Grand Prix Rejects

What do you miss from older F1 races?

I personally miss the air horns that you used to hear all the time during the 90's to mid 2000's Grand Prix, how come nobody uses them anymore?

The Chicane wrote:I personally miss the air horns that you used to hear all the time during the 90's to mid 2000's Grand Prix, how come nobody uses them anymore?

Weren't they all Michael Schumacher's legions of fans who sang when he was winning? I always remember the siren song of 100,000 air horns being at its most intense at Hockenheim. Every time, without fail, as he came round the last corner and the TV cameras followed, even the screeching V10 engines would be drowned out by ten seconds of a constant PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP until he disappeared off into the trees again (or where they used to be). I can only imagine what it was like in the stands. At least a football match in South Africa with its constant cacophony of vuvuzelas only lasts an hour and a half and has a break in the middle.

If there's anything I'd say I miss - and I've said so before - it's the days of the early 1990s where the graphics would be given in the host language provided it wasn't too indecipherable for all us horrible gaijins in England-land (which, back then, was only Hungary and Japan). So we'd see Nigel Mansell setting Giro Più Veloce at Imola and Monza, Ayrton Senna taking Schnellste Runde at Hockenheim, and Alain Prost with Vuelta Más Rapida at Jerez (not Barcelona, because he was driving a truck in 1991).

Imagine what we'd have had to deal with now, if all the host countries were given free rein to use their own language on screen? Never mind Hungarian and Japanese, we'd also be seeing Russian, Mandarin, Arabic (twice) and Korean and Hindi in previous years. Even Azeri and Malay would be something of a relief with those others in the mix.

I miss the great names of Formula One, and teams that really were an embodiment of the people who created them. Brabham, Tyrrell and Ligier fall into both categories, while Lotus, Arrows, Benetton, Minardi and Jordan fit into either one or the other.

And it's difficult to just resurrect a name as well - just look at the recent attempts to bring back the Lotus name and what a massive crock of crap they were.

There's a reason that even when only one of them has won a Constructors title this millenium, Ferrari, McLaren and Williams are still seen as the three biggest teams on the grid. Not the three best, or the three richest, but definitely the three most prestigious. Sauber is a bit of a special case, what with their BMW dalliance in the late 2000s.

You look at some of the teams on the grid now - Red Bull, Force India and Toro Rosso just don't have the same ring to them, even though Red Bull have taken eight World Titles back to Milton Keynes.

What do I miss? Don't get me going but with regards watching it on TV let's start with this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgiBkydMW8k

<sigh>

Murray Walker.

dr-baker wrote:Murray Walker.

I agree but he's better off out of it these days. You see how critical people can be of commentators and presenters online these days? Can you imagine the hostility and abuse Walker would've got? Possibly from contributors to this very forum, too.

Whilst I've never even been to Canada I used to enjoy the inter-team boat race they used to hold on the Olympic rowing lake which, if my memory serves me, was often won by Jordan in the very early nineties. I was happy to see they revived it this season, I hope it wasn't a one off.

dr-baker wrote:Murray Walker.

As the kids would say "true dat".

I also miss the different sounds & characteristics of V12's, V10 & V8's. I.e. looking forward to a V8 car doing well on street circuits or in the rain. Simliarly wondering if the Ferraris would last the distance at Monza before the V12 let go...

I also miss watching a wet race where the drivers actually got to race and not cruse behind the safety car until it was time to stick inters on.

That weird horn at Monaco that went Diddaliddaliddaliddaliddala in a sing-song way. I *think* it was something that alerted people in the pits when someone was coming through.

Ooh, ooh! This guy every year at Adelaide...

Glen Dix - Freaking Legend. Would it be allowed today? No, because Modern Life Is Rubbish.

The variety of it all. As someone who's only been watching a comparatively short time compared to the great history of the sport, even going back to the early 2000s, there was so much more variety. Most teams were running their own engines, tyres, and with refuelling there were some massive differences in strategy all over the field. Not only did it make the different teams and drivers stand out more, but it meant certain tracks would suit some teams more than others, and there would be shake-ups of the grid. Add to this unreliability, and there was a great reason to tune in every fortnight.. And this is obviously failing to mention earlier decades, where different teams' cars and chassis were in themselves unique, and distinguishable from one another in that regard also.

