Alternate F1 World Champions.....Round 2

OOC: Chipperback had a great thread like this, but it went dead several months ago, and I decided I couldn't keep this idea that way. Let's make this rock again, race fans!

1950 – Juan Manuel Fangio (Argentina) Alfa Romeo 158
1951 – Jose Frolian Gonzalez (Argentina) Alfa Romeo 159
1952 – Alberto Ascari (Italy) Ferrari 375 F1
1953 – Alberto Ascari (Italy) Ferrari 375 F1
1954 – Juan Manuel Fangio (Argentina) Mercedes-Benz W196
1955 – Alberto Ascari (Italy) Ferrari 625 / Ferrari D50 (1)
1956 – Juan Manuel Fangio (Argentina) Mercedes W198
1957 – Juan Manuel Fangio (Argentina) Mercedes W199
1958 – Alberto Ascari (Italy) Ferrari 246
1959 – Sterling Moss (Great Britain) Walker Cooper T51 - Climax (2)
1960 – Jack Brabham (Australia) Walker Cooper T51A - Climax
1961 – Phil Hill (United States) Ferrari 156 (3)
1962 – Dan Gurney (United States) Ferrari (3)
1963 – Jim Clark (Great Britain) Lotus 25 - Climax
1964 – Dan Gurney (United States) Ferrari 1512
1965 – Jim Clark (Great Britain) Lotus 33 - Climax
1966 – Jim Clark (Great Britain) Lotus 43 - Ford
1967 – Dan Gurney (United States) AAR Eagle T2A - Shelby-Weslake (4)
1968 – Graham Hill (Great Britain) Lotus 49 - Ford-Cosworth
1969 – Jochen Rindt (Austria) Lotus 49B - Ford-Cosworth
1970 – Jacky Ickx (Belgium) Ferrari 312B
1971 – Jackie Stewart (Great Britain) Tyrrell 003 - Ford-Cosworth
1972 – Jackie Stewart (Great Britain) Tyrrell 003B - Ford-Cosworth
1973 – Francois Cevert (France) Tyrrell 005 - Ford-Cosworth
1974 – Emerson Fittipaldi (Brazil) McLaren M23 - Ford-Cosworth
1975 – Niki Lauda (Austria) Ferrari 312T
1976 – James Hunt (Great Britain) Hesketh 311A - Triumph (5)
1977 – A.J. Foyt (United States) Lotus 78A - Ford-Cosworth (6)
1978 – Mario Andretti (United States) Lotus 79 - Ford Cosworth
1979 – Lella Lombardi (Italy) Wolf-Reynard F1/79 - Zakspeed-Mercedes (7)

1980
FISA – Jean-Pierre Jabouille (France) Renault RE20
FOCA – Emerson Fittipaldi (Brazil) Brabham BT49 - Ford-Cosworth (8)

1981
FISA – Francois Cevert (France) Renault RE30A
FOCA – Rick Mears (United States) Williams FW08A - Judd-Chevrolet (9)

1982
FISA – Gilles Villeneuve (Canada) Ferrari 126C2
FOCA – Tiff Needell (Great Britain) Tyrrell Project Four F12 - Ford-Cosworth (10)

