F1. What If?
May 1st. a few minutes after 2 pm, the Imola race circuit in Northern Italy. Seconds into the seventh lap of the San Marino Grand Prix.
The few seconds that have been the subject of millions of words - of sorrow, anger, confusion, analysis. But mostly of regret. Regret for what might have been had the course of history been different. Had the great champion and idol of the sport been spared an untimely and sudden end, in full view of the television cameras, and raced on to further glory and provided many more moments of brilliance and excitement.
Few other sports bring together the cocktail of factors that make a trawl through the history books of Formula One such a fascinating exercise in speculation and conjecture. Drivers, cars, teams, politics, money, triumph, tragedy, good and bad luck. The vital ingredients that formed the decades of the World Championship, and directed the fates of those who lined up on the start line, and those who watched in the garage, hopes hanging on their cars and drivers. Sometimes these moments are moments in time, often of tragedy, sometimes of failures of machine or man. Other times they are the consequences of decisions in business and strategy. Only with hindsight do they become apparent, and the endless alternate races that might have been come into focus.
Let's explore the great ' what if' moments of Formula One racing, the people and circumstances, beginning with the most infamous pivotal moment of all. The moment that Changed formula 1 motor racing forever. The greatest of many 'what if' moments in the sport. The most prominent time when the destiny of the World Championship was irrevocably altered.
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What kind of different world would have ensued had Senna simply jumped out of the Williams and walked back in the pits to face the horde of TV microphones? In the aftermath of the fatal weekend the sports governing body introduced drastic cuts to the performance of the cars, and many chicanes and new run off areas began sprouting around the tracks. The irony of all this is that another driver also died that weekend - Austrian rookie Roland Ratzenberger - and his death, only a few hundred metres on from Senna's on the track was purely down to the force of impact with an unprotected concrete wall rather than down to the random chance of flying debris. It was Ratzenberger's death from a skull fracture that was more consequential to basic safety improvements. But.of course it was the death of a global superstar that drove the media frenzy and consquent action by the sport.
What if Ratzenberger had been the 'only' fatality that weekend? Well for all the knee jerk safety improvements it took until 1996 until the car's cockpit sides were built up with padding to shield the driver from impacts, and the HANS head and neck helmet support that prevented devastating skull fractures appeared circa 2001. Both innovations would probably have appeared eventually anyway. After all, despite the deaths, safety standards doubtlessly did improve markedly over the late 1980s and early 1990s. But perhaps other fatalities would have had to have happened first? Only a year later future double champion Mika Hakkinen was gravely injured in Australia because the 1995 cars did not yet have lateral head protection. But the rapid medical response saved him and allowed the Finn to return to action by the start of the following year. There were plenty of other incidents in the late 1990s that could have been fatal in the cars of the earlier half of the decade.
On the track had Senna walked away unhurt the chances seem good that he would have been able to challenge for the championship in 1994. Though convinced that he was at a severe disadvantage compared to Michael Schumacher's Benetton, a car Senna was convinced still retained illegal electronic driver aids, the performance of Damon hill in the second Williams later in the year shows that the playing field would have been levelled. Williams made many technical revisions to the troublesome, ill handling car Senna had wrestled to pole position at Imola. Whether he ever would have caught up the thirty point deficit to Schumacher that he would have carried into the Monaco Grand Prix will always be a matter of conjecture. Hill only took Schumacher to a final round decider because the German was excluded from several races late season for ignoring a black flag in the British GP. In 1995 and 1996 the Williams Renault was the best car and another two titles for Senna seem a shoo in, though Schumacher drove out of his skin in the Benetton Renault that year and often the team were well ahead of Williams when it came to race pitstop strategies.
In 1996 Schumacher was lured to Ferrari by a 25 million dollar pay cheque and the prospect of a wholly revised team managed by the Frenchman Jean Todt and benetton strategist Ross Brawn. Ferrari and Philip Morris tobacco paid 25 million for Schumacher to wear the red overalls and Marlboro logo. Presumably they would have paid telephone numbers to snare Senna. Whether the Brazilian, aged 36 would have seriously wanted to relinquish the best car, built by an English team, for a whole new world at Ferrari under the watching eyes of the Italian media is unknown, though possibly not. In 1992, so frustrated was he at not being in the best car he had given publicly offered to drive the Williams in 1993 for nothing.
Another minor possibly, unlikely to have ever happened but intriguing nonetheless occurred around the same time. After a fruitless year chasing the Williams in 1992 Senna went to Arizona at the invitation of Emerson Fittipaldi and drove a Penske IndyCar in a test. At the time the rumour mill swirled that Senna was not interested in hauling an uncompetitive McLaren around in 1993, and the withdrawal of Honda from F1 meant they had lost their engine partner. Marlboro branding adorned both the McLarens and the Penske cars and the sponsor surely had the clout to make Senna an offer to drive in America. Had it been made and accepted then it might have been the Brazilian, rather than Nigel Mansell winning the IndyCar title in 1993. Maybe the 1994 Williams deal never happened at all, and Senna ended up in a Marlboro Ferrari in 1995.
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Ferrari disappearing in the 1950s presents a hugely different history, as does the team being sold off to Ford in 1963. The deal was on the table, top brass had travelled to meet Enzo Ferrari in Maranello and had the American giant not made the mistake of specifying that they would have the final say on the racing team side of the business they would have had their sale. This last clause caused Mr Ferrari to get up and leave - a seismic moment if ever there was one. In 1969 Fiat bought half of the company, keeping it Italian and keeping most of the management intact. Only when Enzo died in 1988 did major change come to Ferrari - for better or worse. Maybe under Ford Ferrari would have thrived more than the four world titles the team took between the 1960s and 2000s (1964, 1975, 1977 and 1979). Certainly there would have been no Ford Gt40 Le mans car - built under specific orders to beat the Italians after the snub. Without Ferrari the history of Fiat and Alfa Romeo (Ferrari's parent company originally when they were a team running Alfas) would be changed. The acquisition of the team allowed many crossovers between Ferrari and Fiat stablemate Alfa, a situation that continues to this day as the Sauber team is rebranded as Alfa Romeo and effectively becomes a Ferrari 'B' team.
After Ascari an Italian has never figured again in the final driver standings. There have been countless contenders but rarely did they stay the course or get the chance to become consistent frontrunners. A decade after Musso and Castelotti the Ferrari team lost another two Italians on the track - with a solo win Lorenzo Bandini led the team in 1967 but perished in truly horrific circumstances at Monaco, pinned under a burning car on the harbourfront. Four years later the promising Ignazio Giunti was killed in a collision in a sports car race with a car that was being pushed across the track by its driver. No wonder Enzo Ferrari eventually baulked at hiring his countrymen given their star crossed, almost cursed record with his team.
Disaster And death are a somewhat depressing inevitability when recounting the what-ifs of Formula 1. Fortunately at least one of the legends of racing did survive the crash that ended his time at the top. Stirling moss came close on several occasions to the championship. Moss won 16 races - easily the most by a non title winning driver, before a crash at Goodwood on Easter 1962 sent him to the hospital for a month. Though often described as a 'career ending' crash (which it turned out to be) it was Moss himself who called time on his time as a driver. He though he had lost the effortless edge and Had to work at his driving to be competitive again. Later he would express regret that, aged 32, he had been too hasty to write off his abilities. His contemporary Jack Brabham was still winning races aged forty in 1970. Moss, known for his passion for competing in as many races as possible could have done the same. We know for a fact that Ferrari had made an offer for his services in 1962. Moss, remembering a broken Ferrari promise in the 1950s had a different idea in mind. He would drive a Ferrari as long as it was run by his regular F1 team owner Rob Walker. To rub it in he even specified that Ferrari red be replaced with Walker's dark blue.
Enzo Ferrari, amazingly, acquiesced to this demand. Perhaps he was still ruing antagonising one of the great drivers of his era and having to watch him drive everything else to beat him. Ferrari had snubbed Moss by design or accident in 1951 by inviting him to drive a Ferrari in the Bari Grand Prix (one of many non-championship races in those more relaxed days). The Englishman went all the way to Italy only to find there was no car and no Mr Ferrari with an answer. Instead when Moss drove Italian it was in a Maserati, and when the British Vanwall team came along as a frontrunner he led his home team against Ferrari. But for a first lap breakdown in the 1958 Belgian GP he would have been champion. His rival Mike Hawthorn was disqualified from the Portuguese GP for restarting against the direction of the circuit, but Moss went to the officials and provided testimony to exonerate him. Again, but for this chivalrous gesture Moss would have been number 1. A year later and Vanwall had gone - the team withdrawn after driver Stuart Lewis Evans had been fatally burned in a crash in the 1958 finale. Lewis-Evans' manager was a 28 year old motorcycle trader and property investor by the name of Bernie Ecclestone. Thus in the space of one incident the fates of the British frontrunner team and the future commercial manager of the whole sport were set. Without Vanwall the field was open for the radical rear-engine Cooper cars and the nascent Lotus outfit, run by the Vanwall's chassis designer Colin Chapman, to become the pacesetters. As for Moss, but for a broken gearbox while leading in the final race of he could have had another championship.
The 1962 Walker Ferrari may or may not have been a competitive proposition as Ferrari fell badly behind in 1962 and 63. But Moss was the miracle worker in inferior cars, as his win in Monaco 1961 in the Lotus, holding back the Ferraris all race showed, so maybe he could have risen above the Ferrari's sudden lack of performance. Tantalizingly the end of Moss's career almost perfectly prefaced the rise of Jim Clark, the Flying Scotsman, in the new monocoque lotus 25. Clark versus Moss in equal terms would have been quite a sight to see, though to start with it could have been quite a one sided affair. With Clark and their lightweight new car Lotus may not have been interested in Walker and Moss stealing the glory from the factory team. However with Ferrari's re-ascendancy in 1964, and eventual championship winning performance by John Surtees, perhaps Moss would have been back on equal footing in his blue Ferrari.
With a few minor changes to fate, and car reliability, Clark could have claimed four titles, possibly five. His Lotus broke down in 1962's finale handing the win to Graham Hill, and his ailing oil-less engine seized on the last lap of Mexico City in 1964. Until Lewis Hamilton's last corner championship denied Felipe Massa in 2008 it looked like a piece of late misfortune that could never be repeated. In 1967 Clark won the most races but also broke down five times. Championship lost he won the last two races of the year, and the first race of 1968 at a canter. With the Lotus gremlins of 1967 mostly cured the 1968 title seemed all but assured. Then came the fateful 7th of April at Hockenheim and the loss of the great man in a Formula 2 event he had little interest in other than to fulfill his obligations. Clark had a choice that weekend. Lotus were also racing a sports car at Brands Hatch, but the Scotsman, honest to his core, stuck with the race he had agreed to do first.1969 would have been closer - fellow Scotsman Jackie Stewart's Tyrrell Matra was hard to beat that summer. The 1970 Lotus 72 was another step forward. Like the 1967 Lotus 49 the low wedge shape car would have been ideal for the skill of Clark to tame it's idiosyncrasies. Perhaps Clark would have retired along with Stewart in 1973, perhaps a little sooner. The rise of tobacco branding on the lotus at the time, first the Gold leaf car and then the iconic John Player Special meant he would have been well rewarded in the bank balance. As it was another long-lost champion took over from Clark - the Austrian Jochen Rindt.
