Formula 1 Blog : Thoughts of an Enthusiast

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

F1 1970s: 1970 world championship- Jochen Rindt

©http://www.formulaonestuff.com/images/Jochen_Rindt_1970_British_CAR.jpg?382

Together from 1969 till 1970
Rindt and Chapman had a relationship fraught
until Rindt was a crash casualty
With many victories the relationship had bought

Pointless in the first 2 races
Rindt was victorious in 5 of the next 6 races
Starting from Monaco till Germany
Save for Belgium, it sounds so many

A retirement later at Austria
Lead to death in practice at Monza
3 deaths it was during this phase
Causing the F1 fraternity to go into mourning again

Just 4 points in the first half of season
Ickx was rejuvenated in latter half of season
But this wasn't sufficient reason
To put an end to Rindt's maiden title season

Adding credence to the then new buzz
Rindt was the first man awarded posthumous
This was Lotus-Ford's second title in 2 years
But perhaps it wasn't sufficient reason to celebrate with beers

claim token YAJ49RSJ9N4M

F1 1970s: part 4- Drivers, Constructors, etc...

Here, I have tried to keep it similar to the 1960s version. I have provided statistics for various important aspects such as the constructors that took part during the decade, the changes in the points system that occurred, the fatalities the F1 world witnessed (not always in F1 though) and my dream line up (arguably).

Constructors:

If one thought that the 31 during previous decade was more, it increased by 50% with as many as 45 constructors during the succeeding decade as F1 gained more popularity among masses and constructors alike. Lotus and Ferrari continued their strong form from previous decade with Brabham and BRM moving downwards. Previous decade newbie McLaren began to show their class with 2 drivers and one constructor’s championships, the same as decade new entrant Tyrrell. Williams and Renault are two of the names which came in and have been prominent names (also as Engine suppliers) in the decades succeeding the 1970s.

Points System:

As was evident in the last few years of the 60s, the points allotted for each position in the race continued to remain the same, only with the results counted towards the championship changing.

* - All races counted towards Constructor's championship

Fatalities:

The number if F1 fatalities did reduce over this decade due to heightened safety concerns which lead to increased safety for drivers.

9 drivers died during grand prix events with seven more dying during non- grand prix events.

Mike Hailwood gained a lot of respect when he pulled Clay Regazzoni from a burning car during the 1973 South African grand prix. Similarly Niki Lauda was saved from more serious injury thanks to the efforts of some fellow drivers.

* Jochen Rindt became the first post humous champion (championship awarded after death) after he died while leading the championship during the Italian GP race weekend.

* Former champion Graham Hill died in a plane crash in 1975

Drivers:

The below table represents my dream teams, for arguably, the most well known constructors of the decade. Some drivers do fit in several teams based on the teams they drove for successfully, but I have tried to achieve a compromise, hence ensuring all good drivers get a look in.

F1 1970s: part 3- Safety

Here, I talk about the various safety features introduced this decade

Safety Car
It was first used in Formula One at the 1973 Canadian Grand Prix. Its called upon when the conditions are deemed too dangerous to drive. Bernd Maylander is the current driver of the Safety Car. In order t indicate that the safety car has been called, a board with letters SC is put along with the yellow flags. It generally joins ahead of the leader of the race, but there have been instances where it has lead to confusions, one primary example being the inaugural SC race itself, wherein the race winner was decided hours after the race had completed.

©http://i1004.photobucket.com/albums/af164/EB_Chris/Misc%20Racing/1973SafetyCar.jpg

Repercussions: The entire field gets bunched up behind the SC, much to the fan’s delight as it increases the excitement in the race, but it is always disadvantageous to those that have built a strong gap to the one behind as all the hard work ends up being nothing. It can be considered synonymous to a coin though, as sometimes it helps a driver and sometimes is a disadvantage to the driver.