1983 – Gilles Villeneuve (Canada) Ferrari 126C3 (11)
1984 – Nelson Piquet (Brazil) Brabham BT53A - BMW
1985 – Keke Rosberg (Finland) Tyrrell Project Four F15 - Honda (12)
1986 – Niki Lauda (Austria) Brabham BT55 - TAG-Porsche
1987 – Aryton Senna (Brazil) Lotus 100 - Judd-Chevrolet
1988 – Alain Prost (France) Brabham BT58 - TAG-Porsche (13)
1989 – Nigel Mansell (Great Britain) Williams FW13 - Renault
1990 – Stefan Bellof (Germany) Ferrari 641 (14)
1991 – Ayrton Senna (Brazil) Brabham BT64 - Honda (15)
1992 – Nigel Mansell (Great Britain) Williams FW14B - Renault
1993 – Uyko Katayama (Japan) Williams FW15C - Honda (16)
1994 – Ayrton Senna (Brazil) Williams FW16 - Honda
1995 – Michael Schumacher (Germany) Jordan 195A - Mercedes
1996 – Michael Schumacher (Germany) Jordan 196 - Mercedes
1997 – Jeff Gordon (United States) Stewart/Tyrrell F27 - Ford-Cosworth (17)
1998 – Johnny Herbert (Great Britain) Jordan 198 - Mercedes (18)
1999 – Mika Hakkinen (Finland) McLaren MP4/14 - Chrysler (19)
2000 – Michael Schumacher (Germany) Jordan EJ10 - Mercedes
2001 – Alex Zanardi (Italy) Ferrari F2001 (20)
2002 – Jeff Gordon (United States) Stewart/Tyrrell F32 - Ford-Cosworth
2003 – Alex Zanardi (Italy) Ferrari F2003
2004 – Juan Pablo Montoya (Colombia) Prodrive T25 - Proton (21)
2005 – Alex Zanardi (Italy) Ferrari F2005
2006 – Fernando Alonso (Spain) Prost EuroFrance AP10 - Renault (22)
2007 – Fernando Alonso (Spain) Prost EuroFrance AP11 - Renault
2008 – Jenson Button (Great Britain) Jordan F1/08 - Mercedes (23)
2009 – Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain) Stewart/Tyrrell F39 - Ford-Cosworth (24)
2010 – Mark Webber (Australia) Brabham BT80 - Chevrolet (25)
2011 – Sebastian Vettel (Germany) Jordan F1/11 - Mercedes
2012 - Tomas Schekter (South Africa) Prodrive T33 - Toyota
2013 - Sebastian Vettel (Germany) Jordan F1/13 - Mercedes
2014 - It begins in Mumbai

(1) Alberto Ascari never dies in an accident, but instead goes on to be Enzo Ferrari's "Consigliere", retiring from racing at the age of 54 in 1972 after Ferrari's domination of the 1972 World Sportscar Champion, continuing to be a test driver and team manager for Ferrari, as well as an RAI comentator, until retiring at age 80 in 1998.

(2) Sterling Moss' recovers fully from his horrible accident at Goodwood and goes on to a long F1 career, retiring from F1 at the end of 1971. Moss spent most of his F1 career with Cooper and Lotus, but his retirement from racing only lasted until he returned to win Le Mans in 1975 and race in indycars, touring cars, sports cars and even rallying - and was successful at all of the above. Moss holds the record for the oldest-ever rookie of the year in the Indy 500, winning that finishing third in the 1981 Indy 500 at age 52, and he still to this day is a formidable competitor in vintage racing.

(3) Enzo Ferrari took on both Gurney and Hill at the same time and won with both, though his volcanic personality eventually drove both off - something that Ferrari would later in life say he regretted.

(4) Dan Gurney would begin his career as a racer in California, but winning the F1 world title in his own car in 1967 was just the beginning of the All-American Racers legend. Retiring as a driver in 1973, he entered the business world as a team owner, engineer and businessman. His famous acquisition of the failing British Leyland in 1982 and its subsequent major revival of fortunes in the 1980s and 1990s drove Gurney into a major name in American racing. A billionaire by the 1990s, Gurney to this day has a fanatical love of cars and racing, and interests all over the place.

(5) Niki Lauda's horrific accident at the Nurburgring and his subsequent recovery to fight his title challenge to the final race of 1976, and James Hunt's awesome charge to answer Lauda, is said by F1 fans to be one of the greatest championship battles of all time. Hunt's near-suicidal charge to second in the 1976 Japanese Grand Prix, often called one of the greatest drives of all time, sealed the title for him, Lord Hesketh and British Leyland. Lauda says he had no regrets for losing that title, a position he has held to this day.

(6) Colin Chapman's Anglo-American "Dream Team" forced two bitter Indycar rivals to become allies, but the Lotus team was dominant in 1977 and 1978 and left A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti with a world title apiece and a life-long friendship with each other and with Chapman. Foyt and Andretti were instrumental in getting General Motors to buy Lotus after Chapman's death in 1985. Foyt would race Lotus Indycars for the remainder of his Indycar career after Formula One, hanging it up after finishing third in 1995. Andretti returned to Indycars in 1982, winning the Indycar title in 1984 and after multiple rounds of horrific luck (giving rise to the "Andretti Curse"), he claimed the Indy 500 for the second time in 1996. Andretti raced sports cars until 2000, returning for a comeback tour in 2002 and 2003 before retiring for good.