After a breakout year in 1969 driving the Lotus 49 Rindt was the pacesetter in the Lotus 72, winning four races before being killed at his peak, aged only 27, in 1970. The crash during Saturday qualifying at Monza left the Austrian as the only posthumous world champion and fatefully brought to pass the words of advice from his manager before joining the team; "If you want to win, drive a Lotus. If you want to live, drive a Brabham". (Though Rindt too had perhaps tempted fate by never preferring to fasten the full safety harness - when his car veered into the Italian barriers after it's inboard brake shaft failed it's driver's injuries were compounded by being pulled down through his harness). His manager was a familiar figure from the past. After the death of Stuart Lewis Evans
Bernie Ecclestone had left the racing scene, but eventually came back and became Rindt's manager. With a second young charge of his was killed in action, Ecclestone moved into team ownership - buying the Brabham team in 1971 when it came up for sale. Had Rindt raced on he could well have ended up in a Brabham in 1972. Lotus struggled much more in 1971. The difficult 1971 season could have sent him elsewhere. Rindt was no Clark, quietly loyal to Colin Chapman and the Lotus team, and the mercurial nature of the Lotus cars could well have sent him to his manager's new acquisition in 1972.
With the loss of Rindt, Lotus again had to look for a new leader in the driving seat. In 1968 the American Mario Andretti took pole position on debut for Lotus at the US GP in October. Colin Chapman had made Andretti's acquaintance in 1965 when the young Italian-born American finished third at Indianapolis behind Clark. Andretti had been to Monza as a child and seen Ascari race, so was always keen to make his way back to Europe to race in Formula 1. When his family moved to America they settled near the Nazareth, Pennsylvania bullring dirt track, and Andretti began a racing career that would never have happened had he stayed in Europe. He didn't win from the pole that day - true to Lotus form the car failed under him - and was too committed to lucrative contracts in America to join Lotus full time. (American racing at the time boasting much larger deals and race purses than Europe, a situation that one day be levelled out thanks to one B. Ecclestone).
With Andretti unavailable, and Rindt dead, Lotus looked to the 1969 Formula Three champion, the exotically named Brazilian, Emerson Fittipaldi. "Emmo" had been the on-off third driver in 1970, finishing 4th in Germany, where Rindt won. Suddenly promoted, Fittipaldi won his fourth ever F1 race, the 1970 USA Grand Prix. A month after the tragedy of Monza, and Colin Chapman had his new lead driver. The Brazilian won the 1972 championship for Lotus aged only 25 - the youngest champion until unseated by Fernando Alonso in 2005. Fittipaldi left Lotus for McLaren in 1974 and won a second championship. 1974 was a highly competitive year where seven drivers won races, and nobody won more than three. The Swiss Ferrari driver Clay Regazzoni could have beaten Fittipaldi in the season finale at Watkins Glen, the two started alongside each other well back in 8th and 9th on the starting grid and level on points, but he fell back with an ill-handling car and scored nothing, while the McLaren finished fourth. Consistency was the key to the title, as Fittipaldi retired from only three races and scored ten times. Jody Scheckter, Niki Lauda, Ronnie Peterson and Carlos Reutemann made up the top six in the standings, and all suffered from retirements affecting their points haul. Lauda in particular dropped out of the last five races in a row while Reutemann failed to score in four consecutive races mid-season. The Argentinian took his place alongside Peterson in the unwanted pantheon of great drivers who never took the title after an astonishing finale in 1981, when after sitting on pole position he fell to fifth in the first lap and drove an anonymous race to finish eighth when all he needed would have been fifth.
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McLaren themselves missed out on a golden opportunity a few years later. At the suggestion of James Hunt the French Canadian Formula Atlantic driver Gilles Villeneuve made his debut for the team at Silverstone in 1977. Erratic and prone to spinning he was nevertheless a freakishly quick and fearless talent. However, McLaren manager Teddy Mayer did not see the same future for the Canadian as many others in the paddock did, and signed up Frenchman Patrick Tambay instead. When Niki Lauda, tired of Italian intra-team politics, stepped out of Ferrari to join Bernie Ecclestone's Brabham the seat at Ferrari opened up, and Enzo Ferrari, enamoured with the small but intense Villeneuve, took him on.
In the short term had McLaren signed Villeneuve he would have been at a disadvantage. Ferrari were competitive in 1978 and had he been a little more restrained in his exuberance he could have won the 1979 championship instead of teammate Jody Scheckter. Suddenly in 1980 Ferrari were nowhere as aerodynamics came to the fore and left them struggling for pace. Next year the new Ferrari turbo V6 engine gave Villeneuve the horsepower to wrestle the awful chassis to two wins. By now the new carbon fibre chassis McLaren MP4 also had a race win and would be getting a Porsche turbo engine in the next year. In 1982 Villeneuve finally had a top class chassis designed by former March and Hesketh man Harvey Postlethwaite, but was defeated by his own mercurial nature. A good run fighting for the lead in the Rio ended in the catch fencing. At Imola he led a Ferrari 1-2 in the closing laps before being duped by team mate Pironi. Villeneuve believed that there was an unspoken rule that Ferrari team mates should hold station if running first and second. In fact there was no such arrangement- though it made sense. Pironi battled Villeneuve, who, until the flag fell with him in second believed he.would be due the win. Outraged and driving in a fury at the next round, Zolder in Belgium, Villeneuve dove for a gap in qualifying that suddenly disappeared. His car flew over the other car and cartwheeled to pieces. By tragic irony, his replacement at Ferrari would be Patrick Tambay, the driver who had been picked for McLaren instead of Villeneuve.
The spirit of Villeneuve's number 27 Ferrari lived on ten years later for the Italian 'Tifosi' when the equally spirited Jean Alesi joined the team in the early 1990s. On the face of it the seat was a prime spot for the Sicilian-born Frenchman, who had announced his arrival on the scene in 1990 by cheekily passing the mighty Senna for the lead in the season opener in America, and in a humble Tyrrell-Ford of all things. It didn't last long - Senna ducked back past at the next corner, but notice had been served on the paddock that a new generation was in town. But, hindsight would not be kind on Alesi's career as he had passed up a 1991 contract with Williams Renault to join the Scuderia. At the time it was a choice that was not entirely hard to fathom; Ferrari won five races in 1990 to Williams's two. Ferrari, with their former McLaren chief designer John Barnard in charge of technical matters had pioneered the semi-automatic paddle shift gearbox, and challenged for the championship with Alain Prost. But if there ever is written a book of old motor racing sayings then "don't join the team that was good last year, join the team that will be good this year" must be close to the top of the list. Williams had the Renault engine deal, a strong technical team working hard on their own technical gizmos such as an incredibly effective active suspension system. And to top it off they had hired the aerodynamacist Adrian Newey from the March-Leyton House team. The small team with the bright turquoise cars had come close to winning several races in the previous three seasons, even beating out Senna's all conquering McLaren Mp4/4 on pure pace in 1988 Portguese race. But for a late race engine misfire Ivan Capelli would have soundly seen off Prost's Ferrari in France 1990 driving Newey's car.
After the 1990 season, Ferrari proceeded to fall to bits in 1991 and 1992. Without the old power structure proved the late Enzo (who died aged 90 in 1988). Alesi managed three podium finishes in 1991 but also retired from eight of the race. 1992 was a shambles at Maranello. Prost had been fired near the end of 1991 for publicly criticising the car's dynamics and comparing it to a truck, an unfathomable move by the management. Alesi managed another two top-three finishes but this time failed to see the finish of ten races. Down the pitlane the Williams Renault dominated 1992 in the hands of Nigel Mansell, winning ten times, including the first five races on the trot. Alesi, meanwhile was 7th in the table. At times the Williams FW14B was at least two seconds a lap quicker than anything else, and finished six of the races in first and second places. Then, in a bizarre twist the drivers of the 1992 team both walked away from the one of most dominant cars the sport had known, before or since - as if Senna and Prost had quit McLaren Honda after the 1988 drubbing they had doled out the field, or Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg left Mercedes for other teams in 2017.
Mansell, a world champion at last after missing out in 1986 and 1987 demanded more money to befit his status. Williams, knowing they had the ear of Prost, a free agent after his firing by Ferrari, did not acquiesce. Mansell quit in a huff and jetted off to America to join Paul Newman's IndyCar team (dragging much of the British tabloid press pack with him). Riccardo Patrese, in his 17th year in F1, and thinking that Prost would be joining Mansell signed with Benetton before Mansell sulked off. As it was Prost joined and won the title, though the veteran Frenchman did not easily adapt to the electronics. Had Mansell stayed, with his experience of the car and the team he might have had a good shot at Prost and a second championship. Given the near misses he suffered in the late 1980s with Williams Mansell could possibly have been a quadruple champion like Prost.
Prost too, missed several chances in the 1980s for more glory. He and his Renault led most of the 1983 season, only for two turbocharger failures to knock him out in Italy, and again while running a safe 3rd in the last round in South Africa. He couldn't blame the car in Dutch GP, when he collided with Nelson Piquet trying to overtake, though at least on this occasion he had also knocked out the eventual champion from the race too. In 1984, after joining McLaren, things were even closer for Prost. The closest ever, as he missed out to teammate Niki Lauda by 0.5 points. The half-point had come from winning the sodden Monaco GP - a race that was stopped before half distance had been reached. As the halfway point was deemed a 'full' race, only half a winner's score was awarded. At the time many thought Prost was very lucky to win - saved by the red flag - and the precocious young driver in second had been robbed of a dream win in an unfancied car. In the end, had Prost finished second in a full race, he have scored more points than he got for winning that day, and would have been 1984 champion. The driver who lost out behind Prost? 24 year old rookie Ayrton Senna da Silva.
