The response to my invitation for guest writers was fantastic and I’m very happy to share the first of these new articles today. Journeyer, a long-time contributor to the comments and Live Blogs on F1Fanatic, covers the history of the Spanish Grand Prix.

Formula 1 has been around for 58 years now. With it goes a very rich and colourful history. I’ve always been a keen student of Formula 1 history, so I tend to go out of my way to know more about races that took place in the past, especially those before I started watching the sport in 1996.

So when Keith floated the chance for us to write guest articles, I took the chance. This is the first (and hopefully not last) of a series that will cover the rest of this season. This article will look at the most dramatic moments in previous Spanish Grands Prix.

1951: The second ever F1 season was a tight one. It went down to the final round at Pedralbes with a straight duel between Juan Manuel Fangio and Alberto Ascari for the title. But Ascari’s tyres went off too quickly, and the Italian was forced to take multiple pit stops to get them changed. Fangio was able to take care of his tyres better. That allowed him to win the race, and with it, his 1st of 5 drivers titles.

1975: This race, held at Montjuich Park, was one of the most controversial race weekends in F1 history. It started with a strike from the GPDA who were demanding for higher safety standards. They were threatening to boycott the Grand Prix, but after legal threats from the organizers, they decided to go ahead. However, on lap 26 of the race, race leader Rolf Stommelen (driving for Graham Hill’s Embassy team) suffered a rear wing breakage on his car. Stommelen lost control of the car, seeing it fly over the barrier. Stommelen himself suffered multiple injuries, while four spectators were killed. They would never race at Montjuich Park again. As for the race, it was called off at half-distance, with Jochen Mass the winner in a McLaren. Lella Lombardi took sixth, which makes her the only woman to ever score points in an F1 race.

1980: This was one of the key battles of the FISA-FOCA war. Alan Jones and Williams won this race at Jarama, but it was later removed from the championship records. FISA (the FIA’s predecessor) declared the race illegal. Because of that, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, and Renault decided to skip the race.

1981: Gilles Villeneuve scored one of his most memorable wins this year in the Ferrari, holding off 4 very quick cars behind him. The top 5 were only separated by 1.24 seconds.

1986: After a four-year hiatus, the Spanish Grand Prix returned to the calendar, this time at Jerez. Ayrton Senna beat out the recovering Nigel Mansell by just 0.014 seconds. Had the start line not been moved back a hundred yards for the race, Mansell would have won. This would be remembered as the closest-ever F1 finish until 2002.

1991: Not only was this the first race at the Circuit de Catalunya, this was also the first race of Max Mosley as the new FIA president. Many will remember Mansell’s overtaking pass on Senna, with the two cars just inches apart, with sparks flying all over! Mansell would go on to win the race.

1994: This was the début race of David Coulthard (pictured above with Frank Williams). But this will go down as the race Michael Schumacher ran with only 5th gear. In spite of that, he managed to finish second to Damon Hill. Those six points would be handy at the end of the season…

Read more about the 1994 Spanish Grand Prix

1996: Schumacher took his first Ferrari win here, in the pouring rain. Jacques Villeneuve took third behind Jean Alesi, while Damon spun out on lap 12. In the words of Martin Brundle, “Michael didn’t have the best car by a mile, but he won it by a mile.”

2001: Mika Hakkinen was on course to take his 4th consecutive Spanish GP win. He was leading Schumacher by almost a minute entering the final lap, but then his hydraulics gave up. This race would also see the first podiums of Juan Pablo Montoya and the BAR team (thanks to Jacques Villeneuve).

2006: Fernando Alonso won that year in the Renault, making him the first ever Spaniard to win his home race.

Read more about the 2006 Spanish Grand Prix

2007: Alonso was not so lucky this year. He tried to pass Felipe Massa’s Ferrari at the start, but he ran out of room and went off the track. Massa would go on to win the race, while Alonso was lucky to finish third behind team mate Lewis Hamilton after Kimi Raikkonen retired.

Read more about the 2007 Spanish Grand Prix

The Spanish Grand Prix (especially the races held in Barcelona) may be notoriously boring, but who would have thought it had so many dramatic moments in its history?

This article was written by Journeyer. If you’re interested in writing for F1Fanatic have a look at the guest posts section of the website.

Have you been to the Spanish Grand Prix? Read about other people’s experiences and share your own stories about visiting the Circuit de Catalunya.

Last weekend Danica Patrick became the first woman to win a race in a major international open-wheeled single-seater category. Patrick won the third round of the Indy Car series at Motegi in Japan.

