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The fan-car at Donington

10. Jul 2020 
by Pierre Van Vliet
4096 views

The Brabham BT46B “fan-car”, designed by the brilliant engineer Gordon Murray, has taken one Grand Prix start only, and was withdrawn after Niki Lauda’s victory at Anderstorp in 1978.

Nevertheless, a few months later, it appeared for a second time, in the spring of 1979, driven by Nelson Piquet in a non-championship demonstration at the Donington circuit, where Grand Prix cars appeared for the first time in 40 years, during the “Gunnar Nilsson Memorial Trophy”.

It was more of a show during which the cars entered tried to beat the lap record: Alan Jones (Williams FW07C) was the fastest in front of James Hunt (Wolf WR8) for which it was the last appearance.

Rupert Keegan, who was a friend of the diseased Swede, had rented an Arrows A1 (picture below) for the event, but he ended nearly 4 seconds slower than Jones.

Source: DR

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