Lady luck came back around Prost's way in 1986, when Nigel Mansell's infamous exploding rear tyre sent the Englishman out of 3rd place in the year ending Australian GP and promoted the Frenchman's race win to a championship win. Less noted, but just as significant to the end result, that year were Mansell being terminally stuffed out of 2nd place trying to get past Senna's very wide Lotus in the opener in Rio, Senna beating Mansell by a scant 0.014 seconds in Spain, the Williams failing while 2nd at both Imola and the Osterreichring, and the Englishman fluffing the start in Mexico, falling from pole position to back in the back. Also forgotten in time is the long time scoring system - until 1991 only the 11 best results counted (as a way of supposed mitigating the effects of car failures unfairly punishing drivers), so although Mansell made it back to 5th in Mexico, he had to drop that score. Without that system Prost scored the most points in 1988 but lost to Senna under he dropped scores rule. Whether the arcane system ever changed all that much over the years is open to question. Only one other driver had suffered the frustration of scoring more but having to drop and finish the championship second - Graham Hill dropped behind John Surtees in 1964 under the system. By contrast the often maligned 1958 Mike Hawthorn championship came about despite Hawthorn having to lose seven points worth of finishes to Stirling Moss's zero dropped scores.
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Williams evidently never really believed entirely in their driver - good professional, perhaps but not really outstanding, and harshly replaced Hill at the end of 1996 just as the championship finally beckoned. Shoved ignominiously out of the frontrunning team in 1997 Hill ended up at Arrows, banking on the new ownership of the storied Tom Walkinshaw racing and Yamaha engine support. A great nearly moment came in Hungary. The Arrows name had been around on the grid since 1978, but had never won a race. With a deal with Bridgestone tyres in 1997 the team came upon miraculous performance at the Hungaroring as the Japanese rubber worked much better than the rival Goodyear tyred cars. Hill passed Schumacher's Ferrari early on in the race and left even his old team far behind, and was all set for a famous win when the hydraulics failed, leaving the Arrows limping around and a sitting duck for Jacques Villeneuve's Williams. Had the car held together and come home a glorious first rather than a desperately disappointed second maybe things would have been different for Arrows.
As it was Hill jumped off to Jordan-Mugen Honda in 1998. After a stellar opening year in 1991, the Jordan team had flattered to decieve ever since, their main claim to fame being giving Michael Schumacher a brief 1 race debut, whereupon he was immediately wrestled away by Benetton. With the Japanese engine deal, the Irish team started to again threaten the frontrunners in 1997, and won the 1998 Belgian GP after Schumacher took care of himself by running unsighted into the back of David Coulthard's lapped McLaren in the rain. Hill took that win, but it would be his last. He faded in 1999, seemingly exhausted by the years of effort and more often than not lived in the shadow of his teammate. Ironically enough this was Heinz-Harald Frenzten, the man who had taken the Williams seat in 1997, and won all of one race with it. Yet, now given the underdog's car Frentzen came alive and won two races, finishing 3rd in the championship.
All this time hill had may have been given other options. Hill's last season with Williams had also been the last for Adrian Newey. The team's principle Frank Williams, and team manager Patrick Head had left their aerodynamicist and lead designer out of driver decisions even though his original contract had stipulated he would be included. They hired Jacques Villeneuve without telling Newey, and then fired Hill in the same way. McLaren pounced for the coveted designer - the contractual muddle was a legal minefield for the two teams, but Williams ultimately couldn't win given their prior behaviour. Newey signed with McLaren but was forced into 'gardening leave for nearly a year, unable to directly influence the 1997 car. When he could get going in his office he promptly turned McLaren Mercedes into the pacesetters while Williams dropped back to clear third best. Newey had a lot of time for his former test driver and his amenable manner, and put some words to Ron Dennis, who phoned Hill with an offer. A McLaren seat but with the proviso that he was the number two behind Mika Hakkinen. In his autobiography Hill recalled the conversation- he was slighted by the idea that he, a world champion, would be the number 2, and said 'no thanks'. After the year of futility with Arrows he regretted it almost immediately he put the phone down but it was too late. Perhaps it would never have been anyway. The team kept a hold of David Coulthard, 11 years Jill's junior. Had hill jumped into a McLaren he could have possibly been straight back into a winning car. On the other hand his 1999 Jordan was a race winner in the hands of Frentzen, so perhaps at age 39 the 1996 champion would have ended up being a bust in a McLaren no matter what.
Hill was the first second generation world champion. His father Graham won the 1962 and 1968 championships, though things might have been a bit different had another Briton not taken his leave of being a racing driver at the end of 1962. Stirling Moss called his one-time Vanwall teammate Tony Brooks one of the most underrated drivers in history, and it's not hard to see why. Brooks ran at the front of the grid for most of the late 1950s and, like Moss, was ill served by fortune. But for being rear ended by his teammate in the last race of 1959, and a cautious pitstop to check for any damage, he too could have denied Jack Brabham the top spot and been the second consecutive British Ferrari champion. Brooks ended up driving for BRM in 1961, the British team having spent ten long years slogging around with only a solitary win to show for it.
At years end the six time winner packed it in, retiring to run his car dealership, leaving the team leader role free to the 33 year old Graham Hill, driving in F1 since 1958. After the years of struggle, the team got a major reorganisation under the engineer Tony Rudd - the forerunner of the modern technical director - and a new in-house engine. Suddenly BRM, with their new P57 car had some speed, and reliability too. With their main rivals Lotus being fast but fragile Hills BRM finished every race, winning four of them en route to the title. Tony Brooks never offered a word of regret - believable given that the fully qualified dentist had always considered motor racing an interesting but dangerous distraction and retired mostly with thoughts of self preservation in mind.
Another driver who could have been a champion but for an unwise move away from a good car was the American Dan Gurney. The only driver to give two marques their debut win (Porsche and Brabham) left the latter to form his own team in 1966. Brabham won the next two titles while Gurney's 'All American Racers' Eagle won a solo race in 1967 - the only one ever for a American in an American car. He nearly had another at the Nurburgring but this most wonderful of wins - the sleek blue Eagle conquering the 14 mile track - was denied by a broken driveshaft on the penultimate tour. The team wound up their European efforts to focus on America in 1969 and Gurney never won any more F1 races. Still, his legend was assured by joining the exclusive club of winning owner-drivers, and in an one of the prettiest cars ever to grace the grid.
The Belgian Jacky Ickx could have taken the 1970 championship with a strong finish to the year but his car not broke down at home at Monza and two other races only yielded fourth. Ickx later always stated that he was relieved not to have taken the prize from the deceased Jochen Rindt and won a very hollow victory. His own career never reached the same heights again. He only won two more grands prix, and two years with Lotus in 1974 and 1975 saw no wins at all. 1973 had been a desperate time for Ferrari but had Ickx stayed he would have been rewarded with a totally reworked team under new manager Luca de Montezemolo (who would later return as Ferrari CEO in the 1990s in the Schumacher era). As it was the Ferrari resurgence was to the benefit of Lauda and Regazzoni in 1974. Ickx stuck around part time in the midfield until 1979 before concentrating his efforts, in a Fittipaldi-style career renaissance, on becoming Porsche's lead sports car driver and winning five Le Mans 24 hours.
Had John Surtees not quit the Ferrari team in the middle of 1966 the chances are good that he would have had a shot at a second title that year. Surtees and the rest were annihilated by Jim Clark in 1965, but the change of engine rules in 1966 (capacity was increased from 1.5 to 3 litres) left Lotus at a disadvantage without a good engine. Ferrari and Surtees won the soaking wet Belgian round but then all hell broke loose at Le Mans. With only two cars entered by the team due to industrial unrest, Surtees, the clear team leader, was left out. When demanding a reinstatement the offer was that Surtees, who expected to be the driver who started, would have to wait for the car to handed over to him. What most incensed the Englishman was that there was no word at all from Old Man Ferrari himself on the matter. The on going Ferrari soap opera dashed another successful partnership as their champ quit mid season and skulked off, eventually ending up leading the Honda team. With a win already in 1965 and one with Surtees in Italy 1967 the Anglo-Japanese partnership showed great potential at the time, but was wound up at the end of 1968 after an appalling firey crash in France that killed their 2nd driver Jo Schlesser (the uncle of a driver called Jean-Louis Schlesser, who, 20 years later, would trip Ayrton Senna out of the lead 2 laps from the chequered flag at Monza, and deny McLaren Honda the closest chance for a.perfect winning season any team has ever had). Surtees, meanwhile, founded his own team, but the closest it came to victory was one second at the 1971 Italian GP.
That race was won by the unlikely figure of Englishman Peter Gethin in the BRM, but it was one of many races that could have been taken by the perennially unlucky Chris Amon - destined never to win a gp despite frequently beating those who won championships. Amon's record bears out his claim to be easily the most accomplished driver who never stood on the top step of the podium. He stood on the other two spots eleven times, and started on pole position five times. His litany of misses is a story of many glories that went wanting;
1967 French GP: Retired from 2nd with a broken throttle.
1967 Mexican GP: Ran out of fuel 6 laps from the end while 2nd.
1967 US GP: Engine seized with 13 laps to go in 2nd. Winner Clark's suspension broke in the closing laps and he lost half a minute in time.
1968 British GP: 2nd by 4 seconds.
1968 Canadian GP: led the whole race when his car broke on lap 73.
1968 Mexican GP; fuel pump broke on lap 58 while leading by half a lap.
1968 Belgian GP: Pole position but retired with a broken radiator on lap 8.
1969 Spanish GP: Leading by 30 seconds just past half way when the engine seized.
1971 Italian GP: Leading when his helmet visor tore off forcing him to pit.
1972 French GP: Leading when his tyre punctured.
Amon was Ferrari's leader at the end of 1960s and the bulk of the retirements came when his car ground to a halt with mechanical problems. By late 1969 he had had enough of the failures and left, after a brief acquaintance with their new car. In typical form as soon as Amon had gone Ferrari finally licked their chronic unreliability and the 1970 car proved quick - and was usually faster than Amon's March-Cosworth. Even here, with an all new team, fate decided to dangle a possible victory in front of the New Zealander at Spa as he finished second by 1.1 seconds to Pedro Rodriguez.
If Amon is the most famed unlucky driver, in fast but unreliable (and vise versa) cars then the next generation had it's fair share of drivers who, in a different narrative, took at least one win their talent deserved. Derek Warwick, the 1978 British F3 champion, was signed by Renault in 1984 to replace Alain Prost. His suspension broke while leading his first race for the team, and that was the closest he would ever come to winning a race. The pivotal moment came at the end of the year, when Warwick stayed put at Renault instead of taking up an offer to go to Williams Honda. The Williams had been unrefined and ill handling in 1984 - the last of their cars with an aluminium chassis rather than carbon fibre, so the decision was understandable. Unfortunately for Warwick the team then took a took a step up performance in 1985, regaining their form from five years before. Williams insteasd took Nigel Mansell from Lotus, and the works Renault team withdrew for good at the end of 1985. Warwick had a 2nd chance in 1986 to join Lotus-Renault. All the signs were good - until lead driver Ayrton Senna stepped in and vetoed, reckoning the team could not support another top driver and Johnny Dumfries brought in (As the inimitable Clive James had it When reviewing the year for television "As a slave"). Dumfries (aka the 7th Marquess of Bute) had been sensational in Formula 3, but fell away in F3000 and F1, only lasting a season before Honda replaced him with their own test driver, the equally anonymous Satoru Nakajima. Meanwhile, Derek Warwick came close to giving Arrows a win in 1989, many years before Damon Hills famous run at the Hungaroring in '97. He was second in Rio, with the team ruing a slow pit stop that left him further back than he finished in 2nd. In a wet and slippery Canada he dropped out of an excellent 2nd with a mechanical problem - and then Senna also retired from the lead close to the finish (a big blow to his championship). Warwick saw out his f1 days with Lotus (sadly now past their competitive days) and Arrows again (albeit under the 'Footwork branding).
