Spoilers. Once an extravagant madness

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!

The Porsche 550 RS driven by Michael May was the first spoiler to appear on a racing car in 1956 at the Nürburgring 1000 km.

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.

It would take ten years for that devilry to reappear. It was 1966 when Jim Hall presented his Chaparral in the races of the sports prototype world championship, equipped with a movable spoiler that stayed horizontal on the straights and lifted up on the corners to give the car greater downforce.

Jim Hall was one of the pioneers of aerodynamics with Chaparral.

This time, the idea set a precedent: Ferrari became the first manufacturer to introduce it in Formula 1 on the 312, albeit with little conviction. However, it was Colin Chapman, the daring creator of Lotus, who seized the opportunities presented by this system and recognized its potential, leading Lotus to triumph after triumph.

The 312 F1-68 was the first single-seater to use wings. It debuted at Spa in Belgium and was improved and improved until even the incidence of the wing became cockpit-adjustable.

Even in these years, much like at their debut, spoilers raised concerns about safety. Sprouting like mushrooms after an autumn rain, they were fitted onto existing single-seaters and were not part of the initial design. They were not only mounted on the rear of the cars either, attached to the structural elements of the suspension, but also on the front, causing alarming oscillations. They were, in fact, quite tall in order to work with “clean air,” and as witnessed during the Spanish Grand Prix with both Hill and Rindt’s Lotuses, they experienced failures that led to dangerous accidents.

Graham Hill’s Lotus 12 at the 1958 Monaco Formula 1 Grand Prix.

Banned once again. However, racing refuses to accept limitations on creativity. Stricter regulations allowed spoilers to make a comeback, following a more rational path of progressive integration into the overall design, ultimately making a significant difference to the performance of single-seaters.

As with all things that emerge from the world of racing, the spoiler found, and continues to find, its application in road cars. It no longer surprises anyone. It just goes to show that every innovation must arrive at the right moment. The engineer Michael May, who went on to earn his degree and became a highly respected driver and successful technician –working for Porsche, Mercedes, and Ferrari – was, to say the least, was initially dismissed as an eccentric madman!

Colin Chapman’s Lotus 49 was revolutionary car that was a subject of various strange aerodynamic experiments like this double spoiler configuration.