Arrows A2

The car was created under the direction of chief designer Tony Southgate, who designed the first “car-wing” Lotus 78 . Arrows A2 has become an absolute realization of the principle of " ground effect " and received for its appearance and painted in the colors of the brewing company Warsteiner the nickname "golden bullet" .

Work began in the winter of 1979 and the new car was ready only in the middle of the season. The bottom and the top of the car were worked out especially carefully. The side pontoons were made very long and started from the front suspension arms. The bottom was flat in front of the car and had a complicated aerodynamic profile at the rear. The front wing was absent, and the role of the rear served as a bending body extension. Not constrained in the timing of the project, Southgate very carefully worked out the hull lines: large-scale models were blown several times in a wind tunnel. The test results showed that the clamping force compared to the previous model A1 increased fourfold.

However, at the first exit of the car on the track in French Dijon, it turned out that the chassis lacked rigidity. This led to chassis jumps on irregularities and the "earth effect" ceased to act. The riders of the team complained about the handling and could not show good results - the car lacked speed. Southgate tried to add stiffness to the chassis, but this led to an increase in the weight of the machine.

Attempts to modify the chassis (installing a traditional rear wing, reworking the suspension) did not lead to improved results and did not allow us to get rid of the main drawbacks of the chassis: poor handling and imbalance.

In total, two copies of the A2 chassis were created, and the best results were the 13th place in qualifying and two sixth places earned by Mass ^[1] .