5 Racecars that used loopholes in the rules

In motorsports most of the time there are rules and regulations regarding the building of a car, sometimes they are rather strict like modern F1 rules for example, they specify the body shape, the engine, the tyre size etc, while in other motorsports the rules aren’t as strict, like Can-Am for example. But regardless of the rules there are often manufacturers and teams who find some loopholes in the rules that give their car an advantage over the others, here are 5 such cars

BGP 001 - 'Double Diffuser'

Brawn GP is a very interesting team, having only competed for one season after buying out the poorly performing Honda team, the car was run with barely any sponsors and with severe budget limitations, lack of time for the development of the car and no funds for development of their car and yet they still managed to get a 1-2 finish in its first race and managed to win both the driver’s and constructor’s championship and getting 8 wins over the season.

But how exactly did this happen? The team that Brawn had bought, Honda had only scored 14 points in the entire 2008 season and yet Brawn GP scored more than that in its first race. The car that Brawn GP ran was pretty much the same car that Honda had built to be it’s potential 2009 challenger but instead of a Honda engine it had a Mercedes engine which had some problems fitting in the car but in the end proved successful. But it was one thing that made the BGP 001 incredibly dominant in the first half of the season, it’s ‘double diffuser’.

With rule changes for 2009 that restricted changes to the bodywork and had regulations for narrower and wider front wings to allow better racing by reducing dependence on aero and increasing mechanical grip one thing that wasn’t mentioned was anything to do with diffusers. The diffuser on the back of the car was used to channel air from the floor of the car to back of the car creating downforce. To do this there was a hole in the middle of the diffuser hence creating the ‘double diffuser’. The hole increased the airflow coming to rear of the car where it would expand and hence create more downforce.

According the teams that didn’t run diffusers, Red Bull, Ferrari, Renault and BMW Sauber; the diffuser’s on the Brawn, Williams and Toyota were illegal but the FIA considered them to be legal and the non-diffuser team’s complaints were rejected. And while Red Bull managed to catch up to Brawn GP towards the end of the season, Brawn GP would still take the driver’s and constructor’s crown and the ‘double diffuser’ certainly helped them achieve that.

Hendrick Motorsport's Chevrolet Monte Carlo 'T Rex'

This was a car so incredibly fast that it was considered too radical for its time in NASCAR. The car, was designed with an attempt to fully exploit the grey areas in the rules of NASCAR. The car’s R&D department was assigned to Rex Stump and his objective was to study the rulebook and make a car that was as fast as it could possibly be while still being within in the rules.

The car had bigger frame rails for making the chassis more resistant to twisting forces and better weight distribution and most of all, it featured ground effects. The car sat high on the ground and had a curved floor, the front of the car was very low on the racetracks so there was low density air underneath the car whoch created a low pressure zone at the back of the car giving it immense amount of downforce and making it stick to the road.

The car was nicknamed T-Rex because it had stickers promoting the Jurassic Park film and also becasue of its designer Rex Stump. And like a T-Rex it devoured the competition in its one and only race. It’s only race was the 1997 Winston All Star race and in it, despite having started down the order, Jeff Gordon and the T-Rex managed a dominant win. After the win however the car was heavily inspected by NASCAR officials and while it was considered to be legal, NASCAR officials told Hendrick Motorsports not the run the car ever again and NASCAR even seized the car to be used as an educational tool.

McLaren MP4-25 - 'F-Duct'

2010 was decent season for the McLaren team with the driver pairing of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton and the McLaren MP4-25 the team picked up 5 wins and 16 podiums over the season and finished 3rd in the constructors championship, but there was one innovation with the car that raised some eyebrows, the F-Duct.

The F-Duct was a device fitted to the front of the car that could be used by the driver in the straights to give them an advantage. There is a small snorkel in front of the driver that would channel air into the cockpit to the rear. Changes in pressure in the duct cause the wing at the rear of the car to change position and reducing aerodynamic drag and giving the car a straight line advantage. The way this was all controlled was by the driver who would change the pressure in the duct by covering a hole in the cockpit by either his hand or his foot. Because of the way it was used, that is, by the driver’s hand or foot, it was not considered a movable aero device (which weren’t allowed in the 2010 season) and hence was deemed as legal. The device was called the RW80 but soon got the name ‘F-Duct’ because it was located near the letter ‘F’ on the Vodafone logo on the car.

Over the season other teams also integrated an F-Duct in their car. But later on the F-Duct was banned at the end of the 2010 season and instead replaced with DRS (Drag Reduction System) in the 2011 F1 season.

Toyota GT-One

Toyota built the GT-One to compete in the GT1 racing series and the rules for the series stated that not only there would have to be a road going production version of the car but also the car would need a boot that could fit a normal sized suitcase.

Mercedes sorted this out by having a rather hard to reach but useable compartment towards the rear at the bottom of the car but Toyota decided that they didn’t want to add such a thing, instead they argued then when the car didn’t have any fuel , the fuel tank could theoretically hold a suitcase. And when the cars were inspected they didn’t have any fuel hence Toyota managed to get away with this.

However the Toyota only had one race to be able to compete with this clever interpretation of the rules, the 1998 Le Mans. Toyota entered 3 GT One’s and they qualified well, one car managed 2nd in the GT class and the other two were 5th and 7th. But in the race one of the car’s ended up suffering a crash leaving just 2 cars. And one of the cars that was challenging for the win suffered a gearbox failure and the remaining car finished the race in 9th well behind the winner, the Porsche 911 GT1. After this due to the succes of the GT1 class over Le Mans Prototypes, the regulations were changed and the class was replaced with the GTP class and the loophole Toyota used was useless. The car did compete in GTP class with a few changes made to it and it did compete in the 1999 Le Mans having finished second overall behind the BMW V12 LMR

1967 Penske Camaro Z/28 'Lightweight'

The 1967 Penske Camaro Z/28 is a rather awesome car, partly because of the very sneaky way it bent the rules shall we say. In order to reduce the weight of the car, many of its metal parts and its body panels were dipped in an acid bath and it was given a safety cage for chassis rigidity. The acid bath certainly helped the car shed some weight, it went from weighing 2920 pounds (1324.4Kg) to a mere 2550 pounds (1156.6Kg) hence it was called the ‘Lightweight’. The car was powered by a V8 producing upwards of 400hp.

When taken for inspection the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) officials were impressed by the saftey cage which was a first in sports car racing but it was no suprise that they denied the car from competing as the body panels of the car were basically see-through. They told Roger Penske and Mark Donohue to never bring the car to a race. But Penske and Donohue did it anyway.

The car and another legal Camaro were entered in the 2nd race of the Trans-Am calendar in 1968 at Sebring with the ‘Lightweight’ with changed bumpers and headlights to make it look like a 1968 model Camaro and when the officials came to weigh the cars, they came up with a bit of a clever stunt, they used the legal heavier car (Number 16) for inspection of both the cars, all they did was swap the numbers on the 2 cars. And when it came to qualifying, they used the same trick again but this time they used the ‘Lightweight’ to qualify for both the cars by once again switching the numbers, the ‘Lightweight’ was the number 15 car but they switched its number after it was done with its qualifying run to 16 and used it to qualify for the heavier car.

In the race the ‘Lightweight’ dominated in its class and even finished ahead of some of the prototypes and sports cars, it managed to get 3rd overall only behind two 907’s.

And that was the legacy of the ‘Lightweight’ Camaro, it is worth mentioning that the car ran in a few more races in the 1968 as well.