Talk:Formula One

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You will have to convince an American this is more expensive than CART or Indy racing.

The article does not tell what distinguish Formula One from other car races. Is it the design rules of the car called Formula One? I have seen some car makers touted their production cars using Formula One technology. But to a layman, what is Formula one exactly?

I have had no luck in trying to find comparative costs of F1 cars versus American Indy cars. Also I could not find any season attendance records for Formula One. NASCAR brought in 6 million spectators, over 190,000 per one day race in 1997. How does Formula One attendance compare? --rmhermen

I will work on addressing your points. Some brief one-liner replies to work into the article:

  • Formula One is a category of automobile circuit racing. It has

been, since its inception, the premier category of circuit racing in the world. * It consists of an annual series of (currently) 17 races.

  • Formula One cars are constructed by the teams (who are often, but

not always, associated with major auto manufacturers) according to a set of rules. The teams must construct their own cars, and no other series races cars built according to the F1 regs (nobody could afford to).

  • The races are around either purpose built road-racing

circuits or adapted street circuits (no oval tracks), and are typically around 300 kilometres in length and take a little under two hours to complete. Racers stop for fuel and tyres at least once, sometimes more, and pit speed and strategy is crucial in deciding a race.

  • Costs are way higher in F1 - the cars are

custom-built rather than off-the-shelf like they are in Indycars, there are fewer restrictions on materials etc (to take a small example, Indycars use steel brakes but F1 uses carbon fibre brakes at about $7000 per set), and the consequent R&D efforts are out of this world. Not to mention Michael Schumacher's salary :)

  • It's generally believed that the best circuit racers are in F1.

Evidence for this includes that a large number of Indycar drivers go to F1 and few succeed, whilst Nigel Mansell went to Indycars in the early 1990's and beat the lot in his rookie year. If, as is rumoured, Jacques Villeneuve (F1 driver and former World Champion) goes back to CART in 2003, there will be a good chance to test this theory.

  • As far as attendance goes, there are 17 races a year and

they probably get raceday attendances of around 100-150,000 each, and total rollups of around 300,000 person/days each, so it's smaller than NASCAR in that respect. However, the TV audience for F1 is way bigger than NASCAR - F1 is global, while you'll struggle to find a NASCAR telecast outside the US. Indycars are maybe a little more global, but nowhere near F1.

Another candidate for most expensive sport is America's Cup Yachting. For example in 1999 Team NZ spent $US40 Million to compete in five races.

I reverted Jimmy Clark back to Jim Clark, on the grounds that I usually hear & use the latter, and I just compared Google stats on:

  • "jimmy clark" "grand prix" (354)
  • "jim clark" "grand prix" (6930)

Hotlorp

Yep, Jim Clark is what I read most of the time. --[[user:Robert

Merkel|Robert Merkel]]

Matra (later Ligier) removed.

Matra sold engines to Ligier and Ligier hired a lot of ex-Matra team members. But Ligier has never buyed the Matra team.

The pinnacle of "auto racing"? Is that what Americans call it? The change to naturally-aspirated cars happened in 1989, before the banning of driver aids. Maybe it should include Benetton in the list of teams that have dominated since 1984 so it could say that those teams have won all the championships. The points scoring system is now out of date. Giuseppe Farina and Nino Farina are one and the same person, so perhaps one name should be used or an indication should be given that they are the same.

In the list of drivers, I don't think the following actually raced in Formula One (from 1950 onwards): Mario Umberto Borzacchini, Rudolf Caracciola, Enzo Ferrari, Vincenzo Lancia, Tazio Nuvolari, Bernd Rosemeyer, Nino Taruffi (is he the same person as Piero Taruffi?), Achille Varzi, Jean-Pierre Wimille. That's a third of the names mentioned. - Some guy

Hello, "guy". You clearly know a lot about Formula One motor racing. You can correct the things you point out as errors yourself, if you want, and write some more stuff to clarify everything. Oh, go on, you know you want to really... :) Oh yes, and you can use "----" to create a horizontal line to separate your text from what has gone before, to make it clear where your bit starts. -- Oliver P. 15:13 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)
A big problem is that formula one existed before world championship Tazio Nuvolari for instance never raced any world championship race.
Ericd 15:45 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)
Formula 1 (at first known as "Formula A") as a formula started out in 1946 and the World Championship began in 1950, so it doesn't predate it by much. The problem is that Nuvolari and some of the others "Some guy" mentioned are sometimes included on account of the fact that they were part of the pre-war racing scene, which was in several ways a precursor to the post-war championship, though it was known as what the intro of this article calls "Grand Prix racing". I agree that those drivers perhaps shouldn't be included here and thus a separate article on the larger Grand Prix racing scene should exist. F1 and GP racing are not necessarily the same. Yet another issue would be non-championship F1 races: do we include them in this page or in a more inclusive GP racing article (and reserve this page strictly to the WDC and WCC)? I have plans for this page, but I'm awaiting possible rule-changes prior to the European season. -Scipius 16:22 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

OK formula One is post-war while Grand Prix is pre-war and world championship came after formula One... This need to be written somewhere. Ericd 16:26 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

I forgot something Formula One differs from World championship at the end of the 50's the world drivers championship was raced by formula two. Who feel to reorder it all in 3 articles with appropriate links : - Formula One (focusing IMHO on the cars and technical rules) - World drivers championship (focusing on the drivers) - Grand Prix (focusing on the pre championship era ?) Ericd 16:32 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

The "F2" years were 1952 and 1953, but it doesn't matter much as there was no F1 during those years so F2 became the de-facto "F1" IIRC. I'd suggest we not split the formula as such from the Championship. The problem is that currently people associate both "Formula One" and GP racing with the F1 WC and would expect an article named "Formula One" to be about that. GP racing and non-championship F1 races (last held in 1982 I believe) are historic phenomena and better dealt with in their own separate articles IMO. -Scipius 16:55 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)
I'm not sure a complete article about formula One will be huge I think it's in fact a huge topic (something like photography) I believe it would be better to make separate arrticle what about an starting a list of topics related to car racing ?
Ericd 17:34 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)
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