[EricH]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

This sounds like it'd introduce a lot of frictional losses over just direct-driving the center wheel and chaining to the two outer wheels.

Not too much. And it helped with our weight distribution (we tended to run with the CG aft of center whenever we could). The gearbox was between the center and rear wheels, so we had two short chain runs.

This was back in the day when if you wanted to direct-drive your center wheel, you had to make your own output shaft, if not your own gearbox--we didn't have that type of capability, then. Besides, we were a dead-axle team--that is, at the time we did NOT go live-axle if we didn't absolutely have to. (In my time on the team, I can think of maybe 4 live axles that weren't in a gearbox, none in drivetrain--they were all reduction stages in arms or shooters,)