Brian Hart 1936-2014

Sunday January 5^th saw the death of former F1 manufacturer Brian Hart. His brief spell as a driver saw some relative success, especially in single seater formulae including Formula Junior, Formula 3 and Formula 2. Hart also competed in a few non-championship Formula 1 races, using Formula 2 cars. However, he made his name in engine manufacturing when, in 1969, he formed Brian Hart Limited.

His company was commissioned by Ford to work on new engine development. He developed the Ford BDA, which was used in Ford’s rally programs during the 1970s. The engine was also successful is Formula 2 along with the FVA. Ronnie Peterson won the Formula 2 European title in 1971 using the FVA and Mike Hailwood winning the same title in 1972 using the BDA engine. When BMW and Renault entered Formula 2, Hart started to develop his own F2 engine, the 420R which made its debut in 1976 in a Chevron sportscar. Then at the end of 1978, Hart’s company got its next big break. The Toleman F2 team committed to R&D financing so that Hart could develop his engines further. As a result of this, Toleman-Hart dominated the European F2 Championship in 1980, with Brian Henton and Derek Warwick finishing 1^st and 2^nd in the standings.

Formula 1 beckoned for both Toleman and Hart and in 1981, Hart developed a turbocharged version of the 420R for Toleman’s first season in Formula 1. Even though the unit was initially underpowered and unreliable, it was enough to establish Hart’s company as a Formula 1 engine supplier. Toleman continued to use Hart’s engine up until the teams purchase by Benetton. This saw Hart provide Ayrton Senna with his first F1 engine in 1984 and what should have been a first win for all parties involved. Senna was different class in the torrential rain at Monaco and finished an incredible second. It would have been an astounding victory had the race not been red flagged on lap 31 because of the conditions (or for Alain Prost influencing the decision to stop the race). Engines were also supplied to RAM, Haas Lola and Tyrell during the 1980’s but, none came as close to the top step of the podium like Senna did. In 1988 Hart’s company returned to a role as a tuning and servicing specialist for Cosworth to help develop the Cosworth DFZ and DFR engines. This was because turbo charging was prohibited in 1988 and a return to development of naturally aspired configurations that had not widely been used since the start of the 1980s. Cosworth was one company that was still doing this however for Formula 2 teams and a couple of better funded Formula 1 teams.

By the time 1992 came around, Hart’s company had funded the design of its first V10 engine, the type 1035 and announced and exclusive two year partnership with Jordan Grand Prix to supply their engines for the 1993 and 94 seasons. The partnership brought some very good results, including Rubens Barrichello’s 3^rd place at the Pacific Grand Prix in 1994. Unfortunately for Hart, Peugeot came along and offered Jordan a factory deal; therefore Hart’s contract was not renewed. Hart instead went onto supply Footwork/Arrows with engines but, the team was struggling financially at the time, which prevented the development of the V10 and the old V8 was used instead. Despite this, the engine managed to get the Footwork car on the podium in Australia 1995 with Gianni Morbidelli at the wheel. Hart took his engines to Minardi in 1997 and began work on another V10 design but could not get the finance for the project.

In 1999, Arrows’ owner Tom Walkinshaw purchased Brian Hart Limited and injected money into the V10 project and it became the Arrows V10. However the deal was hit with many legal issues and Brian parted company with Arrows and Formula 1 before the end of the year. All in all, Hart’s engines yielded 5 podiums in total in f1.