(7) This was the king of all combinations that should NOT have worked - a fledgling Canada-based team with a car designed by a brilliant Formula Ford designer and businessman, with a German-designed turbocharged V8 engine, Japanese tires and drivers in James Hunt and Lella Lombardi - but it did work in incredible fashion. Once the Zakspeed-Mercedes was made reliable, Hunt and Lombardi were able to dispense with the competition. Hunt, however, screwed his chances with a nasty crash at Zolder, leaving Lombardi to grab the bull by the horns. Four race wins (Silverstone, Hockenheim, Zandvoort and Montreal) and incredible battles later, Lombardi walked away with the first world title for Mercedes since 1957 and the first for Wolf, Reynard, Zakspeed and Bridgestone.

Lombardi would go on to race in Formula One until 1985, and be a strident voice for women in society, not just racing. Several other women followed her into the list of Formula One winners since then - Divina Galica, Michele Mouton (who won six races as teammate at Brabham to Lauda, Prost and Piquet in the 1980s), Victoria Butler-Henderson (a truly incredible comeback win at a wet Silverstone in a McLaren in 1995 made her a legend in her own right) and several others as women in racing came to be far more common in the 1990s and 2000s. Lombardi would go on to be a member of the Italian Parliament in the 1990s, including several stints in Italy's cabinet in the early 2000s. A survivor of two bouts with breast cancer, Lombardi is also one of the world's biggest advocates for such awareness.

(8) The FISA-FOCA split got way out of hand, result in two world championships in 1980, 1981 and 1982, with the manufacturers and several big events on one side, and the teams and their commercial muscle on the other side.

(9) General Motors was the first manufacturer to support the FOCA series as financial problems were becoming obvious, and one big result of this was a World Championship for Indycar legend Rick Mears. GM's support of FOCA earned them huge kudos with them, which GM would mine extensively in the 1980s.

(10) The last year of the split series, with negotiations on both sides being moved around by an influx of good events and new races into the FOCA series, while the FISA series stayed strong through the whole situation. The split was ended over the winter of 1982-83 by negotiations headed by Dan Gurney and Jim Clark, both successful team owners and racers, who negotiated out the differences, backed up heavily by some interests on both sides. Ferrari was a vocal opponent of it, but their vocal dislike of it was tempered quite heavily when they won the 1983 World Championship....

(11) Gilles Villeneuve was Ferrari's golden boy, one of the men from the new world who so changed Ferrari in the 1980s. Villeneuve raced for Ferrari in Formula One until making way for the arriving Alain Prost in 1989, but give up racing Gilles didn't. Ferrari's 1990s Indycar efforts were almost entirely run by him and friend and business partner Bobby Rahal, and Gilles also spearheaded Ferrari's Le Mans efforts with the 333SP and 351SP in the 1990s and 2000s. Today he lives in Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, Canada, but can still be seen driving the hell out of Ferraris on the racetrack in the picturesque resort town....

(12) It's long been a held preconception in rallying that "If you want to win, hire a Finn." Keke Rosberg proved that true in F1 in 1985, winning the title in a tough season where him and rivals Nelson Piquet, Niki Lauda and Nigel Mansell trading the points lead six times over the course of the season. Keke was also notable for being a gentleman multiple times for female racers Lella Lombardi, Michele Mouton, Desire Wilson and Divina Galica, up to and including an infamous 1986 incident where he took a swing at Iranian driver Hossein Mousaravi when he quite happily told a BBC TV reporter that "Misses Mouton and Galica have no business on a racing circuit, their place is being good mothers to their children, good wives to their husbands and giving good head." Rosberg heard that comment, tore into Mousaravi on the TV camera, and when Mousaravi shook a finger in Rosberg's face, Keke slugged him. Rosberg retired from F1 in 1987, but was one of the world's best sports car racers in the 1990s, becoming the first (and so far, only) driver to win four 24-Hour races in one year, winning at Daytona in a Mazda RX792P, Le Mans and Spa with a Peugeot 905 and the Nurburgring with a BMW M3.

