History of Formula One
automobile racing has its roots in the European Grand Prix championships of the 1920s and 1930s, though the foundation of the modern Formula One began in 1946 with the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile's standardisation of rules, which was followed by a World Championship of Drivers in 1950.
The sport's history parallels the evolution of its technical regulations. In addition to the world championship series, non-championship Formula One races were held for many years, the last held in 1983 due to the rising cost of competition. National championships existed in South Africa and the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s.
History
Early years and continuation of pre-World War II supercharged engines (1946–1950)
Formula One was first defined in 1946 by the Commission Sportive Internationale of the FIA, forerunner of FISA, as the premier single-seater racing category in worldwide motorsport to become effective in 1947. This new "International Formula" was initially known variously as Formula A, Formula I, or Formula 1 with the corresponding "Voiturette" formula being titled Formula B, Formula II, or Formula 2. When the 500cc formula was internationally recognised as Formula 3 in 1950 it was never titled as "Formula C" so the three International Formulae were then "officially" titled Formula 1, Formula 2 and Formula 3.In the beginning, the formula was largely based on pre-World War II regulations defined by engine capacity. The regulation expected to bring a new balance between supercharged and normally aspirated cars. Non-supercharged 4.5-litre pre-war Grand Prix cars were allowed to race against the pre-war 1.5-litre supercharged 'voiturettes', while pre-war supercharged 3-litre Grand Prix cars were banned.
There is some debate as to what can be considered to be the first Formula 1 race. The first race under the new regulations was the 1946 Turin Grand Prix held on 1 September, the race being won by Achille Varzi in an Alfa Romeo 158 Alfetta - but this was before the Formula was officially in place. The next contender is the 1947 Swedish Winter Grand Prix which was won by Reg Parnell driving an ERA - but this race was run on ice and some consider that it therefore was not a "proper" race. The third claimant is the 1947 Pau Grand Prix which was won by Nello Pagani driving a Maserati 4CL, which is irrefutable.
Championships for drivers or constructors were not introduced immediately. In the early years there were around 20 races held from late Spring to early Autumn in Europe, although not all of these were considered significant. Most competitive cars came from Italy, particularly Maserati. Races saw pre-war heroes like Rudolf Caracciola, Manfred Von Brauchitsch and Tazio Nuvolari end their careers, while drivers like Alberto Ascari and Juan Manuel Fangio rose to the front.
Era of factory Italian and Mercedes front-engine cars (1950–1957)
The Motorcycle World Championships was introduced in 1949. In 1950, the FIA responded with the first ever official World Championship for Drivers. The championship series, to be held across six of the 'major' Grands Prix of Europe plus the Indianapolis 500, was in effect a formalization of what had already been developing in Grand Prix racing during the previous years. Italian teams of Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, and Maserati were best positioned to dominate the early years. Other national manufacturerssuch as the French manufacturer Talbot or the British BRMcompeted, although less successfully. A number of private cars also took part in local races. The Italian and German factory teams in those days often employed 2 to 3 drivers whose nationality was the same as the team's and at least 1 foreign driver; for example the Alfa Romeo team in 1950 consisted of Italian drivers Giuseppe Farina, Luigi Fagioli and Piero Taruffi; and Argentine driver Juan Manuel Fangio.Alfa Romeo dominated all before them in the 1950 season, winning every race but one in the championship with the pre-war "Alfetta" 158s. The sole exception was the Indianapolis 500, which was part of the championship, although not run to Formula One regulations and never contested by the teams that participated on the regular Formula One circuit. The Indianapolis 500 would never be important for Formula One and was no longer part of the championship after 1960. Nino Farina won the inaugural championship, Juan Manuel Fangio taking it in 1951 with the Alfa-Romeo 159, an evolution of the 158. The Alfetta's engines were extremely powerful for their capacity: in 1951 the 159 engine was producing around but this was at the price of a fuel consumption of 125 to 175 litres per 100 km. Enzo Ferrari, who had raced the Alfettas before the war, and his engine designer Aurelio Lampredi, were the first to understand that the 1.5-litre supercharged engine was a dead end: any increase in power meant more fuel to carry or more time lost in the pits for refuelling, so for the last races of 1950 Ferrari sent his 1.5-litre supercharged 125s to the museum, and fielded the new V12 4.5-litre normally aspirated 375s. With a fuel consumption of around the 375s offered fierce opposition to the Alfettas towards the end of the 1951 season. Alfa Romeo, at the time a state-owned company, decided to withdraw after a refusal of the Italian government to fund the expensive design of a new car. Surprisingly, Alfa Romeo involvement in racing was made with a very thin budget, using mostly pre-war technology and material during the two seasons. For instance, the team won two championships using only nine pre-war built engine blocks.
