andrew wrote:I am slightly confused here, I am assuming if a team changes owners then its previous years score in the previous guise does not matter, allowing Renault in 2016 and manor in 2015. However why are Torro Rosso in the 2013 championship? They scored points in 2012 right?
He noted that he only counts points that would be scored under the pre-2003 points system, because why not?
kevinbotz wrote:Cantonese is a completely nonsensical f*cking alien language masquerading as some grossly bastardised form of Chinese
Gonzo wrote:Wasn't there some sort of communisim in the East part of Germany?
andrew wrote:I am slightly confused here, I am assuming if a team changes owners then its previous years score in the previous guise does not matter, allowing Renault in 2016 and manor in 2015. However why are Torro Rosso in the 2013 championship? They scored points in 2012 right?
He noted that he only counts points that would be scored under the pre-2003 points system, because why not?
Yeah, this. Sorry I missed your comment the first time around by the way.
The idea of using the top six points system was to try to avoid too many seasons like 1996, shich featured only Forti, or 2003, where I had to bend the rules a bit to include Minardi & Toyota as everyone had scored points in 2002. Similarly, teams that change their listed constructor are also included, largely to spice things up a bit. It got quite tricky with Larrousse, who had chassis listed as Lola, Venturi and Larrousse in successive seasons. Same theme with Scuderia Italia as well.
The 1985 Championship battle was stopped in full cry between the Dutch and Italian Grands Prix when the tragic news broke that Championship leader Stefan Bellof had been killed in an Endurance race at Spa-Francorchamps. After that, it was with a reluctant air that Martin Brundle completed the formality of a Championship win that could, and perhaps should have gone to his team-mate: if you add the points scored by Johansson and Capelli in Bellof's car to Bellof's own, then the total is two higher than Brundle's final tally.
Lower down the grid, there was little competition, thanks to this year's backmarker teams having a remarkable knack of not finishing (a) the race or (b) the season.
1984 was a season where anyone could beat anyone, although the Ligier car, powered by a beefy Renault turbo engine, was the fastest car when it got going - and in the hands of talented Italian Andrea de Cesaris, it often did. Behind de Cesaris, there were numerous close battles: between Ghinzani and Palmer, between Osella and RAM; ultimately, though, these were battles for second because on all but one of the occasions that de Cesaris finished the race, he did so in first place.
With a four-point lead in the hands of Venezuela's Johnny Cecotto, the final two rounds of the season looked set to be a genuinely exciting title joust between Derek Warwick and the aforementioned Cecotto. Unfortunately for Cecotto, the Hong Kong-based Theodore team had entirely run out of money, allowing Warwick to run home the easy winner at both Brands Hatch and Kyalami. At the other end of the spectrum, RAM failed consistently to get on the grid, and when they did, only twice managed to see the chequered flag. In the hands of Stefan Johansson, the Spirit-Honda package looked promising, but they were only an occasional sight at Grand Prix weekends.
This season, the March car was clearly the dominant package, though some inconsistencies in the driver line-up meant that the drivers' title was far from a foregone conclusion. Once Mass had driven his last race of the season in France, Osella's Jean-Pierre Jarier was his closest challenger. The Frenchman failed to finish another race, though, and it was Fittipaldi's Chico Serra who made a late, but ultimately futile, charge to try to take the title.
Despite having his services split between two teams, Marc Surer was, from an early stage, the clear front-runner in the Championship battle. Had Jarier or Tambay managed to complete a full season, then the Championship battle could have been entirely different, but they did not, and Surer made the most of their respective absences. The Constructors battle, however, was thrilling and went right down to the final race of the season in Las Vegas. Salazar and Ensign arrived knowing that nothing less than a win and a retirement for Surer's Theodore would suffice to win the Championship. Remarkably, that was exactly what happened as Surer suffered a suspension failure that totaled his car. There was a hairy moment as a mechanical issue looked to have ended the race for Ensign, but the mechanics managed to bring Salazar's car back from the brink to enable it to sputter around and take the chequered flag after the two hours were complete.
1980 was a season of laughable reliability in which a total of eight classified finishers were spread across fourteen Grands Prix. Eight of those races failed to see a single car reached the finish.
Interestingly, had the Spanish Grand Prix been counted as a Championship race, Patrick Gaillard's hypothetical ten points would have sealed the Constructors Championship for Ensign.
This season saw an entertaining season-long battle between three newly founded teams: ATS, who last season ran Penske cars, the one-car Williams outfit and Arrows. The Williams package was definitely the faster of the three, though the difference in performance was slight enough that Arrows and ATS drivers were able to hold their own in on-track battles with Jones. The Martini car, which in the hands of Rene Arnoux proved surprisingly fast, could also have featured in the Championship battle, had it not been such an infrequent runner.
