David Coulthard spins out at the start of the 1995 Monaco Grand Prix

There are many doubts over the FIA’s radical ‘budget capping’ plans for 2010.

However, their stated aim of getting 26-car grids into F1 is definitely good news – the only thing I can’t understand is why it’s taken them so long to realise bigger grids is better for the sport.

Amazingly, it’s 14 years since we had a 26-car grid at an F1 race.

The last time 26 cars lined up to take the start was at the Monaco Grand Prix in 1995. Only three teams have remained in the same form since then: Ferrari, McLaren and Williams.

Five have disappeared: Footwork (later Arrows), Ligier (later Prost), Forti, Simtek and Pacific. And five others are still with us in a different form: Benetton became Renault, Sauber became BMW, Minardi became Toro Rosso, Jordan became Force India (via Midland F1 and Spyker) and Tyrrell became Brawn GP (via BAR and Honda).

During that Monaco race weekend Simtek boss Nick Wirth admitted his team needed “several million dollars” to survive until the next round at Montreal in Canada. They ended up missing the race in the hope of attracting backers in time for the French Grand Prix – but two of the companies behind the team went into receivership and the cars were never seen on the grid again.

For many years, the FIA kept team entries down by demanding new entrants lodge a $48m bond with them. This was intended to promote ‘quality over quantity’ among F1 teams – but it was far more successful at restricting numbers than promoting quality entrants. Grid numbers dwindled to a meagre 20 cars at times. The bond was finally dropped at the end of 2006, but since then sky-high budgets have largely kept new teams from entering.

When so much effort has been put into ‘improving the show’ in recent years it is remarkable that there has been virtually no discussion of increasing the numbers of cars. Simply put, more cars means more action and more entertaining racing.

I can’t think why it is taken until now for the FIA to reverse its policy on teams numbers, and it’s hard not to suspect there might be an ulterior motive at work now that they have.

But as long as Max Mosley’s threats about F1 “not needing Ferrari” prove as empty as they sound, and we can gain new teams while keeping the current ones, I think a bigger championship will be a better championship.

1995 Monaco Grand Prix classification

1. Michael Schumacher, Benetton-Renault
2. Damon Hill, Williams-Renault
3. Gerhard Berger, Ferrari
4. Johnny Herbert, Benetton-Renault
5. Mark Blundell, McLaren-Mercedes
6. Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Sauber-Ford
7. Pierluigi Martini, Minardi-Ford
8. Jean-Christophe Boullion, Sauber-Ford
9. Gianni Morbidelli, Footwork-Hart
10. Pedro Diniz, Forti-Ford

Did not finish

Luca Badoer, Minardi-Ford (suspension)
Olivier Panis, Ligier-Mugen Honda (accident)
Mika Salo, Tyrrell-Yamaha (engine)
Rubens Barrichello, Jordan-Peugeot (throttle)
Bertrand Gachot, Pacific-Ford (gearbox)
Jean Alesi, Ferrari (accident)
Martin Brundle, Ligier-Mugen Honda (accident)
Taki Inoue, Footwork-Hart (gearbox)
Ukyo Katayama, Tyrrell-Yamaha (accident)
Andrea Montermini, Pacific-Ford (disqualified)
Eddie Irvine, Jordan-Peugeot (wheel rim)
David Coulthard, Williams-Renault (gearbox)
Roberto Moreno, Forti-Ford (brake pipe)
Mika Hakkinen, McLaren-Mercedes (engine)
Domenico Schiaterella, Simtek-Ford (accident)
Jos Verstappen, Simtek-Ford (gearbox)

Read more

• The rise and fall of F1 driver numbers, 1980-2009
• Max Mosley and the art of distraction
• A grid of 26… A change to the points system? (Forum)
• 1995 F1 season history

Image (C) Sutton

The Formula 1 grid could be down to just 20 cars for the Spanish Grand Prix as the Magma Group purchase of Super Aguri appears to have fallen through as was rumoured last week.

Unless a source of funds is found in the eight days before next weekend’s race at the Circuit de Catalunya, Super Aguri will not be able to participate – leaving just 20 cars in Formula 1.

It is understood that 20 cars is the minimum number Bernie Ecclestone is contracted to bring to Formula 1 races, and if it were to drop any lower some teams could be required to run three cars each.

Ecclestone might therefore have a vested interest in trying to keep Super Aguri going, something he has done in the past with smaller teams such as Minardi.

However as Gman mentioned in the comments earlier today the root cause of the problem is the FIA’s U-turn on customer cars. As it is no longer going to be legal for teams to use chassis supplied by other outfits Honda no longer have any interest in keeping Super Aguri going.

It’s the same reason why Dietrich Mateschitz is selling Toro Rosso and why Prodrive, instead of being the 12th team in F1 this year, are sticking to their rallying and Le Mans programmes.

The last time as few as ten teams entered a round of the F1 championship was the 2005 Chinese Grand Prix (pictured). Those were Ferrari, BAR (now Honda), Renault, Williams, McLaren, Sauber (now BMW), Red Bull, Toyota, Jordan (now Force India) and Minardi (now Scuderia Toro Rosso).

The last team to pull out of the championship mid-season was Arrows in 2002, who were based at the Leafield site Super Aguri is currently run from. Super Aguri also used ex-Arrows chassis in their inaugural campaign.

In 2006 Magma purchased two companies that were formed following the collapse of the TWR Group that ran Arrows: Menard Competition Technologies and Menard Engineering Limited, which operated as consultancies to motoring and motor racing companies.

Sadly for Super Aguri team, from the staff at Leafield all the way to drivers Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson, it looks as though history may be repeating itself.

Update 17/4/2008 at 21:21 – Honda have refused offering further assistance to Super Aguri. A spokesperson told French news agency AFP: “We intend to continue the present structure of our support for Super Aguri.”

