Timelines · Formula 1 · 4 of 7
A 1.5-litre engine the size of a suitcase making over 1 000 horsepower — until it exploded.
1983·BMW M12/13 1.5 L four-cylinder turbo·~640 hp race / ~750 hp qualifying (1983); 1 300+ hp by 1986·1983 Drivers’ title (Piquet) — the first turbo champion·over 850 hp per litre in 1986 qualifying trim
· THE STORY
In the 1980s Formula 1 discovered you could take a tiny engine and force-feed it air with a turbocharger — a pair of turbine wheels spun by the exhaust. The Brabham BT52’s BMW engine was based on a 1.5-litre road-car block, and within three seasons this engine family was passing 1 300 horsepower in qualifying. Those engines lasted minutes at full boost, and nobody cared: they only had to survive one lap.
· WHY IT MATTERED
An engine makes power in proportion to the air it burns. A turbo crams in several atmospheres of it, so a 1.5-litre engine breathes like a 6-litre one. The demo’s single boost dial is the whole era: turn it up and the power climbs almost in a straight line.
· WHY IT MATTERED
The turbocharger is a small gas turbine — the same compressor-and-turbine pair as the jet engines elsewhere on this site, just wrapped around a piston engine. Energy that every earlier engine had thrown out of the tailpipe now drives the compressor.
· WHY IT MATTERED
BMW’s qualifying engines ran boost that melted pistons in a handful of laps, burning toluene-heavy fuel closer to chemistry-lab stock than petrol, with blocks seasoned by being left outside to rust. Maximum power for one flying lap, then rebuild — a philosophy the rules eventually outlawed.
· TRY IT
The exhaust spins a turbine, the turbine spins a compressor, and the compressor stuffs the cylinders with pressurised air — the same blade-wheel pair as the site’s jet engines, miniaturised. Turn up the boost and watch the power climb and the engine’s life expectancy collapse.
Power tracks the air an engine burns, and boost is simply more air per stroke — a straight line all the way to the materials’ breaking point. The same compressor-and-turbine pair as the jet engines elsewhere on this site, put to work on four pistons.
Timelines · Formula 1 · component · Brabham BT52
Stamp the throttle… one thousand, two thousand… and THEN a thousand horsepower.
Rotor inertia + no exhaust energy off-throttle·0.5–2 s to full boost, era-dependent·Smaller turbines, anti-lag fuelling, driver anticipation·Electric spool — the 2014 MGU-H
· WHAT IT DOES
A turbocharger only makes boost once its turbine is spinning fast — and spinning it up takes exhaust energy that a closed throttle isn’t producing. So the driver stamps the pedal mid-corner and, for a second or more, nothing happens; then the boost arrives all at once, usually while cornering. Taming that delay defined how the turbo cars had to be driven.
· WHY IT MATTERS
The turbo’s rotating parts store energy like a flywheel: response time scales with their inertia. A big turbo makes more top-end boost but takes longer to spool — the demo’s slider is exactly that trade.
· WHY IT MATTERS
Drivers learned to open the throttle absurdly early — mid-corner, against the brakes — so the boost would arrive at the exit. Get it wrong by half a second and you got a thousand horsepower sideways in Eau Rouge.
· WHY IT MATTERS
Anti-lag ignition tricks, twin turbos, and finally the hybrid era’s answer: the W05’s MGU-H spins the compressor electrically, deleting lag altogether. Forty years of engineering aimed at this one second.
· TRY IT
Stamp the throttle at t = 0 and watch the boost build. Choose a small turbo for response or a big one for peak power, and check what has actually arrived by the time the corner exit does.
The turbo is a flywheel the exhaust must spin up, so the boost obeys a simple exponential — the time constant is the whole driveability story. Thirty years later the W05’s MGU-H spins this same wheel up electrically in a tenth of a second.