Jackie Stewart
One might wonder… “Is this a safety device or safety feature?” Nope, it is neither. It is Formula One Great and triple world champion Jackie Stewart. As per the Formula 1 website, during his time, the chances of getting killed were 2/3rds over a 5 year period of racing. He became one of the forerunners in pushing towards heightened safety standards, with him even saying once that he would like to be remembered for his work in upgrading safety. With initial opposition in the late 60s, he generally got his voice to be heard, and this lead to what safety is today over time.

©http://www.formula1.com/wi/597x478/manual/gallery_image_main_127_3.jpg

Track safety

Many regulations with regards to track safety were introduced during this time, right from double crash barriers, pre- race circuit inspections, minimum height grass verges, straw bales being banned, wall separation between track and pit lane to a minimum distance of 3 metres between spectators and the outer fence in 1970. By 1974, safety walls around the circuit became mandatory, followed by marshals and medical service personnel (with proper Prior training) getting mandated the following year. Service roads were also to be provided for ease in transport.

© formula1.com

Cockpit

Cockpits were needed to be designed such that the driver could escape out within 5 seconds in the event of a crash/ incident. A 6 point safety harness (2 shoulder straps, with 2 belts between the legs through which another 2 straps pass through) for the driver was made compulsory in 1972. A more prominently placed and better fire extinguisher was to be present by the decade end along with the implementation of safety structures around the dashboard and pedals.

Image shows a 5 point harness : .

©http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lotus_22_inside_detail.jpg

Overtaking Code of Conduct (©http://www.f1pulse.com/schumster/insights/201004232/f1-overtaking-code-of-conduct)

In order to make overtaking more safe, the following rules were introduced:
a) A car that is alone on the track can use the entire width of the track, however, as soon as it is caught by a car that is about to lap it, the driver must allow the faster car to go through at the first available opening. If for some reason the driver that has been caught up is unable to make full use of the rear mirrors, the flag marshals will wave the blue flag, to indicate that the faster wants to overtake. A driver that chooses to ignore the blue flag would be reported to the Stewards.
b) According to the situation, a driver can overtake the car in front of him, either from the right side or the left side. However, moves that could possibly obstruct other drivers, like the change of direction more than once to defend a position, deliberately squeezing the car beyond the edge of the track or any other unusual change of direction are strictly forbidden. Any driver found guilty of using such a method of driving would be reported to the Stewards.
c) The drivers should use the track at all times. To avoid any confusion:
i) The edges of the track are marked with white lines and are considered to be a part of the track; however, the kerbs are not a part of the track.
ii) The driver will be considered to have left the track if no part of his car remains in contact with the track.
In a situation where the driver goes off the track, and without prejudice to point d below, he may rejoin, only when it is safe and without gaining any advantage.
d) Drivers committing serious mistakes repeatedly or seem to have a problem with keeping the car on the track would be reported to the Stewards and could result in penalties up to and including the exclusion of the driver in question.
At any given time during the season, the driver is expected to follow these rules. Any driver who deliberately appears to break any of these rules to gain advantage at any stage in the race or the season could be penalised by the sport’s governing body.

Note: Super licenses were made mandatory in 1978 in order to drive in F1.

F1 1970s: part 2- Tracks

There were very long tracks in use until the mid- 70s with circuit extending almost up to 10 miles in length, hence leading to long races with lesser safety due to parts of the track being inaccessible by medical or safety personnel. With the increased number of deaths in first half of the decade, several circuits were either axed from the calendar or were modified to make them much smaller. One such circuit was the circuit de Charade (on the right) which extended to 8 kms in length as its facilities were available at a tough to access mountainside. It was touted as a very good circuit, but now it has been reduced to below 4 kms and is no more availble on the current F1 calendar.

Spa- Francorchamps: This is another circuit which extended to an imposing 14 kms. Originally 15 kms in length it was reduced to 14kms prior to this decade, and was further reduced to 7kms (shown on right side) by 1979 due to the extremem high average speeds which were leading to lot of fatal accidents (in F1 as well as outside F1).

