Gustav Brunner

Gustav Brunner ( born September 12, 1950 in Graz / Styria ) is an Austrian former Formula 1 designer.

Career

Brunner was in 1970 in motorsport active. He worked as a design engineer at Mc Namara Racing in Lenggries. Chief designer was Jo Karasek from Vienna. McNamara was a former American GI who was stationed in Bad Tolz and in Lenggries at Bad Tolz in Urtlmühlweg built his racing team. His wife Bonny Mc Namara was the wealthy daughter of an American newspaper publisher, which probably contributed the money. Were built at that time Formula V, Formula Ford, Capri - Tours race car and Indy 500 race car for Mario Andretti. Customers of Mc Namara were, among others, Niki Lauda, ​​Helmut Marko and Helmut Koinigg.

Formula 1

Since 1978, Brunner has worked in Formula 1. He became famous for his work at ATS, where he supported Nigel Stroud to develop the ATS HS1. After his departure from the team Gustav Brunner took over the post of technical director. During this time he constructed with Tim Wardrop ATS D3 and D4 ATS. However, the vehicles did not meet the expectations set for them. Nevertheless, he gained a reputation for having limited financial means to build good chassis. So Peter Sauber said later: " When it comes would go to build a Formula 1 car in the forest of the resources available, I would pick Brunner. "

After a one year break Brunner went to ATS, where he was first manufactured by the chassis for the D6 and D7 with the modern composite fiber technology. Due to the lack of reliability of the BMW turbo engine, and the less than satisfactory results Brunner left the ATS team again.

In the early 1980s, Brunner designed several racing cars for the Formula 2 team Maurer Motorsport, who achieved some success with the drivers Stefan Bellof and Beppe Gabbiani.

After Maurer set on racing and he had worked between time as a development engineer for Ricardo Patrese at the Alfa Romeo, Brunner joined the British RAM Racing team. There he developed the RAM 03, in spite of a good chassis its full potential could not exploit due to financial constraints.

The team was disbanded at the end of the 1985 season and Gustav Brunner received an offer from the Scuderia Ferrari to design a chassis for the 500 miles of Indianapolis. Since this project was not carried out, Brunner moved his work on the design of the Ferrari F1/87 for the 1987 season. Ferrari then undertook the star designer John Barnard.

So Brunner returned in the fall of 1987 back to Günther Schmid, who had founded the RIAL team. Andrea de Cesaris was able to bring in a good fourth place with the Rial ARC1 at the U.S. Grand Prix in 1988 in Detroit. But the good results did not prevent a renewed dispute with team boss Günther Schmidt.

Gustav Brunner left the team again and went to Zakspeed, where he was clerk of the course. Here he developed the Zakspeed 891, which used a new and untried eight-cylinder engine from Yamaha. After the team throughout the 1989 had only twice can qualify, provided Zakspeed at the end of the racing one. For the 1990 season Brunner moved to Leyton House, co-owned it was the end of 1991. Here he enjoyed his greatest success with the second place in the French Grand Prix 1990 by Ivan Capelli.

After the March team, which had emerged in 1992 from Leyton House, had ceased operations, Brunner joined the Italian team Minardi, for which he received the Minardi M193 designed in 1993, a very compact, efficient race car without the only car of the 1993 season active suspension took.

After only one year at Minardi Brunner was Head of Research & Development at Ferrari, but returning in 1998 to Minardi, where he was known for unconventional details and the clean design with the underfunded team.

From 2002 to 2005 he worked as a Technical Director at Toyota. In the course of an internal power struggle, Toyota released him because of ausbleibenenden success. Was brought by Brunner in 2006 in front of Cologne labor court over unpaid wages. Against the backdrop of the allegation, Toyota Racing Ferrari simulation software 've used, thereby avoiding both parties the disclosure of technical details.

Team

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