Can anyone recall Lehto pedalling this red-and-white device??
Pls fill me in with details....



Rainer

I suspect this is 1990 testing, Lehto driving an Onyx (logo on the sidepod looks to be Monteverdi). However, this can't be pre-season. Lehto had Nokia sponsorship on the white part of his helmet at least at Phoenix. So my guess would be second half of 1990 or maybe even after season testing or a slight possibility of 1991 pre-season.

Are we sure that this is a Formula 1 car? Logic would dictate that this is JJ testing the Monteverdi (formerly Onyx) late in 1990, after the team had withdrawn from the GP circus. The race number of 36 especially pointing to this.

But... the car doesn't look much like the Monteverdi, the sidepods, nose and engine cover looking different. In fact, it looks to me like a F3000 Reynard. Did Lehto do any F3000 or FNippon races in late 1990 after his F1 drive temporarily disappeared?

Paul : regarding the car not looking like an Onyx I was thinking the same, but maybe this is a design that never raced? I don't have any sources from around 1990, so I don't know whether Onyx got around to designing a 1991 car. Could it be that they wanted to convert a Reynard F3000 to an F1 car?

Just shooting in the dark ofcourse

Hi everyone. This car looks like the Reynard 89D that JJ pedalled for Pacific Racing. He drove 8 races for Pacific and the Team was sponsored by Marlboro. My info says that he drove Number 215 so the 36 on the rear wing is still a mystery. The car however does not resemble the Onyx in anyway.

Can't be the Reynard 89D, the car looks distinctly different from the one in the picture above.

Reynard 89D:

http://www.carclassic.com/html/CY97.htm

It turned out that it was a Monteverdi/Onyx/whateveryouliketocallit. We found another picture of it while investigating another earlier Monteverdi car, the MBM. Unfortunately, the links in this thread to the picture no longer work, but I can assure you that it was the same car!

http://www.atlasf1.com/bb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26057

Found it:

http://www.tobiasullrich.de/monteverdi/cars/all/

It's there indeed ;)

The sidepods look 89/90 F1-ish, and I've seen a pic of a red and white "F1 car" in Monteverdi's own collection - although that car looked like something from Monteverdi's florid imagination, with incredibly high wing endplates, no airbox, delta-form sidepods and a wing mounted well forward... I know Monteverdi wanted to take over design responsibility himself shudder.

My guess is that it's some interim Monteverdi/Onyx test car that never saw the light of day. It doesn't look all that much like the ORE-1 or ORE-2.

For chassis fans, according to Autocourse, Onyx apparently ran ORE-1 chassis 1-3, 5 and 6 at the start of '90, along with ORE-2 chassis 5-7. Hmmm! Your guess is as good as mine - were 5&6 rebuilt into ORE-2s? (I don't believe there was terribly much difference between them...)

Now then now then.

Bit of lateral thought here - alas my scanner is no longer of any use to man nor beast but I photographed the relevant pic.



What is that monstrosity? The nose looks a bit Onyx, but the rest of it looks totally sci-fi.
(There's what looks very much like an Onxy rear wing in the background, with No. 36 on it....)

(From the Monteverdi section in a cheapie book called 'Encyclopedia of Classic Cars' published by Blitz Editions).

Autosport called them Onyx ORE 1B (and Monteverdi ORE 1B in Germany and Hungary), so I would guess that your guess would be correct...

From http://www.tobiasullrich.de/monteverdi/:



Johnny

I write here, because I didn't want to start another new thread, after all I am desperately looking for help for yet another JJ Lehto mystery

It is widely known JJ tested Ligier in '94 mid season, while he was sacked from Benetton, but I have never found any pictures of JJ in Ligier? So anyone here might help? Rainer?