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F1 - A general conversation

299K views 8K replies 100 participants last post by  beardy56 
#1 ·
With all the subject matter being raised in the various F1 topics on here I thought I would start a general topic for any this not related to a particular race.

I came across this a few days ago



The 1965 Dutch GP.

And it just goes to show that some things haven't really changed. This race was just about halfway through the season and Clark is already just about confirmed as champion and the gaps between the leading cars at the end? Raymond Baxter calls this a close and exciting race, wonder what he would make of current F1 races?

This was Jim Clark's 5th win out of six races, he also won the next race in Germany. The only one of the first six races he didn't win he didn't take part in, Monaco, which was won by Graham Hill in a BRM who won the next two races after Germany with Jackie Stewart and the Hill again. Honda broke the mould with their first win in the final race in Mexico with Richie Ginter.

Championship :-

1st Jim Clark 54 Points (all his 6 points scores were wins and all counted, best 6 finishes only counted)

2nd Graham Hill 40 points

3rd Jackie Stewart 33 points

4th Dan Gurney 25 points

5th John Surtees 17 points

6th Lorenzo Bandini 13 points

7th Richie Ginther 11 points

8th Mike Spence & Bruce McLaren 10 points

another seven drivers scored points and after that another 24 drives competed in at lease one of the ten races that year.

That's 40 drivers competing in total and another 11 who attempted to qualify.

The Constructors championship was ( only the 1st placed car in each team counted)

1st Team Lotus - Lotus-Climax 54 points (Jim Clark, Mike Spence and two other drivers )

2nd Owen Racing Organisation - BRM 45 points (Graham Hill & Jackie Stewart)

3rd Brabham Racing Organisation - Brabham-Climax 27 points (Jack Brabham, Dan Gurney, Denny Hulme and 1 other driver)

4th Ferrari - Ferrari 26 points (Lorenzo Bandini, John Surtess (8 races), Pedro Rodriguez (2 races) and 3 other drivers)

5th Cooper Car Comapny - Cooper_Climax 14 points (Bruce McLaren and Jochen Rindt)

6th Honda R & D Company - Honda 11 points (Ronnie Bucknum & Richie Ginther)

7th RRC Walker Racing Team - Brabham-BRM 5 points (Jo Siffert also Jo Bonnier in a Brabham - Climax)

8th Reg Parnell Racing - Lotus--BRM 2 points Richard Attwood, Innes Ireland, Mike hailwood, Chris Amon and 2 other drivers)

with 3 other teams racing and another 3 teams that did not qualify for any races.
 
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#2 ·
This was EXACTLY the point I made (slightly tongue in cheek) in one of the recent threads....
It underlines that the memory from one's youth is distorted by the excitement of that time in my view.
Also it depends if the dominance was in line with the person and team of your choice.
Take the Schumacher years. I stopped watching for a few years, as I have no interest in him or those red cars.
Ask most Italians or Germans and they will remember them as glorious times!
Andi
 
#3 · (Edited by Moderator)
As a lifelong Jim Clark fan I should point out that looking at 1965 in isolation rather distorts the reality of the performances of Clark and Lotus during the 1960s.

1960 and 1961 were Clark's "learning years" where he performed very well in machinery that was good but not the best and he also made mistakes that all drivers do as they develop.

From 1962 through to 1968 when his career was cut short actually is more representative of how things were like back then, even with very competitive machinery through bad luck and unreliability Lotus and Clark lost out in the 1962, 1964 and 1967 championships and were nowhere in 1966. So he and Lotus enjoyed two dominant years out of six. This is nothing like the current situation where the dominant team with "sewing machine reliability" rack up win after win, season after season and produce these multiple championships and win tallies.

The "old days" were better as the mechanical unreliability factor enabled many more teams to win championships - Cooper, Ferrari, BRM, Brabham and Matra as well as Lotus during the 1960s decade.

David
 
#4 ·
Modern efficiency and reliability counts for a lot, steel brakes and manual gearboxes a la 1970s, but with modern safety standards to please the h and s directors, would increase braking distances and have less mechanical reliabilty, but you can't univent things, in any period 1 or 2 teams have been top dog, bop and success ballast closes things up but is so artifical, just look at the btcc last year, turkington the points champ, but Ash Sutton the real race winning champ.
 
#5 · (Edited by Moderator)
All this labelling the Jim Clark years as "boring" overlooks a few basic facts; not least of which is that he never won back to back world championships.

