Talk:History of Formula One

message: "The Finn was nearly untouchable as he took his first title while Schumacher and Villeneuve could only watch (Schumacher putting up an admirable but futile fight)."
I think this sentence really adulterates the 1998 season. At the Luxembourg GP (2 races to go) Hakkinen and Schumacher were equal in the point standings. Even with the notice in the brace it seems to me absurd to compare Villeneuves and Schumacher stand in the championship. Michael was a clear titel contender, and for Villeneuve it was the beginning of the end.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.61.119.159 (talk) 15:22, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  End of the privateer era - 1998 part 

message: Kurohone, I have to disagree with you about Benetton's engine supplier for 1994. Every source I look at claims they used Ford engines for that season. This includes the archive of the official F1 website  and the Cosworth (Ford engines) website which claims "In 1994, the Zetec V8 F1 engine was introduced and powered Michael Schumacher?s first world driver?s title.". Tell me if this changes your mind because I want to reach a consensus before I change the article any further. Also, if anyone has info that could shed some light on the situation, please tell us.
:I apologise for forgetting to sign the message above when I posted it earlier today. 999 20:20, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Benetton - Ford or Renault engines? 

message: in this paragraph: "In contrast, ground-effects were relatively cheap, and could be well-suited to the narrow (and VERY cheap) Ford-Cosworth engine, still used by teams like Lotus, McLaren, and Williams. These two groups were represented by two political bodies, FISA, headed by Jean-Marie Ballestre, and FOCA, headed up by Bernie Ecclestone."
does anyone know what FISA stands for?  i just created a FISA page for the international rowing association.  If you know what this FISA refers to (I presume it doesn't refer to a rowing society), then we can create a disambig page...  -Lethe
:I think i got it.  Federation International du Sport Automobile, right?  -Lethe 09:50, Jun 28, 2004 (UTC)
::Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile, French is the official language for auto racing regulations. Ericd 13:54, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  FISA? 

message: I understand Ken Livingstone has agreed to an F1 race around the streets of London.
I'm sure you aficionados could add a decent paragraph on this.
:Done. I felt that this info is most relevant in the British Grand Prix article so that's where I've put it. BTW, Livingstone hasn't agreed that a F1 race is going to happen in London, he's just said that he supports the idea. SamH 09:55, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  London Street F1 

message: Formula 1 didn't start with the World Championship in 1950. The rules were laid out in 1946 when the FIA was organized, although whether they were called Formula 1, Formula I or Formula A is still a point of contention. The first Grand Prixs using F1 rules were held in 1947. Non-championship races were a regular fixture in the calendar during the 50s and 60s. --Pc13 18:17, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Formula 1 existed before 1950 

message: This article is not dealing with history of F1, it's more accurate to present it has an history of the World Championship for drivers. The championship was raced with F2 for 2 yeras and they were non championship races in the seventies and F1 raced in Hillclimb as late as 1968. Ericd 13:03, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you that the article is incomplete; however, it has long been agreed that an article covering the history of F1 (which, according to every source I have seen, began in 1950) is necessary, so the article should be improved, and not the title changed. — Dan | Talk 13:24, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The move can be counter-intuitive but it's the result of a serious one-man brainstorming. Formula one was defined in 1947. In fact F1 was the pre-war "Voiturettes" category. The World Drivers Championship started in 1950 and was competed with F1 for 2 years and then with F2 for 2 years. And they were historically significant race winning F1 like the Ferguson that never won any championship race. There was also a South-African championship in the early seventuies and a later a British F1 championship (as far I remember Aurora F1). Thus I think an history of the World Championship for Drivers is by far more pragmatic and logical. BTW, redirects exists. Ericd 13:43, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree what we've got now is a history of the F1 World Championship(s). It's not purely the Drivers one though, because there's quite a lot of constructors material here as well. I also think that it ought to become a history of F1, although the World Championships are going to form by far the majority of it. I'm inclined to make 'Formula One's status as a category, not just the well known championship, clear somewhere up front, and try and work in something on the other F1 series. Possibly the material on the F2 years should be skipped over a bit more lightly. I would suggest only including contemporary  F1 series (In the sense that Aurora F1 was contemporary in the late 70s (?)). There are also several historic F1 series (No, I don't mean Super Aguri's four year old tubs!), but I would think those belong somewhere else. 4u1e 23:27, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK - have put my keyboard where my mouth is. Added a couple of short paras on 4WD as suggested by ericd at the appropriate points, which also start to work in the non-championship thing. I'll have a look at domestic F1 championships next. 4u1e 14:14, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done - a couple more paragraphs on the SA and UK domestic championships. I can't see any other significant F1 championships out there. Plus a note on the final non-championship F1 race at Brands Hatch in 1983. It could probably use a bit more on the non-championship F1 scene in the 1950s, though. The whole article is getting rather long now though. I think the sections from 'Turbo F1' to 'Schumacher & Ferrari' could usefully  be compressed without losing any content. I might give that a go next. 4u1e 22:46, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Always easier to write longer than shorter! I've added a little more meat to the pre world championship days - again bearing in mind that this is a history of F1, not the world championship. It was quite a complicated genesis, so I'm not sure I've really nailed down the details correctly. I will go back and compress some of the other sections to compensate. 4u1e 22:03, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