(13) Alain Prost needed over a decade to finally win an F1 world title, but he did with the Porsche-powered Brabham BT58 in the last year of the turbocharged Formula One cars.

(14) Stefan Bellof was forever a leadfoot, never settling for less than going flat-out all the time. Becoming a star by winning the incredibly wet 1984 Monaco Grand Prix of Ayrton Senna and Michele Mouton, Bellof joined Ferrari in 1986, staying there until his retirement from F1 in 2000. 1990 was Bellof's only world title, but the incredibly-talented German was famed for his aggressiveness, his ability to play practical jokes and the absolute distaste he had for German rival Michael Schumacher, who he often derisively called "The Robot". Bellof's retirement from F1 led to a long DTM career after that, which included an infamous pileup he caused at Zandvoort in 2003. Bellof proved to be an astute businessman as well as a driver, and him and Schumacher eventually did patch up their relationship.

(15) Prost and Senna were never friends, but after their acrimonious 1991 season as rivals, which ended with Prost disqualified at the finale in Japan after ramming senna off the road, causing a massive crash for the Brazilian and a subsequent fistfight between the two. Prost's disqualification cost him the world title, and while teammate Bellof did win the race, Senna made a point of gloating of his title victory in the months afterward - though he would one day take back many of his comments.

(16) After owning the 1992 season, Williams lost Nigel Mansell to a bitter contract dispute and Ricardo Patrese to retirement. Williams, remembering his chances given to Rick Mears in 1980 and Keke Rosberg in 1982, Frank Williams took on humble Japanese midfielder Ukyo Katayama, who promptly negotiated Williams to get powerful new Honda engines to counter Renault's moving to Benetton and Lotus, new sponsor dollars and then a title where "Kamikaze Ukyo" went on to win an amazing seven times. Ukyo was sidelined by cancer in his back for 1995, but returned in 1996 to race again, including an emotional hometown win at Suzuka where he had the crowd chanting his name. He retired from F1 after 1998, but ran in Indycars in 2000 and 2001 as part of Toyota's entry into the sport, and is a regular sports car racer. Known around the world and a legend in Japan, Katayama got an additional degree of fame when he helped an Indian search and rescue team rescue four trapped mountain climbers while making an attempt to climb Mount Everest in 2007, suffering frostbite which resulted in hospitalization in the process....but India's highest award for bravery after that. Ukyo is today a board member at Toyota and the owner of the Autopolis Circuit on Kyushu in southern Japan, and has conquered six of the Seven Summits in mountain climbing.

(17) Jeff Gordon's story was led by Ford, which didn't want to lose on its greatest talents in sprint car racing....which Jackie Stewart was impressed by, who signed the California racer to a contract to race formula cars in Europe for 1993. Gordon debuted in F1 in 1995, and Stewart/Tyrrell was very good in 1997....but so was Schumacher and Jordan, and in the final round of 1997 in South Africa, fate worked in Gordon's favor. Schumacher ran off Gordon early in the race, forcing Jeff to work his way back through the field while Michael got away....only for Adrian Fernandez's Arrows to blow an engine right in front of Schumacher, who skidded off into the gravel at Kyalami's fearsome Westbank corner, allowing Gordon the chance to claim his title, which he dutifully took, finishing third to Bellof's Ferrari and the McLaren of Mika Hakkinen, but that was enough for Gordon to claim the title by four points.

Gordon and Schumacher would be joined as great rivals first in Mike Hakkinen's Chrysler-powered McLaren and then by the resurgent Scuderia Ferrari and the unbreakable Alex Zanardi, but the rivalry between the calculating German racer and his more aggressive American rival would be the battle of Formula One for the second half of the 1990s and into the 2000s.

(18) Michael Schumacher's karma kept on kicking him in 1998, with first a crash that broke his legs at Mexico City and then when he returned mechanical failures galore. But his big-hearted, solid-ankled teammate Johnny Herbert, took the bull by the horns, chased down Gordon and teammate Rubens Barrichello and the strong McLaren team of Mika Hakkinen and Jacques Villeneuve and walked away with a huge victory in the championship.

