and I think it is mislabeled. Every other picture of that car labels it as the A9. However, I know you can’t believe everything you see on the internet and if anyone could tell me the differences between the two cars I would appreciate it.

    • I never saw the pic of the A9 at F1 Fanatic (cheater lol 😉 before submitting A8 as the answer, but this is one of the ones I looked at and I thought it was painted in the proper livery w/ red stripe (and labeled A8):

      http://www.flickr.com/photos/chakrauk/2842759767/

      I also didn’t think John would try to be cute and ask for # of points scored if it was in fact the A9, which of course has zero points. Of course, the fact that it was written “constructors points was scored …” instead of “constructors points were scored…” didn’t help! lol…

      I admit though that I didn’t look at specific photos from 1986 season for after the A8 was returned to service to see if they were running the nose that was wider, as you noted, from 1985, or if they had modified the car’s aero package.

      Will be good to get some clarity since this was a challenging question.

      • I didn’t see this picture before I submitted my answer – I only found it later while researching if I’d been mistaken in thinking it was an A9 instead of an A8. I also looked at the u-tube footage later from the races where the A9 was raced and it did indeed have the narrow nose. The Arrows were racing at the back of the field so it was hard to see the A8 at the same races. They showed the A9 in the pits as it retired.

        I made my decision initially from looking at the different Arrows models on Wikipedia. I knew it was a BMW Arrows but there weren’t many pictures of the A9 so I hadn’t seen the narrow nose one until I went through all the different models. I also have a book showing all the Formula 1 cars and it also had the two different Arrows for 1986 showing clearly the different noses on the two.

        The A10 went on to have the narrow nose as well which was interesting. Neither the A8 or the A10 have three side-pod gills that the A9 has.

        This was a very interesting challenge especially with analyzing the differences in the nose between the models. I had been confused for quite a while as most of the pictures showed the wide nose which didn’t fit the picture given.

        I was interested to see in why others thought it was the A8 though as I still have lots to learn:)

        • Hello there taflach!

          “Neither the A8 or the A10 have three side-pod gills that the A9 has.”

          Not to confuse matters more, but doesn’t the A9 have four side-pod gills, as shown in this photo:

          http://www.flickr.com/photos/steveharris/7896770154/

          W/r/t the original competition photo, I know only three side pod gills are clearly visible but I thought the fourth/first could be hidden behind the right front wheel based on the photo angle, or not visible b/c of the photo doctoring.

          Regardless, as you said it was a very interesting challenge and a pleasant distraction.

          Cheers.

  2. no idea about this week’s exam, but very psyched to hear I was one of those who figured it out correctly last week! I had a great time looking into that. Thanks for hearing me plead, Your Honor!

    • If you look closely at the picture of last week, even with the falsified colours, you can see an extra bulge (possibly exhaust?) on the airbox, which the A9 didn’t have. Also the “gills” in the sidepod were smaller on the A9.
      But I’ll leave the final verdict to John, when he’s back as he was the one, who forwarded the answers to me.

      • Looking at John’s photo again, the helmet is obviously the same Bell model featuring in all of the pics of the A9 from the Goodwood festival like this one: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfcat/8573401106/

        WIll be interesting to hear if John meant to use a pic of the A8 and accidentally used one of the A9 or if there’s something else to consider. Regardless, it was fun. Cheers!

  8. That’s not a car but the man behind the wheel. It’s Keke ‘nico’s dad’ Rosberg from the era when F1 drivers look like men not boys.

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