F1 Origins

The Early Years

The British Era

Wings, Shunts & Ground Effects

The Turbo Era

The Active Cars

After Tamburello

Grooves & The New Legends

Once again demonstrating that change is the essence of Formula One, today's F1 drivers are fashioning the stuff from which legends are made. From Villeneuve to Mika Hakkinen and former Irish bad boy Eddie Irvine (together with Giancarlo Fisichella, Ralf Schumacher and Alexander Wurz) these new lions are talented, well-paid and — in light of the savage commercialization of today's F1 — brave in an entirely new way as well.

Not that controversy and politics have been eliminated, however. They actually began in earnest again in 1994, where Michael Schumacher was stupidly shown the black flag at Silverstone for "overtaking" on the pre-race parade lap, and then slapped by FIA with a two-race suspension for allegedly ignoring the flag while Benetton's Flavio Briatore argued with the stewards. The shenanigans escalated at the Hungaroring that season, where Schumacher was disqualified on technical grounds after the wooden undertray plank on his Benetton was judged too thin under the regulations. They peaked at Adelaide — the last gasp for a fun-filled Australian GP F1 venue — where Damon Hill, second in the race and the world championship, desperately dove for a small gap and Schumacher shut the door, breaking the Williams' front wishbone and securing the win and season title. And controversy continued into 1995, where Hill, superficially appearing confident in the superior Williams FW17 of Patrick Head, collided into Schumacher at Silverstone, spun out while leading at Hockenheim, and made a general mess of things as Schumacher handily won his second title. (This included a fantastic victory in the 1995 European GP at a refurbished Nürburgring, where "Schumi" adroitly managed rain tyres and pit strategy to pass Jean Alesi with three laps to go to take the win, while Hill crashed once again attempting to catch the German.)

Emulating the fabled Senna-Prost duels of 1989-90, the 1996-98 F1 seasons featured an odd combination of tremendous on-track racing and sometimes unbelievable off-track wrangling. During the winter, Frank Williams had abruptly doffed Coulthard for the young Jacques Villeneuve, who immediately proved mature beyond his years by outpacing Hill in the season-opening 1996 Grand Prix at Melbourne's Albert Park, eventually succumbing to an oil leak that forced him to accept the second step on the podium. Damon won his championship, but in turn was fired by Williams, whence he moved to a Tom Walkinshaw managed TWR Arrows team that has still not managed to become competitive. Meanwhile, Villeneuve managed his own share of controversy in winning the 1997 World Championship. Driving the last of the Adrian Newy designed Williams cars (the FW19), Jacques bleached his hair blond and captured the pole in the season-opening GP, but was shunted into the gravel at the first corner by the Ferrari of Eddie Irvine. Thereafter, despite occasionally erratic driving, he posted some of the best statistics ever for a second-year F1 driver, with 10 poles, 7 wins, 3 fastest laps and 86 points in 16 races.

Villeneuve is a bundle of contradictions. Hugely talented, there are times when he seems to have cultivated the role of F1’s most conspicuous dissident, a blond-tinted, high-grunge enfant terrible who marches to his own beat, no matter whether it makes his team uneasy or leaves him vulnerable to sanctions from officialdom.

Autocourse 1997-98 - Alan Henry

As is becoming typical, there was major controversy, as well, with Villeneuve being disqualified at Suzuka for failing to slow down under a waived yellow flag in practice (running the race under appeal). This followed a seesaw mid-season battle with Schumacher in which Michael put the Ferrari 14 points in the lead with consecutive victories at Montreal and Magny-Cours, while Jacques was reprimanded by FIA — and summoned to appear personally in Paris the Wednesday before his home Grand Prix — after criticizing proposals for 1998 rule changes (grooved tires, narrowed monocoques, etc.) again designed to slow the cars. The perhaps inevitable result was a first-lap Jacques shunt into the wall on the pit straight chicane while leading the race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. The Canadian press responded that "by calling such an ill-timed meeting, FIA president Max Mosley emerges from the affair covered in infamy and looking for all the world like a petty tyrant on a power trip." For his part, maverick Villeneuve was nonplused, remarking that "I haven't been asked to change my views, just my language" (he reportedly called the new rules "shit").

