Cosworth GBA

Cosworth GBA
Overview
Manufacturer	Ford-Cosworth
Designer	Keith Duckworth Geoff Goddard
Production	1986–1987
Layout
Configuration	120° V6
Displacement	1.5 L (1,498 cc)
Cylinder bore	77 mm (3.0 in)
Piston stroke	53.6 mm (2.1 in)
Valvetrain	24-valve, DOHC, four-valves per cylinder
Combustion
Turbocharger	Garrett
Fuel system	Indirect sequential fuel injection
Output
Power output	900–1,200 hp (671–895 kW)
Torque output	approx. 470–630 lb⋅ft (637–854 N⋅m)
Chronology
Predecessor	Ford Cosworth DFV
Successor	Ford Cosworth DFR

The Ford Cosworth GBA is an extremely powerful turbocharged V6 racing engine, designed and developed by Cosworth, in partnership with Ford, for use in Formula One, from 1986 to 1987. The customer engine was raced by both Lola and Benetton. In the registration lists it appeared under the designations Ford TEC or Ford TEC-Turbo. The GBA was the only supercharged Formula 1 engine that Cosworth and Ford had in the so-called turbo era, and at the same time the last new development to be used before turbo engines were banned in 1989. The Cosworth GBA competed in 1986 and 1987. Only available to selected Formula 1 teams, it did not score a win in a Formula 1 World Championship round.

Nomenculture

Internally, the turbo engine bears the designation Cosworth GBA. The letter combination "GB" was intended to tie in with the Cosworth GA, Cosworth's first V6 engine from 1973, and to express that the new engine was the second Cosworth unit with this configuration. Apart from that, there was no relationship between the GA and the GB. The 3.4-liter GA was based on the Ford Essex block and was intended for use in touring car racing (Group 2).

To the public, the Cosworth GBA was marketed as the Ford TEC, TEC-Turbo, or TEC-F1; he also appeared in the entry lists for Formula 1 races. The letter combination TEC stood for Turbo Engine Cosworth.

Development history and background

The engine manufacturer Cosworth, founded in 1958 by Keith Duckworth and Mike Costin, in partnership with Ford represented in the Formula One World Championship from 1967 with the 3.0 liter naturally aspirated DFV engine. The DFV, was freely accessible to all teams and dominated Formula One in the 1970s. With 155 world championship races won, 12 drivers' and 10 constructors' titles between the DFV's winning debut with Jim Clark and Lotus at the 1967 Dutch Grand Prix and the DFY's final win at Detroit in 1983, it is the most successful engine in the history of Formula One. Ford remains, to this day, the 3rd most successful engine manufacturer in F1 history behind Mercedes and Ferrari despite leaving the sport in 2004. No other manufacturer was able to design a similarly competitive naturally aspirated engine. Only with the advent of turbo engines from 1977 did the DFV gradually fall behind. From 1981, the turbo engines were so powerful and reliable that they were able to win regularly and, a little later, also compete in the world championship. Therefore, in the early 1980s, the top and then also the midfield teams switched to turbo engines. From 1983-1988, all World Drivers' and Constructors' Championships went to drivers and teams with turbo engines.

Cosworth reacted to the emerging turbo wave with a wait-and-see attitude. Keith Duckworth considered the turbocharged engines in Formula One to be inconsistent with the regulations and did not deal with supercharged Formula One engines at all until 1982. A supercharged version of the DFV was created at Cosworth; however, this engine, called DFX, with a displacement of 2.65 liters was only intended for US racing series (CART). In Formula One, on the other hand, the company stayed with the naturally aspirated engine concept for a long time. The DFV was further developed into the DFY, which won again in 1983 (Michele Alboreto for Tyrrell at the Detroit). He could not prevent the loss of importance of the naturally aspirated engine concept. By the start of 1985, only Minardi and Tyrrell had DFV engines, which now produced at least 300 hp less than the least powerful turbocharged engines. And by 2/3's of the way through the season the DFY was gone altogether with Minardi switching to the Italian made Motori Moderni V6 turbo by Round 3 of the season and Tyrrell from Round 7 using the French Renault turbos in at least one of its two cars, and by the 1985 Dutch Grand Prix, 18 years after the DFV's debut, the engine was gone from Formula One.