However, a dominant win in the United States, a Grand Prix for which Patrese was absent, was enough to secure the Drivers Championship with a race to spare for Jones. He was not, however, able to overcome the fact that Arrows had two cars, allowing them to win the Constructors title.
Rarely can there have been so dominant a Formula One campaign. Jody Scheckter was simply unstoppable in a very fast Wolf car, and he didn't even have a team-mate to battle against. Scheckter quite literally scored more points than the other fourteen drivers put together, a very impressive effort.
It was truly lovely to see so many drivers involved with this season's proceedings, even though none of them could match up to the consistent performances of Alan Jones and the Surtees team. The Australian never finished outside the top two positions, and as a result made himself essentially impossible to catch (although the Matra-powered Laffite did do his best). Also, props to Fittipaldi for driving the wheels off that car in order to drag himself up to third in the table.
What an incredible, but tragic, season that was. It was so wide open, with so many race-winning cars and drivers, that the job of a pundit must have been almost impossible. Both Championships went down to the final race of the season in America.
The Drivers Championship should have been a three-horse race, but Mark Donohue suffered a tragic brain haemorrage at the Austrian Grand Prix and lost his life. At the point of his final race, he had 42 points, Andretti had 36 and Brise had 30. Realistically, nobody else was close enough to mount a challenge. With two races left to go, there were only five points difference between Andretti and Brise, but neither managed to reach another chequered flag, so the Championship went to Andretti.
However, Andretti was Parnelli's only driver, which meant they were only able to attain fourth place in the Constructors standings. Penske would have won, but they missed several rounds at the time of Donohue's death, only returning for their home round in America. The top two teams, despite not having a driver in the top two of that Champioinship, were Williams and Hill. Locked on points going into the United States Grand Prix, whichever of them finished ahead in the race would win the Championship. Much like the Drivers Championship, though, neither finished and the FIA had to get their calculators out.
Sometimes, the fastest driver gets in the fastest car and proves themselves totally unbeatable. Sometimes, though, that driver still doesn't win the World Championship because his fast car does insist on breaking down. That was the case for James Hunt - his Hesketh (a March car modified by Harvey Postlethwaite) only reached the finish line five times, but won on every occasion. The remaining slack in the season was picked up by the deceptively pacy Lola of Embassy Hill's eponymous driver and team principal, who only thrice failed to finish.
The season was a very even battle between the quick and unreliable Shadows (which missed the two opening rounds of the Championship) and the steady, reliable Iso-Marlboro car, usually in the hands of the impressive Howden Ganley, who with four wins took the chequered flag more often than anyone else. Although the Drivers' Championship was sorted well in advance, Shadow went in hard at the final race in an effort to ensure that Iso couldn't overturn their lead, in spite of Ickx and Ganley successfully bagging a one-two at The Glen.
Okay, so this season was a bit of a reminder of just how naff this competition can sometimes be. All the same, I do think it's quite fun that an alternate Championship which has delivered such great Champions as Graham Hill, Mario Andretti, Alan Jones, Jody Scheckter, Jacques Villeneuve, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen (and other non-IRL World Champions) can also serve up Rolf Stommelen in an Eifelland.
Last edited by Aislabie on 11 Feb 2017, 16:40, edited 1 time in total.
It was another one of those seasons which is reduced to little more than a scrap between team-mates. At least on this occasion, they were two very good team-mates.
The March chassis was widely distributed across the grid ahead of the 1970 season and proved to be remarkably fast, resulting in the entire Championship top-five being made up of March drivers. Clearly, two of the March drivers (Jackie Stewart and Chris Amon) were far faster than the others, and in the end it proved to e a battle between the pair of them to see who could finish more often and earn themselves more wins in the process Eventually, it was Amon's March that proved to be most reliable and the brave Kiwi won a Drivers Championship for himself.
Alright then, I need help here. I cannot reasonably award the Championship to someone who didn't manage to finish a race. But then again, in this alternate universe, Al Pease being slow wouldn't have posed a danger to anyone else so he wouldn't have been disqualified in Canada and would therefore have claimed victory at the Canadian Grand Prix.
I don't really know what to do, but I'm thinking that this season goes to nobody.
I really love seeing a championship where Graham Hill has won a title for his own eponymous team! Makes me suspect that here is a team and driver that I would have been supporting back in the day.
watka wrote:I find it amusing that whilst you're one of the more openly Christian guys here, you are still first and foremost associated with an eye for the ladies!
dinizintheoven wrote:GOOD CHRISTIANS do not go to jail. EVERYONE ON FORMULA ONE REJECTS should be in jail.
dr-baker wrote:I really love seeing a championship where Graham Hill has won a title for his own eponymous team! Makes me suspect that here is a team and driver that I would have been supporting back in the day.
dr-baker wrote:I really love seeing a championship where Graham Hill has won a title for his own eponymous team! Makes me suspect that here is a team and driver that I would have been supporting back in the day.