Nurburgring: The legendary Nordschleife was softened with the bumps being flattened out after driver complaints in 1970. The circuit was made straighter but still staying at a long 22kms in length, safety was always at risk. After Niki Lauda's near fatal accident in 1976, the circuit was axed in favor of Hockenheimring. Subsequently, the southern nurburgring circuit Sudschleife has been in use and has undergone changes and been quite shorter than the Northern circuit that was in use as is evident on the right side of below diagram.

Replacement Circuits: With concerns being raised about the long, sometimes dangerous and inaccessible circuits, newer shorter circuits were added in as replacements in F1 such as the Paul Ricard (left), Zolder circuit (middle) and the afore mentioned Hockenheimring circuit (right). Among these three, only a shortened version of Hockenheim is in use for F1 races now.

a) © http://www.gdecarli.it/Circuiti/FRA/FRA%20Paul%20Ricard%201986%20A.gif

b) © http://www.juratek.com/UserFiles/Image/Circuit-Zolder-Large.jpg

c) © http://www.espnf1.com/PICTURES/CMS/4500/4555.jpg

F1 1970s: part 1- The Car

Special thanks to www.Formula1.com, Google and wikipedia for all helpful information.

This decade didn’t have numerous developments in the car, but the most significant and far- reaching change was in downforce which brought in drastic reduction in lap times by the end of season. The engine specs were mandated with 1500 cc compressed engines and 3000cc non-compressed engines being the maximum allowed. The minimum car weight limits increased from 530 kg to about 575 kg by the middle of the decade.

The limitation on wing and other down force elements size was introduced at the start of the decade.

Ground Effect

Though wings were introduced in the earlier decade after success by the Chaparral team in the Can- Am series, the concept of ground effect hadn’t been understood. Ground effect not only increased the straight line speeds but increased the cornering speeds too. It has also increased the emphasis on setup as small changes create a larger effect on the balance and hence handling of the car.

By the late- 1970's, Colin Chapman from Lotus introduced concept of ground effect in F1 with the inverted aerofoil in their cars which lead to large increase in speed (though arguably pioneered in Chaparral 2J as early as 1970 for racing).

Note: Ground Effect is similar to the principle (Bernoullis principle) used by planes to rise up in the air, except that in this case the car sticks to the ground due to a suction force that is developed between the car and ground (due to increased air acceleration as the ground moves backwards metaphorically, and lowered air pressure). This leads to the ability of the car to drive upside down at high speeds theoretically.

Brabham bt46b (© http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/12/2011/11/bt46b_1.jpg)

Brabham went a step ahead by introducing a fan to increase the down force but this race winning element was banned by the end of the race as it was considered a movable element (akin to the banned movable wings).

The airbox (As seen in below picture) on top was banned.

The Turbo Era

While Supercharged engines were introduced in the 1970s, it didnt really pick off until Renault joined F1 as an engine supplier in the 1977 season and came in with the Gordini V6 Turbo. It was not all a smooth transition due to the resultant Turbo Lag. It was not until the end of the 1979 season, that the full impact of turbo engines were realised with the Williams winning some races towards latter half of season.

Note: Turbo Lag is the time taken to change speed efficiently in response to a throttle change.

Fuel Tanks

The now predominant saftey fuel cells were introduced in 1970 followed by safety foam presence in fuel tanks with minimum thickness of magnesium increasing to 3mm.

Slick Tyres
Slick tyres were introduced this decade, taking over the road grooved tyres that were being used earlier. The advantage being that traction increases a lot with the increased contact with road. The disadvantage being it becomes very difficult tyre to drive with in damper conditions.

The image on the left depicts Graham Hill's Lotus in 1968 with grooved tyres (shown in red) and the right image depicts a 1978 Lotus with slick tyres (shown in blue).

