Lorina Racing Benetton F1

With the purchase of the Toleman team in 1985, Italian fashion giant Benetton acquired the services of brilliant South African–born designer Rory Byrne. After years of under-investment, Byrne finally had a meaningful design budget,  and for the next decade, his genius would dominate Benetton’s drawing office.

In 1992 Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR) acquired a stake in the team, and supplied the engineering talent of Ross Brawn. The team had already signed up and coming driver Michael Schumacher towards the end of the previous season.

The all-new, Byrne and Brawn designed B192 made its debut at the fourth race of 1992 at the Spanish Grand Prix. Built around a carbon-fibre composite monocoque with a fully stressed works Ford Cosworth V8, the design formed the basis of the successful Benettons that followed.

Although broadly following the same design parameters as the B191—with pushrod suspension in front and rear, Ford HB V8 power, and a noticeable lack of either semi-automatic gearbox or active suspension—it was immediately apparent that the car was a considerable improvement on its elder siblings. It was not as sophisticated as the Williams, McLaren and Ferrari cars, but the very sound design made the B192 instantly competitive.

Shared by TWR racer Martin Brundle and Michael Schumacher, the B192 propelled the team to third in the World Championship. Schumacher was particularly successful, finishing second at the B192's debut in Spain. Later in the year, he scored his maiden Grand Prix victory at Spa, exactly one year after making his Formula 1 debut, and like his team, finished third in the Drivers Championship. Together, Schumacher, Byrne and Brawn would go on to win seven world championships.

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Both Martin and Michael drove this chassis during the season, with Michael finishing second by a mere 1.2 seconds to the McLaren of Gerhard Berger at the final race in Adelaide!  Indeed, it is often forgotten that Martin was often within a second of Michael in qualifying - during the season in which we didn’t know that the German driver would go on to dominate Formula 1. Surely the British driver deserved a victory or two?

The final races of the 1992 season saw B192-08 compete in Japan and Adelaide. The B192 chassis had been intended for use in 1993, but needed considerable changes to make the chassis work with the new season’s tyres.

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The Benetton was run in the early races in 1993 but by then semi-automatic gearboxes, plus active suspension control, were becoming the norm so those features which made the B192 perhaps the last of the breed as an ‘analog’ car were no longer desirable. It might well be argued that the Benetton B192 was the last successful car of the era with a clutch pedal and manual gearbox.