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.....have been up to it. Now the car is looking good and it's the time when we could think of putting a more powerful engine in it.
"Anyway, we work closely with Ford, and all the information we gather goes back to the company. Obviously Ford representatives are watching, and hopefully they will get more involved as time goes on. This year they said they just wanted to see how things went."
Engines are, ot course, the least of Ford's worries, for if a more powerful motor is required, the company can either build one, using off-the-shelf bits, or have Cosworth develop one. So it is pretty obvious that Ford consider the handling of the Fiesta to be of paramount importance. This being the case, what tweaks had Richard discovered during his development of the Datapost cars?
"Basically, it's suspension angles and related problems: getting the tyre temperatures correct along with the castor and camber angles. They're very similar to Minis - or any front-wheel-drive car really. You've got to concentrate on getting the maximum amount of grip on the front. Obviously they all suffer, to some degree, from understeer."
The present thinking on fwd racing technique is that it is all important to dial a degree of oversteer into the chassis, and this Richard has accomplished with Fiesta by using stiffer shock absorbers and springs at the rear, narrower back tyres running higher pressures than at the front, and a fairly heavy anti-roll bar.
"They're a pretty good handling car 'out of the box' anyway, but like most modern production cars, they are not that accurate in the suspension department to begin with, so the main thing is to set them up carefully."
On a Mini, the problem of excessive understeer can be solved by adjusting more i positive camber into the rear trailing arms, but with the Fiesta's rigid axle (it has a beam-type arrangement, as tried on numerous competition Minis), there is very little adjustment possible, the only acceptable oversteer-inducing substitute consisting of raising the rear tyre pressures.
Alan Curnow's comments on driving the cars echoed almost exactly what Barry Lee had said earlier: 'you've got to be very smooth, avoid getting the car sideways, and not wind on too much steering lock with its accompanying understeer. If you don't, you scrub off speed, the tyres get too hot, and the seconds just pour away.
"With some corners, you think you can go into them flat out, but then you scrub off too much speed going through. In a case like that, it's better to brake for the corner and then accelerate through really smoothly. It may seem slower from inside the car, but it shows up as being quicker on the stop-watch."
Cut to scene two, in which Barry Lee returns to the pits. . . . "The handling is much more predictable on the 1300. I felt I could go very deep into corners with the 1300, but I was hugging the inside with the 1600. You know you can go in deep in the 1300 because it will go into a little bit of an oversteer.
"I didn't like the 1600 as much. The 1300 is safe; the other one, you're always waiting for the action."
Curnow chipped in that this was almost certainly caused by the extra 60kg of ballast bolted into Richard's car, which in turn meant that stiffer springs had had to be fitted.
One corner where Barry thought the difference between the two Fiestas was particularly noticeable was going through Surtees, the tight, uphill, slightly off camber left hander which takes cars off the Indy circuit and onto the full Grand Prix lap.
"Richard's car tended to 'stand up' going round Surtees, I felt, and then died a death. The 1300 you expect to die a death going up the hill, but you can go in deeper and therefore get a faster exit, get the wheels back straight, and get the power down. It was equivalent in speed to the 1600 round there." One criticism with both cars concerned the bottom of Paddock Bend, before the ascent to Druids, where they both veered badly to the left with the suspension on full compression. Lee assumed it-,to be excessive front suspension movement, but on querying it when he came into the pits, Richard explained that it must be something to do with the track surface, since both cars were exhibiting the same tendency and had never done so before at Brands.
Lee: "You know, that 1300 really is a super little car - it's so forgiving. My main criticism of the 1600 is with its lack of power. You can go into corners and come out a bit quicker with the 1600, but you haven't got the power and the top end speed to follow it up as you go down the next straight.
"Not only that, but you could commit yourself to a corner in the 1600 and unless you were very experienced with front-wheel drive, like Richard, you could have a big accident. Both cars badly need more radical cams and big-valve heads. It's all down to Ford now to homologate the right bits.
"It's easy to criticise, though. For the amount of effort Richard must have put in to turn the Fiesta into such a tremendous little racer, without any real development help, he must receive full marks."