Today we don't have fuel strategies, we have one tyre company, fewer teams, throwaway Tilkedromes (though thankfully many of them are gone nowadays) filling up the calendar, and for a while there were only three engine suppliers on the grid.

I miss the days when every race was action packed with side-by-side racing from start to finish. When there were no technological gimmicks making the racing artificial. When the teams and drivers weren't sponsored by here-today-gone tomorrow firms you've never heard of or fizzy pop pedlars but instead good wholesome sponsors like tobacco companies. When the teams didn't jump at the behest of cynical money grabbing billionaires like Rupert bloody Murdoch and their grubby little television channels and instead put their faith in the likes of Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley. When the drivers were all good and fair sportsmen and didn't degrade themselves and their sport in shenanigans the like of which we've recently borne witness to, great men like Senna or Schumacher.

Great days.

Attrition. Although that's slowly coming back.

CoopsII wrote:I miss the days when every race was action packed with side-by-side racing from start to finish. When there were no technological gimmicks making the racing artificial. When the teams and drivers weren't sponsored by here-today-gone tomorrow firms you've never heard of or fizzy pop pedlars but instead good wholesome sponsors like tobacco companies. When the teams didn't jump at the behest of cynical money grabbing billionaires like Rupert bloody Murdoch and their grubby little television channels and instead put their faith in the likes of Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley. When the drivers were all good and fair sportsmen and didn't degrade themselves and their sport in shenanigans the like of which we've recently borne witness to, great men like Senna or Schumacher.

Great days.

Heh.

I miss V10s, but not necessarily for the same reasons as everyone else...

Attrition; although that's improved this season as SuzukiSwift has pointed out.
V10s. I don't mind the current engines but i'd be lying if I said I didn't prefer V10s.
Gravel traps.
Lack of professionalism from backmarkers.
Genuine privateer teams.

Great lists so far. I shall add that I miss liveries with actual sponsors - not the blank ones we've seen on McLaren, Sauber, Williams etc. If there was one thing tobacco companies could do right was liveries. West, Marlboro, Rothmans, Mild Seven, Benson&Hedges and so on...

This is going to sound stupid (like much of my contributions!) but I sort of miss the picture quality being a bit crap on the race coverage. It added to the mystique of such exotic far flung races as Suzuki, Interlagos and the Hungaroring when the images were slightly grainy and fuzzy, it really made me feel like I was watching something unusual and extreme.

That's not to say I don't like the high def footage we get today, obviously.

CoopsII wrote:This is going to sound stupid (like much of my contributions!) but I sort of miss the picture quality being a bit crap on the race coverage. It added to the mystique of such exotic far flung races as Suzuki, Interlagos and the Hungaroring when the images were slightly grainy and fuzzy, it really made me feel like I was watching something unusual and extreme.

That's not to say I don't like the high def footage we get today, obviously.

In a way, yeah. The Japanese and BBC broadcasts look crystal clear but the French, Italian, and Austrian broadcasts I have look liked they were filmed in a fishbowl.

SuzukiSwift wrote:

CoopsII wrote:This is going to sound stupid (like much of my contributions!) but I sort of miss the picture quality being a bit crap on the race coverage. It added to the mystique of such exotic far flung races as Suzuki, Interlagos and the Hungaroring when the images were slightly grainy and fuzzy, it really made me feel like I was watching something unusual and extreme.

That's not to say I don't like the high def footage we get today, obviously.

In a way, yeah. The Japanese and BBC broadcasts look crystal clear but the French, Italian, and Austrian broadcasts I have look liked they were filmed in a fishbowl.

And no signal under bridges on onboard footage!

CoopsII wrote:This is going to sound stupid (like much of my contributions!) but I sort of miss the picture quality being a bit crap on the race coverage. It added to the mystique of such exotic far flung races as Suzuki, Interlagos and the Hungaroring when the images were slightly grainy and fuzzy, it really made me feel like I was watching something unusual and extreme.

Are you also including commentary sent down the phone in that package?

Shaky onboard cameras, gives the illusion that the cars are more difficult to drive.

If we are going very far back, I sort of wish one-off privateers were still a thing. Too bad the days of you being able to just casually enter a race as some amateur driver with not much experience are far gone, because it did gave us some interesting characters.

Grass and gravel. Racing is more of a challenge when track limits aren't just white lines.

