Only fans

Murray's glorious Brabham BT46B 'fan car' proved that, if being a little bit naughty was wrong, he didn't want to be right

- James Page

With little more than a week to go before the Brabham BT46B was due to make its debut in the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix, things were not looking good. Better known as the 'fan car', this was Gordon Murray's reply to the Lotus 78 and 79, which had ushered in Formula 1's ground-effect aerodynamic revolution. Along with his colleague David North, Murray had worked tirelessly to solve problems such as getting the all-important skirts to properly seal the underbody area. They'd also changed the material used for the fan blades, but then came a last-minute failure of the fan hub.

As they considered this latest hurdle, Brabham's star driver Niki Lauda said to Murray: 'If this car finishes the Grand Prix, you are a genius.' But not only did it finish, it won - amidst howls of protest from other teams. The following day, Murray's phone rang and he picked it up to hear an unmistakable Austrian accent: 'Hello, genius!'

Ahead of that 1978 season, Murray had conceived his original BT46 with innovative surface cooling in an attempt to pick up straightline speed. Sadly, the concept didn't work, so instead he placed a radiator in the nose of the car and went back to the drawing board.

In order to restore the front end to how he'd initially envisaged it, there was another option: move the radiator so that it sat on top of the Brabham's Alfa Romeo flat-12 engine. It was a convenient and efficient location for it, but it would have to be positioned horizontally, which meant that a fan would be required to draw air through it. And if you're going to have a fan on the car, why not investigate other uses for it?