Yves
Courage started building sports cars back in the early 1980s out of his
race shop located in Le Mans, France. Courage concentrated on one
off runs at Le Mans utilizing his Porsche powered home built prototypes
until the late 1980s when the team entered the Sports Car World Championship.
The team primarily concentrated on running in Europe though they did make
an appearance with the Courage C28 at the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1992.
Then in 1995 Courage decided to make foray into the up and coming World Sports Car series by building the Courage C41. The C41 was a departure for the Courage firm. WSC was new ground. It took a different "package" to win. For starters, the Porsche turbo flat-sixes that they were so used to running weren't eligible. They would have to look towards an engine that was normally aspirated and in size Small Block. Secondly, the tracks were different. The average track in Europe is high speed and has a smooth, well kept, pristine surface. American sports car tracks tend to have slower average speeds and are best approached with a high downforce package. Courage was used to designing cars to go fast down the Mulsanne at Le Mans. High downforce was a new idea.
The
Courage C41 was designed by Paolo Cantone (former designer of the Peugeot
905 3.5 liter Group C car) and benefited from over 200 hours of 33.3%
scale model wind tunnel testing. The initial wind tunnel concept
model was of a long tail coupe, and was designed by Marcel Hubert, but
it never made it past the concept stage (Race Car Engineering V4N5).
The sleek long-tail concept was pretty, and granted it never made it onto
the track, but it gives indicators towards where the team's strength was,
and perhaps as well, as to where it wasn't.
The C41 was run in the U.S. by a number of different teams. And this is one of the prime reasons the C41 struggled; lack of continuity of development. The C41 clearly lacked overall grip and was especially lacking front end balance. This was evident by the fact that at every venue I was at that I saw the Courage, the teams always seemed to be trying something new to develop front end grip. I have put together a montage of the pictures I have taken over the course of two years of the Courage C41. They make interesting reading and give photographic evidence to the technical struggles of the Courage C41.
