From downtown garage to Paragon

When Cooper changed the face of Grand Prix racing in the late 1950s with their �kit car� of bought-in components, they did so from a simple garage workshop � the sort of small-time establishment that may have serviced your old car 20 or 30 years ago. Most of the teams that went on to dominate Formula One in the 1960s and early 1970s were based very much on the Cooper blueprint. Typically, these workshops would be home to around 15�25 employees. The cars would be designed, built, and race-prepared there. Ken Tyrrell�s team, which won three World Championships between 1969 and 1973, was based in a former timber yard. Then the money began to come in. When the car producers began returning to the sport, they brought not just the hardware of their engines to the specialist teams, but also vast research and development budgets. Teams quickly quadrupled in size and workforce, wind tunnels were built together with autoclaves where the cars� carbon-fibre chassis are built. Today a top Formula One team employs over 600 people. And they no longer operate from timber yards or roadside garages. They are based in places like McLaren�s Paragon Centre.

Designed by the world-renowned architect Lord Foster (who numbers the Reichstag building in Berlin and Hong Kong airport among his credits), the Paragon Centre�s stunning circular glass and steel structure is housed within a 50-acre site. It has two man-made lakes � one of them inside the building! Within the circular form are 18-metre wide �fingers� housing individual departments. Between each are 6-metre wide �pavements� that also bring in sunlight and ventilation. The lakes form an intrinsic part of the building�s cooling. Hot air from the on-site wind tunnel heats the building when needed; the exterior lake cools it when it�s not. An underground tunnel links the Paragon Centre to an auxiliary building, in which is housed the McLaren museum. Fittingly, the man whose vision this all is � McLaren�s Ron Dennis �began his involvement in racing by working in Cooper�s roadside garage.

Power players in F1

British teams, using the Cooper model of the �kit car�, and others like them formed a power base throughout the 1960s, and this was emphasised in the early 1970s when Bernie Ecclestone � a former car-dealer and Formula Three racer � bought into one of these teams. An incredibly astute businessman, Ecclestone hauled the sport kicking and screaming into the world of commerce by banding the teams together in order to present a united front during negotiations with race organisers. Soon, and with the help of the emergent TV deals, the sport and the team owners became vastly richer.

Previously the only important players were the big roadgoing factories � such as Mercedes or Alfa-Romeo � who comprised the sport. It had therefore been a sport dependent upon their economic performance in the marketplace and was vulnerable. The new era made the sport�s health more independent of the industrial complex, with the major players now having the sport as their means of livelihood. Ecclestone and the power base the independent teams represented remain at the centre of the sport�s centre of gravity, regardless of which of them is winning on the track.

Creating the cars, then and now

By the end of the 1950s Grand Prix racing had ceased to be dominated by the big car-producing factories and instead had been taken over by specialist race car producers. Ferrari was one of these � at the time it made road-going cars only as special commissions � but the British constructors such as Cooper and Lotus took the concept one step further. They didn�t make their own engines, just bought them in, along with gearboxes, steering, and other components, and assembled everything together. Soon these funny little cars �which incidentally had their engines in the back, overturning the convention of half a century of racing cars � were running rings around everyone else. The factories began to return to Formula One in the 1980s and have stayed ever since.

But usually they tend to be represented as engine suppliers only, going into partnerships with established specialist teams. Hence McLaren-Mercedes, BMW-Williams and BAR-Honda. The only exception to this rule is Toyota, which has bravely decided to go it alone, producing the whole car, including chassis, engine, and transmission in a purpose-built factory in Cologne, Germany.

Famous eras in Formula One history

With the perspective of time, it�s possible to distinguish the critical moments in the sport�s history and its evolution into the fantastic high-tech, highentertainment, high-drama show of today.

Where it began
The first Grand Prix race was held at Le Mans, France in 1906. The French initiated the event as a way around the three-car entry restriction imposed on each nation by the previous premier motor racing competition, the Gordon Bennett Cup. At the time, France was far and away the leading car producer in the world (times change, eh?) and took exception to being limited to just three cars. So with characteristic chauvinism (maybe times don�t change), the French devised their own competition � the Grand Prix � in which no such restriction existed and where honours would be fought out not between countries, but between manufacturers. It�s a lineage that continues to this day.

