Coloni C3B, 1990, photographed by Auge=mit. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. (credit links at the end of the content)
We continue our journey of bringing back the classic stories of F1. Many teams failed, many drivers came and then vanished, and that is what we do here at CarsRave, bringing those forgotten stories back. However, our next topic is about Subaru in F1 and their brief journey in the world of F1.
When people think about Subaru and motorsport, F1 is probably one of the last things that comes to mind, they became famous for rallying, four-wheel drive and the unmistakable sound of its boxer engines, eventually becoming one of the most recognizable names in the World Rally Championship.
But before Subaru built its own rallying reputation, they made an ambitious attempt to enter F1.
Subaru entered F1 in 1990, through a partnership with the small Italian Coloni team and Motori Moderni, an Italian engine manufacturer led by the experienced designer Carlo Chiti.
Subaru’s Ambitious F1 Plan
Subaru’s decisiton to enter F1 wasn’t simply about going racing, the company wanted to bring its engineering philosophy onto the world stage, the horizontally opposed boxer engine had become closely associated with Subaru’s road cars, rather than abandoning that identity for a conventional V8 or V10 configuration, Subaru wanted to demonstrate that is own engine philosophy could work in F1.
Subaru became involved with Motori Moderni, which had experience producing F1 engines, and acquired a majority stage in the struggling Coloni operation, it was an ambitious project, but there was already a major problem hiding underneath it.
The Subaru 1235 Flat-12 Engine
The Subaru 1235 was perhaps the most fascinating part of the entire project, designed by Carlo Chiti, the engine was a 3.5-liter naturally aspirated flat-12, Subaru believed that the horizontally opposed layout could provide a low center of gravity while maintaining the smoothness and potential performance associated with twelve cylinders.
The idea sounded attractive, the reality was very different.
The engine reportedly produced somewhere in the region of 500 to 560 horsepower, depending on the specification and source, that was nowhere near enough to challenge the leading F1 engines of the period.
Honda, Ferrari and other major manufacturers were producing considerably more power, with the strongest engines comfortably exceeding 650 horsepower, the Subaru engine therefore entered F1 already facing a significant performance deficit, but horsepower wasn’t even its biggest problem.
The Engine Was Simply Too Wide
The fundamental weakness of the Subaru 1235 was its physical size, a flat-12 engine spreads its cylinders horizontally on both sides of the crankshaft, that created a very wide power unit compared with a conventional V8 or V10.
In an era when aerodynamic efficiency was becoming increasingly important, this was a serious disadvantage, F1 designers wanted the rear of the cars to be as narrow as clean as possible, the engine, gearbox and the suspension had to be packaged together in a way that allowed the aerodynamicists to create efficient airflow around the rear of the car.
Subaru’s engine made the extremely difficult, its width interfered with the aerodynamic packaging of the car and made it much harder to create the tight rear bodywork that was becoming increasingly commong, the low center of gravity offered by a flat engine wasn’t enough to compensate for the enormous packaging problems it created!
The Weight Problem
The Subaru 1235 was also extremely heavy, its weight was far greater than that of some of the smaller engines being used by rival teams.
The Subaru 1235 flat-12 weighted around 159 kg in bare form, which was only slightly heavier than the Coswroth DFR V8 for example which was around 155 kg.
However, once Subaru engine was fully equiped with its necessary brackets, cooling system, exhusts and other components, the weight reportedly climbed to more than 270 kg.
By comparison, the complete Cosworth package was around 158 kg, meaning the Subaru powerplan could have been more than 110 kg heavier, adding another major disadantage to an already struggling F1 car.
The Coloni C3B: A Difficult Marriage
The next problem came from the chassis, rather than enterin F1 with a completely new car designed specifically around the Subaru engine, the power unit was installoed into the existing Coloni C3 chassis.
The original Coloni was already a small operation struggling to compete against big teams in F1, now its engineers had to accomodate an unusually wide and heavy engine that created enormous packaging and aerodynamic challenge.