text: They were South African F1 races I believe ? Ericd 11:15, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I've put in a para on SA domestic F1 under 'Technology emerges', which covers 62 to 67. The SA championship ran from 1960 to 1975, but Love's 67 result provides an interesting hook for mentioning the series. The UK Aurora series was 78 - 80. I've stuck that at the end of 'The turbo F1 era' which goes from 77 to 80, although I'm not entirely happy with its positioning. Regards non-champ F1 in the 50s, there's some quite promising looking stuff here: http://www.formula2.net/index.html but I'm still trying to work out some words I'm vaguely happy with, and I'm not sure I'm convinced that everything listed there as an F1 race really is. --4u1e 23:08, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  I disagree with the move 

message: Would the authors of this article be so kind as to list their sources in a "References" section at the bottom? — Dan | Talk 00:47, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: A few consistency points:
Should it be litres or L for the engine capacity. I personally feel litres reads better, but don't know if an agreement has been reached elsewhere.
OK to use GP as an abbreviation in the text for Grands Prix? Occurs in scattered instances, but doesn't seem consistent. Again I probably prefer spelling it out in full....
References to Lotus - should these link to Team Lotus (seems more logical to me) or to Lotus Cars?
Cheers
4u1e
*agree with your points. Litres should be "litres" not "L". "Grand Prix" (signular) and "Grands Prix" (plural) should be used instead of "GP" and "GPs". Linking Lotus Formula One and other racing activity to Team Lotus is best. I assume there is a link from Team Lotus to Lotus Cars. MonkeyMumford 14:03, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, if no-one's got any objections, I'll do a bit of editing then. Cheers. 4u1e 19:27, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Link to Team Lotus. Chapman made them independant companies. If someone could knows when it happened this could be useful. Ericd 20:27, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Group Lotus was floated in 1968 but Team Lotus remained in the hands of the Chapman family until its demise. Mr Larrington (talk) 11:20, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consistency questions 

message: With an eye to the 'Domination of McLaren and Williams' section, anyone know when traction control first appeared? www.formula1.com and www.williamsf1.com hedge their bets slightly. The earliest I'm positive it was around (and acknowledged) is 1992 on the FW14B - although the F1 website makes coy reference to early forms having been around since the 1980s 4u1e 08:33, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately the Williams F1 site (which ought surely to be the definitive source!) doesn't carry much in the way of history. Going by google there used to be a lot, but this seems to have been screwed up by the BMW - Williams split, with the result that many google hits now just lead to a 'Do you want Williams or BMWSauber' front page. I'm tentatively going for 1991 now - as the more comprehensive websites (www.f1-grandprix.com and www.motorsport.com) go that way and the story of the unreliable but quick FW14 in 1991 being followed by the very similar, but reliable, FW14B in 1992 rings a bell for me. I don't really regard those sources as definitive though, so I'm open to counterargument. 4u1e 09:08, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date of introduction of traction control 

