Cars
Spoilers. Once an extravagant madness
In 1956, Michael May introduced the first spoiler on a racing car, surprising Porsche with better lap times. Spoilers faced bans but later reappeared in 1966 with Jim Hall's Chaparral. Colin Chapman recognized their potential, leading Lotus to triumph.
The first spoiler did not appear on a Formula 1 car. Vibrant orange, strikingly conspicuous, and relatively large compared to the compactness and lightness of the vehicle. It was mounted on a Porsche 550 RS driven by a 22-year-old private driver, Michael May, an engineering student who had entered the Nürburgring 1000 km. The year was 1956, and that strange car would have seemed like a joke if it hadn’t achieved significantly better lap times than the official Porsche cars. A real slap in the face considering it was the 1955 model on the day the Stuttgart-based company introduced the evolved version of the famous model to the track!
At Porsche, such a notion was deemed unacceptable, leading them to convince the Race Management, under the guise of safety concerns, to impose a ban. May and his brother, inseparable companions, continued their races without sinking into the depths of the group. However, the visionary engineer’s idea proved to be right: his eye-catching spoiler was operated by a lever, maintaining a horizontal position during high-speed stretches, while tilting on the corners. Something very similar to what happens today with the DRS in Formula 1.