Watching together with family that wasn't broken up yet - sorry, too personal

FullMetalJack wrote:Shaky onboard cameras, gives the illusion that the cars are more difficult to drive.

This.

Also: corner names. Who the bloody hell decided that track builders should no longer give their corners a proper name to remember them by and name all corners T1, T2, T3 etc instead?!?

It used a great way to honour old drivers, to make a name for local villages/streets/ponds/ditches/blokes, to immortalize stories, to gain sponsorship for tracks.

But it must have been between 1997 and 1999 that they decided to no longer continue this tradition in the FIA as the old-new A1-Ring got new corner names in 1997, but since Sepang they have no longer bothered. Today this cancerous way of referring to turns has spread so much that even classic corners that used to have names on the classic tracks are referred by T*something* - now the drivers and even the comms talk about T14 instead of Spoon, T9 instead of Stowe, T12 instead of Pouhon, T1 instead of La Rascasse.



edit - Case in point above. I actually confused Sainte-Devote and La Rascasse in my mind because nobody uses the names anymore!

I would suspect it's something to do with where all the new tracks are being built - countries with no motorsport heritage, a dodgy political past (and/or present), or a combination of both. The Valencia disaster might have had some interesting corner names, and I was always in favour of naming Turn 8 at Istanbul "The Scimitar" (it's Turkish, it's curved, and it's deadly), but that's about the full extent of the scope for memorable corner names. Elsewhere, Yeongam might have tried to name its corners Samsung, Daewoo, LG, SsangYong in the corporate style of Bosch Kurve, Coca-Cola Kurve (and many other examples), Sepang might have had a Petronas Curve at the very least, and I'd assume Austin would be more likely to take this route rather than naming its corners after American motorsport heroes of the past; no Hill Corner, Gurney Curve, Andretti Straight or Lunger Chicane for the US Grand Prix. Then there's proper outliers like Sakhir and Baku; would any named corner at either of these circuits mean anything to anyone outside the immediate local population?

I think we're stuck with it now.

This wrote:Watching together with family that wasn't broken up yet - sorry, too personal

Not at all. You see that page you're on? That's me further up it.

dinizintheoven wrote:I would suspect it's something to do with where all the new tracks are being built - countries with no motorsport heritage, a dodgy political past (and/or present), or a combination of both. The Valencia disaster might have had some interesting corner names, and I was always in favour of naming Turn 8 at Istanbul "The Scimitar" (it's Turkish, it's curved, and it's deadly), but that's about the full extent of the scope for memorable corner names. Elsewhere, Yeongam might have tried to name its corners Samsung, Daewoo, LG, SsangYong in the corporate style of Bosch Kurve, Coca-Cola Kurve (and many other examples), Sepang might have had a Petronas Curve at the very least, and I'd assume Austin would be more likely to take this route rather than naming its corners after American motorsport heroes of the past; no Hill Corner, Gurney Curve, Andretti Straight or Lunger Chicane for the US Grand Prix. Then there's proper outliers like Sakhir and Baku; would any named corner at either of these circuits mean anything to anyone outside the immediate local population?

I think we're stuck with it now.

Then of course at the Hungaroring we have the Curve Whose Name Should Not Be Mentioned.

But seriously, why isn't one of the turns at the Hungaroring called that?

dinizintheoven wrote:Then of course at the Hungaroring we have the Curve Whose Name Should Not Be Mentioned.

But seriously, why isn't one of the turns at the Hungaroring called that?

Because if that's what it is called, then we couldn't mention the name of it!

Why not call turn 3 Massa?

You can blame Bernie for the corner numbers not names thing..... especially when it came to corners with commercial names, I remember Brundle saying in an interview in F1 racing saying that a memo came round to commentators to use the numbers rather than the commercial names on circuits as the companies involved hadn't paid any money for the rights to the corner name to Bernie who then had sold the AD boards at those corners to other companies....

dinizintheoven wrote:Then there's proper outliers like Sakhir and Baku; would any named corner at either of these circuits mean anything to anyone outside the immediate local population?

I think we're stuck with it now.

As a street circuit Baku corners could be easily named after nearby buildings.

giraurd wrote:

But it must have been between 1997 and 1999 that they decided to no longer continue this tradition in the FIA as the old-new A1-Ring got new corner names in 1997, but since Sepang they have no longer bothered.

