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lE mANs AsToNs nimrod & amr1

t h e ' 8 0 s w e r e t h e e r a o f g r o u p c , a n d a s t o n ' s c o n t e n d e r s w e r e n i m r o d a n d a m r 1 . w e c e l e b r a t e t h e s e m a g n i f i c e n t m a c h i n e s

PHoToGRAPHY jakob ebrey photographywoRds jethro bovingdon

days of thunder

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Above and leftAmr1 at Proteus Technology in early '89 with, from left, ray mallock (engineering director), michael Bowler (operations director) and mD richard Williams. Nimrod (left) was partly developed by mallock; he shared this very car with Drake Olson in the ill-fated 1984 Le mans

‘Group C was special. It captured the imagination of so many manufacturers and the public, too’ – ray mallock

ray Mallock is a busy man. His company, RML, is buzzing when we arrive just a few weeks before Le Mans. They’re preparing the radical Nissan ZEOD RC racer, the next step in the story of the remarkable DeltaWing racing car, now powered by a hybrid drivetrain that should

allow a full lap of the iconic circuit on electric power alone and at speeds of up to 190mph. The clock is ticking…

‘It’s not long until the test day and there’s so much to do,’ he explains, before adding with a grin: ‘It’s a really exciting time.’ It’s just a moment, but it reveals everything about Ray’s passion for motorsport – and Le Mans in particular. ‘I suppose you could say that all of this,’ he waves his hand towards the spotless and pulsating workshop area, ‘started with Nimrod and AMR1. I’m really glad you’re here to talk about them.’

If you were anticipating another story about plucky Brits, cobbling together a clever but ultimately doomed racing car in between mugs of sweet tea and amongst the swarf and grime of a back-street workshop, think again. As Mallock is at pains to point out: ‘AMR1 was a serious car, we didn’t want for budget and we had some very clever people working on it… it was a body blow when it all ended so abruptly. I really hope you can get across the passion that was poured into that car.’ And the best way to do that is to let Ray do the talking.

‘When I left school I did an apprenticeship at Aston Martin, so I’ve got links back to, what, ’68 or ’69,’ he begins, the fondness for that period bursting through. ‘I worked on the line building DB6 Mark IIs. And when I moved to Distribution – including some PR work – at 18 years old I was the youngest person on the driving list. You were supposed to be 25 but because I raced they said “this bloke can drive a bit”. Anyway, I ended up doing the photoshoot for the DB6 Mark II brochure.’ This is a long way from the Nimrod and AMR1 programmes but a fantastic insight into Mallock’s affection for Aston Martin. He’s recently

lE mANs AsToNs nimrod & amr1

Nimrod 005CoNsTRUCTIoN Aluminium monocoque with GrP body panels ENGINE V8, 5340cc mAx PowER 540bhp @ 6250rpm mAx ToRqUE 440lb ft @ 5000rpm TRANsmIssIoN Hewland five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive, lsd sUsPENsIoN Front: double wishbones, rocker-actuated inboard coil springs over adjustable dampers, anti-roll bar. rear: single top link, twin lower links, twin radius rods, outboard springs over adjustable dampers, anti-roll bar sTEERING rack-and-pinionBRAkEs Vented steel discs, 330mm front and rear, four-piston AP Lockheed calipers wHEEls 18in BBS split-rim alloys front and rear TYREs 11.0/23.5x18 front, 14.0/27.0x18 rear, Avon wEIGHT c1000kg PowER To wEIGHT 549bhp/ton ToP sPEEd c213mph

Our thanks to Roger Bennington (strattonmotorcompany.com) for supplying Nimrod 005.

bought a DB6 mark II and it’s being restored at RML right now. He also managed to get a copy of that old brochure. ‘There’s a spotty Ray Mallock drifting this DB6 Mark II – you can’t really see it’s drifting but I know it is!’

After his stint at Aston, Ray started to work in partnership with his brother Richard and father Arthur at Mallock Racing. Then in ’79 he started Ray Mallock Atlantic Racing to concentrate on his own driving and development career. The workshop was just opposite the family Mallock Racing enterprise in Salcey Forest, near Northampton. It was in ’79 that Ray’s involvement with Aston’s subsequent Group C adventures started to form. Racing at Le Mans in the Fisons-Lola, his team manager was Richard Williams, and the two became great friends. When the Nimrod project took off in ’82, Viscount Downe bought a customer car and Richard Williams ran the team, drafting in Mallock to drive and help develop the car.