But F1 has had precious few female drivers and there’s no sign one might arrive in the sport any time soon. So… why?

It’s not as if there aren’t women racers in other categories. In Indy Cars Patrick raced Milka Duno and Sarah Fisher last year. In Europe the German Touring Car Championship boasts two women: Susie Stoddart and Katherine Legge.

Legge was the last woman to drive an F1 car, when she tested a Minardi for Paul Stoddart at the end of 2005, while the team was being taken over by Toro Rosso.

The only woman ever to get on the championship leader board in an F1 race was Lella Lombardi. She scored half a point for finishing sixth in the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix, which was shortened after a crash that killed four spectators.

Five years later Desire Wilson won a round of the British national F1 series Aurora at Brands Hatch in a Wolf WR3. In 1980 it might have seemed quite likely that, by 2008, there would be women drivers regularly scoring points and winning races in Formula 1. But it hasn’t happened?

Some racing drivers I’ve spoken to – all men, I hasten to add – have suggested that women don’t have the physical strength to compete in top flight motor racing. I think Patrick’s success in Indy Cars challenges that view.

But it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of people hold that view, and aren’t keen on backing women drivers as a result.

On the other side of the coin is the undoubted marketing appeal of having a successful woman in motor racing. Indeed the Indy Car series has been criticised for using the PR value of Patrick to maximum effect.

Why do you think there are so few women in the upper echelons of motor racing?

They include Kyalami in South Africa (where political pressures were also at work) and the Osterreichring in Austria. Others like the famous Montjuich Park street circuit in Barcelona or Mosport in Canada were replaced with nearby circuits during the seventies.

Are many of them better than the tracks we have today? Take a look at more of F1′s past venues.

Kyalami, South Africa

After East London the South African Grand Prix moved to Kyalami near Johannesburg, where it found a successful and poular long-term home. A very quick circuit, it yielded some memorable races. Gilles Villeneuve outfoxed team mate and home driver Jody Scheckter in a wet/dry race in 1979, and Alain Prost raced from the back to win in 1982.

The 1981 race was deemed a non-championship race due to a political row between the teams aligned to the FIA (FISA as it was then) and FOCA, the constructor’s association led by Bernie Ecclestone.

The circuit held its last Grand Prix in its original incarnation in 1985, by which time cars were lapping the track in 1’2s – 26 seconds faster than in 1967. But the politics of racing in Apartheid South Africa where racial segregation was practised put pressure on F1 to leave the country.

Indeed F1 was one of the last major international sports to sever ties with South Africa at this time – and a 1986 race might have happened had the money to support it been found. It wasn’t, and the track was dropped from the calendar. A revised version returned in 1992, which will feature in a later instalment.

Bugatti au Mans, France

France may have had the beautiful Rouen and Clermont-Ferrand tracks but still it experimented with other venues. In 1967 the French Grand Prix was held at the Bugatti Au Mans circuit, a short track the included some parts of the La Sarthe track used for the famous 24-hours.

The plain layout was very unpopular and never used again. Tellingly when Papyrus software chose to re-create the 1967 season for their computer game Grand Prix Legends they purposefully ignored Bugatti and used Rouen instead…

Mosport Park, Canada

Mosport held the first world championship Canadian Grand Prix in 1967. The track was fast and very undulating, and the limited run-off made it especially dangerous. Manfred Winkelhock (father of 2007 F1 debutant Markus) was killed in a sports car race at the track in 1985.

That was eight years after the final F1 race at the track, when the circuit was phased out on safety grounds.

Jarama, Spain

Some tracks really give the lie to the idea that every track used for F1 in the ’60s and ’70s was a bona fide classic. The horrendously dull Jarama (pictured top) is surely at least as bad as anything modern F1 has to offer?

And yet its final race was far better than it had any right to be – a celebrated encounter that saw Gilles Villeneuve hold up a four-car train of rivals for 66 laps (read more about that famous race here).

Mont Tremblant, Canada

Mosport briefly shared the Canadian Grand Prix with a second venue, Mont Tremablant, which held the race in 1968 and 1970. I had never seen video footage of the circuit until the Champ Car World Series visited the venue last year – and it looks beautiful.

The configuration used by Champ Car last year was very similar to that used by F1 four decades ago, albeit with one chicane added. It is also still very narrow, which was part of the problem with it on the two occasions Formula 1 visited. What breathtaking scenery, though.