To highlight the speed difference between the DFY and the turbos, during qualifying for the 1985 French Grand Prix at the Circuit Paul Ricard, on the tracks 1.8 km (1.1 mi) long Mistral Straight, Swiss driver Marc Surer clocked what was at the time the highest speed recorded by a Formula One car when he pushed his turbocharged, Brabham-BMW to 335 km/h (208 mph). This compared to the slowest car in the race, the lone naturally aspirated Tyrrell Ford-Cosworth DFY of Stefan Bellof which could only manage 277 km/h (172 mph).

The DFY's last Grand Prix was not one to remember for the winningest engine at the time in Formula One. Its only entrant, the Tyrrell 012 of British driver Martin Brundle, failed to qualify at the 1985 Austrian Grand Prix held at the high speed Österreichring, a track that highlighted outright power and by this stage the more powerful turbos of BMW, Ferrari and Renault were pushing out well over 1,100 bhp (820 kW; 1,115 PS) in qualifying, over twice the amount of the 530 bhp (395 kW; 537 PS) rated DFY. Brundle's best time had him 11.827 seconds off the pole time set by Alain Prost in the 900 bhp (671 kW; 912 PS) McLaren TAG-Porsche turbo.

Ford had been pushing for the development of a turbo engine for Formula One since 1981. Because of Duckworth's hesitant attitude, Ford temporarily considered cooperation with the German company in this area Racing team Zakspeed, who had experience with turbocharged engines for more than ten years. When Duckworth finally agreed to develop a turbo engine in the summer of 1984, Ford decided to continue working with Cosworth. Development work on the Cosworth Turbo began in the fall of 1984 when all of the top teams had turbocharged engines. The process was not linear. In the first phase, Cosworth designed an inline four-cylinder engine derived from the Cosworth BDA and based on an engine block from the Ford Escort. Over the course of the year, unsolvable problems with the load capacity of the crankshaft arose. So Duckworth gave up the four-cylinder project after about 4 months of development in which 5 different BDA engines all experienced the same crankshaft issues when the engine was turbocharged. In September 1984 the decision was made for a second concept, which meant a complete redesign. Cosworth opted for a six-cylinder V-engine, which received the designation GBA internally.

The development of the GBA was led by Cosworth's Chief Race Engine Designer Geoff Goddard with Duckworth helping to design the engine (Duckworth would be publicly credited with the engine's design). The first drawings were made in December 1984, and the first prototype ran on the test bench on August 1, 1985. In February 1986 the first test drives took place at Boreham Proving Ground. Two months later the engine made its debut in a Formula One race at the 1986 San Marino Grand Prix with 1980 World Drivers' Champion, Australia's Alan Jones at the wheel. Jones qualified in 21st place but failed to finish the race due to overheating, the result of a holed radiator.

The engine was only used in 1986 and 1987. A total of 25 blocks were built, which Cosworth took care of, unlike in the case of the DFV. In 1987, Cosworth employed about 100 people for the GBA alone. When the FIA imposed strict regulations for turbo engines for the 1988 season and, among other things, reduced the permissible boost pressure to 2.5 bar, Ford discontinued the GBA program: The new rules would have required extensive adjustments to the engine, which since turbo engines were completely banned from 1989 was considered uneconomical. Cosworth concentrated in the future again on naturally aspirated engines: For the preferred customer Benetton. The DFZ was developed for 1987 and would be available for the smaller customer teams through to the end of 1988. Benetton had exclusive use of the upgraded DFR for 1988, but that engine would become ubiquitous by 1989 with the DFZ no longer in use. By mid-1989, Benetton would have exclusive use of the new HB series Ford-Cosworth V8's.