Any idea what I should do about the 1969 problem?
You could award it to either Francois Cevert or Al Pease. You could do it as you already have done in your table, or by whoever completed the higher proportion of the race that made up their 'best' result. Or you could just state 'no eligible candidate'. I have several seasons where there were no anti-clockwise races at all in one of my alternative championships, so I just stated that there was no championship that year.
Basically, no idea, but it's your championship, you get to decide the rules!
watka wrote:I find it amusing that whilst you're one of the more openly Christian guys here, you are still first and foremost associated with an eye for the ladies!
dinizintheoven wrote:GOOD CHRISTIANS do not go to jail. EVERYONE ON FORMULA ONE REJECTS should be in jail.
Despite missing two of the first three races of the season with a wrist injury, Jackie Stewart - driving for the dominant Matra team - was still by some distance the most gifted driver to sit in a Matra in 1968. Lola and LDS both made fleeting visits to the grid, but neither made an impact of any great note.
Another pretty naff season, which is symptomatic of the 1966 cars being pretty unreliable and allowing less fast packages (like the McLaren-Serenissima) to ascend the lofty heights of the points. This ragtag bunch is the small selection that was somewhat left behind.
After a South African Grand Prix which contained only runners that would go on to contest no more Championship races, the season descended into a two horse race between the two Hondas. Unfortunately, as one or more of those horses was usually lame, and that the two identical horses were driven by drivers with a vast difference in ability, the result (a Ginther triumph) was entirely inevitable.
A surprisingly varied field competed in the 1963 Championships, although they could rarely be gathered properly in one place. The most reliable car was that of the British Racing Partnership, powered by a BRM P56 V8 and piloted by Innes Ireland. Only once would a car finish ahead of them (Settember's Scirocco in Spa) and they claimed the Constructors Championship with ease.
This season would have been quite exciting, if only Roy Salvadori had been able to take any one of his Lola-Climax cars for a full race distance in order to challenge Surtees. It could also of have been rather fascinating had Brabham's Brabham been out on the track a couple of rounds earlier on in the season. Alas, it was not, to this was an easy win for John Surtees.
What an absolute farce: only one car made it to one finish line despite a reasonable amount of entries. That one car was Keith Greene's Gilby. Commiserations to Fairman and Moss, who were on course to win with the Ferguson Tractor until they were disqualified.
Well that was a weird season. So open was it that, according to the countback rules I've been using, any one of the sixteen drivers to have already attended a Grand Prix weekend could have won the World Championship going into the final round - and so it proved, as Chuck Daigh came from a position of having not reached the finish line in any of five attempts (and not even the start line on a few occasions) to the Drivers Championship thanks to an impressive performance in his Scarab. Porsche, meanwhile, only entered two cars all season, which finished first and second at Monza, and claimed the Constructors. Weird.
There may have been eight constructors involved this year, but only two of them were properly involved. The winners were Aston Martin, although we have no way of knowing whether they or Porsche were quicker because they never entered the same Grand Prix together.
Well, to my surprise this one turned out to be a really good season. Both Lotus and BRM made their first concerted efforts as F1 manufacturers and were both competitive straight away. Ultimately, BRM's greater experience (gleaned from occasional entries as far back as 1951) helped them to be the more successful of the two teams and to win the Championships.
This season would have been an absolute joke had I not included the Formula Two entries to the German Grand Prix (this is something I've been doing for a while).
Okay, I would never have predicted that a Brazilian would ultimately do so well as to be Champion, but Hermanos da SIlva Ramos has done precisely that. The only packages anywhere near to the Gordini were the Connaught-Alfa cars, but they simply didn't stay in one piece long enough to reach the finish line.
The Lancia victory in this year's Championship was thanks entirely to their performance at the Monaco Grand Prix, which was the only time they successfully reached the finish line. Vanwall were the only other team to finish any race at all, but their win was shared between two of their drivers. Surprisingly, Arzani Volpani does not finish last.
Can there ever have been a more dominant team effort in the history of this Championship? Mercedes and their all-conquering W196 car finished first and second in every one of the six Grands Prix contested. And can there ever have been a more dominant driver performance than that of Juan Manuel Fangio, who finished first in every single one of those one-twos? Phenomenal from Mercedes, demoralising for everyone else.
This year's championships were a case of quality versus quantity. Veritas entered far more cars than OSCA, but OSCA won every race they finished. In the end, the car was good enough that they and Louis Chiron (at the age of 54) became champions.
Okay, so what in all the hell happened here then? Well, the short answer is that all the F2 cars got involved. The long answer involves a thrilling narrative of Championship tiebreak and heartbreak, as well as a countless number of German privateers all circulating around the Nurburgring in their re-built Veritas-BMW cars.
Believe me when I say that this one was no fun to calculate.