How it grew
Following France�s lead, other countries soon began staging their own Grands Prix, and the sport�s governing body devised a common set of rules that would be applied to all such races.
By the late 1940s, there were so many Grands Prix � some of them small-time events unworthy of the label � that the governing body specified a handful of �premier� Grands Prix that could be considered major national events.

The birth of a championship
Once the governing body of Formula One identified the major events, the sport was just one step away from combining the results of each of these races, via a points system, to determine a world champion. This system � and the World Championship � came into being in 1950.
Before 1950, there had been a European Championship in the 1930s. The new World Championship was very much like the European Championship, as each of its six Grands Prix were held on European soil. The championship lamely justified its �world� status by including the results of the American Indianapolis 500 race, a race for �Champ Cars�, a completely different breed from the Formula One cars of Europe, and fought out by a different set of competitors. This statistical anomaly remained until the late 1950s when the World Championship had ventured out of Europe and had even included a genuine American Grand Prix.

F1 as National pride

Countries have often been converted to Formula One after one of their countrymen has succeeded in the sport. This was certainly the case with Finland, which for decades had been interested only in rallying (a sport of road-based cars racing against the clock, rather than wheel-to-wheel, through forest tracks and closed roads). The Finns became alerted to Formula One�s existence when Keke Rosberg won the 1982 World Championship.

By the time Rosberg�s prot�g� Mika Hakkinen won his two world titles in 1998 and 1999, the Finns were fervent followers, trailing their national flags to circuits around the world. Since Hakkinen�s retirement they now have a new hero in the form of Kimi Raikkonen. Fernando Alonso has turned Spain onto F1 in a big way and Michael Schumacher�s success transformed F1 in Germany from a minority interest sport to something that virtually every man in the street is aware of.

Racing in national colours

Before the advent of commercial sponsorship in the late 1960s, Formula One cars used to race in their national colours. This tradition dated back to the turn of the twentieth century and a competition called the Gordon Bennett Cup, the direct forebear of Grand Prix racing. In this competition, teams represented each of the five participating countries in a sort of inter-nations cup event. For easy identification, each country was allocated a colour. Italy was represented by red (still seen today in the Ferrari team�s livery), France by blue, Britain by green, Germany by white, and Belgium by yellow. These colours remained an intrinsic part of the sport until corporate liveries rendered them redundant.

The Glamourous F1

Impossibly fast cars driven by brave and handsome young men of all nationalities in a variety of exotic backdrops throughout the world, with beautiful women looking on adoringly. Of course it�s glamorous. Don�t let anyone tell you otherwise � unless it�s a mechanic who just completed an all-nighter fixing a damaged Formula One car while the guy who crashed it took a supermodel out for dinner.

How TV coverage on F1 grew?

In the early 1970s, Formula One mogul Bernie Ecclestone was the first to see the potential of the sport in terms of TV audiences. Commercial sponsorship had become the key to success for the teams. What better way of generating more sponsorship than by securing commercial TV deals that would beam images of the sponsors� liveries all over the world? The result was a nearly perfect symbiotic relationship: The TV coverage increased the sport�s popularity, which in turn made advertisers willing to pay the stations better rates to have their adverts placed within the Formula One screening. As TV stations profited by selling TV time to advertisers, the price Formula One charged the TV companies escalated.

TV stations were often first attracted to covering the sport when one of their home heroes was doing well. In this way, Emerson Fittipaldi paved the way for Brazilian TV, James Hunt for British TV, and Alan Jones for Australian TV. Once exposed to the excitement of Formula One, those audiences still wanted to watch Formula One, even after their local heroes had retired or fallen from prominence.

Danger in Formula One

Racing a 200 mph missile loaded with fuel is never going to be an intrinsically safe activity. For many, this inherent danger is part of the sport�s appeal. The sport has suffered its inevitable tragedies over the years and this only emphasises the courage of those who continue to fight it out on the tracks of the world, accepting the stakes.

Ayrton Senna, one of the greatest drivers of all time, was killed on a black day for motor racing in 1994, just one day after F1 rookie Roland Ratzenberger perished at the same Imola track. It illustrated starkly that the grim hand of chance can reach out to claim any, regardless of reputation. Some have been narrowly spared, yet still the sport has drawn them straight back.

