1990s F1 cars - where are they?

[matherto]

I'm a product of 1990's F1 fandom.

Born in 1990, I remember getting a model of Mansell's FW14B that I treasured more than anything as a very, very young child.

I have vague memories of watching the later rounds of 1993 but my first full season was 1994. Morbid curiosity and the fact it was my first season means that remains my favourite one.

The cars of the 1990's are to me, the definition of F1. If you were to ask me to draw a stereotypical car, it'd be 1990's shaped with some form of cigarette or alcohol livery. They always looked amazing, even the 1995 McLaren...honest...

Anyway, I know McLaren keep a huge selection of their old cars in storage. I know Williams have their museum and also a heritage department dedicated to getting their older cars running and maintaining them. Ferrari have the F1 Clienti program too. Honda have their collection hall with several McLaren and Williams cars.

I know there are museums like the Donington collection and the one at Mondello Park too that have a wide range of cars from that era.

BOSS series has a couple of cars too, usually Benettons like the B197 or a Jordan or two.

I was just wondering if people knew where each chassis' was for each year during the decade?

For instance, I know one of Schumacher's 1994 B194 was for sale (famously the ad included traction control) and that it was one of 8 chassis that year.

Surely they all still exist? Even the smaller teams created a few chassis a year?

I don't know of all the ones stored in museums though I have seen photos of a few Larrousse and other French cars in a museum in France and I think the Barber Motorsports Park in America has a museum with a couple of Lotus (including a 109) but where are the rest?

I'd love to get a list of each car for each year sorted. Is there anyone on here with knowledge of where a specific car might be?

[spider]

https://racecarsdirect.com/SubCatego...ce-cars?page=2

Always interesting to see what comes up on here...Hill's Brabham is currently listed

[Formulahistory]

I heard that Frits van Eerd owns more than 70 F1 cars from the 90s.

[bella]

there was a chap with a huge collection of benettons, but i think he decided to sell up?

[Oldtony]

Visited the "Concord & Concordski on a stick" museum at Simshiem in 03.
At that time they had a fair number of then fairly recent F1 cars on show.
Are they still there?

[Sodemo]

A bar in Birmingham used to have a 1994 Benetton on the wall, probably a "show" car. Its gone now.

[stuart thompson]

Originally Posted by bella

there was a chap with a huge collection of benettons, but i think he decided to sell up?

Would that be the guy who owns Kockney Koi and ran a couple in BOSS? Dave Shelton I think his name is.

[BertMk2]

Didn't James Martin (TV Chef) have a couple as well? Jordan and BAR spring to mind.

In EuroBOSS there have been Jordans, Tyrells, Arrows, Simtek, Benettons - not sure what's currently active and what isn't though. Last year at Brands there were some on display at one of the meets - again Benettons but a Lotus and Prost as well.

[Mike Harte]

And doesn't Mr Ecclestone possess quite a few pre-owned F1 cars as well. I seem to recall reading that he could produce a full grid of cars for a historic race, but I don't know from what period that they all came from.

[S griffin]

I remember James Martin trying his Benetton 196 on Fifth Gear back in 2009

[billy bleach]

Originally Posted by Sodemo

A bar in Birmingham used to have a 1994 Benetton on the wall, probably a "show" car. Its gone now.

There was an ex Nannini Bennetton hanging from the roof in a bar in Temple Bar Dublin that disappeared when the theme changed a few years back. I heard it turned up in Australia

[Neppatsrev Xam]

Originally Posted by stuart thompson

Would that be the guy who owns Kockney Koi and ran a couple in BOSS? Dave Shelton I think his name is.

Klaas Zwart also owned a few(wich were rebranded "Ascari" in BOSS GP)

[old man]

Zak Brown has a few, collection includes Senna's Monaco Toleman and his later John Player Special as well as an Alan Jones Williams.

[GORDON STREETER]

No doubt they are still about and complete, however running them is another matter as the years go on and the mechanics that serviced the complicated beasts in the day are slowly disappearing.
I know Bernie has a few at Biggin Hill !

