Paddle up

But what if I told you there was another? An alternate starting point? One that predated Barnard’s efforts by nearly a decade and, were it not rejected by one man, could have changed the face of F1 very much sooner? For that, we must spool back to the very end of the 1970s and the work of one Mauro Forghieri.

In contrast to 1989, turbocharging was becoming increasingly commonplace in Formula 1 at the end of the previous decade, but with it came enormous turbo lag, a highly undesirable trait in urgent need of mitigation. In 1979 when Ferrari was starting work on its own turbo motor, Forghieri – widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of Ferrari – began work on a semi-automatic transmission, one he believed could slash shift times and negate the pitfalls of forced induction. A high-pressure hydraulic system was developed bearing a strong resemblance to systems used by the aviation industry, and linked to push buttons on either side of the steering wheel.

Obscure though it may seem, Forgheri’s efforts yielded significant track time. The then-current, title-winning 312 T4 was fitted with the semi-automatic gearbox and, with the great Gilles Villeneuve at the helm, completed 100 trouble-free laps around Fiorano after the end of the 1979 season.

To those who witnessed it, the days of the manual gearbox in F1 must have seemed numbered to say the least. Or rather, they would have done were it not for the verdict given by Villeneuve himself. According to Forghieri, the Canadian bemoaned the loss of a manual gearbox, stating that ‘a steel shift lever will always be more reliable than electronics’.

Famed and feared for his treatment of drivers, of all the racers he employed in his autumn years it was Villeneuve to whom Enzo Ferrari was closest, his flamboyance and unwavering commitment reminding him of Tazio Nuvolari, in Enzo’s eyes the finest driver of them all. Gilles’ word was all it took for the Old Man to scrap the project. The following year’s disastrous 312 T5 made do with three pedals and a stick.

John Barnard deserves every bit of the praise he has received for moving the sport on in such a fundamental way. But Mauro Forghieri’s would-be breakthrough remains a fascinating what-might-have-been, one that makes you realise that while Enzo Ferrari may not have been any kind of wizard ingegnere as he liked to be described, when it came to recruiting them to his team, he was one of the greatest there has ever been.

When paddles arrived in showrooms, by Andrew Frankel

I never expected to like the Ferrari F355 with the ‘F1’ robotised manual transmission, replacing as it did one of my favourite six-speed gearboxes. To me part of the joy, even the mystique of driving a Ferrari was to hear every click, clack and scrape as you manhandled an alloy ball on top of a slender stalk around an exposed gate.

Then I drove the two-pedal F355 and found it met my expectations precisely. On the road the shifts were slow and, if you didn’t lift the throttle, notably jerky too, making you look like an amateur in front of your passenger.

But slowly it grew on me: if you timed the changes properly you could make it as smooth as the standard car, but the best bit were downshifts on the race track where you could either left foot brake and stab the throttle to rev-match each shift, or just heel and toe. If you were anywhere close it would sound and feel brilliant.

No, I’d never have chosen one over the manual, but I did see there was enormous potential if somehow the changes could be made smoother and swifter. Of course I didn’t figure that the key was to have the next gear already in mesh just waiting to be engaged, just like they used in pre-selector transmissions before the war. And, as you know, the solution lay not in perfecting the robotised manual, but introducing the dual-clutch gearbox. And the rest, as you know, is history.