No Alfa Romeo, a supporting cast of privateer Lago-Talbot entries and an almost undriveable, unreliable BRM would make Ferrari effectively invincible. The FIA was in an embarrassing position as it had already announced that current Formula One regulations would last until 1954 before switching to 2.5-litre atmospheric engines. Major manufacturers were already working to develop cars for the future regulation and it was obvious that nobody would develop a new car for only two years. The promoters of the World Championship Grands Prix, mindful of the lack of serious competition for the Alfettas, eventually all adopted Formula Two regulations for two years. However, Ferrari's dominance went on with the light 4-cylinder powered 500s, bringing Italian Alberto Ascari his two championships in the 1952 and 1953 seasons. Ferrari's Formula One cars continued to race very successfully in non-championship Formula One and Formula Libre races through this period. Ironically, during this period the only World Championship race for which Formula One cars were eligible was the Indianapolis 500. In 1952 Ferrari entered four Formula One 375s with Alberto Ascari as lead driver, but with little success.
Discounting the Indianapolis 500, the World Championship was entirely based in Europe until 1953 when the season opened in Argentina. Since then, there has always been at least one race outside Europe each year. As planned, the World Championship races returned to Formula One regulations for the 1954 season, now based on a new 2.5-litre atmospheric engine regulation. This successfully brought more entrants to the field. Lancia and Mercedes-Benz came to the formula, hiring the best drivers of the era: Ascari for Lancia, Fangio for Mercedes. Featuring desmodromic valves, fuel injection, magnesium and exotic alloys parts, "streamlined" bodywork and other advanced features, the brand new Mercedes began the 1954 season with Fangio taking pole position at the "Grand Prix de l'ACF" at Reims-Gueux with the first lap over in Formula One before winning the race after a duel with other Mercedes driver Karl Kling, who finished second.
The Mercedes cars swept the next two seasons with Fangio and Moss winning all but three of the races. However, at the end of the 1955 season Mercedes vanished as swiftly as they had come. They had proven the superiority of their technology, but the crash of one of their sportscars that year at Le Mans, killing 82 people, was also a significant factor. The company would not return to Formula One for forty years. After Le Mans, four of the year's remaining Grands Prix were cancelled. The Monaco Grand Prix saw a spectacular incident when Ascari and his Lancia crashed into the harbour after missing a chicane. Ascari was pulled out of the water alive and apparently well. However, there was speculation over an undetected internal injury when four days later Ascari was killed at Monza while testing a sportscar. After Ascari's death, Lancia followed Mercedes out of the category, passing their engines, cars, information and technology to Ferrari. The 1956 season saw Fangio make good use of the Lancia-born Ferrari to win his fourth championship. Driving for Maserati, he took his fifth championship in the 1957 season, a record which would not be beaten for 46 years. Ferrari developed a new engine for 1957, the V6 "Dino" engine, it was competitive by 1958 and Mike Hawthorn became the first British F1 World Champion, though his victory was short-lived: he died the following winter.
"Garagistes" and the rear-mid engine revolution (1958–1961)
1958
1958 was a watershed year, with 47-year-old Juan Manuel Fangio racing only twice, setting pole and fastest lap in his home race as last hurrah, and retiring after the 1958 French Grand Prix as Maserati was outclassed even with him at the wheel. Instead of the Romance languages that had dominated Grand Prix racing unless German factories entered, all F1 champions from 1958 to 1969 would speak English, and hail from three different continents, with five British drivers and an American occupying the first six places in 1958. Nearly the same applied for car makers, with only Scuderia Ferrari winning two races, while barely known British makers of chassis and engines won all other rounds. Some had succeeded in 1500cc Formula Two with new approaches, like making or even buying only a chassis, and using a third party engine, mainly the Coventry Climax FPF DOHC 4-cylinder, which in case of Cooper was already installed behind the driver in the Rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout that would dominate F1 from 1959 onwards. In single seaters with front engine, the driver either had to sit very high on top of a symmetric drive train, or next to the drive shaft in an asymmetric construction. Such complicated front engine layouts were used until 1960 even though the Auto Union racing cars of the 1930s had demonstrated the benefits of having the driver sitting low in front of a compact drivetrain unit that also included a Limited-slip differential, another old Porsche innovation that had been neglected.Although the basic 2500cc formula remained unchanged in 1958, engines now had to run on commercial petrol instead of specialised alcohol or methanol-based racing fuels that often contained toxic components. e.g. Benzene. While the fuel was now similar to sports car racing, Grand Prix racing started to distinguish itself from very long sports car races with pits stops for changes of drivers and tyres, and consideration for endurance and reliability, by putting emphasis on uninterrupted high speed driving of one pilot in his own car, as GP length was shortened from around 500 km/300miles to 300 km/200 miles. This mostly eliminated the need for scheduled pit stops even though tyres still were skinny.