Super Aguri team information

Likewise the Spanish motor sport authorities and the operators of the Circuit de Catalunya have made all the right moves so far to ensure there is no repeat of the racist abuse Lewis Hamilton was subjected to at the recent test session.

It’s a far cry from the dithering and prevarication over the controversial final F1 Grand Prix in apartheid South Africa in 1985.

Apartheid

South Africa’s apartheid system of segregation of races and discrimination against blacks had been a source of international attention and criticism well before the 1980s. Pressure to isolate the country and force it to abandon its racist policies had seen some international sports boycott it up to three decades earlier.

Formula 1 was one of the last sports to abandon South Africa.

The Citizen newspaper, supporters of the South African government, sponsored the race for many years. F1 personnel visiting the country had special cards to record their entry into South Africa, to avoid having their passports stamped, which would have caused problems when they visited countries officially opposed to apartheid.

Nevertheless, even within the often insular world of Formula 1, voices of opposition began to grow. One of them was retired 1976 world champion James Hunt, a commentator for the BBC. Murray Walker recalled him speaking out about it while commenting on one South African Grand Prix:

James, who had very strong views on apartheid, suddenly launched into a withering attack on the evils of the system and the South African government.

Quite apart from the fact that this didn’t seem to be very relevant to the South African Grand Prix, it was politically provocative stuff for the BBC to be putting out in a sports programme and Mark [Wilkin, the producer] rapidly passed him a note which read, “TALK ABOUT THE RACE!”

Teams threaten withdrawal

In 1985 as the South African round approached international pressure on F1 reached a new high. The Brazilian, Finnish, Swedish and French governments were among those putting pressure on their drivers and teams not to attend.

For a while it looked as though a mass withdrawal of teams and drivers might force the cancellation of the race. Enzo Ferrari announced he would boycott the event if rivals McLaren did the same:

At the moment the World Championship seems to be between McLaren and ourselves. They are leading. If McLaren decides not to go to Kyalami, we will not go either. We would not want to take advantage of their non-participation.

Some drivers spoke publicly of their concerns about F1 endorsing apartheid and the fear of a terrorist threat. Ayrton Senna was one of them:

It is necessary to weigh the pros and cons. Things seem to be complicated over there and I don’t believe it is safe to race under such adverse conditions. I am personally against the regime. I would not like to go there, but I have a commitment to my team.

The letters page of Autosport gives some insight into the depth of feeling for and against the race. This is from the September 26th issue:

Holding a prestigious international sporting event such as a Grand Prix in South Africa will only serve to present the country’s Nationalist government with manna from heaven, a propaganda coup on a plate. In this instance, politics and sport are inseparable, for better or worse. For the FIA to pretend otherwise is not only absurd but also displays a stupidity and indifference to world events of which we as motorsport enthusiasts are deeply ashamed.

Another reader in the same issue wrote:

Sport is above politics and always has been… If it has to be Kyalami, the Outer Hebrides or Inner Mongolia, so what? The competition is the only truly important issue.

FIA stand firm

But the FIA, led by President Jean-Marie Balestre, refused to back down, and issued a statement shortly before the race:

In the light of various political demonstrations which have been organised concerning the Grand Prix of Kyalami and personal attacks against M. Jean-Marie Balestre (who on Tuesday October 8 was elected President of the FIA, and the following day President of the FISA), the FISA Executive Committee, the governing body of the sport throughout the world, declares that:
1. President Jean-Marie Balestre has no personal authority to cancel the Grand Prix at Kyalami.
2. This Grand Prix has been on the Formula 1 World Championship calendar for 22 years.
3. The 1985 calendar of the 16 Grands Prix was published in October 1984. Everybody knew the composition of the calendar, and nobody protested about the presence of a Grand Prix in South Africa.
4. The World Championship regulations oblige the FISA to respect the international calendar, and the drivers to take part in 16 Grands Prix.
5. During the Plenary Conference at which were assembled in Paris on Wednesday 9th October the representatives of the 64 member countries of the FISA, several of which are African countries, not one National Sporting Authority requested the cancellation of the South African Grand Prix.”

With the sport’s governing body refusing to cancel the race on the spurious grounds that it lacked the authority, and Bernie Ecclestone apparently content to use the situation to extract more money from the race promoters, the South African Grand Prix went ahead.

The race

Of the 26 cars that had appeared at most of the 1985 rounds, 21 went to Kyalami. Renault and Ligier were the only true boycotters (the former on the verge of quitting the sport anyway), following pressure from the French government. Zakspeed and RAM were not present, but in these cases a lack of money was a more pressing matter than political concerns.

Of the teams that were present, many removed logos at their sponsors’ requests: tobacco company Barclay disappeared from Arrows and Marlboro from Ferrari and McLaren. The Beatrice stickers came off Alan Jones’s Lola, and then the car was withdrawn, amid rumours that the team had been instructed to pull out.

This drew a critical reaction at the time from Autosport columnist Nigel Roebuck:

It is the hypocrisy of it that I can’t stomach. It is the selective morality, the careful removal at Kyalami of certain sponsors’ names from the cars – despite the fact that their products are readily available down the road, widely advertised beyond the TV cameras’ reach.

According to the organisers a crowd of 85,000 turned out to see the race over the weekend – a substantial increase on the previous years’ races. This emphasised the argument that having an international sporting event visit South Africa gave credence to its government.

The race (which, unusually, was held on a Saturday) was won from pole position by Nigel Mansell. In the following weeks the FIA were still considering future races at South Africa. But finally the refusal of several television companies to broadcast the race, following pressure from their unions, forced Ecclestone to cancel the event.

An unusual coda to this story concerns Alain Prost, who on his way to the final race of 1985 at Adelaide spent three-quarters of an hour with Pope John Paul II. Prost, newly-crowned as the first French world champion, had been strongly criticised in his home nation for participating in the race when French teams had withdrawn. The Pope sympathised with him, agreeing that sport and politics should be kept separate…

Today

The row over the 1985 South African Grand Prix is one of the more unsavoury passages of Formula 1 history.