Also in the Amon/Warwick mould was Martin Brundle. The sport's foremost ex-driver commentator since the late 1990s the Englishman who raced against Senna in British Formula 3 in 1983 joined the F1 grid in the next year alongside the Brazilian. And just like Senna he also scored a sensational 2nd place (that months later would be taken away when the Tyrrell team was disqualified for rule infringements) on a tight street course - Detroit in this case - but no wins ever came his way.
In his 13 seasons Brundle drove for Tyrrell, Brabham, Williams (in one race), Benetton, Ligier, McLaren and Jordan. All teams with race winning pedigree yet somehow never found his tenure matching up with any of those teams good years. As with Warwick in 1989 Brundle saw a near certain win in Canada 1992 slip away to a mechanical problem when 2nd. Had the Benetton not cried enough while reeling in Berger's McLaren at a rate of knots it would surely have won. Oft overlooked in the tumultuous 1994 season was the fact that Schumacher nearly threw away the Monaco gp by spinning at St Devote corner late on. Had he stalled that would have been that and Brundle would have joined Jean Pierre Beltoise and Olivier Panis as drivers who won the most prestigious race of all and nothing else.
Brundle's 1984 Tyrrell teammate Stefan Bellof was touted as a potential future champion - he had joined the Englishman and Ayrton Senna for a McLaren test in 1983, and had also been hugely impressive in the wet. But he was killed in a World Sportscar Championship race driving a Porsche 956 at Spa in 1985. Both he and Brundle were not paid huge amounts by Tyrrell so driving outside of F1 was a useful extra source of income, and a place to further demonstrate their skills. Coming up to overtake Porsche team leader Jacky Ickx at Eau Rouge corner, driving a private entry, and determined to put one over on the one-time F1 contender, Bellof tried a over-optimistic lunge, bounced off the side of Ickx's 956 and smashed head-on into the barrier, crushing his car almost in half. Bellof would forever be remembered as the race lap record holder at the Nurburgring (set in the circuit's swansong for sportscars in 1983), and for being the one of the great lost talents who never came close to showing his full potential
Another German is the King of the 'Nearly' club. "Quick Nick" Heidfeld, who holds the record for podiums with no win - 13. After a long gestation as McLaren test driver in 1999 and stints in the midfield the German's break came with Williams BMW in 2005, and then transferring with the Bavarian engines to Sauber in 2006. With a Beemer in the back Heidfeld finished 2nd seven times but the win always eluded him. A measure of Heidfeld's car disadvantage is shown by his laps led - a mere 25 laps out front despite all the good finishes he managed to grind out.
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By contrast with the drivers who never got the ideal drive, there are plenty of top drivers who stepped out of a competitive seat. In days past when the sport was vastly dangerous than it would become it was not uncommon for champions to step away while they were still in one piece rather than race on. Such names include Juan Manuel Fangio, Jackie Stewart, Jody Scheckter, Denny Hulme, James Hunt, Niki Lauda, Keke and Nico Rosberg. Fangio was 47 when he stopped so it seems unlikely his motivation would have continued. Hulme too was approaching forty. Had Keke Rosberg stayed on at McLaren after 1986 chances are that history may not have been too different. His replacement Stefan Johansson was in turn eased aside in 1988 for Ayrton Senna. Not to be harsh on the 1982 world champion but Rosberg versus Senna would seem like no contest for McLaren that year. For obvious reasons Rosberg junior never admitted to stepping out of the Mercedes after his championship in 2016 to preserve his legacy because beating Lewis Hamilton again the next year was unlikely to happen but the chances are more than likely such ideas were on his mind, especially after Hamiltons's points haul had been hobbled by a crucial engine failure late in the season.
Hunt had slipped from McLaren to the midfield Wolf car when he walked away for good after the 1979 Monaco GP. Had he stuck around the biggest loss would have been.to the world of broadcasting as Hunt soon struck up one of the great commentating double acts in the 1980s on the BBC with Murray Walker. Jody Scheckter would have gained a slightly better Ferrari in 1981 - doubtless Villeneuve would have been happier to keep his friend in the other seat rather than Pironi. Who knows how the next year would have panned out with the South African still aboard. Still, Scheckter might never have had his big break with Tyrrell if Jackie Stewart hadn't retired at the end of 1973. Stewart retained his affiliation with the team; years after his last race he still took out the cars for testing. When the six wheel car came along in 1976 Stewart was there at the Paul Ricard track in France, driving the bizarre creation for the cameras. Looking at the times he could still run how Ken Tyrrell must have wished his champion was still aboard as his team gradually slipped towards the midfield.
Niki Lauda retired for the first time in 1979, saying with characteristic Austrian bluntness that he was "tired of driving around in circles". He vacated.a seat at Brabham, who proceeded to win the 1981 and 1983 championships with Nelson Piquet. Lauda meanwhile rejoined the circus in 1982 with McLaren, just as they began an upswing under Ron Dennis after several years in the doldrums. His helmet was now adorned with the logo of his eponymous airline - founded in 1979 and eventually growing into a major international carrier. Lauda Air was certainly one of the most successful non racing related activities any driver was involved with and perhaps inspired others to try their hand at second careers. Carlos Reutemann was elected a provincial governor, Jody Scheckter runs a major farming brand in the UK- Laverstoke Park. Ayrton Senna's children's charity still operates in Brazil. Had he lived beyond his 30s who knows where he might have ended up once the driving helmet was hung up.
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Things came to a dramatic head mid season. All year an espionage scandal had rocked Ferrari and McLaren. The chief mechanic from the former had sent the chief designer of the latter a pile of confidential Ferrari design documents. At Hungary the situation blew up in qualifying and involved Alonso in the most bizarre way. The team had an arrangement whereby the drivers took turns leading the other in qualifying. In Hungary Hamilton decided to pass Alonso during the last 10 minute session. To retaliate Alonso decided to wait in the pit box to stop Hamilton being able to change to a new set of tyres and set one final fast lap. Pole position went to the Spaniard while his team mate steamed. Then the first bombshell - Alonso would be penalised 5 places on the grid for deliberately impeding another driver. Then the second; McLaren would not be awarded any points in the race because, according to the stewards they had been misleading about the incident to the officials. Finally the third - on race morning Alonso allegedly told McLaren boss Ron Dennis that he had been party to emails about the spying scandal. Whether he had or not, whether he was trying a power play, blackmail, or just being foolish, he seems to have completely misjudged what the reaction would be. Ron Dennis felt duty bound to tell the FIA that the stolen Ferrari intellectual property had evidently been (allegedly) disseminated around his team rather more than had been thought. McLaren eventually were fined a whopping 100 million dollars and docked all their constructors championship points for the year.
Needless to say, after Hungary there was no way that Alonso was going to see out his three year contract with McLaren. But he still had a chance to win the championship. Hamilton blew up massively in the last two rounds, through no fault of his own. But for a farcical slip up in China he would surely have been champion. The team left him out for a pit stop far too long, until his tyres were almost down to the canvas. When he came to pit at last he overcooked the entry and slid helplessly into a piddling little gravel trap. It wasn't much, but Hamilton was beached and scored no points. In the final round he still only needed 5th place to beat Alonso and Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, but the two McLarens nearly came to blows in the first lap, leading to Hamilton coming off the track and ending up 8th. He soon made up two positions before his gearbox went haywire, dropping him right to the back. The electronic gremlins were defeated after half a minute of coasting, but Hamilton could only make it back to 7th by the finish. Alonso was third, coming up two points short of Raikkonen. Raikkonen himself had seen a potential title for McLaren go the way of poor reliability in 2005. Three times the Finn had fallen out of the lead due to mechanical problems, including a last lap puncture in Germany, and all three times the benefactor had been ... the Renault of one F. Alonso.
In 2008, meanwhile, Alonso went back to Renault. What worked in 2005 was now not such a wise move. McLaren again were competitive, Hamilton winning the championship at the second time of asking. Alonso struggled with the Renault. A win at Singapore came their way, courtesy of a fortuitous spin into the wall by the other Renault of Nelson Piquet Jr, and safety car period just after Alonso had made a pitstop. With everyone else pitting under the yellow flag, Alonso ended up in the lead. Later the truth about the 'lucky' win came out. After qualifying, with Alonso mired near the back of the grid despite some good pace in practice, some of the Renault bosses decided that they would assist their lead driver in making some places by deliberately crashing the second car at the perfect time. The Spaniard claimed ignorance, and avoided the sanctions that came the way of Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds - the manager and technical engineers who had been integral parts of the team power structure since the controversial 1994 Benetton days. No doubt Ayrton Senna would have been amused to see their comeuppance had he still been around.
In 2010 the second coming of Alonso seemed to be on the way with his big money move to Ferrari. The partnership began perfectly with a win in Bahrain, but it took several months more for another win, and a controversial one at that as Alonso was infamously allowed past teammate Massa in Germany ("Fernando is faster than you" went the not-so-subtle message to Massa that went down in F1 folklore). The championship seemed a shoe-in when Sebastian Vettel's engine failed in South Korea and the Ferrari won. The last round in Abu Dhabi saw Vettel trailing by eights points, but the race turned into a farce for Ferrari when they sent Alonso into the pits very early for a stop. He was covering the Red Bull of Mark Webber (still also an outside chance for the championship) but the pair became mired in the midfield while Vettel, still leading, could run quick times in the lead. Alonso and Webber proceeded to spend the rest of race agonisingly stuck behind (funnily enough) the Renault of Vitaly Petrov. The Ferrari driver finished an imaginably frustrated 7th, Webber still right behind. Vettel, aged just 23, won his first championship by four points. It was the first time all year he had lead the championship.