message: Does anybody know what was 'bizarre by any standards' about 1998? See 'Safety rules and regulations' sub-heading. At a quick look we've got the temporary absence of Renault with the use of rebadged Supertecs/Renaults by Williams and Benetton. Rebadged engines are hardly unique to that season (Ferrari as Petronas (Sauber), Ferrari as Acer (Prost) for example. Or does anyone remember the Subaru (Motori Moderni) flat 12?). Nor are customer engines (Cosworth, Judd et al). There doesn't seem to have been a particularly high turnover of teams or drivers in that year and I don't remember any more arguments than normal on tech regs - Any ideas? 4u1e 17:15, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bizarre 1998 

message: Article mentions two countries banning motor racing post the Le Mans '55 accident. Not strictly on topic, although justified as explanation of Merc's withdrawal. Switzerland is the one I know of - does anyone know what the other one is? 4u1e
:I ended up deleting this anyway - mention of the crash is sufficient to justify Merc's exit. 4u1e 08:35, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The early years - motorsport bans 

message: Should a 'History of Formula One' article really have a section on the upcoming season? The same sort of material is covered in the main F1 article, as well as there being a free-standing 'Future of F1' article. My inclination would be to finish the article with the last complete season - you need a certain degree of 'standing back' to see what the historical picture is. 4u1e 08:43, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK - no comment, so I'm deleting this, just leaving the link to the 2006 article. There's nothing in this section that doesn't also appear in the 2006 Formula One Season section, and towards the end of the main F1 article 4u1e 20:10, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  2006 

message: ericd, glad to see I'm not the only one fiddling with this page! I see you've moved Lauda's crash back to 74. Are we talking about the same crash? Lauda did have an accident on the first lap of the 1974 German GP - see for example http://www.formula1.com/archive/grandprix/1974/482.html for results for that race - but he continued to compete that year - he is shown in the results for each of the following races. The famous accident in which he was given the last rites was on lap 2 of the 1976 race. See http://www.ddavid.com/formula1/lauda_bio.htm , http://www.grandprix.com/gpe/drv-launik.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niki_Lauda .In that year he was fighting James Hunt for the title. You can see that Lauda does not appear in the results for the next two races (Austria and Holland) - http://www.formula1.com/archive/season/1976.html 4u1e
It seems you're right... Go on and correct it. However it's worth mentionning the 1974 crash too, as it was really the turning point of the season. Ericd 10:04, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lauda's crash 

message: http://www.wikif1.org (in French) Ericd 15:16, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiF1 

message: I have to admit, I was thinking of Rolf Stommelen's really big accident at Montjuich, which was definitely a wing mount. However, I failed to remember (or check!)that that accident was actually in 1975, 5 years after the period I was referring to in the history article. I'd still be amazed if it wasn't the mounts breaking that caused the accidents, they're such fragile looking devices, and in any case why change the rules to direct fixing on the bodywork if it's not the not the mounts you're worried about. I'll try and find something more concrete to back up my views, though. 4u1e 07:18, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wing mount collapsing 

message: Eric - good work on the article. Hope my rejigging of your words fits with your intentions! We need to think about article length, though. The article is now up at 58k. I know the 32k limit is not a hard one, but I think it is still not a bad guide, and certainly the wikipedia guidance says that people tend to stop reading after 30-50k.
I'm in no hurry to change things, but I would like to put a suggestion forward and see what you think. The season articles sometimes, but by no means always, have a half page or so 'season summary' (see 2005 Formula One season or 1982 Formula One season, for example). Could we edit this article down closer to 32k (covering the same topics, but in less depth) and move whatever isn't needed here to the season summaries? There is also some good material that could be moved to the team/constructor articles - the Matra and Tyrrell articles in particular are rather weak, and could do with the kind of material we've got here.
What do you think?
Please don't stop adding material to this history article as you have been. If you agree to this approach we can move it later. Moving this amount of material would be a big job, so I'd like to think over the idea for a while. As I say I'm in no hurry.
What I may do in the meantime is copy (not remove) some of the material from 'Sponsorship arrives' to other places where I think it could go to show how we could move material away without losing anything. I've been doing something similar on the main Formula One article.
I look forward to your views. Cheers. 4u1e
Hi I'm also concerned by the length of the article. Of course some of the info could be useful to feed articles about individual seasons, drivers or manufacturers. 
However, I've tried to feed the article with an historic perpespective. I mean to bring the reader to an understanding of the evolution of Formula One while trying to remain concise. I don't think individual seasons articles are at the right time scale to have an historic perspective. IMO the way to go is to adopt a structure similar to History of the Soviet Union : summing up each significative period with a few lines of basic information and connecting to a larger article about this period ?
Ericd 15:21, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article length 

