The History of Formula 1

On 28 August 2008, Phil Hill died at the age of 81. The 1961 World Champion remains the only Formula 1 champion born in the United States.

Hill entered Grand Prix racing after first building his reputation in sports cars. He made his Formula 1 debut at Reims in 1958 and soon joined Ferrari’s Formula 1 team. His first Grand Prix victory came at Monza in 1960. A year later, driving the Ferrari 156 “Sharknose”, he won in Belgium and Italy and secured the World Championship.

That title was decided on one of the sport’s darkest days. Hill won at Monza after an accident in which his teammate and title rival Wolfgang von Trips and 14 spectators lost their lives. The result made Hill champion by a single point, but the circumstances left no room for celebration. He later served as a pallbearer at von Trips’s funeral.

Hill’s ability reached far beyond Formula 1. With Olivier Gendebien, he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans for Ferrari in 1958, 1961 and 1962. He also won the 12 Hours of Sebring three times. After racing, his lifelong interest in machinery continued through classic-car restoration.

Thoughtful, technically minded and unusually candid about the risks of his profession, Phil Hill holds a singular place in motor racing history.

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On 15 April 1979, Gilles Villeneuve won the non-championship Race of Champions at Brands Hatch. Originally scheduled for 18 March, the meeting had been postponed after snow at the circuit. It was held to raise money for the Gunnar Nilsson Memorial Fund for cancer research.

Ferrari brought a single car for Villeneuve: the modified 312T3A/033, rather than the newer 312T4 then used in the World Championship. Chassis 033 already had a successful history at Brands Hatch, having carried Carlos Reutemann to victory in the 1978 British Grand Prix. Seven cars from World Championship teams shared the grid with competitors from the Aurora AFX British Formula One Championship.

Villeneuve started third, behind Mario Andretti and Niki Lauda. Lauda led first, before tyre trouble brought him into the pits. Andretti then moved ahead, but Villeneuve closed the gap and passed the Lotus at Paddock Hill Bend at the start of lap 28. After 40 laps, he finished 15 seconds ahead of Nelson Piquet, with Andretti third.

It was Villeneuve’s only victory in a non-championship Formula One race. Following his wins in South Africa and Long Beach, the result completed a sequence of three Formula One victories in succession.

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On 27 August 1967, the Canadian Grand Prix became part of the Formula 1 World Championship for the first time. Mosport Park hosted a 90-lap race on its fast, undulating circuit, with drizzle at the start, a drying track through the middle distance and heavier rain later in the afternoon.

Jim Clark started from pole after recording the 30th of his career, surpassing Juan Manuel Fangio’s previous record of 29. Clark led the opening laps, but Denny Hulme found more grip in the wet and moved ahead on lap four. Bruce McLaren also briefly climbed to second in the new McLaren M5A-BRM before the changing surface began to favour Clark again.

As Mosport dried, Clark closed a gap of more than 20 seconds and reclaimed the lead from Hulme on lap 58. When the rain returned, water shorted the Lotus 49’s ignition. As Hulme pitted for fresh goggles, Clark’s engine cut out and Jack Brabham suddenly found himself in first place.

Brabham, who had started seventh, won by 61.9 seconds from his team-mate. Dan Gurney finished third for Eagle-Weslake, one lap behind, in what proved to be the final Formula 1 podium of his career.

The one-two secured Brabham’s second consecutive International Cup for Formula 1 Manufacturers, the championship now known as the Constructors’ title. It also proved to be the team’s last. Canada’s first World Championship Grand Prix had ended with a driver winning in a car bearing his own name, while Hulme retained the lead in their contest for the Drivers’ Championship.

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Before Bruce McLaren reached Grand Prix racing, his education began with a dismantled 1929 Austin 7 Ulster brought to the McLaren family home in Auckland. Bruce and his father, Les, rebuilt the car with second-hand parts, while the teenager learned how preparation and mechanical changes shaped its behaviour.

Les initially competed in the Austin because Bruce was too young to hold a driving licence. After turning 15 in 1952, Bruce could enter events himself. At the Muriwai hill climb, on a steep gravel road west of Auckland, he set the fastest time in the 750cc class. The Austin then carried him through local hill climbs, sprints and beach races, with father and son continuing to develop it. McLaren’s archive records that their work increased its top speed from 72 to 87 mph.

Bruce used the car for nearly three years, collecting the first trophies of his competitive life before selling it in August 1955. The lessons lasted much longer. The Austin taught him to prepare a racing car, understand its responses and improve it with the resources available. Those same qualities would later define Bruce McLaren as a driver, engineer and constructor.

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On 26 August 1990, Ayrton Senna won the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps. Before converting pole position into victory, however, he had to start the race three times.

The first attempt was abandoned after incidents further down the field. At the second start, Senna again took the lead and began to pull away, but Paolo Barilla’s crash in the Minardi brought out another red flag. The Brazilian returned to the grid once more and, at the third attempt, kept Gerhard Berger and Alain Prost behind him.

Prost passed Berger for second and gradually closed on the leading McLaren. When Senna and Prost stopped for tyres on the same lap, McLaren completed its stop around four seconds faster than Ferrari. Senna rejoined ahead of Alessandro Nannini, who was trying to complete the race without changing tyres, and resisted two challenges while bringing his fresh tyres up to temperature.

After 44 official laps, Senna crossed the line 3.550 seconds ahead of Prost, with Berger third. It was his fifth victory of the season, his fourth Belgian Grand Prix win and the 25th victory of his Formula 1 career. Having started three times from pole position, he led every official lap and increased his championship advantage over Prost from ten points to thirteen.