To me Jim Clark really showed his class in the early years of the 3 litre formula period. Brabham, Ferrari etc. had full sized 3,000 cc engines to play with whist Lotus initially had to make-do with modified climax engines bored out to 2 litres.

All through the years 1961-1985 nobody was world champion two times consecutively. (there must be something in that)
 
#6 ·
I wasn't picking on any driver or team, I had found the youtube clip and when watching it things just seemed very familiar .

As I said in one of the other threads as a team comes up with a innovation they tend to dominate for a while. I also said about the fact that Lotus would probably have dominated the mid 60's if it wasn't for reliability, which to be fair also effected a lot of teams and hindered a lot of good drivers.

Engines don't blow very often these days because they are made to last a set number of races and will only run at near full power in qually 3. You can bet your bottom dollar the the likes of Clark, Hill, Brabham, McLaren along with Prost, Hunt, Lauda, Mansell, Villeneuve and all the other drivers before fuel limits came in would be pushing to their and the cars limit for a good part of the race.

I wonder what most of the older drivers would make of having to cruise around well with in their's and the cars full limits.

I see they are talking about bringing refueling back for 2021, yes please, by all means limit tank size but please no limit on the amount of fuel a car can use. Lets see F1 cars racing at the drivers and the cars limits. Although I think the cost saving measures will mean less engines during a season which will mean running with an even greater safety margin on the engines power and rev's.

F1 is meant to be about technical innovation and out the box ideas which the current rules and cost saving prevent, IMO.
 
#8 · (Edited by Moderator)
Hi David

I have a feeling that if manufacturers wanted to be in the WEC, they already would be. The fact is that Toyota have been the lone star in LMP1 and when it comes to GT racing, although the grids are strong and the action is usually good, there is actually even stronger support for GT3 formula than there is for LM GTE. While Mercedes, McLaren, Lamborghini and Bentley to name a few are absent from WEC they all have strong GT3 programmes. Same for Nissan, Audi.. the list goes on.

The real manufacturer hub at the moment seems to be Formula E which makes next to no sense to me. The inaugural seasons were for spec cars, and although with the next gen cars the powertrain development is supposedly free, I don't really see too much room for technical innovation given the constraints of the rest of the package. It's almost as if the marketing depts of the large makers are satisfied with being guilty by association rather than establishing tangible links with the on track machinery. Or rather, electronicery
tongue.png


When it comes to Formula One I fully subscribe to the argument that historical "racing" was never any better than it was now. Some races were great, others were strung out and boring, which mirrors the situation today. However one important difference that I think does exist between "then" and "now" (feel free to insert your own years) is that "old" cars and tracks were a lot more exciting in isolation than they are today. The cars moved around and made loud noises, enough to the extent they were entertaining even when lapping by themselves. Today's cars corner on rails and comparatively quiet. Tracks are thoroughly sanitised and provide little thrill for the observer. And both cars and tracks used to be decorated in a plethora of sponsor's colours, mainly thanks to tobacco and alcohol, but also from the automotive industry and even local companies. Who remembers the Fuji TV bridge at Suzuka, or the Sunday Times bridge at Silverstone? Things like this give those places character. That's all gone away now, we've got Rolex, Pirelli, and a field of either plain-ish looking white, grey, or black cars. The racing hasn't changed, but I think the ability of the sport to capture the imagination and fascination of onlookers definitely has.
 
#9 ·
Porsche dominated Le Mans 24 hours throughout the 1970's & 1980's this was not such an issue due to the fact that privateer teams were able to acquire 956's etc. "off the shelf"
 
#10 ·
Bridges and general advertising hoardings always give a circuit character, motor bridge at oulton at the top of deer leap, the silverstone daily express bridge on the old circuit, but for me the features at le mans were the best, the esso man on the outside of the pits straight before they moved it infield about 72, the shell racing car, 3 different designs over the years, at the end of the pit straight as the track sweeps right towards the esses and of course the martini tarpaulin on the roof of White House,donnington sadly lost the spitfire on the crane curves a while back.
 
#11 ·
GP drivers in the "golden age" also race in F2, Saloons, Sports, rallying etc. Today they seem much more limited. Like the cars, the drivers appear not to be allowed any personality with team crew shoving a microphone in every time they speak. I can't imagine James Hunt or Innes Ireland putting up with that.

Cheers

John
 
#13 ·
Hi David

I have a feeling that if manufacturers wanted to be in the WEC, they already would be.

The real manufacturer hub at the moment seems to be Formula E which makes next to no sense to me.

