Then you would love Frankenheimers movie Grand Prix with James Garner and Yves Montand.
Community Question | Your Favourite Decade Of Formula One?
- Thread starter Paul Jeffrey
- Start date
For me it has to be the 70's - it's when my father introduced me to motorsports in general, and at 8 years old the excitement of the battle between James Hunt and Niki Lauda sits in my mind to this day (and yes, Rush has become one my favourite motorsports films, second only to Le Mans).
I guess as a child the magic happens with your first real appreciation of the thing that you end up becoming a life long fan of, and for me that was in '76. It may be that this year in F1 has become something of a cliché, but I was there experiencing as it happened at an age where I understood it for the first time.
So for me the 70's are the golden years of F1 - platinum even.
I guess as a child the magic happens with your first real appreciation of the thing that you end up becoming a life long fan of, and for me that was in '76. It may be that this year in F1 has become something of a cliché, but I was there experiencing as it happened at an age where I understood it for the first time.
So for me the 70's are the golden years of F1 - platinum even.
I was born in the mid 80s and started watching some F1 around 98 I think. I have some fun early memories of Schumacher, Hakinnen, Villeneuve, rookie Raikonnen, Alonso, etc. And only recently have I started watching nearly every race
But my favorite decade is still the 60s. Something about the style, the loose driving on bias plys, the circuit designs and more. But also I would love to be an engineer in that period or earlier, with less narrow specialization, less pre-existing knowledge and more intuition and experimentation. For similar reasons it is also my favorite period for sports cars racing
But my favorite decade is still the 60s. Something about the style, the loose driving on bias plys, the circuit designs and more. But also I would love to be an engineer in that period or earlier, with less narrow specialization, less pre-existing knowledge and more intuition and experimentation. For similar reasons it is also my favorite period for sports cars racing
Hard choice.
Grew up watching F1 during the late 80s and 90s, and I also like the 70s, but I voted for the 60s. Just love the relative simplicity and mechanical rawness of the cars in that era and earlier. Technical regulations allowed a lot more freedom. Basically, as long as the engine didn't exceed a specified displacement and your car met a minimum weight, you could build just about whatever you wanted.
And many teams did. You had tube frames and monocoques, V8's (including cross and flat-planes, as well as 2 and 4 valves per cylinder), flat-12s and V12's (including a transverse-mounted V-12 from Honda), Goodyears, Dunlops, and Firestones, all on the grid at the same time. Two teams built the whole of the car, including the engine and gearbox, in their own shop - BRM and Ferrari. You had drivers winning races and even championships driving cars they built, namely Dan Gurney and Jack Brabham.
I'm much more interested in the cars than the drivers. I often don't care which driver wins, but I usually root for a favorite car. Today it seems rather pointless to take that view because F1 cars are so much alike now. Except for detail differences they are all nearly identical. The technology is interesting but it's hard to care about F1 cars today, there's just no point since they're all technically the same.
Grew up watching F1 during the late 80s and 90s, and I also like the 70s, but I voted for the 60s. Just love the relative simplicity and mechanical rawness of the cars in that era and earlier. Technical regulations allowed a lot more freedom. Basically, as long as the engine didn't exceed a specified displacement and your car met a minimum weight, you could build just about whatever you wanted.
And many teams did. You had tube frames and monocoques, V8's (including cross and flat-planes, as well as 2 and 4 valves per cylinder), flat-12s and V12's (including a transverse-mounted V-12 from Honda), Goodyears, Dunlops, and Firestones, all on the grid at the same time. Two teams built the whole of the car, including the engine and gearbox, in their own shop - BRM and Ferrari. You had drivers winning races and even championships driving cars they built, namely Dan Gurney and Jack Brabham.
I'm much more interested in the cars than the drivers. I often don't care which driver wins, but I usually root for a favorite car. Today it seems rather pointless to take that view because F1 cars are so much alike now. Except for detail differences they are all nearly identical. The technology is interesting but it's hard to care about F1 cars today, there's just no point since they're all technically the same.
You mean '94, right ?
Pauli Ahonen
Volante Racing
Current era. Watching Hamilton. Can he stay on top after new regulations? Can he and the team adapt quickly enough?