The Cosworth GBA was a compact V6 engine that was 450mm long and 510mm high. With regard to the number of cylinders, Cosworth was based on the successful TAG engine from Porsche. However, at 120 degrees, it was more in line with the 120 degree V6 that Ferrari had been running since 1981 rather than the 80 degree TAG-Porsche or the 90 degree Honda's and Renault's, which were designed to be particularly narrow with a view to profiled underbodies. Because smooth underbodies were mandatory from 1983, Cosworth no longer had to take such aspects into account. The engine block and cylinder heads were made of aluminium alloy. The cylinder heads were different from the British Hart 415T detachable. The displacement was 1498 cm³. Cosworth did not disclose bore and stroke dimensions. Outside engineers estimate values of 78 mm (bore) × 52.18 mm (stroke). The cylinder running surfaces were coated with Nikasil. Each cylinder had two intakes and two exhaust valves. The valves were at an angle of 40 degrees to each other. There were two overhead camshafts for each bank of cylinders, driven by chains for the first time since the Repco engines of the late 1960s. The GBA had twin turbochargers designed by Garrett, operating in a single stage. The ignition system was supplied by Magneti Marelli. The pistons came from Mahle. The engine electronics were a Ford development (EEC-IV) in conjunction with Motorola.

The first engines had a compression ratio of 6.5:1. Over the course of the season, Cosworth gradually increased the compression ratio to 7.5:1 and eventually to 8.0:1. After starting at 700 hp for qualifying, the engines increased to around 1000 hp towards the end of the 1986 season. In the second half of the 1987 season, this achievement was finally achieved in the race. The performance of the Cosworth engines was thus slightly higher than that of the Honda engines.

Racing inserts

Unlike the DFV, the GBA was not a commonly available engine. The decision as to which teams were allowed to use the TEC turbo rested exclusively with Ford. For the years 1986 to 1988, Ford awarded the engine exclusively to Team Haas (USA), based in Colnbrook near Heathrow in west London. Cosworth was critical of the decision because while Haas had a solid history in American CART racing (indeed, the Newman/Haas Racing teams CART driver was 1978 World Champion Mario Andretti), its Formula One debut would not be until late in the 1985 season. In Ford's opinion, the prospect of financial support from the Beatrice group (also sponsors of the Haas CART team) initially spoke in favor of Haas, which ultimately only came about to a very limited extent. In fact, Haas only used the engine in 1986. With Beatrice pulling its sponsorship midway through 1986, the Formula One team only lasted until the end of the year.

At the end of the year, team founder Carl Haas sold his team's company (FORCE - Formula One Race Car Engineering) and equipment to Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, who was also the owner of the Brabham team. With Brabham losing its BMW engines after the company pulled out of F1 at the end of 1986 (only allowing Brabham to use their engines in 1987 to honor their contract), Ecclestone wanted to use this detour to forward the GBA engines to Brabham for 1987 and 1988 access. However, Ford terminated the engine contract with Haas, so that ultimately neither Haas nor Ecclestone had access to the turbos. The Cosworth GBA instead went to the Benetton team in 1987, who used it in two cars that season. In 1988 the TEC-F1 was no longer used.

Team Haas

The TEC made its debut in the 1986 San Marino Grand Prix with Team Haas (USA), alternatively referred to in the media as Haas-Lola, Beatrice, Beatrice-Lola, or FORCE-Lola. Haas has been active in Formula One since 1985. The team had contested its first season with British turbo engines from Hart. Haas also started the second season with Hart engines. Drivers were Alan Jones and Patrick Tambay. At the third race of the season in Imola, the Cosworth GBA was ready for use, but initially, the team only had one engine available. The team only had one of the new THL2 cars available with Jones getting the drive while Tambay had to race the old Hart powered THL1 one last time. Although Jones was the senior driver in the team not only being the first signed, but also having won 12 races and a World Championship compared to only 2 wins for Tambay, the Frenchman felt that he should have been given the first race of the new Ford V6 as he had done most of the pre-season testing with the new engine while most of the testing Jones did was in Rio with the race team and the older THL1.