(19) Years of work for McLaren, a massive fight over ownership after Martin Whitmarsh, James Hunt, Gordon Murray, Mansour Ojjeh, Gerald Forsythe, the Stone Brothers and John Watson all teamed up to shove the abrasive Ron Dennis out in 1994 and the work of Italian and American engineers on McLaren's engines all finally came good in 1999, as Mika Hakkinen and Jacques Villeneuve took their Chrysler-powered McLarens to first and third in the 1999 World title, with ten wins between the two drivers in 1999.

(20) Alex Zanardi raced for Williams in 1999 and 2000, but the team was struggling at that point to chase down Stewart/Tyrrell, Jordan, McLaren and Benetton, which led Zanardi to take a long-shot team at Ferrari for 2001 to replace the retiring Stefan Bellof. But the Scuderia, flush with cash and with an excellent team, just needed Zanardi's spirit and Greg Moore's persistence and ability, as well as a healthy dose of help from master aerodynamicist Adrian Newey, to take the Scuderia back to the top, which Zanardi ably did in 2001, 2003 and 2005.

(21) Sometimes you don't know what you have until you go out there and see what's rocking, a fact that Prodrive boss David Richards found out in 2004. Prodrive just got the best advantage of rules changes and had the services of leadfoot Juan Pablo Montoya and rookie Kimi Raikkonen, and they took advantage of it.

(22) Alain Prost was one of the best drivers there was in his time, but as a team owner and businessman he was even better, and back-to-back world titles in 2006 and 2007 proved it and the abilities of Spaniard Fernando Alonso, as well as Renault's efforts in its return to Formula One Racing.

(23) Michael Schumacher's final season in F1 before retirement (which didn't last....) saw him finally get a teammate who could top him on a regular basis in talented Brit Jenson Button. Helped ably by Herbert and with Schumacher showing a surprisingly humility towards his teammate, Button had the tools to go to a title, and after a string of rough results early in the season, Schumacher swallowed his pride and backed up Button, a fact which Michael would say taught him much. Button went away with the first title for Eddie Jordan in nearly a decade.

(24) Welcome to the top of the racing world to Jeff Gordon's long-tutored protege, British racer Lewis Hamilton.

(25) The Brabham name came back for 2007 after seven seasons away thanks to Australian investors, with the team led by legendary Australian racer Peter Brock and having Sir Jack Brabham's full approval, and with seemingly all of Australia supporting "our boys". In 2010, after getting better all the time in the chassis department and with powerful Chevrolet engines, Mark Webber and Will Power took Brabham to the top, with five race wins for Webber and three for Power and the first real Australian-born world champion.

The 2014 Formula One World Championship

2013 was a wild one that finished with a display of utter dominance by World Champion Sebastien Vettel, roaring to four straight victories to finish the season for Eddie Jordan's Silver Arrows. Despite that, five other teams claimed a victory in 2013, and the re-introduction for 2014 of turbocharged engines and the radical new chassis designs brought out by Jordan, Stewart and Lotus in 2013 are expected to keep up both the speeds and the competition. Combine that with the longest F1 season ever, and you get perhaps the most wide-open world championship ever. For those that know the score....

Part 1: The Races

1) Grand Prix of India presented by Tata Group
February 7-9
West India International Circuit
Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
32 competitors

2) Iran Air Grand Prix of Iran
February 21-23
Sorkheh Hezar Park Racing Circuit
Niroo Havayi, Tehran, Iran
30 competitors

3) Anglo American Grand Prix of South Africa
March 7-9
Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit
Midrand, Gauteng, South Africa
30 competitors

4) Repsol Gran Premio de Argentina
March 28-30
Lago Potrero de los Funes Circuit
San Luis, Argentina
36 competitors

5) Grande Premio Petrobras do Brasil
April 4-6
Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace
Sao Paulo, Brazil
30 competitors

6) United States Grand Prix West presented by Miller High Life
April 18-20
Long Beach Grand Prix Circuit
Long Beach, California, United States of America
28 competitors

7) Banco Santander Gran Premio de Espana
May 2-4
Montjuïc Stadium Circuit
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
28 competitors