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Thirty-five years ago today, on 25 August 1991, 22-year-old Michael Schumacher made his Formula 1 debut in the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps. Driving the number 32 Jordan 191-Ford, he replaced Bertrand Gachot. Jordan itself was contesting its first Formula 1 season.

Schumacher arrived from Mercedes’ sports car programme. He had won the 1990 German Formula Three Championship and the Macau Grand Prix, but his experience of Formula 1 machinery amounted to a short test on Silverstone’s South Circuit only days before Spa. He completed around 20 laps in the Jordan.

He had never raced at Spa-Francorchamps. Schumacher studied the 6.94-kilometre circuit on a folding bicycle, then began learning it at speed. His lap of 1:51.212 was the eighth-fastest time set during qualifying. When Riccardo Patrese lost his Saturday times because his Williams lacked a functioning reverse gear, Schumacher moved to seventh on the starting grid. He was four places and 0.774 seconds ahead of his experienced team-mate, Andrea de Cesaris.

The race offered almost no chance to build on that performance. After only a few hundred metres, the Jordan’s clutch failed and Schumacher stopped before completing the opening lap. The result sheet recorded no finish, but the weekend had already changed how Formula 1 saw the young German.

By the next Grand Prix at Monza, Schumacher was driving for Benetton and finished fifth. Twelve months later, he returned to Spa and claimed the first of his 91 Formula 1 victories. His debut race had lasted only moments; the impression left across that weekend marked the beginning of a career that would reshape the sport.

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Twenty-five years ago today, on 25 August 2001, Ken Tyrrell died at his home in Surrey, aged 77. He had spent more than three decades shaping one of Formula 1’s most distinctive independent teams.

Tyrrell’s path into motor racing began with a visit to Silverstone in 1951. After competing in the lower formulae, he recognised that his greater strength lay in running cars and developing drivers. In 1963, he offered Jackie Stewart a test in one of his Formula 3 Coopers. Stewart won the British Formula 3 title with Tyrrell in 1964. Stewart later said that no one had played a more important part in his professional life.

Tyrrell’s team entered Formula 1 in 1968 as Matra International, using Matra chassis and the Cosworth DFV. Stewart secured his first World Championship in 1969. When Matra wanted its own V12 engine used for 1970, Tyrrell chose to retain Cosworth power. While temporarily campaigning March chassis, he commissioned Derek Gardner to create the team’s first car. Built in secrecy at the team’s base in an Ockham timber yard, the Tyrrell 001 appeared in 1970. The resulting family of Tyrrell cars delivered both championships in 1971. A third Drivers’ Championship for Stewart followed in 1973.

Over the following decades, Tyrrell gave opportunities to drivers including François Cevert, Jody Scheckter, Michele Alboreto, Martin Brundle, Stefan Bellof and Jean Alesi. The team’s willingness to think differently also produced the six-wheeled P34, one of Formula 1’s most recognisable designs.

Twenty-five years after his death, Ken Tyrrell is remembered for his judgement, integrity and the trust he placed in people. From a timber yard in Surrey, he built an organisation that reached the summit of Formula 1.

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On 24 August 1997, Luigi “Gigi” Villoresi died in Modena at the age of 88. His career connected pre-war Grand Prix racing with the opening years of the Formula 1 World Championship.

Villoresi began competing in 1931 and built his reputation with Maserati. After the Second World War, he was crowned Italian champion in 1947 and 1948. At Silverstone in 1948, he led Alberto Ascari home in a Maserati one-two in the RAC International Grand Prix, the first Grand Prix held at the former airfield.

His relationship with Ascari became one of the defining bonds of the era. The two men ran a transport business together during the war, and Villoresi later persuaded Ascari to continue racing. When Enzo Ferrari recruited Villoresi in 1949, Ascari followed. They remained Ferrari team-mates through 1953, the period in which Ascari won two World Championships, before both joined Lancia.

The World Championship began when Villoresi was already 40, so its statistics record only the later part of his career. By then he had accumulated major victories across Europe, and in 1951 he added the Mille Miglia for Ferrari.

Villoresi was one of the central Italian drivers of motor racing’s transition from the pre-war years into the Formula 1 era. His own victories, his service to three great Italian marques and the support he gave Ascari all belong to that legacy.

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On this day in 1987, Didier Pironi lost his life during the Needles Trophy offshore powerboat race near the Isle of Wight. His crewmates, television journalist Bernard Giroux and former Ligier Formula 1 engineer Jean-Claude Guénard, also lost their lives when their boat, Colibri, overturned after encountering the wake of a tanker.

Pironi had reached Formula 1 through France’s Elf development programme. He made his World Championship debut with Tyrrell in 1978, the same year in which he and Jean-Pierre Jaussaud won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the Renault-Alpine A442B. After two seasons with Tyrrell, he joined Ligier and claimed his first Grand Prix victory at Zolder in 1980. Ferrari signed him for 1981.

By the summer of 1982, Pironi was leading the World Championship. During wet practice for the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim, his Ferrari struck Alain Prost’s Renault and was launched into the air. Pironi suffered severe injuries to both legs and underwent more than 30 operations. He did not start another Grand Prix, yet his 39 points were enough for second place in the championship, five behind Keke Rosberg.

After a long recovery, Pironi tested Formula 1 cars again in 1986. A Grand Prix return did not follow, and he turned his competitive focus to offshore powerboat racing.

Pironi was 35 years old. Today, The History of Formula 1 remembers Didier Pironi, Bernard Giroux and Jean-Claude Guénard.

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