The most dramatic example of this was Niki Lauda who, after crashing in the 1976 German Grand Prix, was given the Last Rites in hospital, not expected to make a recovery from critical lung damage. Yet, just six weeks later, he was behind the wheel of his Ferrari, facially scarred, but indomitable. He finished fourth and later went on to win a further two world championship crowns. The sport�s governing body, the FIA, has imposed fantastically rigorous safety legislation on Formula One. These regulations cover both the construction and crash testing of the cars before they are allowed onto the track.

Star drivers of Formula One

Michael Schumacher stands as the most successful Formula One driver of all time. A whole new generation of hard chargers has arrived in the last couple of years, several of whom are tipped to step into Schumacher�s shoes. Drivers such as Juan Pablo Montoya and Kimi Raikkonen have lost no time in putting Schumacher on the receiving end of the tough treatment he�s been used to dishing out. Each era of F1 has its stars and challengers and it�s one of the more fascinating aspects of the sport to see which of the pretenders is going to step forward and take the champion�s crown. Schumacher did it in the past to Ayrton Senna who in turn had done it to Alain Prost in the 1980s.

Prost had emerged as the number one after proving quicker than team-mate and triple champion Niki Lauda at McLaren in 1984�5. A decade earlier, Lauda had proved the natural heir after the retirement of triple champion Jackie Stewart at the end of 1973. It has been this way ever since the sport began. Every leading driver � champion or challenger � has a huge fan base, sometimes linked to their nationalities but not always. Colombian Montoya has won over millions of fans throughout the world with his brand of audacious racing, for example. Spaniard Fernando Alonso has brought F1 to life in his home country but is gaining ever-more admirers from all nations and many see him as Schumacher�s biggest long-term threat.

Schumacher�s younger brother, Ralf, has not had the same meteoric F1 career as Michael but can be devastatingly quick and in 2003 emerged as a genuine world championship contender. The personalities of the drivers, their perceived strengths and weaknesses and their past histories in battle colour the fans� view of the races unfolding in front of them, drawing them into a �storyline� that has no end, just ever-more chapters. Michael Schumacher is ruthless, a spellbinding winning machine. Montoya is the inspired Latin who can sometimes get under Schuey�s skin.

Raikkonen is the �Ice Man� who seems never to feel pressure or emotion. Alonso is the brave, impassioned but hard-as-nails new boy. On the other hand, it�s been said that Michael Schumacher cracks when anyone is able to put him under real pressure, that Ralf is not aggressive enough, that Rubens Barrichello is too subservient to team-mate Schumacher, that for every great Montoya move there�s a corresponding mistake. All these things, whether true or not, add to the drama for those who follow the sport closely.

The drivers who make it to the top of the ladder and graduate to Formula One are invariably champions in the feeder categories (see the section �The feeder formulas� earlier in this chapter for information about the feeder series). Their winning credentials have usually been established all the way from kart racing. But the turnover of driver talent in Formula One is high because those with any question marks alongside their Formula One performances tend to be quickly replaced.

Wheel-to-wheel racing in Formula One

Truth be told, there�s not enough wheel-to-wheel racing in Formula One because the cars are too fast and the designers too clever for the sport�s own good. Huge aerodynamic downforce and super-efficient carbon-fibre brakes mean that braking distances are incredibly short, which limits passing opportunities. On the right tracks, of course, cars can still pass one another, but overall, passing is rare.

Some folks maintain that because passing is such a rare thing, it�s lent extra spice when it does occur. These people are called Formula One apologists. The act of overtaking encapsulates the combat of the whole sport; it is one driver pitting his skill against the other in a split-second of opportunity and either succeeding or failing in his move. It also forms a natural dynamic in the story of the race, without which the event can simply appear as a succession of cars being driven very fast.
The format of some circuits makes overtaking more feasible than at others. These �passing� circuits tend to be the favourites of both drivers and spectators.

Most drivers enjoy the combative element of overtaking but the huge braking and cornering grip of the cars makes it an exceptionally difficult thing to do. It tends to happen when two cars are braking for a corner. In cars that decelerate from 200 mph to 40 mph in around three-seconds, and in a space little longer than a cricket pitch, the driver doing the overtaking has just a tiny window of opportunity to position his car and brake later than the guy in front.

