ARROWS A10-01

Description

The Arrows A10 was a Formula One car used by the Arrows team to compete in the 1987 and 1988 Formula One seasons.
The car was designed by Ross Brawn and was upgraded slightly in 1988, racing as A10B.

As BMW announced its intention to officially withdraw at the end of 1986, Arrows team boss Jackie Oliver brokered a deal with support from its primary sponsor, USF&G, to continue the use of the upright 4cyl BMW engines under the name of USF&G subsidiary Megatron, Inc., founded by long-time F1 aficionado John J. Schmidt.
The engines were serviced by the team’s long time engine tuner Heini Mader from Switzerland, the former mechanic of Jo Siffert.

For 1987 the engines were fitted with a FIA approved pop-off valve which was mandatory for all turbo engines in the season with turbo boost restricted to 4.0 bar (previously turbo boost was restricted only by what the engineers felt the engines could handle, though most, including the BMW M12, usually went no further than 5.6 Bar).
Power from the engine, which always had the ability to handle high boost settings, was still estimated to be over 1,000 bhp (746 kW; 1,014 PS) for qualifying and around 850 bhp (634 kW; 862 PS) for races with the cars also restricted to just 195 litres of fuel per race. During the season the team continually experienced problems with the pop-off valve cutting in well below the 4.0 Bar limit in both qualifying and races, with Warwick reporting at the opening race in Brazil that the valve was restricting boost to 3.5 Bar, and sometimes it was cutting in at 2.6 Bar (a loss of around 200 bhp (149 kW; 203 PS)), a situation that didn’t improve throughout the season.
Without the resources and financial backing available to the likes of Ferrari or Honda, it would take Mader until the three quarters of the way through the 1988 season to solve the problem.

In 1987 the team improved from its 10th place in 1986 to finish in 7th place in 1987.
Englishman Derek Warwick scored 3 points for the year with a 5th in the British Grand Prix, and 6th in Hungary, while his American teammate Eddie Cheever managed to score 8 points from a 4th in Belgium, 6th in Detroit and Portugal and another 4th in Mexico, in what was his comeback year after missing most of the 1986 season when racing Sportscars for Tom Walkinshaw Racing’s Silk Cut Jaguar team.
His only Formula One race in 1986 was in Detroit for the Haas Lola team.

The car scored 11 points for the season leaving them in 7th place in the Constructors’ Championship.