The threat of competition and a need to overcome physical or legislative limitations drive the advances, while the championship’s largely meritocratic nature ensures exceptional people are backed by immense financial resource to achieve exceptional advances.
Given F1 boasts a proud 70-plus-year history, not all innovations devised in that time have been deemed to be in the best interests of the championship. Many have been outlawed on the grounds of cost or safety, while some ideas were swiftly scrapped due to their potency that left the rest of the field chasing shadows.
Meanwhile, other ground-breaking designs have come to set a new standard and forced all teams to adopt their likeness to stand any chance of remaining in contention. These are some of the biggest innovations in F1 history…
Rear-engined layout – 1959
Putting the engine behind the driver in the Cooper T51 allowed Jack Brabham to win the 1959 world title and transformed grand prix racing forever
Photo by: Motorsport Images
Auto Union had found success with the concept in the 1930s, but it was the Cooper T51 machine of 1959 that made the idea of putting the horse behind the cart really stick.
The benefits of the reconfigured engine layout were threefold. It reduced weight, by cutting how far elements of the drivetrain needed to stretch past the driver to reach the back axle as required in front-engined, rear-wheel-drive machines.
The cars were also more agile as the bulk of the weight was kept within the wheelbase. Plus, rear- (or, rather, mid-) engine cars were more efficient at cutting through the air thanks to their smaller frontal area.
Those design principles allowed Cooper to develop its race-winning T43 creation into the T51, with which works driver Jack Brabham and Rob Walker’s privateer pilot Stirling Moss proved competitive at every type of track.
Five wins from nine rounds in 1959 wrapped up the constructors’ crown for Cooper, before the enhanced T53 returned a title double…
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