I was born in '87, and the 60s is definitely my favourite era. I don't see any reason you can't vote for it!
Its hard to chose only one decade of F1. For me it would be the 80s and the 90s because of the awesome drivers of that era, the cars (MP4-4, Ferrari 641), the technological advances made at that time and of course the Senna Prost rivalry, that for me was the best in F1.
But the 60s for me are just as incredible, especially with the cars and tracks (Old Monza and SPA are amazing) from that time.
But the 60s for me are just as incredible, especially with the cars and tracks (Old Monza and SPA are amazing) from that time.
Time, location and exposure are critical to this decision . . . (AND your time in reading all of this drawn out treatise!)
As a the oldest kid growing up in a family of boys in Nebraska & Iowa during the 1970s, I was always aware of the Indy 500 because the Des Moines Register Sunday edition would always publish a color grid guide in the Sports section. Racing coverage on TV was often tape delayed on weekend programs like ABC's Wide World of Sports. I keenly remember watching the multi-hued, identically prepped Camaros of the International Race of Champions during the latter part of the 1970s.
It must have been when I was old enough to move from a crib to my own bed that my grandma made me a bedspread from fabric printed with track names like Monaco, Monza and Sebring and featuring the cigar-shaped open wheelers of the 1960s. (I still have it!) Classic Hot Wheels Redlines came out in 1968--the year I was born (I remember a couple of open road racing cars) and I also had a neat if cheap plastic Can Am push car.
I later discovered Matchbox cars and had a yellow SuperKings race hauler with a winged open wheel racer (I bought another out of nostalgia). I later got a futuristic auto hauler with a load of five cars that included a yellow M-B SEL roadster, orange BMW coupe, white and light blue Pantera, a red and white Dodge Challenger, and a bright blue Pontiax Firebird. I wore through the knees of several pairs of pyjamas pushing those cars around the house, reenacting countless Smokey and the Bandit scenarios. Luckily, grandma also made PJs!
Then in the early 1980s, my grandma (the same one that made my quilt) told me that our cousin Joe Ruttman might be racing on TV--we would fitfully scan for him in NASCAR Busch Grand National and Winston Cup competition. Later our family got cable television and ESPN covered a variety of motorsports. The Nashville Network broadcast everything from NHRA drag races to swamp buggie races produced by Diamond P Sports with legendary broadcaster Steve Evans and others.
My mom was the youngest of six, so most my cousins were much older than me. Growing up, some of them had Thunderjet slot car tracks and built some amazing short track models. When they were old enough, they bracket raced a couple of Novas while others had '55-57 Chevy street rods and a few even flipped musclecars like 427 CID 425hp Biscaynes for profit.
Musclecars were few and far between in Des Moines. I do remember a gaudy yellow and red back-halved '68 Charger that was parked on the curb in front of our house for several days. I wanted my dad to take it to his warehouse and hide it for me because it appeared it had been abandoned.
Smokey and the Bandit instilled in me a great passion for 2nd generation General Motors F-bodies, the 1970.5-1981 Camaro and Firebird. Our lady neighbor had a pristine dark blue base '75 Camaro, and my mom even test drove a silver 1976 Trans Am that belonged to one of my dad's salesmen.
Everything changed when one of my friends bought a Palladium Silver 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge Ram Air III 3-speed manual from Duffy's in Cedar Rapids. A former drag car with only 1500 miles on it, the owner allegedly swapped in a Ram Air IV for competition. (My friend immediately disassembled it for restoration but never told me when he sold it in pieces for pennies!)
The Judge had what looked like a hand brushed a coat of blue Dutch Boy paint, but the die was cast: I became a GTO fanatic (my first car was a 1971 400, auto, a/c painted Porsche Guards Red. As if the "arrest me red" hue wasn't enough, the seller had thoughtfully equipped it with glass pack mufflers!) and, eventually, a lover of all American musclecars. Another friend had a Mayfair Maize 1968 Firebird 350 when some of our friends and classmates were getting new 1985 Mustang GTs (the last carbureted 5.0s), Trans Ams, and Honda Preludes and Toyota Celicas.