But yesterday the FIA showed how far the sport has progressed when it responded immediately to the racist abuse of Lewis Hamilton by pointing to the passage in its statutes that reads, “The FIA shall refrain from manifesting racial discrimination in the course of its activities.”

The argument about whether sports should take heed of political concerns is one that continues to come up. There is considerable public and political pressure growing on China ahead of this year’s Olympic games in Beijing over the country’s dismal record on human rights and other matters.

None of this has yet troubled the organisers of the Shanghai Grand Prix. But as recent and more distant events have shown, F1 does not always exist in a vacuum.

Video: 1985 South African Grand Prix, Kyalami

As ever, I’d be especially interested to hear from readers who were at or remember this race.

Reference material used in the writing of this article included several Autosports, Autocourse 1985-6, Nigel Roebuck “Inside Formula 1″, Terry Lovell “Bernie’s Game”, Murray Walker “Unless I’m Very Much Mistaken”, Tom Rubython “The Life of Senna”. the 1985 F1 season review video “Deservedly Prost” and video of the 1985 South African Grand Prix on BBC.

Photo copyright: HondaRacingF1.com

More on racism in F1

• F1 must take a stand against racism now
• In it for the hate
• Lewis Hamilton fans ‘racist’

Is it to give the smaller teams a chance? To make sure it isn’t the team with the biggest wallet that always wins?

Or is it to stop the car manufacturers from leaving the sport? F1 is faced with complaints that it is a frivolous, environmentally-unfriendly waste, as the global economy teeters on the edge of a recession.

Cost cutting used to be about allowing the smaller teams to compete. But now the justification is different. Now it’s about reducing the financial burden on the major manufacturers that comprise the majority of the F1 grid and supply engines to all the teams.

This could be a sign of a subtle and potentially very damaging change in attitudes to Formula 1.

Car manufacturers were attracted to Formula 1 on the first place because it was desirable – glamorous, popular, a technological tour de force.

Now the sports’ governing body is trying to help them justify their place in the sport by making it defensible – not too expensive and not too damaging for the environment.

Last week the FIA and the manufacturers sat down and brokered compromises on various radical changes to the future of Formula 1.

Budget capping was mooted as one solution to escalating costs. I’ve always been very cynical about this simplistic idea because I can’t imagine how it could be enforced. I’ve read that new economic laws following various Enron-type financial scandals have made it a realistic option.

The proposed restriction on engine development has also been agreed, though reduced from 10 years to five so that more environmentally-friendly power plants can be introduced in 2013.

All of this is many years too late to spare the like of Arrows, Prost and Minardi from going to the wall. It can only be out of concern that the car manufacturers might leave that these new rules have been brought in.

Concerns are growing about the state of the global economy. The United States Congress slashed taxes by $145bn last week in a bid to stimulate growth but on Monday the value of the FTSE 100 index fell by 5.5% ($163bn).

FIA President Max Mosley has claimed that because he deals with the top directors of the car makers, rather than their racing divisions, he is better placed to judge if and when they might want to leave the sport.

But should there be a recession I’m not sure that car manufacturers will stay in Formula 1 because it’s costing them $150m instead of $300m.

This would not be so alarming if the teams had customer chassis and customer engine supplies to fall back on. But the FIA fumbled its attempt to legalise customer chassis in Formula 1. The Prodrive team, which might have been a model of how to run a competitive outfit on a fraction of a typical F1 budget, now may never see the light of day.

Customer engines are gone too. At the end of 2006 Cosworth, F1’s last independent engine builder, left the sport. Not because their engine was un-competitive, but because Williams, the only team using the V8 unit, needed the support of a manufacturer.

This may prove a serious problem if the car manufacturers start leaving the sport in large numbers.

Photo copyright: Williams / Lorenzo Bellanca / LAT Photographic

Read more about cost cutting

• How do you stop teams from using wind tunnels?
• Imagining ‘Formula X’
• The FIA owe Prodrive an apology
• Poll: allow ‘customer teams’ in F1?
• Renault out-spent McLaren in ’05

And who better to start things off with than F1′s greatest slapstick comedian, Taki Inoue.

Read about his brief career and watch video of some of his ‘highlights’ below…

Although it is overlong and patchy in places, the 1995 season review video is one of my favourites.

Partly because it coincides with the period when my interest in F1 expanded beyond Nigel Mansell. There’s also a high standard of crashing. But I think mainly it stems from the fact that it tells the full story of the season – not just who won what and who Ron Dennis scowled at – but actually looks at some of the backmarkers.

1995 was, by any standard, a bumper year for backmarkers. Unlike the pre-qualifying days, this generation of moneyed mobile chicanes were actually getting on the grid – at every race!

Giovanni Lavaggi is widely remembered as perhaps the slowest driver to have ever started a modern-era F1 race, while Jean-Denis Delatraz and Mimmo Schiattarella comfortably claim the runner up spots.

But the undoubted backmarker star of 1995 was Taki Inoue.

Small beginnings

Inoue did little to set the world alight in a decade of racing up to that point – ninth place in the 1993 Japanese F3 championship was a career best. As far back as 1989 Inoue’s star was such that Formula Three teams in the UK were quoting him £400,000 for the season – double the rate for a competitive driver.

Eventually 1994 saw a move into Formula 3000 with Super Nova Racing alongside Vicenzo Sospiri. Sospiri came to within a whisker of winning the title. Inoue qualified ninth at Estoril, which was his best result of the year.

By the tail end of 1994 the fledgling Simtek team were already struggling to pay the bills, and Inoue’s wallet saw him in the car for the Japanese GP. Luckily the non-qualifying Pacifics were even worse than he was, so Inoue found himself 26th and last on the grid. His race lasted 3 laps before he aquaplaned off in the wet conditions.