[bella]

fair point gordon - can't some of the late 90s mclarens only be fired up using a period laptop?

[GORDON STREETER]

Originally Posted by bella

fair point gordon - can't some of the late 90s mclarens only be fired up using a period laptop?

You're probably right Bella but I suppose a 5 year old with an iPod could probably do it !! I can remember doing a winter warmer at Brands when some of the cars that were in the same race as me had to be started with a laptop

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by GORDON STREETER

No doubt they are still about and complete, however running them is another matter as the years go on and the mechanics that serviced the complicated beasts in the day are slowly disappearing.
I know Bernie has a few at Biggin Hill !

Clare Williams referred to this as part of a discussion over the gift of a car to Massa.
She said that they have very few options for the cars once they are finished with, as it is too complex to fire up the engines.

[BertMk2]

Originally Posted by old man

Zak Brown has a few, collection includes Senna's Monaco Toleman and his later John Player Special as well as an Alan Jones Williams.

Zak Brown also has a Hakinen McLaren (and that was before he got his hands on the keys to the McLaren garages!)

Originally Posted by crmalcolm

Clare Williams referred to this as part of a discussion over the gift of a car to Massa.
She said that they have very few options for the cars once they are finished with, as it is too complex to fire up the engines.

That's part of the reason you see a lot of the cars in EuroBOSS (or whatever it's called these days) running with different engines - there were a lot of Judd powered cars last time I saw it. The correct engines are too complex / lack of spares / too expensive - some of these cars were running in the 'throw the engine away after each session' era (slight exaggeration but certainly they weren't built with longevity in mind!).

[old man]

Actually this whole engine thing is a historic element in itself, the keepers of F1 history need to have a record of, even examples of, these complex and exotic engines. I know I for one would like to know more about what went into them, the power available and why they were so complicated to fire up.

Has anybody written a book?

[chillibowl]

perhaps there should be renewed calls for an F1 hall of fame?

[Richard C]

Sorry, what follows is a bit of a technical rant about the longevity of content on digital media and systems that rely upon dead or dying legacy hardware/software.

Originally Posted by old man

Has anybody written a book?

So let me rant about digital media and the impact on the history of modern F1! You hear talk occasionally about the difficulty of digital storage in that formats change and equipment no longer exists to read the data. There is that for sure, but there is also the situation in which I think a lot of modern history lives on the internet be it wikipedia articles, new stories, forum posts, whatever. However there is little guarantee that information will persist long term because the parties who currently host that information are generally "for profit" and at times have little incentive to maintain the information long term. I am sure we have all had the experience of clicking a link from an old article somewhere and it is just gone. So my hope is that yes, this stuff should be documented in a way that can last. Otherwise we may find that in some ways modern F1 will be the least documented in the long term.

Here is an example of digital decay... Before things like forums were popular, there was what is/was known as Usenet newsgroups. I think they are still in use today, but they were much more popular around a decade or more ago. At some point someone started to archive them, then that seemed to get consolidated into a searchable system by someone known as "DejaNews". Then eventually that archive was acquired by Google which was folded into their "groups" system. It continued to be searchable and you could read older content. Then at some point within the last few years the ability to search and view older content (pretty much all that was archived by DejaNews) was removed from the search interface. So all of that content is currently not available to anyone (unless they have made their own archive). Depending upon what a Google does with it, it may be gone forever.

So... oddly enough paper may last longer than some digital media. That is why I continue to buy paper books.

Originally Posted by old man

Actually this whole engine thing is a historic element in itself, the keepers of F1 history need to have a record of, even examples of, these complex and exotic engines. I know I for one would like to know more about what went into them, the power available and why they were so complicated to fire up.

