Gordon Murray reveals GMA T.50s race car homage to Niki Lauda

System 1 legend Niki Lauda would have been seventy two a long time previous if he were being alive now. Although he died in 2019, we consider he would have heartily approved of the new Gordon Murray T.50s, which will also be named the Niki Lauda as an homage.

That’s for the reason that Lauda drove the Brabham BT46B “fan motor vehicle,”  the System 1 motor vehicle that influenced the T.50’s technological centerpiece, to its only victory. The downforce-creating fan served Lauda get the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix to the dismay of rival groups. Murray also created that motor vehicle, and required to shell out tribute to his good friend and 3-time F1 champ.

Like the Brabham, the T.50s is not street authorized. It’s billed as a observe model of the GMA T.50, the supercar Murray created as a pure driver’s antidote to the standing barges that modern-day supercars have turn out to be. The Lauda leans more durable into Murray’s philosophy of lightness. In excess of two hundred lbs have been stripped from the street-going T.50, many thanks to just one fewer passenger seat in the 1+two layout, a stripped-out interior, and thinner glass. Full pounds, 1,878 lbs.

Even so, decreased mass isn’t really the only effectiveness enhancement. The Cosworth-created 3.nine-liter V12 now helps make 725 horsepower, or 66 extra ponies than the standard product. Portion of that achieve comes from a central roof-mounted ingestion drawing air into the engine, as properly as the removing of any seem restriction hardware from the exhaust.

For the observe product, just one of the street T.50’s dearest features, an previous-college handbook transmission, has been changed with a 6-speed paddle-shift Xtrac. In accordance to GMA, the equipment ratios are extra carefully spaced on the race motor vehicle, so a adhere shift didn’t make feeling the driver would lose important milliseconds switching gears and taking fingers off the wheel.

The Lauda provides many aerodynamic aids that visually differentiate it from the T.50, starting with a extensive lessen air dam. A trio of NACA ducts funnel fresh air into the cabin and toward the entrance brakes. A extended dorsal fin like the kinds uncovered on Le Mans prototypes extends from the cabin roof to the rear, where by a GT-design rear wing spans the tail. In accordance to GMA, it generates as substantially as 3,300 lbs of downforce at one hundred seventy five mph.

Inside of, the central instrument pod has been changed with a electronic display, and the standard steering wheel with a yoke-style take care of. Taking the room on the proper, where by the handbook shifter and console would have been, is a board of toggle switches.

There will only be twenty five Niki Laudas developed. Each will function a plaque celebrating a victory by just one of Murray’s a lot of F1 motor vehicle styles, starting with the 1974 South African Grand Prix at Kyalami Circuit. Manufacturing commences January 2022, and regardless of a $4.3 million price tag, GMA says fifteen autos are presently spoken for.