Arrows deal

Unsurprisingly this début did not have Inoue’s phone ringing off the hook with offers, but he managed to buy a seat in the Arrows team at $4.5m for the 1995 season.

Capitalising on the Oriental obsession with F1, Inoue was able to pay his way thanks to a series of small sponsorship deals with local companies. Little did he know he was set for one of the most bizarre seasons in F1 history.

Two freakish incidents stand out above the others. While being towed home after his Arrows expired at Monaco a combination of pace car driver bravado and Inoue’s incompetence meant that the Arrows somehow contrived to flip over. Aside from the embarrassment, it is worth considering that Inoue was probably going quicker with the tow rope than he managed in the Arrows.

Then came Hungary, where Inoue was most unfortunately, but most amusingly, run over by the fire marshall arriving to extinguish his smoking Arrows. The sight of Taki sprawled over the bonnet is the defining image of 1995.

Exit

Most drivers may have sensed the stars were out of kilter and called it quits. But no, Inoue completed the season, and in the process managed to determine the outcome of the championship, playing a cameo role in the infamous Damon Hill/Michael Schumacher shunt at Monza.

By the year’s end Inoue had become the inadvertent F1 drivers yardstick for ineptitude, with Johnny Herbet famously muttering after a bad qualifying session ‘I was driving like Taki Inoue’.

Unsurprisingly the Japanese was not offered a race seat for 1996, and retreated back home where he raced, without success, in Japanese GTs for a couple of seasons before calling it quits. Since then little has been heard, or sought, and it is now certain that Inoue’s legacy will be the five minute highlights clip of his crashes and incidents on the 1995 review tape.

Taki Inoue videos

Inoue’s famous cameo with the safety car at the Hungarian Grand Prix in 1995.

The Japanese driver pirouettes gracefully out of his final Grand Prix at Adelaide in 1995.

Related links

• The feeder formula champions (p2/4)
• 1995 F1 season history – Glimpses of Greatness
• “He did it his way!” (Video) (1995 F1 season review)

And yet no F3000 or GP2 champion has ever gone on to win the sport’s ultimate prize – the Formula 1 World Championship.

In this four part series we take a look at the 22 champions – and what became of their F1 careers.

Christian Danner
1985 F3000 champion with 52 points (2nd Mike Thackwell, 45)

After winning the inaugural Formula 3000 championship Danner moved up to F1 and was briefly the subject of a tug-of-love between Arrows and Osella mid-way through 1986.

In 1987 he joined Zakspeed, a similarly un-competitive team. He moved to Rial in 1989 and finished fourth in a high attrition race at Pheonix, but only qualified for one further race that year, which was the end of his F1 career.

Ivan Capelli
1986 F3000 champion with 38 points (2nd Pierluigi Martini, 36)

Italian Capelli made his F1 debut with March, which later became Leyton House. He impressed at the wheel of Adrian Newey’s cars of 1989 and 1990, very nearly winning the French Grand Prix in 1990.

A move to Ferrari in 1992 should have been his breakthrough season, but the team was mired in political strife and produced a dire car. Capelli was slaughtered by the press and left before the end of the year. After a couple of races for Jordan in 1993 he quit.

Stefano Modena
1987 F3000 champion with 41 points (2nd Luis Perez-Sala, 33)

Modena jumped into F1 at the end of 1987 with Brabham, taking over from Riccardo Patrese who was filling in for the injured Nigel Mansell at Williams.

He was considered a promising talent but his lack of application was a cause for concern – he even retired a healthy car on one occasion. A move to Honda-powered Tyrrell in 1991 briefly promised great things but the team lapsed into un-competitivity and Modena’s career soon fizzled out.

Robert Moreno
1988 F3000 champion with 43 points (2nd Olivier Grouillard, 34)

Moreno sampled some truly awful machinery in his F1 career, the first of which being the useless Eurobrun in 1989. He got a seat at Benetton late the following year after Alessandro Nannini’s career-ending helicopter crash, and wept with joy when he finished second at Suzuka.

Tears of a different career were in order when the team dumped him in 1991 in favour of the incoming Michael Schumacher – Moreno relinquishing his seat for a thick wad of cash.

He somehow wrestled the appalling Andrea Moda onto the back of the grid at Monte-Carlo in 1992. A few years later came a spell at the wretched Forti team before he moved to Indy Car racing in America.

Jean Alesi
1989 F3000 champion with 39 points (2nd Erik Comas, also with 39, but one fewer race win)

Another of the great unfulfilled talents, Alesi was fourth on his début for Tyrrell in France in 1989 while still racing in F3000. He impressed again in 1990, battling with Ayrton Senna at Pheonix, then moved to Ferrari for the duration of the team’s wilderness years.

He won once, at Montreal in 1995, then left for two years each at Benetton, Sauber and at Prost (plus a few starts for Jordan) before quitting.

Photo: GEPA Pictures

Related links

• Read more about GP2 at Maximum Motorsport

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

Less than three weeks ago I started a thread about it on an F1 forum – and it now has almost 3,000 posts.

F1 is no stranger to controversy – here’s ten of the juiciest from recent years…

Water cooled brakes, 1982

One of the most celebrated controversies ever to hit F1. In 1982, fearing that their turbo powered rivals had them completely out-gunned, several top British teams including Brabham and Williams started fiddling with the minimum weight rules.

Unlike the fuel-thirsty turbos, they could run their cars far lighter than the minimum weight and had to use ballast to bring it up to the minimum level.

Lotus’s Colin Chapman hit on the idea of using a reserve water tank – ostensibly used for brake-cooling – to bring the weight up. They could then dump the water after the race had started, and (legitimately) top it up again after the race before the car was weighed.

Nelson Piquet (Brabham) and Keke Rosberg (Williams) finished first and second – but when FISA (now FIA) found out about the water tanks they were thrown out.

