1981 World Professional Drivers Championship

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Bobby Doorknobs
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1981 World Professional Drivers Championship

Post by Bobby Doorknobs »

No, this isn't a new PMMF series that I've accidentally posted into the wrong forum, Dieter Rencken has obtained a dossier laying out the rules for the proposed breakaway series that was planned by the FOCA teams for 1981:


Some interesting points:

- The calendar was set to include no less than four races in the US: The pre-existing rounds at Long Beach and Watkins Glen, and two new races in New York and Las Vegas (the latter of course having not yet hosted a GP). Although, knowing Bernie's well-known difficulties in securing a New York race in the past three decades, the closest we would get would probably still be the CART race in the Meadowlands

- Sweden and Mexico were also included on the provisional calendar, neither country having hosted a race since 1978 and 1970, respectively. As we know, F1 eventually did return to the latter country in 1986

- All that said, it seems only Monaco, France and the Netherlands had come to any sort of final agreement with the "World Federation of Motorsport (WFMS)" at the time this dossier was published

- "The qualifying events shall be open to racing cars of the WFMS Formula 1, except for any explicit waiver granted by the WFMS". This would seem to imply that some races could in theory be open for otherwise non-compliant machinery (Indy cars, for example), although presumably this measure would only be undertaken in the event of an undersubscribed entry list. This isn't without precedent either - in the early seventies some world championship race organisers were prepared to open their entry lists to F5000, F2 and even USAC Championship cars in the event of there being too few entries. Luckily for them (but unlucky, perhaps, for us!) there were usually at least twenty F1 cars turning up for every practice session, and so there was no need for such a contingency plan

- It would seem that there was to be no dropped scores rule, which in reality continued to be a feature of the new Formula 1 World Championship until 1990

- The opening rounds of the championship would have complied with the pre-existing FISA Formula 1 technical regulations, with the new WFMS F1 rulebook only coming into force at the beginning of the European season

But anyway, I'd love to see the full text of this dossier should Dieter release it.
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Aislabie
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Re: 1981 World Professional Drivers Championship

Post by Aislabie »

This is fantastic! Thank you greatly for bringing it to our attention
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FortiWinks
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Re: 1981 World Professional Drivers Championship

Post by FortiWinks »

Very interested to see what article 4 states! How many rejects would there be is more my interest!
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mario
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Re: 1981 World Professional Drivers Championship

Post by mario »

It is an interesting document, and I do hope that Dieter does release more details of what it contains. I'd be interested to see quite how far they took this particular document, as I am wondering whether this was intended to be a serious proposal or not.

It may well be that the primary intention of this document wasn't to establish such a championship, but rather was intended to be part of the power play between FISA and FOCA - in other words, the mere existence of this document was intended to give FOCA more leverage by making it look as if they did have a credible alternative to F1.

To adapt the parlance of the military, the proposal may never have been anything more than a "series in being" - the document was intended to exert influence on FISA and force them to take a more conciliatory approach due to the potential threat of such a series existing.
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FortiWinks
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Re: 1981 World Professional Drivers Championship

Post by FortiWinks »

Sorry to dig up an old thread but I was thinking about it again, maybe those three races (France, Netherlands & Monaco) were the unconfirmed races and the organisers were waiting for their decisions to go either FISA or FOCA which is why there are so many races?

Because I was trawling through the Autosport forums and there was one thread on cancelled F1 races and it had two seperate calendars for ‘81 and I don’t remember any Dutch Grand Prix on the original list, France had the same date penciled in on both of them and Monaco is obviously a street circuit so they’d maybe probably prefer to back one series?
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