BENETTON F1 B188-01

The Benetton Formula 1 Team was created in 1985 after the Benetton family bought the Toleman team. The new owner brought a lot of money to this rather anonymous team and a lot of ambition, the skilful Toleman’s head designer Rory Byrne had now the means to design a very serious Formula 1. After an interesting Berger’s victory at Mexico in 1986 with the BMW-Turbo engine, the next season was to be disappointing for the newly formed team. Despite a great chassis ( Byrne drawn all of the 7 Schumacher World Champion cars ), the factory Ford – V6 Turbo was not as powerful as expected. Benetton could only be the witness of the McLaren-Williams-Ferrari epic battles. At the end of 1987, the FIA worried about the outrageous power given by Turbos ( more than 1100 HP in qualification ), announced new regulations for 1989 based on 3.5 liters aspired engines. Consequently 1988 was to be a year of transition and Benetton very surprisingly decided to anticipate and designed an all new Formula 1 around a revised V8 Cosworth. Benetton became Ford’s factory team and had the exclusivity on the new V8 DFR wich had lowered crankshaft, allowing much better gravity center and rear air-flow circulation. The output was brought to 620 HP which was a big step compared with the previous DFYs. The transmission was an all new “reverse gearbox”, a system Porsche had already tested on prototypes, for a better weight balanced. Byrne designed and extremely pure aerodynamic body which gave to the B188 this beautiful shape. In 1988 the drivers retained were Boutsen, which proved in 1987 to be a strong performer and fine chassis analyst, and Nannini the young Italian hope. The tandem performed extremely well, actually this season revealed Nannini’s skil and the B188 was evidently the best aspired Formula 1. Though McLarens were untouchable, indeed it was the pinnacle of Prost-Senna duel ( only Berger managed to break McLaren’s domination at Monza ) and Ferrari was still advantaged by using the Turbo engine, Benetton managed to reach the 3rd place at the manufacturers championship, leading Williams, Arrows, Lotus, March ... Boutsen was given the honorific title of aspirated engines’ World Champion, with Nannini they scored 8 podiums and 39 points. A total of 9 cars were built in 1988 and 1989, as the B188 was still fast, it was only replaced by the B189 at the 5th race of the 1989 championship.
Price : Sold

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