Moving to the Kansas City area in 1984 expanded my automotive horizons. I joined the Heart of America Pontiac Club and, as newsletter editor, printed the monthly publication "Poncho Tracks" on a dot matrix printer. I even created a new masthead using a combination of our IBM PC Jr. (what a piece of over hyped junk that was!) and a 1/25-scale Goodyear Eagle GT Gatorback tire rolled in some ink ( you had to be there but it looked decent at the time.)
My uncle Paul was a Chevy enthusiast with an all original 1956 Chevy DelRay four door sedan, a 17k mile survivor '63 Impala 327/powerglide combo, and a '72 Malibu 4-door he bought new for his family, and several resto projects. Every April he drove down to KC from Omaha to take my brothers and me to the Vintage Chevrolet Club of America swap meet which was held in the Hallmark Cards employee parking garage. Our ritual was an early all you can eat breakfast at Shoney's (mmm, bacon and biscuits 'n gravy) before heading into the dank and dark parking structure on a quest for automotive treasure. It was always damp and cold, but I always returned home with 15-20 moldy-smelling '60s vintage Hot Rod, Car Craft, Super Stock, Popular Hot Rodding, and Hi-Performance Cars magazines.
I bought a set of four 15-in. x 7-in. Pontiac Rally II five-spoke rims for my GTO for $60 and four nice used trim rings for $20. (I still have a mismatched set of the original 14-in. rims from my car and two of the 15-inchers that were possibly from a full-size Poncho, Grand Prix or Firebird. I wish I had the car to go with them.) I can still feel the cold metal biting into my hands as a carried the heavy--but best looking stamped steel rims ever--down the parking ramp.
I also wish I had $4000 then to spend on a dazzling 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner 383 convertible on offer one year at the VCCA meet. Painted silver, it looked "right" and I remember being fascinated by the the vinyl-like texture of the convertible top. Later I saw what had to be the same car (there were approx. 900 ragtops built in '70) looking like every panel had been intentionally dented. I still wonder what color it was originally, as silver was not offered that year.
Kansas City International Raceway was a 1/4-mile dragstrip only a few miles from my house. I saw "Big Daddy" Don Garlits run 270+mph in his Swamp Rat XXX top fueler and was instantly hooked on the electricity and ground-shaking power of nitro-methane. I witnessed the first 4-second and 300mph funny car passes at nearby Heartland Park Topeka and was later a freelance motorsports photojournalist beginning in just after high school. The Heartland Park track surface had so much grip in those early years that it became almost routine to see records fall.
About that time NASCAR was really growing and a friend and I decided we wanted to see a Winston Cup race in person. I picked Talledega--the biggest and fastest superspeedway on the circuit. On the way there, we stopped to take a photo of the exterior of Elvis Aaron Pressley's childhood home in Tupelo, MS, and detoured through Ft. Payne, AL--the home of country music super group Alabama--to tour their museum. We also stopped at every Exxon station we saw to get some of the early Racing Champions 1/64-scale diecast cars which were promotional itens for the movie Days of Thunder.
To be continued . . .
(Trust me--I am getting to a point!)
As a the oldest kid growing up in a family of boys in Nebraska & Iowa during the 1970s, I was always aware of the Indy 500 because the Des Moines Register Sunday edition would always publish a color grid guide in the Sports section. Racing coverage on TV was often tape delayed on weekend programs like ABC's Wide World of Sports. I keenly remember watching the multi-hued, identically prepped Camaros of the International Race of Champions during the latter part of the 1970s.
It must have been when I was old enough to move from a crib to my own bed that my grandma made me a bedspread from fabric printed with track names like Monaco, Monza and Sebring and featuring the cigar-shaped open wheelers of the 1960s. (I still have it!) Classic Hot Wheels Redlines came out in 1968--the year I was born (I remember a couple of open road racing cars) and I also had a neat if cheap plastic Can Am push car.
I later discovered Matchbox cars and had a yellow SuperKings race hauler with a winged open wheel racer (I bought another out of nostalgia). I later got a futuristic auto hauler with a load of five cars that included a yellow M-B SEL roadster, orange BMW coupe, white and light blue Pantera, a red and white Dodge Challenger, and a bright blue Pontiax Firebird. I wore through the knees of several pairs of pyjamas pushing those cars around the house, reenacting countless Smokey and the Bandit scenarios. Luckily, grandma also made PJs!