When it comes to Formula One I fully subscribe to the argument that historical "racing" was never any better than it was now.
I agree with a lot of what you say Gary. Regarding the manufacturers I don't really care where they go as long as it is away from F1. The manufacturers have all gone to FE because it is small budget and very cheap advertising. The racing itself was never any better, there were dominant teams and drivers, processional races etc but as I said at least there was the random factor of a high retirement rate which mixed up the results and a teams domination rarely lasted more than two seasons.

Bridges and general advertising hoardings always give a circuit character, motor bridge at oulton at the top of deer leap, the silverstone daily express bridge on the old circuit, but for me the features at le mans were the best, the esso man on the outside of the pits straight before they moved it infield about 72, the shell racing car, 3 different designs over the years, at the end of the pit straight as the track sweeps right towards the esses and of course the martini tarpaulin on the roof of White House,donnington sadly lost the spitfire on the crane curves a while back.
Motor racing circuits used to be so individual due to the geography they ran through and they had a range of challenges (fast, slow, long, short and hilly) most of this has gone now with the Tilke formula.

I wasn't picking on any driver or team, I had found the youtube clip and when watching it things just seemed very familiar .
I realised that you weren't and I used Clark/Lotus as an example particularly as they were the team to beat for a high proportion of the 1960s.

David
 
#14 ·
I agree the circuits are a problem.
However I don't have an answer because I do feel there is a large relationship to safety which I find important. I do think people shouldn't be dying. I don't know enough to understand if there are other solutions to that problem.

Are we sure that if the manufacturaers went away anyone would be interested? Who else would want to be involved now? With cigarettes gone who would be advertising? What global brands could afford these things? Perfumes maybe? A Chanel car, a Paco Rabanne car? Fashion houses? Prada, Hugo Boss etc? Or food? Macdonalds v Burger King?

Or are you imagining red and green cars? That will never be possible again. We are fifty years beyond......

The manufacturers, it seems to me, have saved F1 from disappearance. They have become a new reason for teams to exist, without which I don't think they would.

More than happy for someone to show me i'm wrong :)

Andi
 
#15 ·
Thing in the 60's was as teams innovated they tended to beat them self a lot of the time. Taking 1965 as an example there was about 70 retirements in 10 races. The top 5 in the championship only all completed 1 race together and the top 6 didn't even manage this.

Although we have had 23 retirements this season in the same number of races the top 5 have only failed to finish 1 race and so have the top six, both different races.

Whilst we don't want cars breaking like they did in the 60's I think we need to have the engines pushed harder and have some more blown engines, how many of the early Turbo cars failed to finish because the turbo blow?

Maybe giving the teams a free choice of tyres for the whole race would mix things up a bit. Maybe one of the lower order teams could get through a whole race on the hardest compound and gain a points finish.

I've always been a F1 fan and I think always will be but they need to rip up the part of the rule book that stops teams from innovating. Lotus innovated so did Williams and McLaren and when they did they all did very well. Now it just seems to be down to money and engine power.

For 2021 lets tear up the rules for tyre choice, fuel limits (just a tank size), and wings (maybe just an overall maximum width) and a lot more freedom in aerodynamics. Let the designers decide what the cars wings and overall airflow needs to be. Wings could change for different circuits. Yes some of these could increase costs but there is also the chance for the lower budget teams to build a simpler car that uses design innovation to improve performance. I a team develops a new innovation don't just ban it let the other teams catch up. That's what F1 should be about, cutting edge development.

I've just had a look at the 1966 season, only 9 races with the best 5 results counting. Only 2 drivers finished 6 races, no one else managed more than 4 finishes and no team got a car home in every race. At least the points system was designed to work with a high number of retirements,

Don't think, cost aside, that I would go to another F1 race because unless you are in the right place you won't see any racing. I've only been to 3 GP the first being the 1974 Austrian and the group I was with picked the correct spot to be in the middle of the Texaco Schikane as the cars started to park up opposite us and go off at the start of this section. I also attended the british GP in 1980 at Brands and 81 at Silverstone.

Now talking about reliability 1981 at Silverstone 24 starters and only 8 finished the race with only Watson and Reutemann on the same lap. i was in the stand opposite the old pit exit so again a go view.
And the year before at Brands I was somewhere between Clearways and Stirling and could see the cars exiting from Westfield and coming down the hill and flying past my spot and only the first 3 on the same lap.