The 1997 F1 season also saw the entry into Formula One of Jackie Stewart's new Stewart Racing team, backed by Ford, and a splendid second-place finish by Rubens Barrichello for Stewart in the rain at Monaco. Team Tyrrell introduced the ugly and controversial "X-Wings" — sidepod-mounted winglets — that would eventually be banned in 1998. But the big story of '97 was how changed rules led to changed tactics that fundamentally altered the sport. With refueling introduced as a measure to add drama, F1 enthusiasts complained that Grand Prix racing had become an overly esoteric technical exercise with overtaking on most circuits the product of pit stop strategies rather than passing cars on the track itself. Undoubtedly the master at this new craft was Schumacher, whose tactical genius at Benetton extended to Ferrari, using tremendously quick "in laps" that allowed him to pass faster cars in the pits.

Yet the end of the 1997 season would become a prelude to a splendid 1998 F1 championship. Moving into the penultimate race at Suzuka, Villeneuve held a nine-point advantage, but his DQ and Ferrari's timely win put Schumacher in the points lead by one. So it all came down to the European GP, this time returning to Spain's Jerez, where high drama was in order. Villeneuve qualified on pole with Schumacher alongside, posting the exact same time (and placed second only since his hot lap was later in the session). On lap 48, 20 tours from the finish, Villeneuve moved to overtake Schumacher for the lead, and Schumi turned in to the Williams' left-hand sidepod as the

Schumacher remains the most complete driver in F1 today. Apart from the dazzling car control, Michael rules his Italian team with a psychological rod of iron, taking as much responsibility for technical decisions as he does for capitalizing on them during the race. . . . Jackie Stewart believes that the man who eventually eclipses Schumacher is not yet even in F1. He could be right.

Autocourse 1997-98 - Alan Henry

Canadian dived inside. The move was widely perceived as a re-run of the controversial Schumacher-Hill accident at Adelaide in 1994 — which Schumacher has consistently denied was deliberate — but this time ended up with the Ferrari stranded in the gravel trap and Villeneuve coasting to an easy third-place and the World Championship title. Schumacher this time, moreover, was brought before the FIA, stripped of his second-place in the driver's championship, and transformed among many Formula One fans from Saint in the making to Satan incarnate. More importantly, perhaps, the Ferrari team for which manager Jean Todt had brought Schumacher on as its salvation in 1996 faced the prospects of another hard winter and yet another season in the many long years since Jody Scheckter, the last prancing horse World Champion, captured the title in 1979.

Discarding their long-lived orange and white livery when Marlboro withdrew from Formula One, McLaren International returned to F1's roots with new silver West cars powered by Mercedes, hearkening to the "Silver Arrows" driven by Fangio and Moss in the 1950s. This time, the drivers were Hakkinen — who had taken Michael Andretti's seat and survived a massive head injury during a high-speed crash at Adelaide in 1995 — and Coulthard. The Scot won the opening race of the 1996 season, and with characteristic sportsmanship gave way to permit the Finn to win his first GP in the finale at Jerez. Would Hakkinen's victory, like Alesi's 1995 Canadian GP win, be a one-hit wonder? The 1998 Grand Prix season would answer with a resounding "No."

In fact, despite initially looking like a McLaren romp, Formula One '98 proved to be the most exciting F1 season in years. Despite the rule changes and grooved tires (supplied by both Goodyear and Bridgestone) the cars once again were faster, and overtaking just as difficult. Then Hakkinen's dominant MP 4/13 McLaren won four of the first six races, including opening 1-2 finishes with Coulthard in Melbourne and Interlagos. But Schumacher split the McLarens on the Buenos Aires grid, and outfoxed Coulthard into making a mistake to capture the Argentine GP. After Hakkinen's victory at Monaco left him 22 points in the drivers championship lead, it looked like Ferrari were doomed to another season of disappointment and F1 fans resigned themselves to a McLaren cruise to the crown.