Then in the early 1980s, my grandma (the same one that made my quilt) told me that our cousin Joe Ruttman might be racing on TV--we would fitfully scan for him in NASCAR Busch Grand National and Winston Cup competition. Later our family got cable television and ESPN covered a variety of motorsports. The Nashville Network broadcast everything from NHRA drag races to swamp buggie races produced by Diamond P Sports with legendary broadcaster Steve Evans and others.
My mom was the youngest of six, so most my cousins were much older than me. Growing up, some of them had Thunderjet slot car tracks and built some amazing short track models. When they were old enough, they bracket raced a couple of Novas while others had '55-57 Chevy street rods and a few even flipped musclecars like 427 CID 425hp Biscaynes for profit.
Musclecars were few and far between in Des Moines. I do remember a gaudy yellow and red back-halved '68 Charger that was parked on the curb in front of our house for several days. I wanted my dad to take it to his warehouse and hide it for me because it appeared it had been abandoned.
Smokey and the Bandit instilled in me a great passion for 2nd generation General Motors F-bodies, the 1970.5-1981 Camaro and Firebird. Our lady neighbor had a pristine dark blue base '75 Camaro, and my mom even test drove a silver 1976 Trans Am that belonged to one of my dad's salesmen.
Everything changed when one of my friends bought a Palladium Silver 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge Ram Air III 3-speed manual from Duffy's in Cedar Rapids. A former drag car with only 1500 miles on it, the owner allegedly swapped in a Ram Air IV for competition. (My friend immediately disassembled it for restoration but never told me when he sold it in pieces for pennies!)
The Judge had what looked like a hand brushed a coat of blue Dutch Boy paint, but the die was cast: I became a GTO fanatic (my first car was a 1971 400, auto, a/c painted Porsche Guards Red. As if the "arrest me red" hue wasn't enough, the seller had thoughtfully equipped it with glass pack mufflers!) and, eventually, a lover of all American musclecars. Another friend had a Mayfair Maize 1968 Firebird 350 when some of our friends and classmates were getting new 1985 Mustang GTs (the last carbureted 5.0s), Trans Ams, and Honda Preludes and Toyota Celicas.
Moving to the Kansas City area in 1984 expanded my automotive horizons. I joined the Heart of America Pontiac Club and, as newsletter editor, printed the monthly publication "Poncho Tracks" on a dot matrix printer. I even created a new masthead using a combination of our IBM PC Jr. (what a piece of over hyped junk that was!) and a 1/25-scale Goodyear Eagle GT Gatorback tire rolled in some ink ( you had to be there but it looked decent at the time.)
My uncle Paul was a Chevy enthusiast with an all original 1956 Chevy DelRay four door sedan, a 17k mile survivor '63 Impala 327/powerglide combo, and a '72 Malibu 4-door he bought new for his family, and several resto projects. Every April he drove down to KC from Omaha to take my brothers and me to the Vintage Chevrolet Club of America swap meet which was held in the Hallmark Cards employee parking garage. Our ritual was an early all you can eat breakfast at Shoney's (mmm, bacon and biscuits 'n gravy) before heading into the dank and dark parking structure on a quest for automotive treasure. It was always damp and cold, but I always returned home with 15-20 moldy-smelling '60s vintage Hot Rod, Car Craft, Super Stock, Popular Hot Rodding, and Hi-Performance Cars magazines.
I bought a set of four 15-in. x 7-in. Pontiac Rally II five-spoke rims for my GTO for $60 and four nice used trim rings for $20. (I still have a mismatched set of the original 14-in. rims from my car and two of the 15-inchers that were possibly from a full-size Poncho, Grand Prix or Firebird. I wish I had the car to go with them.) I can still feel the cold metal biting into my hands as a carried the heavy--but best looking stamped steel rims ever--down the parking ramp.
I also wish I had $4000 then to spend on a dazzling 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner 383 convertible on offer one year at the VCCA meet. Painted silver, it looked "right" and I remember being fascinated by the the vinyl-like texture of the convertible top. Later I saw what had to be the same car (there were approx. 900 ragtops built in '70) looking like every panel had been intentionally dented. I still wonder what color it was originally, as silver was not offered that year.
