Last week, Auto123.com posted an article about the innovative but never raced Ferrari 312 T6 six-wheel car. There’s been other 6-wheel F1 cars in Grand Prix history. Here are a few of them…

TYRRELL P34

Designed by Derek Gardner who wanted to reduce the frontal area of the car as well as drag, the highly innovative P34 showcased two usual huge rear tires and four, 10-inch tires at the front.

A complex steering system allowed to steer all four front wheels at the same time at the correct angle.

Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler piloted the car in 1976, while Depailler and Ronnie Peterson had one P34 each in 1977.

The car proved to be a handful to drive but Scheckter captured one victory driving it, in Anderstorp, Sweden in 1976.

Team Tyrrell abandoned the P34 when Goodyear said they would no longer design special diminutive 10-inch tire for the P34.

MARCH 2-4-0

March’s Robin Herd and Max Mosley (yes, the former president of the FIA) gave the go-ahead for a 6-wheel prototype to be built in 1976. Unlike the Tyrrell P34, the March was to sport four small wheels at the… rear.

An ingenious gearbox design was required to minimise any frictional power losses. It would also have to be stronger to counteract the higher torsional and flexural stresses that the close-coupled four-wheel-drive system would generate.

The car was testing on a few occasions but repetitive transmission problems (the gearbox was flexing excessively) put an end to the March 2-4-0 development history. On its reappearance at the Belgium GP in June, the converted 761 chassis had been reconfigured as a conventional four wheel car.


WILIAMS FW07D

Williams originally designed the 6-wheel FW07D to make the most out of ground effect aerodynamics, which employed skirts down the sides of the cars, touching the ground, to create a vacuum under the car at speed and generate enormous grip in the corners.

With a six-wheeled chassis front wheel-width tyres could be used at the rear, allowing the skirts to be extended along the full length of the car, creating even more grip.

Williams found an unexpected feature of the six-wheeled design. In wet conditions slick tyres could be used on the rearmost axle because the road those wheels were running on was swept sufficiently clear of water by the tyres in front.

Alan Jones, Keke Rosberg and test driver Jonathan Palmer tested the car with promising results. However, the FIA decided to ban cars with more than four wheels before the FW07D made its debut in Grand Prix racing.