Actually, correcting you there. Sepang has had corner names from what I can remember, the twisty double hairpin opening complex being Pangkor Laut chicane, the double-apex on the top of the circuit being KLIA and the turn before the back straight named after local theme park Sunway Lagoon, among others.

Another circuit with it's fair share of turn names is the Marina Bay street circuit, turn 1 being named Sheares, turn 7 memorial, turn 10 Singapore Sling, turn 17 being Piquet...wait no.

Still, you're right about the lack of corner names. We should have a competition to name any turn on any track we like. I vote to name turn 3 at Sochi "Long-bendybend-around-a-stadium-that-never-ends bend"

Playable toy merchansiding.

With Spa, I've always wanted the one after Bruxelles to be Ickx. Seems obvious enough, you've got one unnamed corner and one unused legendary Belgian....

You might think naming it after a reject would be better, but how do we decide between Claes and van de Poele? It'd be like explicitly having a favourite child. So naming it after someone good is better because there's one choice.

UgncreativeUsergname wrote:With Spa, I've always wanted the one after Bruxelles to be Ickx. Seems obvious enough, you've got one unnamed corner and one unused legendary Belgian....

You might think naming it after a reject would be better, but how do we decide between Claes and van de Poele? It'd be like explicitly having a favourite child. So naming it after someone good is better because there's one choice.

Ickx is already a corner at Zolder, maybe that explains. (and so is Bianchi). Spa went for frère on one corner. Van De Poele won Spa 24 a lot of times, so he'd be the most logical pick. (also the third corner in Eau Rouge-Raidillion complex is unnamed yet)

There's also Thierry Boutsen I guess, although his best Spa finish was only fourth.

This Could Be You wrote:There's also Thierry Boutsen I guess, although his best Spa finish was only fourth.

Well he didn't have any special meaning for either circuit. I guess Gendebien as a 4 time Le Mans winner counts more as Belgian legend.
Then again i have no idea what the corners at Mettet are called like.

WaffleCat wrote:Still, you're right about the lack of corner names. We should have a competition to name any turn on any track we like. I vote to name turn 3 at Sochi "Long-bendybend-around-a-stadium-that-never-ends bend"

I prefer to name it after Blya...sorry, Kvyat.

Checked a bit for buildings in Baku:

1 Marine (ship terminal just outside it)
2 Anadolu (restaurant located inside)
3 Bank Respublika (located outside)
4 Sahil (metro station nearby)
7 Paris Bistro (restaurant inside)
8 Boutique Palace (hotel in the Old Town)
11 Qosa Qala (historical building)
15 Filarmoniyasi (Philharmonic concert hall inside)
16 Azneft (Azneft Square in that corner)
19 Kukla (name of the theatre inside)

A lot have already been mentioned - attrition, grass/gravel, variety in equipment, easily identifiable circuits/corners, racing in the rain.

I'd add I used to like the absence of the safety car, e.g. someone with a 30 second lead then they had that lead and it was down to others to catch up or hope they break. Imagine Mansell v. Piquet at Silverstone '87 interrupted by a late SC, or conversely Markus Winkelhock keeping his half minute lead on aggregate when Nurburgring '07 was red flagged (OK he retired soon after in real life, but still...)

And just the general idea that somebody could win by a minute, or have 3 or 4 cars finish on the lead lap, or the field spread could be more than 4 or 5 seconds per lap and not have to worry about the reactionary powers that be decide that this makes it "boring" (as if there is such thing as a boring motor race) and that all the rules need changing. Although there were the early signs of that as early as 1994 in fairness.

Pitstops being optional.

Oh and this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgiBkydMW8k

thinking about this ;

Yes, attrition ; F1 has an endurance element - it is not just a sprint , and there is a test being set for sustained speed and performance and reliability. So some people should logically fail- and at present it seems too easy to meet the test and get to the finish ( even with technically only 3 engines per season). Attrition gave opportunities to the non-big hitters.

Full grids - there's room for 26 on the grid. Some people have never seen an F1 race with a full grid . More cars, more racing, more stories, a bigger cast of heroes ( and villains?) ...More fun

I also miss about 10 minutes of racing per GP - races took a bit longer, which added to the enduro aspect, and there were hardly any safety cars - so there was more racing !