Mallock’s recollections of Nimrod are a mixture of excitement, frustration and bitter sadness. Many think of Group C as the halcyon days of sportscar racing, but did it seem that way at the time? ‘It did really feel special,’ he says with a broad grin. ‘It captured the imagination of so many manufacturers and the public, too. It was fantastic having a formula that allowed such a variety of powertrain options and a good deal of scope on the aero. You could enter with a full-blown race engine, a production-based

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lE mANs AsToNs nimrod & amr1

engine, turbo, normally aspirated… so many opportunities. To take on the big boys? Magical.’

Nimrod presented a sharp, hungry Mallock with a unique opportunity. ‘The rolling chassis was done by Lola and the bodywork was down to Robin Hamilton,’ he explains. ‘It was a fairly crude attempt at creating an aero platform. Robin had quite a bit of experience in racing production-based Astons but none in prototypes as far as I’m aware.’ This isn’t said with any malice, just the keen matter-of-fact attitude needed to go racing successfully. ‘So actually there was quite a lot of scope for improvement and that included aero and suspension,’ he continues. ‘At the time I was working with Arthur, my father, on suspension geometry analysis. He was one of the first people to develop his own computer programme for 2D suspension analysis, and that proved invaluable. So in combination – the aero and suspension – we managed to get that customer car going very well. Our little car without much budget generally managed to out-perform and outstay the works car. It handled beautifully.’

With the Mallocks refining the suspension, Willem Toet’s work at the MIRA wind tunnel (Toet started as a mechanic but went on to become an aerodynamicist with BAR, BMW and Ferrari F1 teams) and a strong driver line-up of Ray, Simon Phillips and Mike Salmon, their car ran as high as

years. While we were campaigning the C2 cars, we were working on a ground-up C1 project. In fact Max and his team had the project on the CAD for a couple of years… waiting until Peter and Victor were ready to go again.’

They were ready in late 1987. A new company, Proteus Technology Limited, was formed with Richard Williams as MD and Mallock as engineering director and new premises in Milton Keynes. As Mallock is at pains to point out: ‘We had everything set up for a proper go at Le Mans in 1989.’ And that included the basis for a highly competitive car.

‘AMR1 was bespoke, state of the art, the first true all-carbon monocoque with the roof and rollover structure built into the main body of the tub, rather than a vestigial cover over a steel rollcage,’ says Mallock. ‘So the steel was really there to keep the FIA happy rather than for strength and stiffness.’ This was designer Boxstrom’s innovation and it didn’t stop there. AMR1 also had its complete drivetrain canted at 7 degrees to clean the aero profile and allow a very wide venturi underbody; the gear cluster was ahead of the rear axle centre-line to improve weight distribution and the car’s aero performance over the Nimrod – even the last Nimrod with Toet’s massive improvements – was almost beyond compare. ‘The cut-outs behind the front wheels were crucial. We were one of the first to understand the effects of sucking the air through

3rd at Le Mans in ’82 at around 3am before burnt-out valves slowly dropped them down the order to finish a highly creditable 7th overall. ‘It really gave us a taste for it,’ remembers Mallock in a masterful piece of understatement.

Pace Petroleum found more money over the winter of ’82, and in ’83 they came back to Le Mans after an intensive aero development programme at MIRA. With the same tyres, fuel and suspension set-up, Nimrod NRA/C2B ran 11 seconds a lap quicker than previously. Sadly an engine failure ended the challenge and in ’84 there was the terrible accident (see p76) in which driver John Sheldon was badly burned and a marshal was killed. ‘It was one of those Le Mans where so much effort and passion goes in, you feel like you’re laying your life on the line. And then somebody tragically does get killed. Devastating for everybody. That was a full stop on the Nimrod programme.’

It was far from the end of the story, though. RML was commissioned to build the lower ‘C2’ class prototypes for Ecurie Ecosse and went on to win the world championship in that category in 1986. And always bubbling away in the background was Aston Martin. ‘Peter Livanos and Victor Gauntlett had remained committed to coming back to Le Mans with Aston Martin at some point,’ explains Mallock. ‘I’d met and begun to work with an incredibly innovative designer called Max Boxstrom during the Ecurie Ecosse

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dRIVE aston martin v12 vantage

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Track record: AMR1

After a crash in testing, Amr1 missed the first round of the 1989 FIA World Sports Prototype Championship in Japan, instead making its debut at Dijon-Prenois on may 21. Limited testing miles and strong competition meant that David Leslie and Brian redman finished 17th.