At Imola the new THL2 with its Ford engine was clearly inferior to the old THL1 with the team finally getting some good speed from the Hart turbo in its swansong race. In qualifying, Jones was almost three seconds slower than Tambay. In the race, Jones retired after 28 laps with an overheated engine. From Monaco, both Haas cars started with the Cosworth turbo. During the 1986 season, the THL2 suffered from a lack of power from the Ford turbo with both Jones and Tambay lamenting Ford and Cosworth continually turning down their requests to build special, more powerful qualifying engines. Another major part of the problem was reliability. Jones retired ten times out of 14 races with the car, Tambay just as often out of 13 races. However, there were also three finishes in the points: Jones finished fourth at the Austrian Grand Prix, and in the subsequent race in Italy he finished sixth. Tambay took fifth place in Austria. In the warm-up for the Canadian Grand Prix, Tambay crashed after a driving error. He sustained injuries to his feet that prevented him from racing in Montréal and a week later in Detroit. In the US, Eddie Cheever took over instead the second car from Haas. Overall, Haas scored six championship points in 1986 and finished eighth in the constructors' championship. Already in the early summer of 1986, the end of the racing team became apparent. The reason for this was on the one hand the sporting results, which fell short of the - unrealistically high - expectations, on the other hand, the team's economic difficulties. The 1987 season would have required a new sponsor, which Haas could not find. In October 1986, Haas shut down the racing team.

During qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix at the fast Monza Circuit, Alan Jones claimed to have had a heated discussion with engine designer Keith Duckworth about the need for qualifying engines. Jones claimed he was able to point out the "block of flats" rear wings run by Benetton (BMW), Williams (Honda), Arrows (BMW) and Ferrari, yet the slowest of them, the Ferrari F1/86 of Michele Alboreto, was still around 20 km/h (12 mph) faster in a straight line than the Lola's which were running the bare minimum wing settings for speed on the straights while still having some grip in the turns. With the lack of straight line speed, the closest time either driver could post to Teo Fabi's pole winning BMW powered Benetton B186 was Tambay who was 3.73 seconds slower. Despite this, Duckworth, Ford and Cosworth still refused to budge on qualifying engines.

Benetton

The British racing team Benetton Formula emerged from the Toleman team in 1986. While Toleman had used Hart engines for six years, in his first season Benetton started and scored a win with customer engines from BMW, which Mader serviced. For the 1987 season, Benetton received the Cosworth GBA engines exclusively. The emergency vehicle was the Rory Byrne-designed Benetton B187, a development of the previous year's BMW-powered B186. Drivers throughout the season were Teo Fabi and Thierry Boutsen. In Cosworth's opinion, Benetton was structurally better positioned than Haas, so efficient further development of the turbo engine was possible.

Boutsen and Fabi almost always qualified for the first five rows with the Cosworth GBA. The best qualifying result was Boutsen's third starting position in the penultimate race in Japan, plus several fourth starting positions. Boutsen finished nine times and Fabi seven times. After numerous technical failures at the beginning of the season, most of the drivers reached the finish line in the second half of the year. Boutsen finished nine, Fabi seven races with finishes. The Benetton-Fords scored regularly. Both drivers finished third once (Fabi in Austria, Boutsen after the disqualification of Ayrton Senna in Japan). There were also three fourth and five fifth places. At the end of the year, Benetton was fifth in the constructors' championship with 28 points. In the hands of Boutsen, the GBA actually led two F1 races in 1987. The Belgian driver briefly led the season opening Brazilian Grand Prix for half a lap (though he wasn't counted as leading a lap as he never led over the start/finish line), while he would later lead for 13 laps of the Mexican Grand Prix.

Applications

• Lola THL2
• Benetton B187

Gallery

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