Montjuich Park, Spain

If Jarama was ridiculous, Montjuich Park was sublime – and ridiculous. Based on around the roads of a public park in Barcelona, Montjuich was halfway between being a challenging road course with the added obstacles of being a confined street circuit.

It held four Spanish Grands Prix in odd numbered years from 1969-73 while Jarama held the others. It was around this time that F1 car designers were starting to get to grips with using wings for downforce, which was pushing up corner speeds.

The bumps and crests of Montjuich made the situation especially perilously for the cars with their large wings mounts high atop the car on flimsy pylons. Wing failure put the Lotuses of Jochen Rindt and Graham Hill out of the 1969 race in enormous accidents.

Worse followed in 1975 when a face-off between the race organisers and drivers over safety standards threatened to cancel the race. Only when the organisers threatened to impound the teams in the Olympic Stadium (south on the aerial photograph) did they agree to race, but on the condition that the barriers around the circuit were secured properly, a job the teams’ own mechanics had to do.

Even then there was insufficient time to complete the work, and so when Rolf Stommelen crashed into an unsupported section of barrier during the race his car was thrown into the crowd, filling four spectators. The race was stopped early and F1 never raced at Montjuic Park again.

In sixth place that day was Lella Lombardi, who became the only woman to date to score in a Grand Prix event, earning half a point.

Hockenheimring, Germany

By 1970 drivers were becoming more out-spoken with their concerns about safety standards. One of the biggest concerns was the Nürburgring Nordschleiefe, and safety fears precipitated a move to the Hockenheimring for the 1970 race. Ironically, the track was best known for being the place where Jim Clark was killed in a Formula Two race in 1968.

The German round returned to the Nürburgring the following year, and substantial sums were spent improving the track’s safety facilities and installing Armco barriers to keep the cars out of the trees. But this was just postponing the inevitable – Niki Lauda’s near-fatal fiery crash in 1976 spelled the end for the Nürburgring and Hockenheim became the home of the German Grand Prix.

Osterreichring, Austria

The Austrian Grand Prix moved up the road from the Zeltweg airfield to the nearby Osterreichring – indeed, so near that it too is confusingly referred as Zeltweg in some publications.

The wide and fast Osterreichring nabbed the title of ‘F1′s fastest track’ away from Silverstone – Jo Siffert’s fastest lap at the track in 1971 was 216.1kph (134.27mph) compared to Jackie Stewart’s 212.2kph (131.85mph) at Silverstone. But soon the race organisers had to think about cutting speeds.

As ever the DVD is rich with fascinating material and the only problem is that there isn’t more of it.

This disc will be particularly interesting for Ferrari fans as it covers the first drivers’ and constructors’ title for the team under the stewardship of Luca di Montezemolo. Niki Lauda piloted Mauro Forghieri’s 312T to five wins and, with it, the title – the first for Ferrari since 1964.

But there’s plenty of other interest in a season that saw nine winners in 14 races and included the maiden victories of Carlos Pace at Interlagos, Jochen Mass at Montjuic Park and Vittorio Brambilla at the Osterreichring (their only wins) and James Hunt at Zandvoort.

The Montjuich Park race is another famous and dark episode in the sport’s history. Threatened by cancellation because of unsatisfactory safety conditions, the drivers eventually race but Rolf Stommelen’s crash killed four spectators.

Also appearing in the film is Lella Lombardi,who in that race because them only woman to score a world championship point. Indeed it was half a point, as the race was stopped early.

The film captures all of these moments along with some very interesting other clips – including an on-board clip with Emerson Fittipaldi at Monaco and the drivers being lectured on safety procedures at Silverstone (Mass monkeying around behind Fittipaldi). Hunt gesticulating at Patrick Depailler after colliding with him in Monte-Carlo is another highlight.

Every round is covered with a single exception – the season finale at Watkins Glen which came after Lauda had won the championship. The only other significant omission is the very brief attention paid to the death of Mark Donohue in practice at the Osterreichring.

Otherwise this is an excellent video and a worthy continuation of the series.

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Related links

• “Formula One 1970: The Uncrowned Champion”
• “Formula One 1971: Great Scot!” (DVD)
• “Formula One 1972: Fittipaldi’s Year” (DVD)
• “Formula One 1973: Reign of Stewart” (DVD)
• “Formula One 1974: Down to the last race” (DVD)
• F1 Fanatic’s Most Recommended – The best F1 books, videos and more

Tags: f1 / formula one / formula 1 / grand prix / motor sport