8) Carrefour Grand Prix de France
May 16-18
Paul Ricard Circuit
Le Castellet, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France
30 competitors

9) Grand Prix of Monaco
May 23-25
Monaco Grand Prix Circuit
Monte Carlo, Monaco
24 competitors

10) Labatt's Grand Prix du Canada
June 6-8
Circuit Ile Notre-Dame
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
28 competitors

11) Mobil 1 Grand Prix of New York
June 13-15
Port Imperial Road Racing Circuit
Weehauken, New Jersey, United States of America
28 competitors

12) RAC British Grand Prix presented by Marks and Spencer
June 27-29
Silverstone Circuit
Silverstone, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom
32 competitors

13) Siemens Grosser Preis von Deutschland
July 4-6
Hockenheimring
Hockenheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
30 competitors

14) Scania Sandvik Grand Prix of Sweden
July 18-20
Gotland Ring
Kappelshamn, Gotland, Sweden
32 competitors

15) HSBC Grand Prix of Europe
August 1-3
Nurburgring Nordschleife
Nurburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
40 competitors

16) Grand Prix of the Netherlands presented by Phillips
August 15-17
Circuit Park Zandvoort
Zandvoort, North Holland, Netherlands
28 competitors

17) Shell Grand Prix of Belgium
August 22-24
Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps
Francorchamps, Spa, Belgium
32 competitors

18) Agip Petroli Gran Premio d'Italia
August 29-31
Autodromo Nazionale de Monza
Monza, Monza and Brianza, Italy
32 competitors

19) Under Armour United States Grand Prix East
September 12-14
Watkins Glen International Raceway
Watkins Glen, New York, United States of America
30 competitors

20) Valvoline Grand Prix of the Americas
September 19-21
Circuit of the Americas
Austin, Texas, United States of America
32 competitors

21) Tecate Gran Premio de Mexico
September 26-28
Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez
Mexico City, Mexico
30 competitors

22) Sony Playstation Grand Prix of Japan
October 10-12
Suzuka Circuit
Suzuka City, Mie, Japan
30 competitors

23) Grand Prix of Korea presented by LG
October 17-19
Korea International Circuit
Yeongnam, South Jeolla, South Korea
32 competitors

24) Sinopec Grand Prix of China
October 24-26
Shanghai International Circuit
Jiading, Shanghai, China
30 competitors

25) Petronas Grand Prix of Malaysia
November 7-9
Sepang International Circuit
Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Malaysia
30 competitors

26) SingTel Grand Prix of Singapore
November 13-15
Marina Bay Street Circuit
Marina Bay, Singapore
28 competitors

27) Rolex Qantas Grand Prix of Australia
November 28-30
Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
32 competitors

I'm subscribed…especially if there's a Chrysler American Motors

(1) Alberto Ascari never dies in an accident, but instead goes on to be Enzo Ferrari's "Consigliere", retiring from racing at the age of 54 in 1972 after Ferrari's domination of the 1972 World Sportscar Champion, continuing to be a test driver and team manager for Ferrari, as well as an RAI comentator, until retiring at age 80 in 1998.

(2) Sterling Moss' recovers fully from his horrible accident at Goodwood and goes on to a long F1 career, retiring from F1 at the end of 1971. Moss spent most of his F1 career with Cooper and Lotus, but his retirement from racing only lasted until he returned to win Le Mans in 1975 and race in indycars, touring cars, sports cars and even rallying - and was successful at all of the above. Moss holds the record for the oldest-ever rookie of the year in the Indy 500, winning that finishing third in the 1981 Indy 500 at age 52, and he still to this day is a formidable competitor in vintage racing.

(3) Enzo Ferrari took on both Gurney and Hill at the same time and won with both, though his volcanic personality eventually drove both off - something that Ferrari would later in life say he regretted.

(4) Dan Gurney would begin his career as a racer in California, but winning the F1 world title in his own car in 1967 was just the beginning of the All-American Racers legend. Retiring as a driver in 1973, he entered the business world as a team owner, engineer and businessman. His famous acquisition of the failing British Leyland in 1982 and its subsequent major revival of fortunes in the 1980s and 1990s drove Gurney into a major name in American racing. A billionaire by the 1990s, Gurney to this day has a fanatical love of cars and racing, and interests all over the place.