1958 saw the introduction of an International Cup for F1 Manufacturers, with points allocated on an 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 basis to the first six cars in the race. Furthermore, points were only awarded to the highest placed car of each make, i.e. if a make finished 1st and 2nd they would receive only eight points for 1st. The 2nd placed car would not earn extra points, but made sure that the next car would only receive 4 points for 3rd place. The Indianapolis 500, which was included in the World Championship of Drivers until 1960, did use quite different chassis makers in the 1950s, and did not count towards the International Cup for F1 Manufacturers. Later, some chassis makers won both F1 Championships and the Indy 500 in the same year, Lotus with Jim Clark in 1965, and McLaren in 1974, with Emerson Fittipaldi winning Indy in later decades.
The British Vanwall team won six of the nine races it entered, and took the maiden Constructors' Championship that season, but ruined their Drivers' Championship aspirations by having two drivers that either won or had to retire, with only two other results in a whole season. Third placed Tony Brooks won three GPs, had to retire five times, and had a 7th place. Stuart Lewis-Evans suffered the worst, three finishes in the points versus five DNF, the last even fatal after the engine seized. Stirling Moss had won the first GP for Cooper, won three more races with Vanwall, was beaten only once to second place, but also had to retire from five Grands Prix, thus had fewer chances to score the extra point for fastest race lap.
Mike Hawthorn in a Ferrari took the Drivers' Championshipbecoming the first English driver to earn a title, by winning only one race, with only two DNF and consistent finishes on the podium, mostly 2nd. He demonstrated speed with four poles, and earned the Championship by also scoring four extra points for five fastest lap, and often while chasing the leader. Moss, despite having more wins than Hawthorn, had fewer poles, only three fastest laps, and lost the championship by the one point difference by fewer fastest laps. It is often attributed to high sportsmanship that cost Moss the 1958 title, but this barely holds up. After the 1958 Portuguese Grand Prix, Hawthorn, who finished second and had set fastest lap, was threatened with disqualification for going in the wrong direction while push-starting his Ferrari downhill, following a spin in which the sputtering engine stalled. Race winner Moss was in the process of lapping Hawthorn, witnessed the whole incident, and argued to stewards on Hawthorn's behalf that no other car was still running, thus none put in jeopardy. The six plus one points were not taken away, and Hawthorn kept his lead in the championship standings, with two more races to go. With only the six best race results counting, Hawthorn had to give up all 7 points from his first three GPs, a 3rd and 5th place plus fastest lap before the Monaco DNF, thus he kept 38 for a win and five second places in the latter part of the season, equal to Moss' 38 for four wins and a second, without a sixth finish, but a sixth countable achievement, 1 point for the fastest lap in the German GP DNF. The difference were the fast laps. Only 4 of 5 were counted for Hawthorn, all 3 for Moss, thus Hawthorn 42 points, Moss 41.
The 1958 season also saw a woman driving in Formula One for the first time with Maria Teresa de Filippis racing a private Maserati at the Belgian Grand Prix.
1958 was a watershed in several crucial ways for Formula One. Against a small field of only nine Ferraris and Maseratis, with many European teams still tuning engines for new fuel regulations rather than travelling to the 1958 Argentine Grand Prix in January, Vanwall driver Stirling Moss choose to drive the mid-engined Cooper T43 entered by the private team of Rob Walker. Powered only by an undersized 2-litre Coventry-Climax Straight-4, Moss could not win on outright speed, and compared to the Italians with Centerlock wheel, the four-stud wheel hubs of Cooper would lose additional time in a tyre change. When the race distance was reduced due to hot weather, the team gambled on not making a pit stop at all. With others in the pits, Moss took over the lead. Realizing too late that the little car would not come in, the more powerful Italian cars did not start in time to chase Moss down. Winning with worn out tyres by two seconds, it was the first victory for a car with the engine mounted behind the driver in Formula One resp. Grand Prix racing since the mid-engined Auto Union racing cars had been successful in the 1930s. It was also the first World Championship GP win for a private entrant as well as the first win for a car powered by an engine built by a third party manufacturer, and not even with full capacity. The next Grand Prix in Monaco was also won by the same private team, this time with a newer Cooper T45 driven by Maurice Trintignant and facing more substantial opposition, with 30 entrants trying to qualify for 16 spots on the grid in the city. Still powered by undersized F2-derived engines, the Cooper and Lotus and Porsche 718 remained underdogs in 1958. As soon as the Coventry Climax FPF engine was available with full 2.5-litre size, the little British cars went on to dominate Formula One.