But Schumacher fought back fiercely, driving his Maranello team to improve the car, winning (as in 1997) back-to-back in Canada and France, then adding the British GP to move within two points going into the ninth race at the Austrian A-1 Ring. There, Schumacher first showed signs of being human, pressing too hard at the start on a light fuel load and ploughing through the gravel at high speed, eventually finishing third. By the time the F1 circus moved on to Spa-Francorchamps, Schumi was again seven points down and hanging on just barely to Hakkinen in the title battle. Belgium indeed proved the turning point of the season — with another controversial race — where a massive 13-car shunt at the La Source hairpin, initiated by Coulthard, put many cars out of action at the first corner. On the restart, Hakkinen then spun and destroyed his McLaren when hit by Johnny Herbert's Sauber-Petronas. In atrocious rain, Schumacher opened up a massive lead, but then reamed a slow-moving Coulthard from behind in the spray, wiping off the Ferrari's entire right-side suspension and wheel. Incensed, Schumacher raced down pit lane to have it out with "DC," but was pushed away by the mechanics. Eventually, Damon Hill went by to give Team Jordan its first GP victory.

Despite a Schumacher win at Monza to tie the World Championship, Hakkinen rose to the occasion. Under intense pressure, Mika won the Luxembourg GP at the Nürburgring, outpacing Schumacher's pole with a pass in the pits, taking a four-point lead to the finale at Suzuka. With the F1 press all talking about the two previous Schumacher final-race incidents (Hill and Villeneuve), the German captured the pole, but stalled on the grid and was forced to start from last position. Schumacher knifed

After eight hard years with Team McLaren, Mika Hakkinen had come back from his huge shunt at Adelaide to take the Championship in a flat fight with the acknowledged giant of the sport.. . . But for Schumacher and Ferrari, there was no disguising the fact that a season’s worth of hard work had clunked to a halt on the Suzuka grid. The long climb towards the elusive title would now start all over again — more like Sisyphus than Hercules — and there would be little rest.

FOSA F1 99 - George Goad

through the field, yet on lap 32, Ferrari's title ambitions ended not in a whimper, but the bang of an exploding Goodyear tyre. Hakkinen took the title in style — a deserved World Championship who outqualified Ayrton Senna in his first race for McLaren in 1993, cheated death in the 1995 Adelaide crash that ended with a broken neck, won his first race in 1997, and now stands on the top podium of the world.

That left 1999 as the 50th anniversary season of the modern formula one era and the end of the first century (and first millennium) of Grand Prix racing. Another classic. With Alex Zanardi returning to F1 from CART racing in the U.S., where he had scored impressive back-to-back championships, many expected a Williams revival and another riveting Schumacher-Hakkinen duel. But instead, Zanardi never got the feel for the twitchy, grooved-tired modern F1 car and languished at the back of the grid all season, with Ralf Schumacher taking the team lead and scoring well for Frank Williams. Team Stewart had a great engine and a good car, earning Johnny Herbert his third win, and Jacques Villeneuve led a massively funded British American Racing (BAR) team, using a modified Reynard chassis that has dominated American IndyCar racing, to a disappointing points-less finish. The "other" Schumacher, Michael that is, shunted out for nearly the entire season at Silverstone, breaking his legs after a full wheel lock crash straight into the tire barrier. His Ferrari team mate Eddie Irvine took up the slack well, winning four races and finishing 98% of all laps in the season, an incredible display of reliability and consistency. But after losing concentration, making some bad offs and weeping emotionally after a self-inflicted spin out of the lead at Monza, Mika Hakkinen won the season-final GP in Suzuka to capture his second consecutive drivers' title by a slim two points.

While many observers felt that the 2000 Formula One season would see a resurgence among the backmarkers, particularly the new Team Jaguar, rising from Ford's purchase of Stewart, it was hardly so. McLaren and Ferrari continued their dominance, together winning every race, nine by Michael Schumacher alone. With early-season reliability problems for Mika Hakkinen and a late-season charge by Schumacher, the German convincingly captured the World Championship at the penultimate United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis — returning to F1 after a gap of nine years — with his emotional reaction broadcast over the pit radio for the world to enjoy. It was Maranello's first F1 championship in more than 20 years, making good, at long last, on Jean Todt's bold and expensive bet on the German phenomenon. And with his victory at Monza, Schumacher tied the legendary Ayrton Senna for second place among all drivers in career victories (eventually finshing the season with 44), weeping with joy during the post-race press conference as the magnitude of his accomplishment set in.

And so as the 2001 season begins, these new lions — joined by returning tyre manufacturer Michelin and another former CART champion for Williams, Juan Pablo Montoya — will battle again for the most elusive prize in motor racing. And their exploits, successes and failures will be recorded in statistics, for later generations to view with wonder and some nostalgia. But that has always been the way of Formula One history.