Spirit 101 F1 car

Constructor:	Spirit
Type:	Race car
Body:	F1 single seat
Engine:	Hart 415T,Cosworth DFV

The Spirit 101 was a racing car of the British motorsport team Spirit Racing , who participated in the 1984 and 1985 Formula One World Championship .

The car was equipped with a turbocharged engine from Hart . A temporary version with Cosworth suction engine was called Spirit 101C .

Spirit Racing was founded in 1981 by John Wickham, former manager of March Engineering's Formula 2 team , and former McLaren designer Gordon Coppuck. Spirit appeared in 1982 with Honda engines in the Formula 2 European Championship . A year later, the team debuted together with the Spirit 201C and Honda's newly developed turbo engine in Formula 1 In the summer of 1983, Honda concluded a long-term contract with the top team Williams F1, The Spirit management initially had the hope, in parallel to be able to use again as a junior team in 1984 Honda engines again, and developed in view of this engine for 1984, a new car, the Spirit 101. The hope was not fulfilled, however, because Williams' Team boss Frank Williams insisted on an exclusive delivery. Spirit therefore lost the Honda engine for 1984 and switched to turbocharged engines from Hart. The Spirit 101B was tailored to the Hart engine development of the 101, which was never completed in the originally planned version.

Spirit was financially supported by Honda in 1984. This was shown, inter alia, on advertising stickers from Honda, which were attached to the flanks of the 101B. Despite this was the team that had a total of 15 employees, as the smallest and finanzschwächste the Formula 1 season in 1984.The Spirit 101B was further developed for the 1985 season to the model 101D .

The Spirit 101B was  built with only two copies (101B1 and 101B2) . The car had a monocoque, which partly consisted of plastic. Some parts were made of aluminum. The monocoque was created by the British specialist John Thompson. Since Brian Hart's turbo engine was built as a four-cylinder less wide than Honda V-engine , the rear of the Spirit 101B was much narrower than that of its predecessor. In the first version of the 101B, released in January 1984 at Brands Hatch was tested, the side boxes still resembled those of the 201C. By contrast, the versions of the 101B used in the World Cup races did not have conventional side boxes anymore. The radiators were located diagonally in front of the rear wheels at the height of the engine.  The cockpit and the tank were full dressed, the motor, however, was open normally. The suspension was taken over by the 201C. Although Coppuck had developed a newly developed push rod construction; For financial reasons, however, it was not implemented for either B1 or B2. Overall, the 101B was lighter than its predecessor, although the hard four-cylinder in itself was heavier than Honda's V6 engine. 

The Spirit 101B was powered by a turbocharged four-cylinder Hart 415 engine. Comparable engines used the British teams Toleman and RAM Racing . Toleman, who competed with Ayrton Senna , was Hart's preferred customer because his boss Ted Toleman largely financed the development of the hard-turbo engine. The engines supplied to Toleman were further developed and therefore more powerful and steadier than the engines for RAM and Spirit. So the Toleman engines had an electronic fuel injection, while the engines for RAM and Spirit were equipped only with a mechanical injection. The Toleman drivers also had a boost between 3.2 and - in qualifying - 4.0 bar available; however, the pilots of Spirit and RAM were limited to 3.0 bar.  In this version, the clients Hart engine was regarded as leistungsschwächster Turbo engine whose performance over which was only 30 to 50 of a Cosworth DFV PS. As power transmission  a five-speed gearbox from Hewland was used. 

For the first six races of the year, Italian Mauro Baldi drove for Spirit. The team had initially sought a commitment from Fulvio Ballabio , who had taken some test drives with the 101B before the season; Ballabio, however, received no super license . For the Grand Prix of Canada, the Dutch debutant Huub Rothengatter took over the cockpit, which remained in the team for the following seven races. At the end of the season, Baldi returned for the Grand Prix of Europe and Portugal .

With the exception of the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix , the 101B qualified regularly. Although none of the Spirit pilots went beyond the 20th place on the grid during the season, they qualified in half of the races ahead of the drivers of the financially better-equipped RAM team, who used a comparable engine. During the race lowered Coppuck the boost pressure of the hard-motors often below 3.0 bar from in order to increase their shelf life. Baldi and Rothengatter were five times among the first 10 drivers to the finish; the best result was four eighth places. RAM, however, reached only four ninth places.

Spirit responded to the failure of the Hart engines with a temporary change to Cosworth naturally aspirated engines. During the week between the Canadian Grand Prix and the Detroit Grand Prix, Coppuck and the Spirit mechanics rebuilt the first of the two 101B to accommodate a Cosworth DFV engine. Associated with this was the use of conventional side boxes, as they had already been used on the prototype of the 101B and its predecessor 201C. The naturally aspirated version was called Spirit 101C. Spirit only seeded the 101C for the Grand Prix of Detroit. At the subsequent race in Dallasthe team reappeared with the 101B2 with Hart engine. The 101C was re-equipped in the summer of 1984 for the 101B and served the team until the end of the season as a replacement vehicle.

At the Detroit Street Circuit , Huub Rothengatter drove the Cosworth-101C. Beside him, only the two drivers of Tyrrell and one of the Arrows pilots put in naturally aspirated engines. In qualifying, the team suffered from considerable technical and organizational difficulties. Initially, participation in training was delayed by a self-activating fire extinguisher, then the transmission linkage jammed. Rothengatter drove by far the slowest qualifying time, with his Cosworth engine suffering from defects and running to the end of the training on only four cylinders. Rothengatter's best training time was 9 seconds over that of Nelson Piquet ( Brabham - BMW), who took the pole position, and 3.5 seconds over that of Marc Surer in Arrows-Cosworth. As 27th of qualifying training missed Rothengatter so the qualification.

Technical details

• Chassis: Aluminium monocoque
• Designer: Gordon Coppuck
• Suspension front and rear: Double wishbones, coil springs
• Engines postion: mid-engine, longitudinally mounted.
• Engines:
  1984-1985: Hart 415T, Straight 4, 1,459 cc (89.0 cu in), turbo,
  1984: Ford Cosworth DFV, 2,993 cc (182.6 cu in), V8 naturally aspirated,
• Transmission: Hewland FGB 6-speed manual
• Wheelbase: 2718 mm
• Weight: 540 kg (1,190 lb)
• Fuel: Shell,Eleven
• Tyres: Pirelli