(5) Niki Lauda's horrific accident at the Nurburgring and his subsequent recovery to fight his title challenge to the final race of 1976, and James Hunt's awesome charge to answer Lauda, is said by F1 fans to be one of the greatest championship battles of all time. Hunt's near-suicidal charge to second in the 1976 Japanese Grand Prix, often called one of the greatest drives of all time, sealed the title for him, Lord Hesketh and British Leyland. Lauda says he had no regrets for losing that title, a position he has held to this day.

(6) Colin Chapman's Anglo-American "Dream Team" forced two bitter Indycar rivals to become allies, but the Lotus team was dominant in 1977 and 1978 and left A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti with a world title apiece and a life-long friendship with each other and with Chapman. Foyt and Andretti were instrumental in getting General Motors to buy Lotus after Chapman's death in 1985. Foyt would race Lotus Indycars for the remainder of his Indycar career after Formula One, hanging it up after finishing third in 1995. Andretti returned to Indycars in 1982, winning the Indycar title in 1984 and after multiple rounds of horrific luck (giving rise to the "Andretti Curse"), he claimed the Indy 500 for the second time in 1996. Andretti raced sports cars until 2000, returning for a comeback tour in 2002 and 2003 before retiring for good.

(7) This was the king of all combinations that should NOT have worked - a fledgling Canada-based team with a car designed by a brilliant Formula Ford designer and businessman, with a German-designed turbocharged V8 engine, Japanese tires and drivers in James Hunt and Lella Lombardi - but it did work in incredible fashion. Once the Zakspeed-Mercedes was made reliable, Hunt and Lombardi were able to dispense with the competition. Hunt, however, screwed his chances with a nasty crash at Zolder, leaving Lombardi to grab the bull by the horns. Four race wins (Silverstone, Hockenheim, Zandvoort and Montreal) and incredible battles later, Lombardi walked away with the first world title for Mercedes since 1957 and the first for Wolf, Reynard, Zakspeed and Bridgestone.

Lombardi would go on to race in Formula One until 1985, and be a strident voice for women in society, not just racing. Several other women followed her into the list of Formula One winners since then - Divina Galica, Michele Mouton (who won six races as teammate at Brabham to Lauda, Prost and Piquet in the 1980s), Victoria Butler-Henderson (a truly incredible comeback win at a wet Silverstone in a McLaren in 1995 made her a legend in her own right) and several others as women in racing came to be far more common in the 1990s and 2000s. Lombardi would go on to be a member of the Italian Parliament in the 1990s, including several stints in Italy's cabinet in the early 2000s. A survivor of two bouts with breast cancer, Lombardi is also one of the world's biggest advocates for such awareness.

(8) The FISA-FOCA split got way out of hand, result in two world championships in 1980, 1981 and 1982, with the manufacturers and several big events on one side, and the teams and their commercial muscle on the other side.

(9) General Motors was the first manufacturer to support the FOCA series as financial problems were becoming obvious, and one big result of this was a World Championship for Indycar legend Rick Mears. GM's support of FOCA earned them huge kudos with them, which GM would mine extensively in the 1980s.

(10) The last year of the split series, with negotiations on both sides being moved around by an influx of good events and new races into the FOCA series, while the FISA series stayed strong through the whole situation. The split was ended over the winter of 1982-83 by negotiations headed by Dan Gurney and Jim Clark, both successful team owners and racers, who negotiated out the differences, backed up heavily by some interests on both sides. Ferrari was a vocal opponent of it, but their vocal dislike of it was tempered quite heavily when they won the 1983 World Championship....

(11) Gilles Villeneuve was Ferrari's golden boy, one of the men from the new world who so changed Ferrari in the 1980s. Villeneuve raced for Ferrari in Formula One until making way for the arriving Alain Prost in 1989, but give up racing Gilles didn't. Ferrari's 1990s Indycar efforts were almost entirely run by him and friend and business partner Bobby Rahal, and Gilles also spearheaded Ferrari's Le Mans efforts with the 333SP and 351SP in the 1990s and 2000s. Today he lives in Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, Canada, but can still be seen driving the hell out of Ferraris on the racetrack in the picturesque resort town....