F1 1960s: 1960 world championship- Jack Brabham

© https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1WJMduSDxxNQ5eAOm81cQsTdZwNSf-jr8DFXPaTl3YxMxvRwoYOczscPrSYQho0DJdBOrLOSYIZKNzEnUUx2ItQIznprm7JJC6jMhF1Dxk1FcUdMJ13fHzCBM-5HGqqL52fdHRvngd40/s1600/1960-jack-brabham.jpg

Here starts the 1960 almanac
A year after cooper got Tauranac
Post Argentina, on the flying airliner
There was a talk between Jack and Cooper

The new car was the Cooper T53
This started with a spin at the Monaco Grand Prix

Till Portugal starting from Netherlands
There was a five straight win success

In between Spa saw deaths for two
But that couldn't stop a Cooper 1-2
Sterling Moss too had an accident
This added to Jack's confidence some augment

Monza was once again on the banked track
Phil Hill ending it with a lone conquest
It was for once a Ferrari cakewalk
Thanks to all the British teams boycott

Moved from Sebring to Riverside
The US GP saw Moss's podium reappearance
But that was too little too late
To stop Jack Brabham's dominance

F1 1960s: part 3- Drivers, Constructors, etc...

Finally, we are into the third and final part of this article series. Here, I will be discussing about a few other aspects featuring in the 1960s:

Constructors:

There were as many as 31 constructors taking part in the 1960s. As the below stats indicate; Lotus, Ferrari, BRM, Brabham, Cooper were some of the biggest in this decade with lot of innovative solutions in car design leading to large performance swing among these teams. Matra too were quite effective in their short stint towards the end of this decade. The eye- opening aspect though from this decade is that there are only 2 of them left from that decade showing the cut- throat competition that is evident in F1. Even those 2 constructors – Ferrari and McLaren aren’t in great position in the world automobile industry, though they are very much respected. This clearly shows that it is not necessary that an automobile giant will end up having success in the F1 world, largely thanks to the wide performance gap that has existed between F1 cars and road cars.

Points system:

If one thought that the chopping and changes in points system have been confusing us spectators only since recently, then he/ she is wrong. This has been seen from earlier itself, but to a smaller extent. Unlike present, only the top 6 drivers were given championship points each race in spite of the similarly large number of entrants entered at each grand prix. While the general scoring system of 9-6-4-3-2-1 was followed for more or less the whole decade except for 1960 (where first placed man got 8 points), but towards the latter half of the decade, the number of results effectively counted for the driver’s championship and constructor’s championship were reduced.

Additionally, another point of note is that unlike the preceding decade, there were 6 drivers given points per grand prix instead of 5, with no points given for the fastest lap, hence lowering the importance of going for the sensational lap.

Fatalities:

In continuance of my previous article, we get to see the list of F1 drivers who had fatal crashes in F1 (dark blue) and those F1 drivers who dies in race crashes outside of F1 (light blue). As can be seen here, there were lot of fatal crashes during this decade, hence pointing towards the lack of safety focus during this decade. Many of these crashes and other non- fatal crashes lead to deaths and injuries among the crowd too.

It can also be seen that there were drivers taking part in varied motorsport raving events (some of them dividing time with their normal F1 duties). These days so as to prevent any injuries/ fatalities to drivers for F1 drivers, most teams disallow their drivers from participating in non f1 events during the calendar year. There are few exceptions- Robert Kubica comes to mind immediately.

Drivers: Some of the more prominent drivers featured in this era are listed below for what I would consider the prominent teams of the decade. Arguably, the drivers have been placed in teams where they achieved better relative success compared to others in those teams. Here is what I would consider a very strong field in that decade:

F1 1960s: part 2- Safety

Now we move onto the second article of the series, this article stresses on safety features introduced into F1.

SAFETY:

One would assume that safety has always been given prime importance in Formula 1. That actually hasn’t been the case. F1 was a sport for the elite- for those who were not just fast but more importantly had a Do-or-Die attitude, fully aware of the risks and a probability of not coming out of a race in full health. It was only during the 1960s that safety began to be given some importance. As could be seen by the several deaths that continued in the next few decades, it was still not given complete importance until a certain disastrous weekend 3 decades later. Here some of the more important features introduced to improve safety in this decade will be discussed.