The next year Ferrari and Alonso could only win once, while Vettel and Red Bull dominated with eleven wins. In 2012 things were a little closer, but not by much as the Spaniard had was was probably his finest season in what was conspicuously not the fastest car. He won three times and finished on the podium in another nine races. The first half of the year was highly competitive - eight different drivers won the first eight races, and the next five yo-yo'ed between five of those eight. Then Vettel regained the dominating form of 2011 and won four in a row. In the decider in Brazil, the situation was Vettel ahead by thirteen points of Alonso, who had to either finish in the top three regardless of where the Red Bull finished, or win and hope Vettel was lower than fourth. Up against the odds the miracle seemed to come true for Ferrari on the first lap as Vettel was tipped into a spin after dropping down to 7th. The Red Bull spun around and sat in the middle of the track facing the entire field. The entire field, miraculously, missed the stricken German. Flashback to Belgium a few months earlier - Alonso and several others had been wiped out by the overenthusiastic start of Romain Grosjean, who flew his Renault over the top of most of the front of the pack. Then in Japan, Alonso was knocked out on the first lap by Raikkonen, the second of only two retirements all year. By contrasting fortunes, Vettel, with minor damage after the contact, spun back the right way, carried on and finished in the 6th place he needed for a third straight title with Alonso 2nd in the race. But for the swing of eleven points over three different seasons Alonso could have matched Fangio by 2012.
Alonso finished second yet again behind Vettel in 2013, only this time by an enormous margin as the Red Bull won a staggering thirteen races, including a season-ending nine in a row (matching the seemingly impenetrable record of Alberto Ascari over the 1952 and 1953 years). After five years of 'close but no title' Alonso fell out with Ferrari management and left to rejoin McLaren for 2015. On the face of it a once-unthinkable return to a team he had left with all bridges well and truly burned. However, management had changed - Ron Dennis as group CEO was now not involved with the day-to-day running of the team, and the team had a new exclusive deal with Honda for engines. Hopes that the heydays of the 1988-1992 McLaren Honda era would be reborn came crashing down over the first race of 2015. Alonso qualified 18th on his McLaren debut, over two seconds slower than the pole position time, and retired after twenty laps with a broken engine. Over the next seasons McLaren Honda Mark 2 went from struggling start, to embarrassment, to utter fiasco. Alonso had one top five finish in his first year and retired seven times. 2016 was a little better in terms of reliability but two top-fives were the high points. Even fifth was too much to ask in 2017, and again he dropped out of seven races (which was better than not even lining up on the grid due to a failure in Russia). Alonso retired after a 2018 season that at least began with some consistent top-10 finishes but deteriorating into the usual run of retirements and anonymous pointless mid-field races. The comparisons were there with Emerson Fittipaldi before him - a double champion wasting his years chasing for scraps while the watching world wondered what would have happened had he stayed put. Possibly not a title - Ferrari couldn't manage one either even with Vettel having moved to join them from Red Bull, but they came much closer than McLaren.
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In stark contrast to Fernando Alonso's years of frustration, there is the saga of his erstwhile 2007 teammate Lewis Hamilton. The young rookie from Stevenage came within a whisker of being the first genuine debut world champion in 2007 - but for sliding off a wet track in Germany and finishing out of the points, the bald tyres debacle in China and the gearbox fault in Brazil his season was near-faultless. He nearly missed out again a year later, struggling around the Brazilian grand prix while rival Felipe Massa in the Ferrari led from start to finish. A late race rain shower seemed to have doomed the McLaren driver as the newcomer Sebastian Vettel passed him for the crucial 5th place a few laps from the finish. Then what the weather gods had taken away they returned as.the Toyota of Timo Glock fell away on its worn out tyres, losing the 5th place to Hamilton in the final corner of the final lap.
Massa could have done no more and rarely had a race winner had such conflicting emotions. Ferrari had reason to rue the Singapore race - the same caution period that was caused by Piquet in the Renault and vaulted Alonso to the lead sent the then-leading Ferrari into the pit box - where disaster struck. The team released the car too early and it dragged its broken refuelling hose along after itself. After the delay while the crew ran down to remove the broken hose, Massa was then penalised with a pitlane drive-through for the unsafe release from the pit box, finishing 13th and losing vital points that would have made all the difference at year's end.
After more fruitless years where Red Bull and Ferrari won everything Hamilton took the huge leap into the unknown with the Mercedes team. Though they had bought out the phenomenally successful Brawn outfit and pumped it full of money the rest of the pack had caught up fast in 2010. In fact Mercedes F1 was starting look suspiciously like another Jaguar F1 white elephant. Ironically enough, Niki Lauda, formerly advisor to the latter, had now joined Mercedes and was responsible for their biggest coup when he pep talked Hamilton into leaving McLaren because the engine rules would be changing and Mercedes would be the most ready for the new circumstances. The FIA replaced the naturally aspirated V8 engine formula with a V6 Turbo-Electric hybrid arrangement in 2014. At a stroke Red Bull were stuck with a low on power Renault unit and Mercedes swept to the front of the field with their mastery of the V6 Hybrid. Save for his engine detonating itself out of the lead in the 2016 Malaysian Grand prix, and all but handing the title to teammate Rosberg, Hamilton would have won 2014 to 2018 straight. Had Hamilton stuck with McLaren chances are he never would have added to his solo effort in 2008. Or, maybe, someone else would have swiped him...
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Countless drivers who made a name for themselves in other fields of racing never appeared in Formula One at all. Many dropped out in the lower divisions, quite a few tested for teams but never made an appearance on the starting grid. The most decorated Le Mans 24 Hour winner Tom Kristensen tested for the Tyrrell, and Minardi teams, and drove a Williams BMW in 1999, but a race chance never appeared. Triple Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti had the offer of becoming the McLaren test driver in 1995, but turned it down as he already had a contract to race in Indycar, and didn't fancy the constant trans-Atlantic commuting. Four years later he also turned away an offer from BAR - probably wisely given the car's awful reliability, and then in 2000 tested for Jaguar but nothing came of it. Super succesful French touring car champion Laurent Aiello was once a Formula 3000 driver, and was pushed by Peugeot to be in the McLaren team for 1994. But he wasn't fit enough to stand the g-forces and despite being as quick as anybody was not considered for the drive. Another tin-top stalwart, Alain Menu, tested a Williams right after Jacques Villeneuve in 1995, and came away with similar times despite not having been in a open wheel race car for four years. He had no 'name recognition' though, and did not get called back.
The 1992 British Formula 3 champion Gil de Ferran tested for Williams, but like Franchitti, ended up racing in America and winning Indianapolis without ever starting in F1. The late Dan Wheldon had the offer of a testing role with BMW-Sauber in 2006 instead of staying stateside, but chose the frontrunning Ganassi Indycar team instead. Greg Moore, another tragically lost talent in America, and the Canadian successor to Jacques Villeneuve in Indycars, was on the radar in Formula 1, and Jackie Stewart had made moves to sign him up before his untimely death aged only 24 in 1999. Before both Moore and Villeneuve their countryman Paul Tracy was offered a Benetton ride for 1995 after a very impressive test in 1994. He didn't think he would stand much of a chance against Michael Schumacher in the team and declined to stay with the Marlboro money at the Penske team.
Tracy's move had echoes of another great talent who opted to stay in America when he could have taken at shot in Europe. The last champion from the USA was Mario Andretti in 1978 - the Italian American had joined Lotus full time in 1976, eight years after his pole-winning debut, and steered the team's ground breaking aerodynamics programme to the riches of 1978. And that would be it for American drivers in F1. None have won a race, let alone a championship since Andretti won the 1978 Dutch Gp. Despite the massive fall of in F1's presence in the 1980s the situation was not a foregone conclusion. In 1984, Rick Mears - 4 time Indianapolis 500 winner, and multiple race winner in America - was offered a drive with Brabham in 1980 alongside Nelson Piquet. Mears had won Indianapolis in 1979, in only his second try, and Bernie Ecclestone fancied the idea of American sponsor-friendly 'name' for the team. Mears did two tests, one in France and one in America, and was faster than Piquet the circuit he already knew. The team thought he would be a 'megastar' and drew up a contract. But the money was not much, and the pull of staying at home with the mighty Penske organistaion was too great and Bernie was to be disappointed.
All of Mears wins were taken with Penske racing, including another three Indy 500s, so his side of the deal worked out well. Penske itself presents a tantalising alternate history as the team ran a satellite F1 outfit in the 1970s, and even won a race (the Austrian GP in 1976) and on pure pace to boot, but withdrew at the end of 1976 to focus on America. Had Penske stayed on into the ground effect era, the 1980s could have had a much more American flavour (Or 'flavor') to it. F1 would have been well within the their capabilities. Never short of money, Penske built their own IndyCar chassis in England well into the 1990s, just as if they were an F1 team. For a few years in the early 1980s there was nearly no difference between Indy and F1 cars anyway, and two notable future F1 designers first made their names with Indycars. John Barnard, the architect of McLaren's cars in the mid eighties came to their attention with the ground effects Chaparral that won Indianapolis in 1980, and Adrian Newey, after a tentative first role for the Fittipaldi first made his reputation as a wizard of downforce with successful March and Lola Indycars.
The end of ground effect aerodynamics in 1983 and the mandatory flat floor rule is near universally celebrated as a good thing. However it does overlook the fact that both world sports car championship and Indy kept allowing such cars with some limitations, and to the probable improvement of their racing. With the underneath of the car out of bounds F1 teams immediately began piling on wings and rear venturi tunnels onto their cars. Such devices create huge amounts of turbulence in their wake and are also affected badly by such turbulence when running into it - the dreaded 'dirty air' was born whereby following cars were prevented from catching and passing by the churning air coming from the car in front. Had F1 kept limited ground effects in 1983 would it have been bedevilled with the turbulence problem ever since?
Ground effects themselves could have made an appearance much earlier than the late 1970s
In 1969 the BRM team worked on a secret 'wing car' concept, strikingly similar to the 1977 Lotus 78 that introduced under floor aero to F1. Chief engineer Tony Rudd and his apprentice Peter Wright had reasoned that simply bolting on wings to the cars was a little crude, and that even more downforce could be generated by turning the entire car into a one large concave aerofoil shape. BRM seemingly had little to lose with the radical idea but the prototype was canned by the management before it became a working car, the thinking being that it was diverting too much time from the actual race car.
Rudd and Wright later joined Lotus, where they simply resurrected their stillborn concept, and added the side skirts that made all the difference to the downforce generated.
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Perhaps most poignant of all in any recollection of F1 "What ifs" is the sadly too-long list of drivers who made it to the promised land and showed huge promise, but then were taken before they ever really had a shot at greatness. The lost careers begin even before the World Championship even began. In 1949 the international racing season began in Argentina, and the Grand Prix event was marred by the death of Jean-Pierre Wimille. The Frenchman had won the Swiss, Belgian, Italian and French Grand Prix races in the immediate post war years, and was a sure bet to be a frontrunner in the age of the official championship when he died.