This caused a political stink – the cars had been legal to the letter, though not the spirit, of the rules. Plus John Watson’s McLaren, that was elevated to second following the disqualifications, was similarly illegal and yet went un-punished. Not for the first time there were dark mutterings about the shared nationality of FISA President Jean-Marie Balestre and new Brazilian GP winner Alain Prost.

The British teams boycotted the San Marino Grand Prix, but it made no difference. By the end of the year most of them had made arrangements to obtain turbo engines anyway.

Tyrrell, 1984

Two years later virtually all the teams were running turbos with one notable exception – Tyrrell. Team boss Ken Tyrrell tried to use an inelegant variant of the water tank trick, this time using lead shot, to get around the minimum weight rules.

But when he was found out all manner of unrealistic allegations were thrown at him, including suggestions that he had been using illegal fuel mixtures.

The Tyrrell team was thrown out of the championship, a move which also stripped Martin Brundle of a hard-fought second place at Detroit.

Prost vs Senna, 1989-90

The controversy to end all controversies. Late in 1989 Alain Prost made public remarks that he was sick of team mate Ayrton Senna’s intimidatory tactics on the track. So when Senna tried to pass him for the lead at Suzuka, Prost calmly turned his McLaren into his team mate’s car, taking both out of the race.

An incensed Senna regained the circuit via an escape road, got his car fixed, passed new leader Alessandro Nannini and won the race – only to be disqualified. Prost was champion. A furious Senna thought he saw the hand of Balestre at work, and vowed revenge.

Exactly one year later at the same venue he took it. Despite having taken pole position for the Japanese race Senna’s request for pole position to be moved to the favourable side of the circuit (as is common practice now) was refused.

So when Prost passed him at the start from second on the grid, Senna kept his foot buried into the accelerator and hammered into Prost’s car. The crash took them both out, and Senna was champion.

BAR’s fuel tank, 2005

Many teams have fallen into the cracks between what the FIA technical regulations say and what they mean. That was exactly what happened to BAR in 2005.

Following the San Marino Grand Prix, in which Jenson Button and Takuma Sato finished third and fifth respectively, the FIA stewards asked BAR to explain why the car weighed 594.6kg when completely emptied, rather than the regulation minimum of 600kg.

The team claimed that the engine required a minimum of 6fg of fuel, stored in a special collector, to function. The stewards accepted that but BAR were surprised to see the FIA appeal against the stewards’ verdict.

At a hearing in Paris on May 4th BAR presented their evidence and insisted that the car had never run below 600kg during the race. The FIA countered that the only satisfactory way to prove this was by draining the car of fuel.

The court of appeal agreed with the FIA but, fortunately for the team, did not carry out their requested sentence of a year’s ban from F!. They were forced to miss the next two rounds.

Schumacher’s ‘slips’ 1994 & 1997

For three years the question of whether Michael Schumacher deliberately crashed into Damon Hill at Adelaide two win the 1994 championship was debated furiously. But an apparent repeat of the move on Jacques Villeneuve in Jerez in 1997 removed all doubt in the eyes of many.

Perhaps even more scandalous than the deliberate crash was the FIA’s weak response. Schumacher was disqualified from the championship (in which he had only finished second anyway – and he was not stripped of any race wins) and forced to help an FIA safe driving initiative.

Which seemed more than a little ironic.

‘Fix’? Jerez ’97 and Melbourne ’98

The other scandal at Jerez that year was McLaren’s stage-managed finish to let Mika Hakkinen win the race. Not only was team mate David Coulthard asked to move out of the way, but also Williams’ Jacques Villeneuve, which gave the impression of collusion.

It got worse at the start of the next season when, once again, Coulthard let Hakkinen past, this time to honour a pre-race agreement. After that McLaren boss Ron Dennis found it difficult to refute charges that he was overly sympathetic to Hakkinen.

Rascasse-gate, 2006

The number one controversy of last year – bigger than Fernando Alonso’s penalty in Italy, dwarfing even Renault’s mass dampers being banned.

When Schumacher flailed to a halt at Rascasse during qualifying, only the most naive could avoid the conclusion that he’d done so deliberately to delay his rivals. Yet he protested innocence.

Ferrari’s stinging denunciation of the stewards’ verdict against Schumacher left a bitter taste in the mouth and it soured Schumacher’s final year in the sport.

Michelin, 2003

Michelin was only in the third year of its return to the sport when it became embroiled in a very messy affair that damaged its relationship with the governing body. Just three years later it was on its way out again.

The tyre rules in 2003 specified how wide a tyre must be before a race, but not during. Michelin’s tyres were found to expand during use, affording more grip. It was a simple exploitation of a rule that had a clear intention – but also a clear limitation.

When rivals Bridgestone supplied the FIA with details of what Michelin were doing the governing body reacted instantly, demanding that tyres also be inspected after the race and subject to the same size restrictions. Michelin were forced to hastily revise their tyres ahead of the Italian Grand Prix.

That weekend an infamously heated press conference saw Ferrari’s Ross Brawn defend the decision against widespread opposition led by McLaren’s Ron Dennis and Williams’ Patrick Head. The latter pointed out that Michelin’s tyre construction had been in use for over two years and never called into question.

At Monza Michelin’s five-race run of victories ended – Bridgestone-shod Ferrari won all the remaining races and took both championships.

United States Grand Prix, 2005

The farce at Indianapolis in 2005 terminally hurt Michelin’s relations with the FIA and damaged F1′s reputation in the place where it needed it most.

The 2005 rules demanded that tyres last an entire race. When Michelin arrived at the newly resurfaced Indianapolis circuit from the American Grand Prix it discovered that the banked final turn was causing the sidewalls on its tyres to collapse. This was no one-off caused by an unusual new construction – Michelin had no tyres that it could bring to the race to allow its seven teams to compete.

What followed was the hideous spectacle of F1 at its worst. A total lack of contingency planning and impossible political intransigence turned one mistake into a needless farce.