Roll-over Bars: As can be seen in comparative images to the right, the curved bar present at higher position than the driver is the Roll-over bar introduced so as to provide protection to the driver in case of a car turning turtle or as the name implies, if the car rolls over. This will take the impact and reduce chances of the drivers head or neck taking the brunt of the impact. This has been improved upon a lot and looks quite different in current day cars. Roll-over bars were introduced in 1961. By 1968, it was required for it to be at least 5cm above the driver’s head.

Flags: While the checkered flag has been used to signal the end of the race for a century at the least (perhaps sporadically in its initial stages), with a few other flags also being used, they were introduced into the FIA regulations only around 1963. The safety car was introduced a decade later. With the help of these safety flags, the drivers running get to know the current track conditions: whether it is greasy, unsafe, etc... This has become quite an important aspect of safety in Formula 1 with penalties handed out for flag infringements.
Note: Flags shown on right represent the flags currently in use.

On- driver safety aids: Fireproof suits and un-breakable full visor helmets were made mandatory in 1963, so as to reduce burn casualties /injuries and head/neck injuries respectively. Additional fireproof clothing was recommended later in the decade.

Cockpits: Starting 1963, the cockpits were restructured such that the drivers could exit more easily or be extracted more easily in an event of an accident. As can be seen from the image comparison, the cockpit was made more spacious with extra leg room so as to allow the driver or others to extract a driver out from the car in more hazardous circumstances.

Miscellaneous: A double fire extinguishing system was introduced in 1969 with activation possible both by the driver (when he is restricted by the safety belt), and from the outside.

Interrupters for electronics were introduced in 1963.

Following Graham Hill’s crash in 1969, movable aerofoils were banned which were beginning to be seen in most cars.

F1 1960s: part 1- The Car

Here starts a 3 part article series covering some important aspects of this decade in Formula 1. Over the years, F1 has become more truly a global sport with circuits in all different parts of the world. Though it was considered a global sport 5 decades back, but its presence was felt mainly in the western hemisphere with all tracks being in that half of the world. Even now, most of the audiences are Europe based, but slowly it has begun to increase in Asia. This was the time when F1 slowly began to evolve from being a sport for just the rich and famous to more towards wider participation.

In the first part of the article series, technological and cosmetic innovations in F1 will be discussed.

Engine- By the end of 1960, the rear-engine cars were dominant. Cooper re-introduced the mid-engine cars, which became quite popular and saw all regular competitors using it by 1961 with the new reduced 1.5L engine rules. This made the F1 cars the fastest among all cars in the European race arena; but by 1966 sports cars were quicker thanks to their larger and more powerful engines. Hence F1, in continuance with the trend of being the fastest, tweaked the rules to allow either 3L engines or 1.5 L with compressor engines, which was used and continuously developed over the years.

Chassis- Evolution from space frame design to the Monocoque was thanks to Colin Chapman’s innovative aluminium sheet Monocoque chassis. Hence, this was a single piece design when compared to the earlier multiple parts design. This brought about a huge improvement in safety standards and has been continuously improved upon over the years.

Note: Monocoque forms the primary part of the chassis (the rectangular framework which acts as the basic bone structure of the F1 car) with the engine and front suspension placed onto it.

Sponsorship: With the costs in Formula 1 escalating, it became a requirement to have sponsors for the teams in order for the teams to continue. Lotus were once again the pioneers in this field with their 1968 racer featuring Imperial tobacco painting in their livery. Ferrari meanwhile began to use the now distinct Shell decal.

Note: Through sponsorship, companies are able to obtain worldwide publicity by paying money to the teams and having their logo/ images shown on the bodywork of the car.

Aerodynamics: During the late 1960s, several teams began to experiment with the now familiar wing/ aerofoil design seen in present day F1 cars. Though at that time they used a more basic design compared to the more sophisticated ones present now. So this has gradually brought about much higher cornering speeds, and hence quicker lap times.

Note: Aerodynamics are the small body parts that are added or modified in an F1 car, such as bargeboards, winglets, etc..