message: Do you think the long-haired guy is James Hunt ?
Ericd 16:13, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  I need an advice 

message: http://www.f3history.co.uk/Racingpics/index.htm
I know, I've e-mailed the guy to ask about using pictures of various Brabhams and of the Fittipaldi brothers in F2, but I've had no response yet and the site was last updated a couple of years back. 4u1e
"Please feel free to download anything you find of interest and if you do use it in a web site of your own a name check would be nice." It seems that we could find a agreement ? Ericd 19:55, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Great pics 

message: Any suggestions for changing the headings? "Next generation heroes" for example seems a bit POV whilst "After the Ferrari dominance?" seems incorrect as Ferrari seemed anything but out during the 2006 season. Alexj2002 22:28, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well "Next Generation Champions" wouldn't be POV, as it's fact Hill and Villeneuve were both champions. As for Ferrari dominance, I'm guessing we could have "Rise of Renault?" or does that seem too POV?--Skully Collins Edits 07:47, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

text: We could revert to 1950 - 1960, 1961 - 1970, etc etc. which is definitely neutral. However, the periods of interest don't necessarily match the complete decades, so I think that's probably not a good idea. 'Next generation champions' or 'Second generation champions' seems OK. 'After the Ferrari dominance?' was written in early 2006 when it seemed more appropriate! Obviously it's not right now. I hate to focus too much on Schumacher, but is the historically most significant element of the last two years going to be the end of his career? If so, should the title be something like: 'Schumacher retires'. Alex's suggestion is also good - or we could have 'Renault displace Ferrari'. 4u1e 07:51, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Headings 

message: Rubber bag tanks (Safety tanks) were introduced in 1972 not 1970 see http://atlasf1.autosport.com/news/safety.html. This was definitely not the reason for the disappearance of the spaceframe in F1 as the F2 Elf 2 used a spaceframe with safety tanks as late as 1976. Ericd 17:33, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Safety tanks 

message: The victory of Gurney with the Eagle Weslake in 1967 should be included as it is the first victory of an American chassis. Ericd 17:58, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eagle Weslake 

message: That article badly needs something about Todt before Ferrari ! Ericd 20:37, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Todt 

message: I removed :
 (Their car was notable for being the only design so far to have a transversely mounted engine.)
Well the the Bugatti 251 had also a transversely mounted engine.
At first I believe the the 1.5 L Honda was was the only F1 car with transverse engine to race in GP, but it appeared that the Bugatti 251 raced one GP. 
Ericd 13:16, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment about my edit 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: 'Aspect of history' is a lousy SD for this article. 'None' also doesn't work. I was thinking, 'History of automobile racing' or something to that effect. Anyone else have a better idea for this article's SD? Masterhatch (talk) 13:59, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: . I agree the current SD is lousy. However, I don't think 'History of automobile racing' is appropriate, as the article doesn't cover the history of all types of automobile racing; just one (Formula One). How about "History of Formula One motor racing" (which I acknowledge is somewhat repetitive, but might be better than 'None' for readers who don't know what Formula One is)? DH85868993 (talk) 02:39, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, my suggestion wasn't a good one. I just threw it out there to get a discussion going. Your suggestion is definately better than mine. Masterhatch (talk) 03:25, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I've updated it to "History of Formula One motor racing". It can always be updated again if someone comes up with something better. DH85868993 (talk) 05:35, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Short description 

message: Juan Manuel Fangio was not the only driver who took part in the Indianapolis 500 in the 1950s while competing in the other races of the F1 World Championship calendar: Alberto Ascari also participated in the 1952 edition with a Ferrari, qualifying for the race but forced to retire in the early laps (he'll be classified 31st). He won F1 World Championship in the same year, winning all races he took part in except this one. Mg55 (talk) 20:45, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I have updated the article accordingly. Thanks for pointing out the error. DH85868993 (talk) 05:42, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alberto Ascari at Indianapolis 500