Another tragically short lived young talent was the Mexican Ricardo Rodriguez. As a precocious 19 year old he led for Ferrari in the Italian GP (the same race that saw the death of another lost talent, Ferrari's Wolfgang von Trips, who could have been Germany's first champion 30-odd years before Michael Schumacher). Rodriguez finished in the top-6 two times in the next year before fatefully taking up the offer of a Rob Walker Lotus to drive in his home Grand Prix. A non-championship event at the time, the Mexican circuit claimed it's hometown future star in a practice session crash. His older brother Pedro came to F1 a few years later, and as well as winning Le Mans, he took two wins then also perished, in 1971. Much like Jim Clark he was racing in a relatively unimportant race in Germany - this time an Interserie sports car race.
The early 1970s were littered with tragedies that left behind forever unanswered questions. Rodriguez, Jo Siffert, Peter Revson, Francois Cevert, Bruce McLaren - all Grand Prix winning drivers who died at the wheel.Many of these names were inextricably tied in with the future fates of their teams. McLaren is the obvious great 'what if?' The team the Kiwi had founded in the late 60s carried on much as it had without him throughout the 70s before being bought and turned into the 1980s incarnation as McLaren International under Ron Dennis. Had Bruce still been in charge of his team, would it have been sold to a third party? Most likely it would have become a manufacturer of road cars a long time before it finally began to make them in large numbers in the 2000s, as that was one of Bruce McLaren's long held dreams.
The dashing Englishman Piers Courage looked set to be a future winner when he joined the circus in the late 1960s. Though from a wealthy background he had no family support and had made a name with talent. His owner was a name that would become familiar in the future - one Frank Williams. This was the first incarnation of Williams racing and it would have welcomed the Courage family money had it been available. As it was Frank Williams accepted the chance to run a car designed by the niche Italian sports car company DeTomaso (maker of the iconic Pantera road car). At the Dutch GP Courage crashed the car off into a bank, overturned and exploded in flames. Heartbroken, Williams would have to regroup and come up with a new team.
In the beginning of the 1970s one of the frontrunners had been the Tyrrell outfit, hailing from a woodyard in Surrey, England. After running the French Matra cars, and taking Jackie Stewart to the 1969 championship they started running their own car in 1970. Alongside Stewart they paired the French driver Johnny Servoz-Gavin, winner of the 1969 European Formula 2 title. At Monaco that year Stewart was on pole position while his teammate didn't qualify. Servoz-Gavin, a dashing playboy-type, who did not need the money, upped and left for good, happy not to end up another victim of the era. Into the empty seat came another French F2 star, Francois Cevert. He would be Stewart's team mate for the three years, winning one race before being killed in a crash during the season's last race in 1973 when his car crashed into, and partly through a guardrail. With Stewart retiring (a decision he had made before his friend's death) the team needed two new drivers. On the horizon had been yet another F2 standout - Scotsman Gerry Birrell, a favourite son of Ford racing who were keen to promote him to replace Stewart, but he too was killed during 1973, at an F2 race in Rouen in the summer, in awfully similar circumstances to Cevert.
As well as Birrell there a triumvirate of British lost talents in the 1970s who did race in F1, two of whom could have starred for teams that never were. Roger Williamson only started two races in a privateer March, his death in the 1973 Dutch GP also spelled the end of sponsor Tom Wheatcroft's interest in F1, the property mogul instead buying up the Donington Park circuit and amassing a collection of historic cars, rather than creating a team. Tony Brise was the future star of Graham hills new team in 1975. The double champion retiring as driver after sixteen years behind the wheel. With sponsorship from embassy tobacco (the long-time backer of television stalwarts snooker and darts in the UK) the Hill Team could have been an upstart challenger in the late 1970s. Hill, already in his 40s, was primed to become a team owner with the quick Brise driving. Sadly the pair, along with the teams manager and designer were all killed when hill crashed his private plane in thick fog while trying to land at Elstree airfield. With all the key figures gone the team never returned after the crash.
A plane crash also claimed the Brazilian Carlos Pace, leading Bernie Ecclestone's re-emergent Brabham team in 1977 before his untimely loss. A few years later fellow Brazilian Nelson Piquet won two titles for the team.
The last of the three lost Britons was already a winner in F1. Tom Pryce won the non championship Race of Champions in 1975 in the unfancied Shadow. The Welshman undoubtedly would have been on.the radar of Lotus, McLaren and Williams in 1978 had he not been killed in a collision with a track Marshall running across his path in South Africa in 1977. His place was taken in the Shadow by Australian Alan Jones, who would be Williams first champion in 1980. It was a tragic time in F1, on and off the track. After the loss of Pryce the Lotus driver Gunnar Nilsson had to withdraw from racing to be treated for cancer. Nilsson was replaced by compatriot Ronnie Peterson. Peterson had been in F1 since 1970 and had won several races, but had never quite settled in one team. After challenging Fittipaldi and Stewart for the 1973 championship he was stuck at Lotus as they became increasingly noncompetitive. Moving to March in 1976 led to a solo win, but the six wheel Tyrrell in 1977 couldn't bring another win. Meanwhile Lotus had bounced back with their ground effect car, and Peterson came back to the team for 1978, albeit with the stipulation that he be strictly the number 2 behind Mario Andretti. The Lotus plan worked as Andretti was the champion in the game changing Lotus 79. However a terrible shadow was cast over the triumph - late season Peterson broke both his legs in a start melee in Italy. The 34 year old Swede died that night on the operating table. Weeks later his countryman Nilsson also died from his cancer. Whether either could have been big hitters in the 1980s debatable. Nilsson won one Grand Prix for Lotus but fell ill before he.could do much more. Lotus never won another championship after 1978 and Peterson had in fact signed for McLaren - and It would take until 1984 before that team became the dominant force again.
That year McLaren won twelve races with Alain Prost and Niki Lauda. Prost had replaced John Watson, Watson, a five time winner, and a championship contender in the topsy turvey 1982 year, saw the writing on the wall and retired rather than drop into a tail end team. Had Gilles Villeneuve not crashed to his death at Zolder it is not a stretch to imagine Watson making way for Villeneuve in 1983. The Canadian was unlikely to stick around in the poisonous politics of Ferrari even had he won the title. Even with Villeneuves death Ferrari should have claimed to 1982 drivers crown. Didier Pironi looked well on the way to the championship when he too fell victim to a massive crash running into the back of another car. This time it was fellow Frenchman Prost in the rain at Hockenheim. Pironi survived with smashed legs and feet but never drove in F1 again. Had Pironi been champion he might have been in the sights of Renault or McLaren. Had either Villenueve or Pironi tied up McLaren then Prost would have been stuck at Renault. Perhaps Villeneuve would still have been at McLaren Honda in 1988 when one Ayrton Senna came knocking.
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Ten years later another Villeneuve, Gilles son Jacques, was announcing that he would be leaving Williams, where he had won the world championship in 1997, to head up a brand new team. As it turned out the British American Racing team would be a major flop. Though not short of funding and expertise thanks to British American Tobacco money and Reynard chassis design the car was seriously short of reliability. Villeneuve didn't see the chequered flag until the 12th round. Remarkably, after winning the Indy 500, eleven grands prix and a championship in two year, Villeneuve junior would never again win anything else of consequence. In terms of duration his father had a.longer winning career. However, the BAR team would, eventually spawn a hugely successful team over a decade later, albeit under a different brand.
The saga began in the team's second year. In 2000 Honda agreed to supply engines - the company had cancelled a planned F1 team after building an entire car and testing it in 1999. The BAR Honda deal also spelled the beginning of the end for Jordan, who after enjoying exclusive Mugen-Honda engines now had to share, and began to slip away from the front where they had been running in 1999.
After a few more frustrating years the BAR Honda started to come good in 2004, with Jenson Button scoring the team's first pole position. At the time restrictions on tobacco advertising were coming into force - another blow for smaller independent teams like Jordan - and at the end of 2005 Honda bought out the BAT share in the team.
In the mid 2000s car manufacturer interest was at an all time high. As well as Honda there was Ford running a Jaguar-branded team, Toyota, Renault, Mercedes Benz engines in the back of McLarens, BMW in the Williams. All the manufacturers could not break the stranglehold of Ferrari and Michael Schumacher, enjoying a purple patch with five straight titles from 2000 to 2004. Ford in particular was achieving nothing much of note with Jaguar - the team beginning as Stewart Ford (under the leadership of former champion Jackie Stewart), in 1997 before being rebranded in 2000, after winning a race the year before. The jaguar Ford proceeded to nosedive in competitiveness in the next few seasons. In 200x Ford threw in the towel and sold the team to the Red Bull drinks company.
Red Bull would utterly dominate the early 2010s but without one major coup it may never have happened. Adrian Newey had been at McLaren since 1997 but, as at Williams, had become dissatisfied with a marginalised role within the team. Had McLaren's Ron Dennis been a bit more accomodating to his designer's opinions he may not have lost him to a rival team. Newey had come very close to leaving in 2001, when he agreed in principle to join Jaguar, but the deal fell through when he got wind of the political power plays in the background that would have seen his friend (and former driver of his cars in Indycar racing) Bobby Rahal replaced as principle with Niki Lauda. A few years later Jaguar had become Red Bull and the drinks firm swooped in. Helmut Marko (a former driver who had to retire after being blinded in one eye by a flying stone during the 1972 French GP) approached Newey at the British GP, and bluntly asked him to call him back. Red Bull hired the affable Christian Horner from the Arden F3000 team, and he too worked the charm on the most valuable non-driver in the paddock, along with former Williams driver turned Red Bull man David Coulthard. The only stumbling block was money - owner Dietrich Mateschitz baulked at the prospect of handing over huge sums for one designer but was persuaded by a phone call with Gerhard Berger. The Austrian never won the championship for his country, but by giving a good word to Newey he played a pivotal role in making sure that the country's anthem would be heard a great deal on the podium in the next seasons.
At the same time Honda, after winning a race in 2006 and then slumping back into the midfield abandoned ship at the end of 2008. The global financial crisis and recession of the time the boardrooms of car makers saw their F1 teams as a politically untenable extravagance. The former Honda team was saved at the last minute by its manager - former Ferrari manager Ross Brawn, the impresario behind all of Michael Schumacher's titles at Benetton and Ferrari. Then, in an extraordinary turn of events, the unbranded, unsponsored 'Brawn' turned up to the season opener in Melbourne, qualified 1-2 and won going away. By seasons end Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello had won eight races for the Brawn and Button the championship. By then the team was no more- Mercedes Benz turned up with their cheque book and bought the lot, setting the foundation for the Silver juggernaut that dominated the second half of the 2010s. So what once had been the Tyrrell team in 1998 had it's entry bought out by BAR, then became Honda, then Brawn, and finally Mercedes.
