Our new puzzle: Racing Rarities – What on earth is going on at Ferrari?

Mostly drawn from the archives of our photo partners XPB and Grand Prix Photo, every week from Tuesday we present a little piece of motorsport history. Tell us who you can recognise (Example: Jo Siffert, Monza, 1970) and join in the guessing game for the honour of it – there’s nothing to be won. Send your answer to: mathias.brunner@speedweek.com. The closing date for entries is midnight on Sunday of the current week.

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In this new puzzle, identifying the driver is no problem (after all, it’s written on the car), and the racing car manufacturer shouldn’t pose any difficulties for our puzzle-solvers either. This time, we want to know: where and when was this photo taken, and why was the car driven in this configuration?

Our clue for the last question was: A daft idea fails, as this arrangement of the radiators never caught on in Formula 1. Pictured is the Irishman Derek Daly in his Ensign N179 during practice for the South African Grand Prix at Kyalami, the third World Championship round of the season, following Argentina and Brazil.

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Derek Daly in Kyalami 1979, rechts am Auto Ensign-Gründer Mo Nunn

Foto: Grand Prix Photo

The Ensign N179, owned by team principal Morris (Mo) Nunn, appeared in this configuration just once. At first glance, observers were left wondering: had Ensign’s technical director John Baldwin and chief designer Shahab Ahmed perhaps forgotten that a racing car also needs radiators? The arrangement on the nose of the car looked like a stopgap solution, and driver Derek Daly was cooked ‘al dente’ in the cockpit. After South Africa, a modified car with a conventional radiator layout took to the track.

Naturally, it didn’t take long for this model – whose aesthetics took some getting used to – to earn its nickname: ‘cheese grater’. Given its sheer ugliness, it even acquired a second nickname – ‘stepladder’.

Derek Daly, who was always underrated in Formula 1 and (by his own account) made a fool of by his only top team, Williams, recalls the ‘cheese grater’ as follows in his excellent autobiography *Serial Survivor*.

‘It was a flop, and I had to pay the price. The thing was lightning-fast on the straights, but the shock absorbers and side skirts weren’t efficient enough to maintain a constant suction effect; we were driving winged cars back then, so I was just floundering about in the corners.”

“The car was later voted one of the ugliest Formula 1 cars, but what was essentially a clever idea never realised its full potential. Mo Nunn simply didn’t have the budget to turn this idea into a success and was seized by panic when I failed to qualify at Kyalami.”

The idea behind the concept (no radiators in the sidepods, hence more space to generate downforce) wasn’t bad, but the cooling performance wasn’t good enough, the cockpit got too hot, there was too much weight on the front axle, and there wasn’t a good solution for venting hot air either.

Today, there would be two options: either the concept would be rejected outright following appropriate simulations, or better approaches would be found to compensate for the drawbacks.