Now that could be why we remember these races as being exciting with lots of overtaking, but most of it would have been backmarkers being overtaken.
this was Bands 1980 3 cars on winners lap, 3 cars 1 lap down, 2 cars 2 laps down, 3 cars 3 laps down, 1 car 4 laps down and the final finisher 7 laps down.
Now that's a lot of overtaking even if a position didn't change in the race.

Sorry for the long post, but please comment, shoot me down in places, but most of all lets hear your thoughts of what you would like to see for 2021.
 
#16 ·
I saw a video about the "shark fins" and they kept using all kinds of computer stuff to show how they figured out the best size, shape and material for it.

That got me to thinking about why we felt old racing was better.

The idea that crossed my mind was that back in the day you had very little in the ways of knowing if something would work or not.

Much like during wartime you have to fail fast and fail often as effectiveness overrules efficiency you had an idea, you tried it out as best you can and saw if it stuck.

Look at all the wings, ground effects (Chaparral), fast back NASACRs, the vacuum cars..etc etc. even Formula E's second season reminded me of this as you had everything from single gear to 5 gear cars and Renault eDams even had a sort of 8 gear set up with a bicycle-like manual gear changer to get the a different set of ratios.

It became obvious that a lot of these ideas simply didn't work (Renault's did... they won the championship).

Nowadays people sit in offices pushing 1s and 0s and testing testing testing in theory so they have a general idea that something will actually work long before they hit a track. At that point it is a matter of dialing things in as the cars are (still) driven by humans and not machines (yet)....

On the one hand I miss the wacky "let's stick XYZ on it and see if it goes faster!" but at the same time given the fight for resources and the pressure to win I can completely understand that you can't afford to just try crap out.

So maybe it comes back to money and the fact that the good teams have bigger... computers... and can test, test, test and to a certain degree takes chance more out of the equation. (as mentioned above about reliability)

My (probably unpopular) point of view is that the whole point of any "formula" sport is to eek out he best car possible within those parameters. When one team has much more resources it is really is kind of unfair.

I remember when Williams brought out the "dancing car" the press at the time basically said they should provide it to other teams (for a fee).

Compare that to one make series like Porsche Carrera Cup where it is all about car setup and driver ability.
 
#17 ·
A few people on this thread have berated modern F1 because reliability of the front runners has rendered the races as predictable. However the flip side of this is cars in general are infinitely more reliable than they were in the past.

Does anybody seriously want a return to 1960's-1970's motoring???
 
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#18 ·
It is what it is, as all the teams use computers and programming nerds at the end of it all the dude turning the steering wheel, pressing the pedals and taking real time decisions is the bit nobody can control but him (and occasionally her). The best teams have the best drivers and some are always better than others.
One make series are utterly boring, I'm not remotely interested in these.
Hopefully the right decisions will be agreed on to put more emphasis on the dude in the driving seat but I've no doubt just like our model car racing the best always rise to the top.
 
#20 ·
#21 ·
My point about reliability is that the cars and engines aren't being over stressed in modern F1. If the cars had been running at 90% of maximum performance in the 60's and 70's how many more cars would have finished each race ?

I fear the the cost cap for 2021+ will only stiffel innovation in the top teams and although it may allow the smaller teams to catch up this may only make the races even more boring as everyone ends up with level machinery. We can only hope that different teams spend there development in different areas of technology.
 
#22 ·
My point about reliability is that the cars and engines aren't being over stressed in modern F1. If the cars had been running at 90% of maximum performance in the 60's and 70's how many more cars would have finished each race ?

I fear the the cost cap for 2021+ will only stiffel innovation in the top teams and although it may allow the smaller teams to catch up this may only make the races even more boring as everyone ends up with level machinery. We can only hope that different teams spend there development in different areas of technology.
Back in the good old days when you had a qually engine, a spare car and as many engines as you could afford...they were built for one race not seven + qually + 3 practices.

You can't level the machinery when there's four different engine manufacturers and 10 car manufacturers.

We need more tyre manufacturers in F1 + some ground effects + refuelling (with a minimum stop time to prevent rushed accidents that got refuelling stopped in the first place)
 
#23 ·
I can’t believe F1 is thinking of bringing back refuelling! Just another gimmick to try and make it look vaguely interesting. Refuelling was stopped because of the danger of fire and the carcinogenic properties of the stuff.
 
#25 ·
The best way to enforce a "stay on the black bits" rule is to minimise the use of tarmac run-off areas. A little excision on grass (or in gravel) with cost time and hopefully reduce the need for 'track policing'

Formula One needs to investigate how other motorsport categories (both four & two wheeled) deal with the competition/entertainment conundrum.
 
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