A superb and rare photo of the innovative and very rare Chaparral 2F racing car, seen in action driven
by Phil
Hill and Joakim Bonnier during the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans. Unfortunately they had to retire from the race.
Chaparral Cars was a United
States automotive company
which built prototype race cars from the 1960s through the early 1980s.
Chaparral was founded by Jim Hall, a Texas oil magnate
with an impressive combination of skills in engineering and race car driving.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Chaparral's distinctive race cars experienced
strong success in both American and European racing circuits. Despite winning
the Indy 500 in 1980, the
Chaparrals left motor racing in 1982. Chaparral cars also featured in the
SCCA/CASC CanAm series and in the European FIA Group 7. It is also said in
popular culture that the Chaparral race cars were barred from events because of
them being too effective and fast, especially the 2J.
Chaparral was the first to introduce effectively designed
air dams and spoilers ranging from the tabs attached to the earliest 2 model to
the driver-controlled high wing 'flipper' on the astoundingly different looking
2E, all the way through to Hall's most idealistically inspired creation, the
2J, the car that would forever be known as the 'vacuum cleaner'. The use by Jim
Hall of a semi-automatic transmission in the Chaparral created flexibility in
the use of adjustable aerodynamic devices. The development of the Chaparral
chronicles the key changes in race cars in the '60s and '70s in both
aerodynamics and tires. Jim Hall's training as an engineer taught him to
approach problems in a methodical manner and his access to the engineering team
at Chevrolet as well as at Firestone changed aerodynamics and race car handling
from an art to empirical science. The embryonic data acquisition systems
created by the GM R&D group aided these efforts. An interview with Jim Hall
by Paul Haney illustrates many of these developments. The Chaparral 1 was the
first car to carry the Chaparral name and marked the transition of Jim Hall
from an entrant to a constructor. Built by Troutman and Barnes, the Chaparral 1
was a conventional front-engined car, a development of the Scarab sport car
first built for Lance Reventlow in 1957. Jim Hall raced it successfully through
1961, 1962 and 1963 while he created the design for Chaparral 2. As it was not
a design owned by Jim Hall, other cars were sold to cut costs. It was the only
Chaparral to be raced by someone other than Chaparral cars. The Chaparral
2-Series was designed and built to compete in the United States Road Racing
Championship and other sports car races of the time, particularly the West
Coast Series that were held each fall. Following the lead of innovators like
Bill Sadler from Canada and Colin
Chapman who introduced rear engined cars to Grand Prix cars in Europe (where Jim
Hall had raced in Formula 1), its basic design concept was a rear engined car.
First raced in 1963, it was developed into the dominant car
in the series in 1964 and 1965. Designed for the 200
mile races of the sports car series, it was almost
impossible to beat. It proved that in 1965 by winning the 12 Hours of Sebring
on one of the roughest tracks in North America. As the car
was being developed, Jim Hall took the opportunity to implement his theories on
aerodynamic force and rear wheel weight bias. In addition, the Chaparral
2-Series featured the innovative use of fiberglass as a structural element.
Hall also developed 2-Series cars with conventional aluminum chassis. It is
very difficult to identify all iterations of the car as new ideas were being
tested continually. There are three generally accepted variants:
- The 2A is the car as originally raced, featuring a very
conventional sharp edge to cut through the air. It also featured a square tail
with a concave tail reminiscent of the theories of Dr Kamm. Almost immediately
an issue with the front end being very light at speed with a consequent impact
on steering accuracy and driver confidence. The first aerodynamic appendages
began to appear on the 2A.
- The 2B was the name applied to the cars with the full
package of “aero tweaks”, chin spoilers, fender slots and rear spoiler.
- The 2C was the name
applied to the car with the first in-car adjustable rear wing which was
designed to be flat on the straight and tipped up to add rear downforce under
braking and in corners. This was a direct benefit of the automatic transmission
which kept the left foot free to operate the wing mechanism. The 2C was based on
a Chevrolet designed aluminum chassis and was a much smaller car in every
dimension than the 2A. Without the natural non-resonant damping of the
fiberglass chassis, Jim Hall nicknamed it the EBJ, “Eye Ball Jiggler.”
Coincidental with the development of aerodynamics was Hall's
development of race tires. (This is a complex subject that should have a
separate article.) Jim Hall owned Rattlesnake Raceway adjacent to his race
shop; that proximity allowed him to participate in much of Firestone's race
tire development. A two-article series in "Car and Driver" magazine
featured Jim Hall's design theories. The article turns speculation about
vehicle handling into applied physics. It was the precursor to the elaborate
data collection and management of current racing teams. Hall's methodology was
probably the first documented approach to measuring and managing the properties
of race cars. The 2D was a closed cockpit variant of the 2 series (which were
all open cockpit designs), designed for endurance racing in 1966. It won at 1000
km Nürburgring in 1966 with Phil Hill and Joakim
Bonnier driving. It also competed in the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans, withdrawing
after 111 laps.The 2E was based on the Chevrolet designed aluminum 2C chassis and
presented Jim Hall's most advanced aerodynamic theories to the racing world in
the 1966 inaugural Can Am championship. The 2E established the paradigm for
virtually all racing cars built since. It was startling in appearance, with its
radiators moved from the traditional location in the nose to two ducted pods on
either side of the cockpit and a large wing mounted several feet above the rear
of the car on struts. The wing was the opposite of an aircraft wing in that it
generated downforce instead of lift and was attached directly to the rear hubs,
loading the tires, for extra adhesion while cornering. A ducted nose channeled
air from the front of the car up, creating extra downforce as well. By
depressing a pedal that was in the position of the clutch pedal on a car with a
manual transmission, Hall was able to feather, or flatten out, the angle of the
wing when downforce was not needed, such as on a straight section of the track,
to reduce drag and increase top speed. In addition, an interconnected air dam
closed off the nose ducting for streamlining as well. When the pedal was
released, the front ducting and wing returned to their full downforce position.