At the same time Mercedes arch rival BMW had set themselves up well for the big time. After powering Williams to some wins but little sustained success in the 2000s the company bought into the midfield Sauber team (ironically a team that began in 1993 branded as 'Concept by Mercedes Benz'. Sauber-BMW won the 2008 Canadian GP in the hands of Robert kubica and looked to be title challengers. But then the company inexplicably switched their focus to the 2009 season and drifted off the pace for the rest of the year. 2009 turned out to be a massive disappointment and BMW withdrew from F1 in 2009 after a decade and a half of missed opportunities. Robert Kubica is the great lost talent of the modern age. Both Alonso and Hamilton rated him as.being on their level. When fatalities are now mercifully rare the chances of severe injury outside of the sport are still present. Kubica won his one race in 2008, moved to Renault in 2010, and was on the radar of every top team when he went rallying in North West Italy at the start of 2011. On a narrow right hand corner, just after passing through a village, he slid his Skoda Fabia wide into a steel barrier. The barrier sliced through the door, into his right forearm and practically severed it. Clearly the polish driver could not begin the year but after a few months it was clear he might be gone for good as the movement in his arm could not be recovered. Had he not.had this crash there were two clear possibilities for Kubica; Mercedes Benz were keen for 2012, it could have been Kubica rather than Hamilton joining the team. If not that year then possibly in 2010 instead of Nico Rosberg. The other obvious possibility was Ferrari. Felipe Massa, championship challenger in 2008 faded after a near fatal accident when he was hit in the helmet by a loose spring and being overshadowed by Alonso. Kubica could have easily been a Ferrari driver for 2012.
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Political, financial and business machinations behind the scenes can have just as much of an impact on the course of history as any crash. Once upon a time Formula 1 races were a major spectator draw in America. With Phil Hill, Andretti, Gurney, and Revson all race winners, the country had once had strong connections to the sport, but no other long running Grand Prix has run through so many venues that did not stick. The current US GP, in Austin, Texas, owes its existence to a long roll of failed attempts and abandoned venues that once thrived. The first US GP took place at Sebring airfield in 1959. That circuit would continue to host the famous 12 hours sportscar race, but the GP did not come back. In 1960 another promising venue appeared for one time. Riverside Raceway, in the eastern fringes of greater Los Angeles would appear to be an ideal place for a Grand Prix. The circuit was a classic road course in the mould of European tracks, and located in the state synonymous with movie stars driving Ferraris and other European exotica to the sports car races. Riverside gave way to Watkins Glen in upstate New York. This would be F1's home for nearly twenty years, Then, unceremoniously, all the heritage was thrown away - F1 left after 1980 and never came back. The Glen remains, and would never be seen as suitable to host the race in the 21st century. Had the GP stayed, though, perhaps the changes would have been made to keep the track up to date.
In 1983 F1 also let slip the seven year-old Long Beach Grand Prix to IndyCar racing, never to return to California again. The popular street race event in the spring SoCal sun could have remained on the F1 calendar into the 1990s but the increasing demand for ever more lavish faculties may have doomed it by then. Even today the layout is a mere 1.9 miles around and is lapped in barely over a minute. Other abortive attempts to keep F1 in America included a race in Las Vegas; notoriously it was laid out in the car park of Caesar's Palace Casino - essentially a giant go kart track, looping back on itself several times, with no features and as flat as an American downtown car park usually is - usually the venue is the winner of any 'worst circuit ever' award. Another tries came in the centre of Dallas in 1984 (financial problems put the kibosh on the event after one try), a relatively long lasting race in Detroit (another event supplanted by Indycars) and the three races in the middle of Phoenix, Arizona, races that never attracted much more than indifferent attendance. After 1991 the United States race disappeared until 2000, when it was resurrected at what would seem to be the perfect location; Indianapolis. The home of the 'Greatest Spectacle in racing', the Indy 500, would seem to have been the natural fit for the Grand prix. Unfortunately the design of the infield road course was slow and fiddly and the only concession to the location was to use the first corner of the banked speedway. Because of the need for run off in the first corner of the F1 track the direction was reversed to the usual anti clockwise direction of the oval, making the banked corner the last turn.
In 2005 trouble stirred in this corner. The Toyota of Ralf Schumacher blew its rear tyre and crashed hard. Toyota, like most teams except Ferrari, Jordan and Minardi, ran Michelin tyres. Soon it became obvious that there was a growing crisis - Michelin were concerned that their tyres could be dangerous on the banked corner. The FIA responded by doing precisely nothing. A temporary chicane was proposed for the problem corner, but nothing came of it. The Michelin teams were stuck; contractually they were obliged to line up on the grid, but they were potentially in danger of being hit with criminal charges if they knowingly let their drivers race with defective equipment. The solution was to start the formation lap, contract fulfilled, and all withdraw before the start. The farcical sight of two thirds of the field pulling slowly into the pits while the two Ferrari's lamely circulated to a one-two finish, while much of the disgusted crowd headed for the exit was a near fatal blow to the event at Indianapolis. And all for the sake of a flawed track and a complete lack of compromise by those in charge.
For all the 2005 race did damage the real killer for the 2000s incarnation of the US GP was the exorbitant fees demanded by F1s promoters and Bernie Ecclestone. Even the hugely wealthy Hulman-George family - owners of Indianapolis Motor Speedway - decided to ditch the Grand Prix after 2007. And this all came back to two behind the scenes decisions taken by the FIA and Ecclestone. To completely tell the story it is necessary to wind the clock back to the dawn of the 1980s. At that time the grid was divided into two factions; the British "garagiste" teams (as Enzo Ferrari called them) running the Ford Cosworth customer engine and perfecting their ground effect aerodynamics; and the "Grandees", the car companies, Ferrari, Renault, Alfa Romeo. The big guns had more money and powerful turbocharged engines, but struggled with the aero design (witness Ferrari's lame duck 1980 after their championship year).
The British teams were all powered by the ubiquitous Ford Cosworth DFV 3 litre engine, the power plant that had been winning ever since its debut in 1967. The DFV had come about from the business connections of Lotus's Colin Chapman. Without a good three litre engine for 1966 rules formula, Chapman first went to to the Cosworth engineering company (founded by a former Lotus engineer) to scout out the tools and to Ford for the money. Chapman's contact - PR boss for Europe Walter Hayes - saw the potential of the tie-up and signed the cheques. With the new engine Lotus and Jim Clark jumped back to the front. So far in front sometimes that Hayes worried that it would all be seen as hollow and meaningless. A big car company running rings around a bunch of amateurs. So he took the momentous decision to sell the DFV engine on to anybody who ponied up the cash. Ferrari, BRM and Honda all kept things entirely in-house, but the rest of the field leapt at the chance, creating the age of McLaren, Tyrrell, March, Surtees, Ligier, Wolf, and a whole bunch of also rans with the Cosworth in the engine room.
FISA dropped a bombshell in 1981 on the British teams by declaring that there had to be a minimum gap under the car - effectively outlawing the sliding side skirts that generated all the cornering speeds. Brabham responded by designing a hydraulic suspension that lowered the car down on track but lifted up in the pitlane where the rules were enforced. The battle lines were drawn - with the British teams lined up under the auspices of Bernie Ecclestone's FOCA (Formula One Constructors Association) versus Fisa, Ferrari and Renault. The 1980 Spanish Grand Prix was officially voided from the record after a pre-race dispute over the driver's licenses. The Foca teams had told their drivers to boycott the pre-race drivers briefings. In return Fisa declared that the drivers would be fined and their licenses revoked if there was any more insubordination from the teams. To solve the problem the Spanish organisers declared that the race was not sanctioned by Fisa, the officials left the event and the manufacturer teams withdrew. A disagreement over dates meant that the first race of the 1981 year in South Africa was also voided in a similar way, becoming an unofficial non-championship race. It was won by Reutemann - had it counted he would have comfortably been champion not Piquet.
For several months it seemed as though Formula 1 would be split in two. Two warring series, as the CART-IRL IndyCar split in the 1990s showed would only lead to two weakened series. Things settled down in 1982 but only after another skirmish at the San Marino GP when the Foca teams boycotted after fisa declared that they had been running their cars illegally underweight and they couldn't refill their coolant tanks with useless ballast after the race to make them legal. Because of the boycott the.race ended up.being Renault vs Ferrari, and when both the Renault's failed it came down - fatefully - to Villeneuve and Pironi. What if...
Peace had come to the paddock thanks to a simple unanimously agreed arrangement that saw the FIA agreed as the arbiter of all sporting matters and Foca as the commercial rights holder with Ecclestone as the sports business svengali. In the late 1980s Ecclestone divested himself of the Brabham ownership he had held for over a decade to become the 'boss' of Brand F1. Brabham were a spent force and were gone by the end of 1992. Meanwhile Bernie's right hand man and legal counsel from the Fisa-Foca days, Max Mosley succeeded in being elected to the presidency of the FIA (Fisa being abolished as a needless complication). Game, set and match to Ecclestone. In 2001 the Mosley and the FIA sold the commercial rights to Formula 1 to Ecclestone and his (or, technically his wife's) SLEC holding company for 100 years. Partly this move was motivated by European Union competition rules to separate the commercial and administrative sides of sports.
Already an American equity firm, Hellman & Friedman had 50% control of Ecclestone's SLEC company, a stake they sold in 2000 to German media firm EM.TV. Not long after another German media company, Kirch, bought the EM.TV 50% plus another 25% of SLEC to own 75% of Formula 1. Kirch then collapsed in 2002, putting their share under the control of several banks, and Ecclestone. The musical chairs continued in 2005 when Ecclestone sold a majority stake to a private equity firm, CVC Capital Partners. Formula One became a name in their portfolio, and Ecclestone, though further bolstering his billion pound bank balance, was for the first time ever, an employee. Being primarily a money making enterprise for its shareholders the effect of CVC ownership was an expansion of the schedule and the massive increase in the fees for hosting a Grand Prix. In the 2000s a slew of new races joined the calendar - mostly in places prepared to pay Ecclestone and CVC the multi million dollar sanctioning fees; Bahrain, India, Singapore, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Abu Dhabi, South Korea, Russia...
Venues that could not be subsidised by compliant governments keen for international exposure, ie; the traditional European and American races, felt the squeeze and ticket prices went sky high as Silverstone, Hockenheim and the like struggled to turn a profit. The French GP- the original Grand Prix - disappeared entirely from 2009 to 2018. Nobody was prepared to pay for it. The German race, despite the presence of Vettel in a Ferrari and Mercedes Benz at the sharp end on the track didn't run at all in 2015 and 2017. Imola said 'arrivederci' for good in 2006, unlikely to return again.