I have two comments regarding the complexity of modern racing (and sometimes street) cars. First, I have to wonder how teams (and future owners) handle the situations in which they don't own the engines. So for example the car Williams gave to Massa. That car used a Mercedes engine which I assume was returned to Mercedes at the end of the season. I don't know the details, but I assume that Massa has only a chassis with "something" (highly likely completely non-functional) mounted in place of the power unit and maybe the transmission. The point being that unless you are someone like Mercedes, Renault or Ferrari... complete "modern" F1 cars likely don't exist when a season ends. That is why everyone talks about those who have working cars have different (none original) solutions for the engines.

Second, there is the issue brought up above about the reliance upon older hardware. There is the story that has floated around for quite awhile how McLaren is reliant upon a 1995 Compaq laptop for work on the original F1 road car because of a unique CA card required to make it all work. The IT industry is littered with stories like this. Usually it is some type of unique hardware system that requires related ancient computer equipment. I think the US Air Force still uses a system as part of the nuclear deterrent that relies upon 8" floppy drives.

I do think that long term this can be solved, but it does require some work. Machine virtualization is one example. But special hardware interfaces makes that difficult (which I think is the McLaren issue). But I believe that even McLaren is biting the bullet and working on a replacement that doesn't require the ancient Compaq laptops.

This next bit is VERY esoteric, but in 2014 a group established contact with a satellite named IEEE-3 that was from the 1970s. The satellite had long been retired and had a proprietary system for communication that was long gone. But it was still orbiting the sun and sending back data. Using some newer hardware and special software techniques (radio geeks will know about what is known as "Software Defined Radio") that were not really available decades ago, they recreated (relatively cheaply) the ability to to talk to the satellite without the original communication hardware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intern...#Reboot_effort

My point is that, if someone wants to, they can solve the problem with interfacing with the older cars without having to rely upon the old associated computer hardware and software. It just takes someone who is dedicated to make it work.

Richard

[Mike Harte]

To add to your last point about needing someone to be dedicated to make it happen, you need also to have sufficient monetary recourses as well.

But as you say about what you think may have happened to Massa's power-unit, this was also part of the problem that restricted the Pirelli testing to just the three teams; most of the others didn't have or couldn't afford to keep the units for the tests, and they also didn't have enough chassis available.

Look at what happened to the wet weather tyre test that Ferrari recently conducted. I don't believe that Vettel had a major shunt, but even Ferrari couldn't provide replacement parts. It is almost as though the teams are copying the car manufacturers, etc., and parts only come on stream just in time. Long gone are the days of huge stock bins of parts.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

To add to your last point about needing someone to be dedicated to make it happen, you need also to have sufficient monetary recourses as well.

I almost added that point as well. Today that is very true. I do think that over time it may actually cost less given the assumption of more and more technical capabilities in the future. That has to however be measured against the difficulty of poor or non-existent documentation as well as personal domain knowledge (i.e. having access to engineers who know the details) disappearing over time.

Richard

[geordiecriag101]

When i was at ASI this year i was taking to sumone from Williams Heritage about what state their cars are in and they try to keep them in running condition, but the engines are the biggest problem.
Williams have all the kit needed to run any Renault engined cars, for the BMW ones they need to call BMW who will send a few engineers and the kit need to run the engines but any of the Honda engined cars cant be run as Honda wanted all of their property returned!

[Mike Harte]

Richard, whilst you write about digital decay, another thing that users of the internet need to be wary of is that some history is being re-written to suit unknown agendas.

I happened to, only yesterday, look up articles on the history of a certain marque of car to refresh my memory. What I found is a complete re-write of timelines that was impossible to weave into my own movements from that time - we are talking about the 1980s.

What has seemed to have happened is that the timeline has been moved about 5 years, so instead of starting at the beginning of the 80s, every things now starts at around the middle of that decade. I think that this may have something to do with the fact that the manufacturer had great difficulty in meeting all the requirements of the regulators in the States, especially California. So, to save themselves blushes, it was much easier to re-write the timeline.

As your great leader, Abe Lincoln, once said: 'You can't trust everything that you read on the internet'.