F1’s iconic cars: The Ferrari 312 by Giorgio Piola

Next year will be Giorgio Piola’s 50th year in the sport – having covered over 800 GPs, he’s one of the longest serving journalists to ever grace the F1 paddock. This gives him a unique insight into the ever-changing landscape of the sport and perhaps, more importantly, an uninterrupted vision of the physical transformation the cars have undergone. For more details about Piola's work, and prints available to buy, click here. We start our journey in 1974, a decade on from Ferrari’s last F1 World Championship success, during a time period that had seen the Scuderia struggle against teams that Enzo Ferrari had previously coined ‘Garagiste! Assembliatore!’ Ferrari had become an outlier, as it competed in a field made up predominantly of cars running the Cosworth DFV V8, while it was the only team to run a flat-12, a design it had been using since 1970, under the stewardship of technical director Mauro Forghieri. Niki Lauda, Ferrari, talks with Mauro Forghieri, Ferrari Designer and Luca di Montezemolo, Ferrari Team Manager Photo by: Sutton Images Forghieri is an iconic figure, not only at Maranello, where he helped to steer the team to eight world championships and four drivers’ titles, but also in the sport in general. He oversaw the design of every part on the car, in an era when, he’s even jokingly admitted, it had to be done with “a tape measure and a hammer”. The Italian had planned a revolutionary new design for the 312 in 1973, installing the radiators in sidepods, much like Lotus had done. But unlike his opposition, they were still to be fed air from the nose. This led to an unusual design which earned it the moniker ‘Spazzaneve’ or snowplough, such was its ungainly appearance (below), and while the team tested the design at the end of 1972 it never actually raced. Lorenzo Prandina, 1972 Ferrari 312 B3S Spazzaneve Photo by: Dave Dyer Internal strife at Ferrari, including wranglings over the direction of their racing department, saw Forghieri moved to Ferrari’s experimental department for ’73, while the 312B3’s design for that year was overseen by Sandro Colombo instead. Ferrari 312B3 1973 detailed overview Photo by: Giorgio Piola Excerpt from Autosport SEPTEMBER 5, 1974... Suffice it is to say, the B3 in its original form was built in Britain by former March employee John Thompson at his Northampton premises during the winter months at the end of 1972. Ferrari had commissioned Thompson to build the monocoque following the failure of its projected "snow plough"-nosed B3 in testing during the latter half of 1972. Until the B3 made its debut at the Spanish Grand Prix at the end of April last year, Ferrari relied on its proven, but by now, uncompetitive B2 design. Ferrari 312B3 front mounted radiator Photo by: Giorgio Piola Two B3s appeared at the Montjuich circuit for team leader Jacky Ickx – the original Thompson-built chassis in its side-radiatored form and the other, which Ickx elected to race, hastily converted to front-radiator guise (above), the reasoning being that the other car overheated. The chassis "turned out to be rather a long, wide design, a characteristic which the team evidently feel to be a fault because they were making excuses," according to Grand Prix reporter Pete Lyons. Despite Ickx qualifying it sixth on the grid and running sixth until half distance when he made a pit stop to "have his brakes bled," it looked an encouraging start for such a new car. It was destined not to be so. Forghieri returns The 1973 B3 was a disaster and following another round of internal politics within the Ferrari ranks, which saw its sportscar division disbanded, Forghieri was reinstated and immediately set about resurrecting its fortunes. Having missed the Dutch and German GPs, the team arrived in Austria with its ‘Mark 3’ variant of the B3 albeit without Ickx in tow as he’d quit the team in protest at missing the German GP. The Mk3 was a total overhaul – Forghieri and his team moved back toward his first vision for the B3 and installed the radiators in the side of the car, freeing space around the nose for the first full-width front wing, a design that all of the teams had to move to from there on. Meanwhile, the periscope inlets at the rear of the car were replaced by a tall airbox, allowing the flat-12 to breathe more freely. The new bodywork at the rear of the car, including the airbox, changed the airflow received by the rear wing and so that was changed too, as the oil coolers were moved into the sidepods. Ferrari 312B3 evolution Photo by: Giorgio Piola Piola created three cutaway drawings of the B3, which we must remember took 30-40 hours of painstaking work to craft each. The upper of these shows how the team finished out the ‘73 season with the Mk3, the middle is a depiction of the B3-74 that started the season in 1974, while the lower shows us how the car finished out the season. Much like modern development it’s plain to see that the car was almost entirely transformed, with new front and rear wings, enlarged brake ducts, a new wheel rim design, a smoother cockpit and airbox surround, totally revised suspension, a new oil cooler pod fairing and many more smaller, but just as rewarding modifications. This is why the B3-74 can be considered a game changer, not only for Ferrari but the sport in general, as Forghieri’s team moved even further away from the cigar tube-shaped cars of yesteryear and created the first real widebody car. Niki Lauda, Ferrari 312B3-74 Photo by: Sutton Images The ‘sidepods’ encased the long-slanted radiators that helped to resolve the original cooling issues encountered in 1973 with the ‘Spazzaneve’, as air could now be drawn in from behind the front wheels, pass through the radiators and leave via the top-mounted chimneys. This extra girth also enhanced the airflow around the rear wheel too and led to changes to the oil cooler pod design later in the season. Ferrari couldn’t afford to transfer the B3’s woeful handling characteristics across to this car either and so it looked at how it could improve the car’s overall packaging. Extending the cockpit and seating position forward, it installed a larger fuel tank (highlighted in yellow, below) the redistributed some of the car's momentum under acceleration and braking. This led to further suspension geometry changes to improve traction and deal with the issue of weight transference that the B3 had suffered as the fuel burnt off. Ferrari 312B3 1973 vs 312B3 1974 comparison Photo by: Giorgio Piola This had previously been made even more problematic by the continued use of a flat-12 engine, whilst almost the entire field used Cosworth’s more fuel-efficient DFV V8. However, improvements were made during the winter of ’72, as Lauda’s expertise during testing helped improve performance and driveability. Helping the flat-12 breathe more easily, the Scuderia moved to the taller airbox design that had become en vogue too, while adaptations to the front and rear wings helped stabilise the B3-74. The 312B3-74 returned the Scuderia to the top step of the podium on three occasions that season, with Clay Regazzoni and Niki Lauda each collecting second places on three occasions and Regazzoni two third place finishes. But it did not come without the need for serious improvement, with Forghieri’s team making numerous changes to the 74 throughout the season, as we can see in the following gallery… You can now own a piece of this story too, as a collection of posters showing off Giorgio Piola’s magnificent illustrations have been made available for you to own. The Ferrari 312B3-74 from this collection is a full car cutaway, which took approximately 30-40 days to complete at the time, such is the depth of detail on offer: https://www.giorgiopiola.com/amr_en/prints

Series	Formula 1
Teams	Ferrari
Author	Giorgio Piola

Giorgio Piola's F1 technical analysis

F1’s iconic cars: The Ferrari 312 by Giorgio Piola

In this new series of articles we are going to uncover the incredible detail of Formula 1’s most iconic cars, drawing from the huge collection of illustrations painstakingly crafted by Motorsport.com’s legendary illustrator and technical analyst Giorgio Piola.

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