Although FIA President Max Mosley was not present at the race, he opposed a request by the Michelin-supplied teams to construct a temporary chicane before the final corner to allow them to race – even when the offered to start from the back of the grid and forego the right to score championship points.

Mosley instead offered the conspicuously unrealistic alternative of making the Michelin drivers take the banked corner very slowly – which would have been lethally dangerous.

When all but the six Bridgestone-shod cars started the race it provoked a feverish war of finger-pointing. None of which did anything to change the fact that F1 had out on a dismal non-event in the heartland of American racing – at the very venue where Ferrari’s fixed finish three years earlier had caused great ill-feeling.

Belgian Grand Prix, 1981

The Belgian Grand Prix of 1981 began with a protest by the drivers, who were unhappy about the safety provisions for their mechanics. It met with little sympathy from the race organisers, who hurried them back to their cars.

The formation lap began haphazardly with cars circulating the track in a random order, then squeezing past each other to form up on the grid. Near the front Riccardo Paletti’s Arrows stalled, and his mechanic Dave Luckett jumped down from the pit wall to get the car re-started.

What followed was sheer horror. The TV cameras looked on as the race organisers, apparently oblivious to Luckett crouched behind the Arrows, gave the start.

The cars streamed past Patrese until his own team mate, Siegfried Stohr, totally unsighted, smashed into Luckett and Patrese’s car. Stohr leapt from his car and thumped his crash helmet in anguish as he realised what had happened.

Incredibly, Luckett survived with only broken bones. F1 had an enormously lucky escape.

F1 top tens

• Top ten... Curious F1 coincidences
• From Teflonso to Britney: Top ten F1 driver nicknames
• Ten reasons why you don't want to be an F1 driver
• Top ten... Underdog triumphs (Video)
• Top ten... Hermann Tilke corners
• Top ten... First lap crashes (Video)
• Top ten... Team radio moments (Video)
• Top ten... Weirdest F1 retirements
• Top ten... Home Grand Prix wins
• Top ten... Ways to finish an F1 race

Indeed, had they stepped in more quickly to rid the sport of ground effect cars, a series of terrifying crashes might have been avoided – and lives might have been saved.

Another Lotus innovation

Ground effects was another innovation brought to F1 by Colin Chapman’s Lotus team. It was borne of an idea of making the entire car function as one giant wing to increase downforce.

It was also one of the first developments to be discovered using a wind tunnel. The team observed that when the outer edges of the car’s sidepods reached the floor it generated a massive increase in downforce. It created a low pressure area beneath the car, sucking it down.

Applying that theoretical observation to the track proved difficult. The Lotus 78 (a.k. the John Player Special Mark III) of 1977 was the first car to attempt it and did boast substantially better grip than its predecessor. But poor reliability ruined the team’s season.

The team continued into 1978 with a modified version of the 78 but really hit its stride when it brought the 79 out for its first race. At Zolder, the sixth round of the season, drivers Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson destroyed the opposition, finishing first and second by a comfortable margin. They repeated the feat next time out in Jarama, Spain.

A focus on tidying up the aerodynamics of the car made the 79 a leap forward over its predecessor and every other car in the field. The rear bodywork was all-enveloping and the front and rear suspension was brought within it to keep the airflow as smooth as possible.

Chapman used every trick to keep the back of the car as neat as possible – even lobbying for a change in the rules that allowed the car to have a single fuel tank. This allowed him to move the cockpit forward, insert the fuel tank between the driver and the engine, and tidy up the rear of the car accordingly.

Lotus won eight of the season’s 16 races – total dominance by 1978 standards. But their double title win was, as so often in Lotus’s history, marred by tragedy. Ronnie Peterson died of complications following in accident at the start of the Italian Grand Prix, where Andretti became drivers’ champion.

Out of control

The team also lost the plot on design. Chapman targeted an aggressive development of the ground effects concept for the 1979 car, the Lotus 80. But rival constructors Ligier and Williams beat him by allying the ground effects to a more rigid chassis structure.

Lotus won nothing in 1979 – but ground effects continued to dominate. And the gigantic cornering speeds they created saw lap times tumble. Alan Jones’ pole position time for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone of 1’11.880 (236.324kph / 146.845 mph) was 6.61s quicker than James Hunt’s of two year’s previously.

By 1980 escalating cornering speeds was becoming a real concern. It was the focal point of a furious dispute between the governing body FISA, typically supported by the manufacturer teams Ferrari, Renault and Alfa Romeo, and the constructors’ association FOCA, led by Brabham boss Bernie Ecclestone.

Simply put, FISA wanted to ban ground effects because of the dangerously high cornering speeds they allowed, and the fact that if one of the ‘skirts’ broke it could send a car off the track at massive speed with no warning for the driver.

FOCA resisted – its teams largely used Cosworth engines that were less powerful than those of the richer manufacturers, and more effective chassis design using ground effects provided them with a means of levelling the playing field.

A series of accidents escalating in severity put pressure on FISA President Jean-Marie Balestre to act. In testing for the German Grand Prix Alfa Romeo driver Patrick Depailler was killed when his car speared straight on at the high speed Ostkurve.

His death was blamed in part on the fact that the safety fencing on the corner had not been erected. But the massive cornering speed of his ground effect car was a contributory factor.

The following season brought a controversial ban on skirts. But designers quickly found a gaping hole in the regulations: The undersides of the cars were only required to be flat when the car was in the pits.

Brabham’s Gordon Murray was first to cotton on to this and he produced an ingenious solution for his BT49 which automatically lowered the skirts while the car was on the track. With that advantage Nelson Piquet destroyed the opposition in the Argentinian Grand Prix.

Teams began copying the system – albeit using a crude lever operated by the driver instead of Murray’s complex hydraulics – and soon every car in the field was legal in the pits but illegal as they lapped the circuit.

FISA gave up the fight and re-legalised skirts for 1982. The consequences were dire.