Alan Curnow's win at Oulton Park earlier this season was the first time a Fiesta had gained a class win in a motor race. It seems very likely that if Fiesta development continues at its present pace, there will be many more victories as drivers realise it is possible to build a quick, competitive racer for no more than the price of a comparable Mini. The potential is enormous; it merely requires to be logically exploited. How about it. Ford?
Facts of life. Obviously not all has been plain sailing for the Fiesta in competition. But has this Ford proved to be a problem child? What are the company's real aspirations for it? We talked to John Taylor, Tim Brise and chassis engineer Len Bailey to bring you the lowdown. . . .
Fiesta's year with Roger Clark in 1979 did nothing for either of them. Boreham's pre-occupation with the World Rally Championship, and divided internal opinions on FWD, together with Roger's alleged attempts to turn Fiesta into an Escort contrived to produce a competition image that Ford is still trying to live down.
Whether Roger was actually getting the 'right' bits is not 100 percent clear, but for whatever reasons, the car became the subject of some ill-concealed mirth in rally circles -hardly a great British G2 debut, or an impressive public relations gambit.
But then again, the odds were always going to be stacked against Fiesta while the Escort was being built at Boreham, and the company was winning with them.
Not many people have long memories in this business, but Ari Vatanen's excellent eighth overall on the '79 Monte Carlo Rally -the car's competition debut - was a genuinely impressive result even though it was also one which got 'lost' in the furore of over Waldegard losing the rally on the last stage as a result of 'strategic' rocks etc.
However, the Europeans noticed, even if the British didn't, and today you'll find a Fiesta rally team in Spain that's as successful as any semi-private outfit in southern Europe; but you'll also find a successful rally team based in Maidstone, Kent, run by John Taylor in association with Boreham. He's been running a BDA engined Fiesta for Tim Brise all year, and at the time of writing, it hadn't retired from a single event entered. That may not prove much to you or I. Why not? Why are we biased against FWD in competition? Is it because we, like the drivers themselves, have been brought up on Escorts; the spectacular to watch, easy-to-drive, sideways-to-eternity style which has dominated our forest racing world for so long? If that is so, then we do have short memories. Does anyone remember the Mini? Are we aware of what Renault Sport are achieving in France with a G2 FWD Renault 5? Does anyone remember what Per Eklund achieved with a VW Golf on the Monte this year?
But FWD does have its limitations. After discussing the matter at length with even its most enthusiastic devotees, it seems clear that it will always be less easily adaptable to the varying venues of rallying; more easily put at a disadvantage by changing conditions. But not only is it here to stay, (at least as far as the new FIA category A is concerned), it's not going to be as boring or as difficult as FWD's UK detractors would have us believe. Tim Brise: "I must say that I didn't fancy the idea before the start of this season, I didn't think I'd find the experience enjoyable, I also thought the car would be a hard struggle physically, but I found it mucn safer than I'd expected, right from the start."
A day spent in Wales with Stig Blomqvist as tutor was enough to each Tim the more esoteric applications of left foot braking; an ingredient of Fiesta competition driving which is regarded as essential.
"The car is very easy to control in this way, but you've got to balance it right through the corner, power against brakes. When it can be difficult is if anything should go wrong in the corner; ie: an unforseen hazard looms up. At that point, one's natural RWD instinct is to come off the throttle, which with FWD and Fiesta will have you understeering straight on, and off the road. It's the split second reactions you've got to come to terms with."
Nevertheless Tim has found it easier to transfer from Fiesta to G4 Escort and back again than he did the previous year while swapping from G1 to G4 RWD. . . . "Perhaps because the technique is so different in the former case that you tend to think much more about it.
"I don't think it's ever going to be a car for every event, like an Escort can be made to be. One would need to pick events carefully; but it's fabulous on tarmac, especially tight tarmac, equipped with radial tyres which makes it more forgiving to drive."
Fiesta in competition is here to stay, yet at present there are very few young drivers with the experience necessary to drive such a machine quickly. George Forbes proved on the Scottish that a totally committed performance in a Fiesta is anything but dull to watch; and who could possibly remain indifferent to the sight of Stig - The Master - in an FWD car? But Ford's rather hesitant move into the Fiesta game has not encouraged those who might have been tempted, which is sad because Fiesta, the first competition FWD car to be developed in this country for many.....
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