The result was a car that looked compromised almost everywhere, the Subaru engine occupied a huge amount of space inside the chassis, while its weight and dimensions made it difficult to achieve the kind of aerodynamic shape required for modern F1, the team was effectively trying to make an outdated chassis work with a completely unsuitable power unit, it was a difficult engineering problem from the beginning.
Bertrand Gachot Faced an Impossible Task
The only driver for the Coloni-Subaru effort was Bertrand Gachot, he was experienced F1 driver, but there was very little he could do with the car underneath him.
The Coloni C3B was nowhere near the pace required to reach the starting grid, during the early races of the 1990 season, the car struggled even to get through pre-qualifying.
The gap to the competitive teams was enormous sometimes over 10 seconds per lap.
In F1, a driver can occasionally compensate for an imprefect car with extraordinary talent, but there is a limit, Gachnot wasn’t simply driving a car that was slightly slower than the opposition, he was trying to qualify a car that was fundamentally compromised by its engine, chassis and aerodynamic package, the result was far worse than expected.
Eight Races, Zero Starts
They failed to pre-qualify at each of the first eight Grand Prix in which it participated during the 1990 season, that meant the car never even made it onto the starting grid for a F1 race.
Subaru had entered F1 hoping to demonstrate the potential of its distinctive engineering philosophy. Instead, its engine had become associated with a car that couldn’t even qualify, the project wasn’t showing signs of turning around quickly either.
The problems were too deeply connected, more power alone wouldn’t solve the aero problems, better aerodynamics wouldn’t solve the weight problem, a better chassis would still have to accommodate the enormous engine, the entire concept needed a fundamental rethink.
Things would probably have been different for Subaru if they had the chance to build a completely new chassis around the engine. However, once the season had already started, there was simply no time to go back and redesign the entire car. The team was already struggling with the engine’s size and weight, and developing a new chassis from scratch would have taken far more time and resources than they had.
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Why Did Subaru Leave Formula 1 So Quickly?
The failure of the project wasn’t caused by one single problem, it was the combination of an unsuitable engine configuration, inadequate performance, excessive weight, difficult packaging and a partnership that lacked the resources needed to overcome those problems.
Subaru had effectively entered one of the most competitive engineering environments in the world with a power unit that was poorly suited to the direction F1 was taking, the flat-12 concept was particularly problematic because of the aerodynamic demands of the era.
F1 cars were becoming increasingly dependent on carefully controlled airflow around the underside and rear of the car, a wide engine could interfere with that packaging and force designers to compromise other areas of the chassis.
The Coloni team simply didn’t have the resources of McLaren, Williams, Ferrari or other leading organizations to spend years solving such problems, there was no realistic path to competitiveness without a major financial and technical transformation.
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Subaru Walks Away
After eight unsuccessful races, Subaru withdrew from the F1 project. the Italian team subsequently returned to using Cosworth V8 power.
The Subaru 1235 disappeared from F1 almost as quickly as it had arrived.
For Subaru, however, it became something different, the company redirected its attention toward rallying, and that decision would eventually change Subaru’s motorsport history forever.
From Formula 1 Failure to Rallying Success
The irony of the Subaru F1 project is that the company’s greatest motorsport achievements came from almost the opposite philosophy. Instead of trying to compete in F1 with a large, naturally aspirated flat-12, Subaru increasingly focused on rallying with compact turbocharged boxer engines and four-wheel-drive tech.
The World Rally Championship was a more natural environment for Subaru’s engineering identity, the boxer engine remained, four wheel drive became central to the company’s competition cars.
The Subaru team went on to become one of the most famous teams in rally history, with legendary drivers and iconic blue-and-gold cars becoming a defining image of the WRC during the 1990s and beyond, in that sense, the failure in F1 didn’t end Subaru’s motorsport ambitions.
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Featured image credits: Coloni C3B, 1990, Auge=mit. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