Some of the new races were popular - at least with the participants. Turkey in particular was lauded for having an exciting circuit, even if it wasn't drawing in very big crowds. Istanbul Park hosted a race from 2005 to 2011 - when the Turkish government stopped subsidies. The race in Azerbaijan's capital city was widely mocked as the ur-example of CVC F1 following the money to unlikely outposts. But in reality the centre of Baku is a historic and scenic place with aspects in its architecture of Paris and the very long straight along the waterfront esplanade lends itself to overtaking. The Singapore GP has proven a popular fixture on the calendar, helped by the long historic ties to Britain and motor racing culture in the country, and the challenging street circuit being right at the heart of the city.
Some of the other races were utter duds and perhaps could not have been anything else given their total reliance on subsidy to be viable. South Korea built a circuit in 2010 intended to be part of a whole new city district. When the race came the track wound it's way through mostly empty lots, with precious little of the tower blocks and business parks seen in the artists impressions. The circuit was not in Seoul, but Yeongnam, far away in the south of the country, a place few foreign tourists travelling to watch F1 were likely to travel. South Korea's only major moments of note were in the first race when Mark Webber's championship chances were dealt a near fatal blow when he skidded off the wet track early in the race while running second. Before the race Webber led by 14 points, after he was down on Alonso by 11. And teammate Vettel seemed to have been dealt a unsurpassible blow when his engine erupted into flames from the lead. With two races left, he was 25 points down on Alonso. The $375 million Korea International Circuit lasted three more races, before the Grand Prix left. The fees demanded by CVC and Ecclestone for the rights to host a race crept up to a whopping $27 million per race, a cost the organisors could not afford. Samsung, Hyundai, LG and other giant Korean companies had been courted as potential sponsors for the race, but none had signed any deals. Formula 1 simply was not a big deal in the area like it is in Japan.
India would seem a good fit for formula 1. The Force India team run by businessman Vijay Mallya had joined the grid in 2007 (purchasing and rebranding the Spyker team - who in turn had bought out Midland, who had done the same to Jordan) and the country has a deep historic tie to British sports culture via cricket. But where car culture is concerned, Uttar Pradesh is not northern Italy. and the bland identikit circuit could have been anywhere. The same problem that applied to other new permanent circuits applied; even with an impressive gate of 90,000 spectators the developers were relying on the track boosting the value of the area as a whole, making a profit from investments in new building developments and infrastructure rather than the race. Three races were run on the anonymous track- Vettel clinched his 4th title in 2013 there, the sixth of his nine straight wins to round off the year. The Indian GP was not subsidised by the government and was an entirely private event run by the Jaypee Sports group. Unfortunately the 2008 worldwide recession put brakes on their development plans and the race during it's brief life made a loss of around $25 million, not helped by the government not allowing the same tax status to apply to the Grand Prix as to many other sports. They decided that F1 was not a 'sport' like cricket, and unlikely to have much beneficial grassroots impact on the country to justify tax breaks. F1, they declared, was 'entertainment', and Jaypee were not going to get any beneficial arrangements to assist with the $50 million worth of rights fees.
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In the late 2010s the balance of power in F1 had shifted from the old 'Big four' of the 1990s - McLaren, Williams, Ferrari and Benetton - to being dominated by Mercedes and Ferrari, by far the most financially secure teams. Even red bull, dominant for a.few years started to fall behind in the Hybrid era, handicapped with a less powerful Renault engine. Renault itself were perennial upper-midfielders along with McLaren and Williams, and not looking likely to trouble the top step of the podium. In 2018, the seven-time race winner Daniel Ricciardo jumped ship from Red bull to Renualt- a brave move, but perhaps understandable given his near decade age advance on teammate Max Verstappen and the potential financial might on offer from effectively the French national team. Whether Ricciardo turns out to be next Hamilton or Alesi will be answered in the 2020s.
In 2016 and probably to the relief of many inside F1, CVC sold up and left. The new owners were an American media group called Liberty media. The change also spelt the end for Ecclestone. Now in his mid eighties he was told he was not to be required any further. The CVC era had changed the sport greatly, even if it was often subtle and behind the scenes. It certainly helped create a distinct two tier sport divided between the three 'A' teams (Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull), the 'B' teams affiliated with them and utilising technical support and engines (Toro Rosso, Sauber Alfa Romeo in particular) and the others. Two saga of Williams is illustrative of the changes that came about because if the CVC sale - Williams, quadruple champion in the 1990s, have never won the top prize again after 1997, they won ten races between 2001 and 2004 when powered by BMW engines and apart from one solo win in 2012 have never been close since. By 2019 they were the backmarkers despite still being the same size company they always were. The game had moved on and completely independent constructors unaffiliated with huge money stand no chance. How healthy this arrangement will be remains to be seen. All that is certain is that in 1999 there were sixteen races in the season..20 years later that number had expanded to twenty one and undoubtedly much of the grid would be unable to sustain the slog without manufacturer partnerships and wealthy personal sponsors brought in by drivers. Some of the additional races have been the return of more traditional races to the calendar - the Austrian GP, the Mexican GP and the French race all came back from limbo.
For all that Bernie Ecclestone wrought on Formula 1 - good and bad - one decision stands head and shoulders above the rest as his wisest move and greatest positive legacy. And it might not have come about if he had not needed an appointment at the London Hospital in 1978. There he came to the clinic of Professor Sidney Watkins - eminent neurosurgeon and lifelong racing enthusiast. Aged 53, Watkins was well known for his affiliations within Britain's Royal Automobile Club and was a familiar face at racing meets. As a bonus he also had an American medical license and had spent some time in the 1960s as resident doctor at Watkins Glen circuit. During the appointment an offer was made - on weekends would the Professor like to become the formula 1 medical adviser?
Ecclestone had begun to introduce regular television coverage of races in 1977. Until the grands prix appearing live in the living room was a sporadic occurrence. National races tended to appear on their host.broadcasters channels and the Monaco gp would usually get coverage somewhere. In 1978 the BBC's "Grand Prix" highlights show of all races first aired, with its famous use.of the bass riff from Fleetwood Mac's (then brand new) song 'The Chain' as it's theme. The rollercoaster 1976 season had shown the Showbiz potential of formula 1, as drama on and off the track moved the sport centre stage on the back pages. Ecclestone had forced through the season finale in Japan despite a monsoon that all.but flooded parts of.the track because there was live television coverage being beamed all around the world. Niki Lauda had pulled out in protest after a handful of laps, objecting to the risks being forced on the drivers.
Mindful of.this reaction, Ecclestone knew that the kind of bloodbath that had characterised much of the decade would never be tolerable if F1 was to become must see television entertainment. He knew that safety facilities had to be improved and that.he needed an ally to make it happen. Jackie Stewart had been the original advocate for safety advances in the 1960s. His epiphany had come after a bad crash at Spa in Belgium in 1966. Stewart and several others had crashed out in a cloudburst, the Scotsman being stuck inside a petrol filled wreck for twenty minutes before his fellow drivers managed to pull him out. A single spark and he would have suffered the same fate as Lorenzo Bandini.and many others. When he was finally rescued Stewart was appalled by the state of the 'medical centre' he was stretchered to. This one crash indirectly led to many changes as the eventual world champion pursued improvements to the tracks, cars and the facilities. The Nurburgring disappeared from the schedule for a year to be modernised, removing hedgerows and trees and replacing them with barriers. The 'old' 8 mile long Spa-Francorchamps was gone forever after 1970. Many top drivers sponsored a mobile hospital bus that would drive to the European races, and some took personal physicians with them to take charge of their care should they end up in hospital.
Ten years later Prof Watkins was faced with a very mixed bag when it came to improve the safety of Formula 1. Minimum standards were decided on but frequently not met. A permanent medical building at every track, a medical helicopter on standby during the whole event, paramedics stationed at some points on the circuit and a medical chase car following on the first lap were all recommendations, and even well established venues did not confirm. Given the cost and hassle involved many did not want to conform, but the 'Prof', backed by Ecclestone's influence and the FIA, had the willpower and contacts to force through improvements.
Initially there was lots of resistance in many places but the debacle of the 1978 Italian Grand Prix hardened the resolve of those in charge to speed up the medical response. When Ronnie Peterson was sent feet first into the barrier in the seconds after the start in a pile up things looked very bad. The Lotus exploded into flames after tearing away much of its front in the crash. The driver was rescued by his compatriots and laid on the ground. The doctors finally made it to the stricken driver where the prognosis seemed to pick up- Peterson's legs and feet were smashed and his hands burned, but he had not received life threatening injuries. He had, however been laid out by his wrecked car for many minutes before help arrived, and Professor Watkins had been prevented from taking any charge of the situation by baton wielding police condoning the track in case errant fans invaded the scene. Peterson was carted off to hospital, where his injuries were to be operated on. In the middle of the night his vital signs began failing, and by morning he was declared brain dead. Killed by fat embolism throughout his system. Appalled by the needless tragedy formula one became hardened to never allow inadequate care to cause a driver's death ever again.
Sadly they didn't quite manage this goal as the death of the popular Italian Elio de Angelis in a test session in 1986 attests. De Angeles asphyxiated under his upturned car after a massive crash and minor fire - but because this was a testing session very little of the medical response that would have been there on a race weekend was present. The lesson was learned that day, and never again was there a needless death due to lack of rescue. The five fatalities (3 drivers and 2 marshalls) since that time have all been unsurvivable trauma. This is the last of the alternate realities that could have faced F1. Had the sport carried on with the danger and near certainly of death each year it would surely have perished itself, or at the very least never become a major worldwide TV fixture. When Ayrton Senna stepped aboard his Williams Renault that May Day in 1994, he might not have been a superstar, who's name resonated around the world, and who's loss was mourned by millions. And when Michael Schumacher, and then Lewis Hamilton took on the mantle as one of the world's sports icons they owed an awful lot to the efforts of several influential people behind the scenes making sure they could race for years without coming to major harm.
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After all, in 1955 it could have been a world without Ferrari. In 1963 Moss and Brooks are introduced ever after as Britain's first two World Champions. In the spring of 1968 many more years of wins for Jim Clark. In 1970 the Ferrari of Amon battles the Lotus of Rindt down to the wire. In 1976 Emerson Fittipaldi adds a third title. 1984 was the year of Villeneuve and Prost at McLaren. Jean Alesi strolled off in the Williams in 1992, and 1993. Ayrton Senna sent the Monza crowd wild with Ferrari's first win at home for many years in 1996. Lewis Hamilton - the rookie champion, what's gone wrong ever since read the headlines in 2014. Michael Schumacher in 2012? The seven champion retires after a race long battle with the newly crowned five time champ Alonso - one more than Fangio, and two less than Prost. 2020? Turns out that Daniel Ricciardo's move to Renault was the right one?
Time will tell.
