I was lucky enough to be invited to hear John Bertrand speak at a breakfast at the Hotel Sofitel Melbourne. He was the skipper of Australia II, which in 1983 snatched the America’s Cup from the Americans for the first time in 132 years. Apparently, it was a big deal in 1983. It was a tale to inspire the Australian people, who were in the middle of a recession and suffering from drought. You can read The Age article on the victory.
Mr Bertrand told us about his chief design engineer, Bob Lexcen.
Bob was a perfectionist. To him, it was all about the power-to-weight ratio. If we were sailing and nothing was going wrong, he’d be fretting because he’d worry that he had overdesigned it! If nothing was breaking, he’d go around drilling holes all over the yacht, just to bring down the weight!
You don’t understand, Bob was not like any of us. This man sought perfection. In his perfect world, the yacht would fall apart just as it crossed the finish line. It would be designed just to get through the race and nothing more.
We always said that if Bob was designing Formula 1 cars, the fuel tank would be just the right volume so that the car would be running on vapour fuel by the end of the race. The weight of unnecessary fuel would just slow the car down. And the driver would be unconscious as he crossed the finish line — because Bob will let him have only enough water to stave off dehydration during the race!
What perfection!”
Well, you know, he’s absolutely right.
Interestingly, formula one cars are designed to do just that. (moreso in the past than now, due to rule changes). Their engines are designed to fall apart at the end of a race distance. This is why formula one cars don’t always finish races.
I can’t remember who it was that said this, but I read it on a sporting poster of some sort… “if you don’t collapse, unconscious, at the end of a race, you didn’t go hard enough”.