Next up it was Le mans. ray mallock shared Amr1/03 with David Leslie and David Sears (that's mallock driving below), but they were forced to retire with engine failure. However, Amr1/01 driven by Brian redman, michael roe and Costas Los finished 11th in what was only the car’s second race.

There was a strong 4th place at the 480km of Brands Hatch, followed by 8th at the Nürburgring, where again the excess drag hurt Amr1. At Donington, the Leslie/roe car finished 6th while Sears/redman followed in 7th, beating Porsche 962s and the Toyota 89C-V in the process.

At Spa, the redman/Stanley Dickens car scored another strong 7th place while its sister car retired, and at the final round of the season in mexico – where the altitude hurt the normally aspirated Amr1 – the sole Amr1 driven by redman/Leslie finished 8th.

Aston martin claimed 6th in the 1989 Teams Championship behind Sauber, two Porsche 962 outfits, Jaguar and Nissan.

that void, which gave us a very powerful tool to tune the front downforce.’ With a new 6-litre version of the V8 and a Reeves Callaway-developed four-valve head producing around 670bhp, the lighter, more slippery AMR1 with strong ground effects seemed a serious contender.

However, not all was rosy. ‘The car had a long gestation period,’ begins Mallock. ‘Max and his team – for all their incredible strengths – definitely took longer than ideal in getting the design out. That meant we were late out on track and missed the first round of the championship.’ Even more of an issue was that AMR1's rear-mounted radiators gave too much drag – hardly ideal for Le Mans.

The 1989 race was the last to use the full Mulsanne, uninterrupted by chicanes, and the turbocharged Sauber Mercedes C9s were hitting an incredible 248mph. The AMR1’s drag issues were stark – it could only manage around 217mph. AMR1/03 retired with engine failure but AMR1/01 was 11th in what was only the car’s second race. Away from the long straights at Le Mans, its potential started to reveal itself. ‘For the next round at Brands Hatch we’d gone away and got our thoughts together,’ remembers Mallock. They arrived with a new, lighter chassis, AMR1/04. ‘We had a really competitive 4th, which was so satisfying. The car proved its handling and its downforce came into its own. By Brands we had a good offering.’

Development continued and by the season’s final round a new iteration, AMR1/05, had been lightened further and fitted with a new 6.3-litre engine with 740bhp. Furthermore, AMR2 was on the way with much reduced drag, helped by repositioning the radiators to the conventional location. Le Mans in 1990 was looking very exciting indeed. ‘Yes, we felt ready to take on the likes of Porsche,’ says Mallock. Then the rules changed. ‘The success of Group C in general meant Bernie and Max saw it as a threat to F1, and the rules were changed overnight. Now you had to use a 3.5-litre F1-type engine.’ Ford had recently bought Aston Martin and Jaguar and decided it would be Jaguar’s Group C programme that would get Cosworth's 3.5-litre V8. To continue, Peter Livanos would somehow have to fund a brand new engine development. It was impossible.

‘So all this effort, upheaval, blood, sweat and tears came to nought,’ rues Mallock. ‘The programme was canned Christmas-time 1989. A bitter disappointment. People look back at it as a short-lived thing that died because it wasn’t very successful. That wasn’t the case. It died because of the rule change. There was no lack of commitment, potential or performance. We’d put everything into it, we could have achieved fantastic things with Peter and the AMR programme.’ Just like that, Proteus Technology was wound-up and Aston’s Group C adventure was over. V

AMR1/05CoNsTRUCTIoN Carbon/Kevlar

central tub, carbonfibre panelsENGINE V8, 6300cc (original specification; today 5998cc)

mAx PowER c740bhp @ 7200rpm (6.3) mAx ToRqUE

563lb ft @ c5000rpm (6.3) TRANsmIssIoN Hewland

five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive, lsd sUsPENsIoN Front

and rear: double wishbones, rocker-actuated inboard

coil springs over adjustable dampers, anti-roll bar

sTEERING rack-and-pinionBRAkEs Vented steel discs,

355mm front and rear, four-piston AP calipers

wEIGHT c920kg PowER To wEIGHT c815bhp/ton ToP sPEEd c220mph

Above and rightAMR/05 is today owned and raced by Paul Whight,

supported by Robin Ward at Damax.co.uk. Our thanks to them both. The car will feature in the

Group C support race at this year's Le Mans 24Hrs on Saturday June 14. In the UK, Group C fans can

see a superb selection of these spectacular cars in action at the Silverstone Classic, June 25-27

lE mANs AsToNs nimrod & amr1