F1 Controversies by Tony Dodgins

Strap on your helmet, fasten your seatbelt and put the pedal to the metal; we are racing! As F1 launches into a new season with the most radical set of changes in the history of the sport, popularity is at its highest ever. This is the perfect time to delve into the history of F1 and even more the controversies that have helped shape the sport.

As the F1 circus circumnavigates the globe in its own little bubble, it plays out like a modern soap opera.

From Portugal in 1958, when a show of ultimate sportsmanship saw Stirling Moss hand the World Championship to Juan Manuel Fangio, we are taken on a trail of tragedy and triumph. We see inside the greatest on-track rivalries, such as Niki Lauda and James Hunt, who never gave an inch to each other on the track but were best of friends off it.

In the early years, we see the abysmal safety standards that saw the deaths of numerous drivers and spectators. This came to a head when Ferrari famously boycotted the Monte Carlo Grand Prix in 1968 following the death of the team’s driver, Lorenzo Bandini, after a fearful crash in 1967.

The introduction of the Tyrell turbos in 1984 certainly put the cat among the pigeons. To meet the weight criteria, they took to running large water tanks ostensibly to cool the brakes. Once the race started, the water was dispersed in the direction of the brakes, allowing the car to race 50kg underweight. After the race, the tank was refilled prior to weighing. The justification for the dodge was that the rules didn’t specifically forbid this. Renault responded, “Well, they don’t specifically preclude machine-gunning your rivals either, but we wouldn’t expect that to be accepted.”

Probably the fiercest, most famous, and most tragic rivalry was between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, who vied for World Championships from 1985 to 1993. In 1994, Ayrton Senna, by now a three-time Formula One world champion, died on May 1, 1994, at age 34 following a high-speed crash into a concrete barrier while leading the San Marino Grand Prix. The Brazilian icon's fatal accident, occurring at the Tamburello corner, caused major, lasting safety reforms in motorsport.

Finally, there is the legal battle launched by Felipe Massa seeking recompense from the 2008 season, when he felt he had been denied the championship due to race-fixing that included cars deliberately crashing to bring out the safety car; interestingly, this is still before the courts.

Reviewer: Chris Casey

Ivy Press