Road Racing
Spyker is credited with building and racing the first ever four-wheel racing car, the Spyker 60 HP in 1903.
Bugatti created a total of three four-wheel-drive racers, the Type 53, in 1932, but the cars were notorious for having poor handling.
Miller produced the first 4WD car to qualify for the Indianapolis 500, the 1938 Miller Gulf Special.
Ferguson Research Ltd. built the front-engine P99 Formula One car that actually won a non-World Championship race with Stirling Moss in 1961. In 1969, Team Lotus raced cars in the Indy 500 and two years later in Formula 1 with the Lotus 56, that had both turbine engines and 4WD, as well as the 4WD-Lotus 63 that had the standard 3-litre V8 Ford Cosworth engine. Matra also raced a similar MS84, and McLaren entered their M9A in the British Grand Prix, while engine manufacturers Ford-Cosworth produced their own version which was tested but never raced. All these F1 cars were considered inferior to their RWD counterparts, as the advent of aerodynamic downforce meant that adequate traction could be obtained in a lighter and more mechanically efficient manner, and the idea was discontinued, even though Lotus tried repeatedly.
Nissan and Audi had success with all-wheel drive in road racing with the former's advent of the Nissan Skyline GT-R in 1989. So successful was the car that it dominated the Japanese circuit for the first years of production, going on to bigger and more impressive wins in Australia before weight penalties eventually levied a de facto ban on the car. Most controversially was the win pulled off at the 1990 Macau Grand Prix where the car led from start to finish. Audi's dominance in the Trans-Am Series in 1988 was equally controversial as it led to a weight penalty mid season and to a rule revision banning all-AWD cars, its dominance in Supertouring eventually led to a FIA ban on AWD system in 1998.
New 2011 24 Hours of Le Mans regulations may revive AWD/4WD in road racing, though such systems are only allowed in new hybrid-powered Le Mans Prototypes. One example is the Audi R18 e-tron quattro (winner of 2012 race, the first ever hybrid/4WD to win Le Mans), utilizing an electric motor in the front axle while combining the engine motor in the rear.
Read more about this topic: Four-wheel Drive
Famous quotes containing the words road and/or racing:
“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)