Disaster and near misses

By now many of the leading teams were using turbo engines which required substantially more fuel than before. Thus drivers were perched at the front of explosively powerful turbo cars that cornered so quickly they could barely see.

This much was obvious at the second race of the year in Brazil when the winner, Nelson Piquet, collapsed on the podium from the exertion of manhandling his Brabham BT49D around the fast circuit in scorching Rio de Janeiro heat. His team mate Riccardo Patrese retired after losing his bearings and almost collapsing at the wheel.

Much worse was to follow. In qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix Gilles Villeneuve tagged the back of Jochen Mass’s March and Villeneuve’s Ferrari was launched into the air. It hit the ground nose-first with such force that it likely killed Villeneuve instantly. The Ferrari disintegrated and threw its driver across the track.

The accident horrified the sport but, like Depailler’s death, it was immediately blamed on another mitigating factor – qualifying tyres. Villeneuve had previously complained about the dangers of trying to post a quick qualifying lap under high pressure on tyres that only provided grip for a lap or so. And those were exactly the circumstances in which he was killed.

With the benefit of hindsight it is fair to say that, although the pressures of qualifying played a role in Villeneuve’s death – as did his fall-out with team mate Didier Pironi, the vicious nature of the ground effect cars had a hand in it too.

Two months later at the Dutch Grand Prix the suspension on Rene Arnoux’s Renault collapsed under the enormous pressure generated by ground effects. He ploughed into the tyre barrier at Tarzan corner, mercifully stopping short of the crowd.

An even luckier escaped followed later in July. During the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard Mauro Baldi’s Arrows and Mass’s car tangled, firing Mass’s burning car into the spectator enclosure. In that terrifying moment pure fortune alone spared Formula 1 from suffering its own equivalent of the 1955 Le Mans disaster – no one was killed.

But at the German Grand Prix in August Pironi was not so lucky. Much has been written about his state of mind going into that race, and many have speculated why he was even bothering to lap the Hockenheimring in the pouring rain in qualifying when he already had pole position.

In thick spray he drove straight into the back of Alain Prost’s Renault at undiminished speed. His Ferrari arched into the air and ploughed its nose into the ground. Pironi survived, but his legs were terribly broken in many places, and he never raced an F1 car again.

The catalogue of traumas prompted FISA to act, and flat bottomed cars were made mandatory for 1983. Ground effects were gone.

Lessons had been learned from beyond Formula 1 too. In America the Indy Car series had begun using ground effect cars. In practice for the Indianapolis 500 Gordon Smiley was killed in a crash of appalling violence, hitting a concrete wall nose-first. The impact was so great his crash helmet was wrenched from his head with the chin strap still fastened.

Perhaps it would be possible for modern single seater racing cars to employ full ground effect trim – but modern safety standards would demand enormous compromises.

Enormous run-off areas would put spectators a long way from the action, street racing would be out of the question, and drivers would need the kind of gravity suits used by fighter pilots.

It’s not hard to reach the conclusion that ground effects had to be banned.

Read every article in the ‘Banned!’ series – from turbos to slicks to the ‘fan car’ and more

• Banned! archive

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

After ending 2006 strongly with Takuma Sato’s fine drive in Interlagos, Super Aguri are going into 2007 on the back foot after their new car failed crash tests. It may not even be ready for the first race.

There are some reasons to be cheerful, though.

Super Aguri are getting serious.

Last year they compromised their driver line-up for commercial reasons, running an all-Japanese squad featuring two drivers (Yuji Ide and Sakon Yamamoto) who were not ready for F1.

Now they’ve given a seat to Anthony Davidson – a popular and talented test driver who’s been crying out to go racing.

The car may have suffered an embarrassing setback – but as it’s likely to be closely based on a Honda design they will surely be in a stronger position than last year, when they raced a car based on a four year-old Arrows.

So having propped up the gird for most of 2006 they can expect to do much better in 2007 – perhaps even venturing into the points on the days when the retirement rate is high.

For that they will need to depend on their drivers not to do anything foolish. Sato made the odd rash move last year and it was not uncommon to see one of the Super Aguris come to grief in the opening laps of a race. Worst of all, he crashed out in Indianapolis on one of those rare days when points were there for the taking.

With Davidson alongside him, Sato will be under far greater pressure this year, and it should serve as a good test of whether he really deserves a place in F1.

Thanks to the cult status of boss Aguri Suzuki (the first Japanese driver to finish on the podium – at his home race, no less – in 1990) the team enjoy gigantic support in Japan.

Hopefully by that late stage in the season, when the F1 teams arrive at Fuji for the first time in three decades, we’ll have some idea about the long-term future of the outfit. Do Honda intend to keep them going long-term? Or are they just a quick fix to keep a Japanese Honda driver in F1 until such a time as they find another one quick enough to deserve a place in the Honda team?

Surely the team can’t have a great shelf life if its sole purpose is to be a vehicle (excuse the pun) for Sato?

The team has potential, and in a few months time could be anywhere from the back of the pack to the upper midfield.

Related links

• Season previews

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

2006 sees the biggest change to the engine rules since turbos were banned at the end of 1988, as 2.4- litre V8s replace 3-litre V10s. We have our fifth qualifying procedure in four years, a knockout system halfway between A1 Grand Prix qualifying and the DTM ‘superpole’.

And – at long last – an extra team: The curious Super Aguri outfit, built by Honda to appease the masses of Japanese fans appalled by Honda’s sacking of Takuma Sato. Honda V8 engines are all the new team has going for them, stuck in a four-year-old Arrows chassis and piloted by total rookie Yuji Ide alongside Sato, who in three years never really justified his F1 place.

Wholesale changes to the technical rules tend to produce similar changes in the balance of power. And, sure enough, last year’s sixth-placed finishers Honda look like they have produced the goods for 2006. The car has proven stupendously reliable in testing, and Anthony Davidson fired an opening salvo before the team packed up for Bahrain, lapping Valencia half a second quicker than anyone else.