Get it a little bit wrong and a collision is a near-certainty. With a rival close behind him, the driver in front must try to ensure he is not vulnerable into the braking areas. He needs to ensure he is not slow down the preceding straight and to do this he needs to ensure he gets a good exit from the corner leading onto that straight. But sometimes this is impossible to do for more than a few successive corners because the driver behind, if he�s clever, can force him into taking a defensive line into a corner that prevents him being passed there but which makes him slow coming out and therefore vulnerable to attack into the next turn. It can be a game of brains as well as bravery and skill.

There�s a tingle of anticipation when a driver is closing down on the leader in the race�s closing stages on a track where overtaking is feasible. Never was this better demonstrated than in the 2000 Belgian Grand Prix where Mika Hakkinen closed down on Michael Schumacher. That he then passed him in a fantastic gladiatorial way with just a couple of laps remaining brought the race to a climactic end.

Changes have been made to make more of this sort of thing possible, such as the circuit redesign at the Nurburgring in 2002 and the imposition of the one blocking move rule in the 1990s. But more radical changes to both cars and circuits are probably still necessary; overtaking is arguably too much on the impossible side of ��difficult�� on too many tracks at the moment.

Comparing Formula One and other types of racing

Racing in America for a time overlapped in its development with European racing; then it veered off in the direction of oval track racing.

CART and IRL racing in America
Formula racing in America became Indy Car racing, spawning the CART and IRL series of today. These cars look like Formula One cars to a casual onlooker, but a Formula One car is lighter, more agile, and more powerful. Another difference is that Formula One cars never race on ovals; instead they race on purposebuilt road racing tracks or street circuits. Furthermore, each Formula One team designs and builds its own cars rather than buy them off the shelf from a specialist producer.

NASCAR and Touring Car racing
Non-formula, road car-based racing spawned NASCAR in America and Touring Car racing in the rest of the world. Both are for cars that from the outside look like showroom roadgoing models but which underneath the skin are very different. NASCAR tailors for American production models and races mainly �though not exclusively � on ovals. Touring cars are based on European or Australian road cars and, like F1 cars, race on road racing or street tracks.

The feeder formulas
In Europe, feeder formulas to Formula One � where drivers, team owners, designers, and engineers can all hone their craft on the way to Formula One �developed. Today these are classed as Formula 3000 and Formula 3. The names and numbers have changed over the years but Formula One remains what it has always been � the pinnacle. F3 is currently for single-seater cars with engines based on roadgoing production cars not exceeding 2-litre capacity. F3000 is for single seaters powered by a specific 3-litre racing engine defined by the governing body.
The structure and hierarchy of motor racing is extremely complex and not very logical. All you really need to know is that, in global terms, Formula One is at the top of the pyramid.

Other formula racing

The reason why the sport is called �Formula� One is rooted in history. Pioneer motor racing placed no limitations on the size or power of the competing cars. With technological advances, this free-for-all quickly made for ludicrously dangerous conditions � especially as the early races were fought out on public roads. As a result, the governing body of the sport at the time began imposing key limitations on the format of the cars in terms of power, weight, and size. Only cars complying with this �formula� of rules could compete.
The rules of Grand Prix racing have adapted to the technology and needs of the times. The rules formulated for racing immediately after World War II were given the tag of �Formula One�, a name that has stuck ever since. Formula Two was invented shortly afterwards as a junior category, with a smaller engine capacity. Not long after that, Formula Three came into being for even smaller single-seaters. The Formula Two name was dropped in the mid-1980s and replaced by Formula 3000, denoting the cubic centimetre capacity of the engines. Formula Three remains. If illogical and inconsistent labelling bugs you, motor racing is not for you.

Why F1 become the most important racing in the world?

Formula One stands at the technological pinnacle of all motorsport. It�s also the richest, most intense, most difficult, most political, and most international racing championship in the world. Most of the world�s best drivers are either there or aspire to be there, and the same goes for the best designers, engineers, engine builders, and so on. It�s a sport that takes no prisoners.

Under-achievers are spat out with ruthless lack of ceremony. Formula One takes its position at the top of the motorsport tree very seriously. Formula One traces its lineage directly back to the very beginnings of motor racing itself, at the end of the nineteenth century, when public roads were the venues. All other racing series have sprung up in its wake. Unlike most racing categories, Formula One isn�t just about competition between the drivers. It�s about rivalry between the cars, too. The technology battle between teams is always an ongoing part of Formula One.