It was a brilliant design. But the moveable-wing was banned by the FIA so Jim
Hall had to make do with a fixed-wing which was not adjustable by the driver
during the race. Within two years every sports racing car as well as formula
one car had wings on tall struts, although many were not as well designed as
Hall's and the resulting accidents from their failures caused the high wings to
be outlawed by the sanctioning bodies. The 2E scored only one win in Laguna
Seca with Phil Hill driving, but the reason for this may have been the larger
engines the other competitors were using. Hall stuck to an aluminum 5.3 liter Chevrolet engine in his
lightweight racer while the other teams were using 6 and sometimes 7
liter iron engines, trading weight for power. Hall
applied the aerodynamic advances of the aluminum 2E to the older fiberglass
chassis closed-cockpit 2D for the 1967 racing season. A movable wing, on
struts, loaded the rear tires while an air dam in the front released pressure
to keep the suspension from compressing at high speeds, and the radiators were
moved to positions next to the cockpit. An aluminum 7
litre Chevrolet engine replaced the 5.3 litre engine of the 2D. While
always extremely fast, the extra power of the larger engine was too much for
the automatic transmission to handle and it broke with regularity. When a
solution was finally found to the transmission problems, the 2F scored its
only win on 30 July 1967 in the BOAC
500 at Brands Hatch with Phil Hill and Mike Spence driving. After this race,
the FIA changed its rules, outlawing not only the 2F but the Ford
Gt Mark 4 (winner at LeMans) and the Ferrari P4 (winner at Daytona, 2nd at
LeMans) as well. As with the 2D, the 2F raced
wearing Texas license
plates. The 1967 2G was a development of the 2E. It featured wider tires, and a
427 aluminum Chevy engine. While on par with his competitors in terms of power,
the lightweight 2C chassis was
stretched to the limit and it was only Hall's driving skill that kept the car
competitive. For the 1968 Can Am series, still larger tires were added when the
2H was not ready to race. Jim Hall's racing career was effectively ended in a
savage crash at the Stardust Grand Prix, although he did drive in the 1970
Trans Am series while fielding a team of Chaparral Camaros . Never one to be complacent,
Jim Hall noted that the increasing downforce also created enormous drag.
Seeking a competive edge, the 2H was built in 1969 as the replacement for the
2G to minimize drag rather than maximize downforce. However, the anticipated
gains in speed were more tha offset by the reduced cornering speeds and the car
was consistently slower than anticipated. Generally deemed a failure, it
eventually sprouted a huge wing. The most unusual Chaparral was the 2J. In
addition to a powerful 700 hp engine, and a three-speed semi automatic
transmission, the back of the 2J housed two 17-inch fans driven by a 45 hp
snowmobile engine. The Can Am Series had no engine size limit, so the two
snowmobile engines weren't affected by an engine displacement maximum. The
purpose of the fans was to 'suck' air from under the car to provide downforce.
This gave the car tremendous gripping power and enabled greater maneuverability
at all speeds, which cannot be achieved by simpler aerodynamic devices such as
diffusers and wings. Since it created the same amount of vacuum under the car
at all speeds, down-force did not decrease at lower speeds. With other
aerodynamic devices, down-force decreases as the car slows down or achieves too
much of a slip angle, both of which were not problems for the 'sucker car'. It
also had ground effect Lexan-plastic skirts to keep air from leaking in, a
technology that would appear in Formula One several years later. The 2J
competed in the CanAm series and often qualified at least a couple of seconds
quicker than the next fastest car, but was not a success because it was plagued
with mechanical problems. It ran for only one racing season in 1970 after which
it was outlawed by the SCCA (even though it was approved by the SCCA prior to
the car's first race). The SCCA succumbed to pressure from other teams, McLaren
in particular, who argued that the fans constituted 'movable aerodynamic devices'
which were outlawed by the international sanctioning body FIA (which was first
applied against the 2E's adjustable-wing). There were also complaints from
other drivers saying that whenever they drove behind it the fans would throw
stones at their cars. McLaren argued that if the 2J was not outlawed, it would
likely kill the CanAm series by totally dominating it - ironically, something
McLaren had been doing for years[1]. A similar suction fan was used in Formula
1 eight years later for the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix, by the Brabham BT46B but
was banned soon after. The 2K was a USAC ground effect car which was designed
by Briton John Barnard. It won the 1980 Indianapolis 500 with
Johnny Rutherford. In 2005 a wing of the
Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas was dedicated to the permanent
display of the remaining Chaparral cars and the history of their development by
Midland native Jim Hall.
This is a very nice and very rare non period photo that reflects a
wonderful era of Chaparral ‘s automotive history in a wonderful way. This is your rare chance to own this
photo, therefore it is printed in a nice large format of ca. 8" x 9"
(ca. 20 x 22 cm). It makes it perfectly
suitable for framing.
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