Kansas City International Raceway was a 1/4-mile dragstrip only a few miles from my house. I saw "Big Daddy" Don Garlits run 270+mph in his Swamp Rat XXX top fueler and was instantly hooked on the electricity and ground-shaking power of nitro-methane. I witnessed the first 4-second and 300mph funny car passes at nearby Heartland Park Topeka and was later a freelance motorsports photojournalist beginning in just after high school. The Heartland Park track surface had so much grip in those early years that it became almost routine to see records fall.
About that time NASCAR was really growing and a friend and I decided we wanted to see a Winston Cup race in person. I picked Talledega--the biggest and fastest superspeedway on the circuit. On the way there, we stopped to take a photo of the exterior of Elvis Aaron Pressley's childhood home in Tupelo, MS, and detoured through Ft. Payne, AL--the home of country music super group Alabama--to tour their museum. We also stopped at every Exxon station we saw to get some of the early Racing Champions 1/64-scale diecast cars which were promotional itens for the movie Days of Thunder.
To be continued . . .
(Trust me--I am getting to a point!)
Last edited:
One of my all time favorite tracks and ran countless hundreds of laps in rF1 to perfect a new AI fast line and corridors to limit their wall contacts!It was the early 90s that got me hooked forever. I'll never forget the onboard sound from the Ferrari 641 and bobbing head of Jean Alesi
For me it's the 50's for sure. I vividly remember going to Aintree in 1957 for the British Grand Prix that year. My first live race, the smell, wheel twirling drivers, faces covered in oil and brake dust are all permanently embedded in my mind. You were close to the action, could see the drivers working unlike today with a procession passing you ever lap about half a mile away across the gravel with about three inches of the drivers helmet poking out the top. Happy days indeed
First : 80S for the early Senna era (and the prost/Senna duel). Piquet/mansel, the Turbo beast and the beautiful 88/89 cars. Qualifying tyres and refueling
2nd : 60s for the beautiful tiny cars and the magic Jim Clarck
3rd : 70s for the inovation (wing car, flap, the Brabham's, turbine cars ....)
4th : 90s for the beautiful cars and the Ferrari revival
5th : 50s for the monster "cars" to drive
6th : 2000s for some good duels
7th : 2010 and the horrible turbo area. Slow cars close to endurance (have to take care of consumption and tyres). Halo and the cars design in general
2nd : 60s for the beautiful tiny cars and the magic Jim Clarck
3rd : 70s for the inovation (wing car, flap, the Brabham's, turbine cars ....)
4th : 90s for the beautiful cars and the Ferrari revival
5th : 50s for the monster "cars" to drive
6th : 2000s for some good duels
7th : 2010 and the horrible turbo area. Slow cars close to endurance (have to take care of consumption and tyres). Halo
and the cars design in general
Prost.
The rivalry never ends
More seriously, I think the best era has something to do with the rivalry you watch on tv as a child. For many years there haven't been huge rivals on the track (just dominant cars and drivers), battling through races and seasons. Battle is the word which comes innmy mind when I think about F1. As a kid, this is a show you'll remember all of your life.
I lost interest in the late 2000s because I could not get the feeling of a battle. It's sad kids from this era haven't witnessed the same intense battles thei parents have watched.
And the DRS introduction killed everything for me, F1's push to pass era, what a shame for this noble sport. I hope one day F1 will be F1 again, especially with the current young drivers, there is a lot of talent there, and we could witness great battles between them in the next few years if something is done for the cars. Such talents using push to pass technology (what an advanced technology, lowering the wing angle, F1 is the pinnacle of technology...) is a total waste. I'm not sure any F1 era had so much comparable talents at the same time in a championship. The 2020's could be one of the best era, an amazing show for the kids born in the 2010's. But for that, we need new cars ; not mentioning their design and their sound, which are part of the dream. Which kid will remember the sound of the current f1?
And i haven't mentionned the drivers' style, but Vettel seems to be the only grown up man on the track among kids. Formula 1 used to be driven by adults.
Well, design, sound, kids are not that important if they drive, race and battle each other. Let's give them the right cars for that, and without DRS.
This, so much
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