Honda look seriously competitive. But, then, they have some serious competition:

Renault

2005 champions Renault will lose reigning drivers’ champion Fernando Alonso to rivals McLaren for 2007. This cannot help internal relations and will cause Alonso to be kept in the dark about late-season technical development.

But the R26 has been bang on the testing pace and Alonso, whom many still carelessly underrate even after his championship year, will have even greater drive than last year. Team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella may find the new car’s handling more to his taste, but Alonso out-scored him 135-56 last year, and it’s hard to see Fisichella turning that kind of disadvantage around.

McLaren-Mercedes

Last year’s runners-up have shown similar levels of prodigious speed and lousy reliability in testing as they did last season. But before wrapping up their test programme the radical chrome-effect machines were looking the equal of Renault and Honda.

Either Juan Pablo Montoya or Kimi Raikkonen will leave the team at the end of the year – or possibly both. Montoya is determined to bounce back from his injury- and error-riddled ’05 and overshadow Raikkonen in the same manner he threatened to towards the end of last year. Don’t bet against it happening, especially if Raikkonen confirms his rumoured move to Ferrari.

Ferrari

The prancing horse licked its wounds over the winter break and their 248, sporting aerodynamics clearly ‘inspired’ by Renault and Toyota, looks fast. Exactly how fast is difficult to say, as they’ve avoided testing alongside other teams, but the return of tyre changes will benefit rubber suppliers Bridgestone.

The obvious weak link is in Michael Schumacher’s new team-mate Felipe Massa, who seems like a one-year stop-gap before a potential megabucks partnership between Raikkonen and Moto GP hotshot Valentino Rossi – assuming, that is, that this really is Schumacher’s last year at the top level. Don’t count on it if the 248 brings him ’04 levels of dominance.

Toyota

After making progress in 2005, their ‘must-show-progress’ season, Toyota enter their ‘must-finally-win-something’ season. Neither outright pace nor strong reliability have been much in evidence with the new package, which was first to hit the track late last year. Worse, home rivals Honda look very strong.

The intra-team rivalry at Toyota between the highly-paid Ralf Schumacher and highly-rated Jarno Trulli will be especially fascinating. Trulli took the most impressive results in ’05 and qualified strongly, but lost out to Ralf on points largely due to misfortune and unreliability. Will he firmly put one over baby Schu this year?

Williams-Cosworth

If one team seems to have got all their off-season decisions right, it’s Williams. Michelin, due to leave F1 at the end of ’06 anyway, are dropped for Bridgestone, who were much stronger before the one-off ’05 ‘no tyre change’ rules. GP2 champion Nico Rosberg (son of Williams legend Keke) arrives and so do Cosworth, replacing BMW who are off to do their own thing.

McLaren ace tester Alex Wurz has been poached and the arrival of Narain Kathikeyan – with his Tata megabucks – is the icing on the cake. The FW28 looks decidedly purposeful and even if it hasn’t been quite on the testing pace they’re certainly a good bet for strong points finishes early in the season.

Honda

The former BAR team look set to bounce back to their 2004 championship runner-up form – maybe even higher. Stability has been the name of their off-season game with the only significant change being the departure of shunt specialist Takuma Sato for seasoned veteran Rubens Barrichello.

Jenson Button’s bid for supremacy over his new team-mate will make for very interesting viewing, especially if, as seems likely, the two are battling over victories.

Red Bull Racing-Ferrari

After a surprisingly storming 2005, Red Bull have kept the pressure up during the off-season. Not content with poaching McLaren design ace Adrian Newey they have also incurred the wrath of Renault by luring many of their top staff away with fat wads of cash.

But the R2 – the first true Red Bull car – has had serious teething trouble in testing. The Ferrari engine may be an excellent power supply but its installation has proved difficult and the car has serious overheating problems – not ideal when the first two races will be in the sweltering heat of Bahrain and Malaysia.

BMW-Sauber

BMW head honcho Mario Theissen has finally got his way and put an entire team at BMW’s disposal – yet, strangely, kept the ‘Sauber’ name, for the time being at least (presumably until they start winning.) The team have excellent resources at their disposal in the form of a massive wind tunnel, but the F1.06 looks basic and has shown little promise.

Jacques Villeneuve has clung tenaciously to his seat – to the obvious displeasure of Theissen & co. – and will have to put a resurgent (and now fully fit) Nick Heidfeld firmly in the shade to keep his place in Formula One.

Midland F1-Toyota

Shed a tear for dear departed Jordan – the fun loving outfit have metamorphosed into the gallingly corporate Midland F1, replete with steely grey and bright white colour scheme.

Nor is their on-track performance likely to win them many admirers with a decidedly average-looking car and two rent-a-drivers. How long with owner Alex Schnaider consider it a worthwhile investment? Bernie Ecclestone has already said he mis-advised Schnaider about buying the team…

Scuderia Toro Rosso-Cosworth

Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz knows a bargain when he sees one, and snapping up F1 minnows Minardi to form a Red Bull junior team (with an Italian name as an homage to the old Faenza squad) was one of his smartest moves yet.

’04 Formula 3000 champ Vitantonio Liuzzi finally gets a proper crack of the whip alongside Scott Speed – a somewhat inconsistent American who nonetheless could finally give those Stateside something to cheer about. Hell, they may even get a race to watch this year…

Super Aguri-Honda

Just how much did Honda’s public relations team hate the big bosses for dropping Japan’s favourite son Takuma Sato on the eve of his home race? Answer: so badly that Honda have shelled out serious cash to bundle him off into a Honda-powered ‘B’-team.

The FIA, sensing another precious signature on the ’07 Concorde Agreement, couldn’t butter up team owner (and ex-F1 driver) Aguri Suzuki quick enough – never mind letting them run four-year-old Arrows chassis and hand their bond payment in early. So much for keeping ‘embarrassingly bad’ teams from competing.