(12) It's long been a held preconception in rallying that "If you want to win, hire a Finn." Keke Rosberg proved that true in F1 in 1985, winning the title in a tough season where him and rivals Nelson Piquet, Niki Lauda and Nigel Mansell trading the points lead six times over the course of the season. Keke was also notable for being a gentleman multiple times for female racers Lella Lombardi, Michele Mouton, Desire Wilson and Divina Galica, up to and including an infamous 1986 incident where he took a swing at Iranian driver Hossein Mousaravi when he quite happily told a BBC TV reporter that "Misses Mouton and Galica have no business on a racing circuit, their place is being good mothers to their children, good wives to their husbands and giving good head." Rosberg heard that comment, tore into Mousaravi on the TV camera, and when Mousaravi shook a finger in Rosberg's face, Keke slugged him. Rosberg retired from F1 in 1987, but was one of the world's best sports car racers in the 1990s, becoming the first (and so far, only) driver to win four 24-Hour races in one year, winning at Daytona in a Mazda RX792P, Le Mans and Spa with a Peugeot 905 and the Nurburgring with a BMW M3.

(13) Alain Prost needed over a decade to finally win an F1 world title, but he did with the Porsche-powered Brabham BT58 in the last year of the turbocharged Formula One cars.

(14) Stefan Bellof was forever a leadfoot, never settling for less than going flat-out all the time. Becoming a star by winning the incredibly wet 1984 Monaco Grand Prix of Ayrton Senna and Michele Mouton, Bellof joined Ferrari in 1986, staying there until his retirement from F1 in 2000. 1990 was Bellof's only world title, but the incredibly-talented German was famed for his aggressiveness, his ability to play practical jokes and the absolute distaste he had for German rival Michael Schumacher, who he often derisively called "The Robot". Bellof's retirement from F1 led to a long DTM career after that, which included an infamous pileup he caused at Zandvoort in 2003. Bellof proved to be an astute businessman as well as a driver, and him and Schumacher eventually did patch up their relationship.

(15) Prost and Senna were never friends, but after their acrimonious 1991 season as rivals, which ended with Prost disqualified at the finale in Japan after ramming senna off the road, causing a massive crash for the Brazilian and a subsequent fistfight between the two. Prost's disqualification cost him the world title, and while teammate Bellof did win the race, Senna made a point of gloating of his title victory in the months afterward - though he would one day take back many of his comments.

(16) After owning the 1992 season, Williams lost Nigel Mansell to a bitter contract dispute and Ricardo Patrese to retirement. Williams, remembering his chances given to Rick Mears in 1980 and Keke Rosberg in 1982, Frank Williams took on humble Japanese midfielder Ukyo Katayama, who promptly negotiated Williams to get powerful new Honda engines to counter Renault's moving to Benetton and Lotus, new sponsor dollars and then a title where "Kamikaze Ukyo" went on to win an amazing seven times. Ukyo was sidelined by cancer in his back for 1995, but returned in 1996 to race again, including an emotional hometown win at Suzuka where he had the crowd chanting his name. He retired from F1 after 1998, but ran in Indycars in 2000 and 2001 as part of Toyota's entry into the sport, and is a regular sports car racer. Known around the world and a legend in Japan, Katayama got an additional degree of fame when he helped an Indian search and rescue team rescue four trapped mountain climbers while making an attempt to climb Mount Everest in 2007, suffering frostbite which resulted in hospitalization in the process....but India's highest award for bravery after that. Ukyo is today a board member at Toyota and the owner of the Autopolis Circuit on Kyushu in southern Japan, and has conquered six of the Seven Summits in mountain climbing.

(17) Jeff Gordon's story was led by Ford, which didn't want to lose on its greatest talents in sprint car racing....which Jackie Stewart was impressed by, who signed the California racer to a contract to race formula cars in Europe for 1993. Gordon debuted in F1 in 1995, and Stewart/Tyrrell was very good in 1997....but so was Schumacher and Jordan, and in the final round of 1997 in South Africa, fate worked in Gordon's favor. Schumacher ran off Gordon early in the race, forcing Jeff to work his way back through the field while Michael got away....only for Adrian Fernandez's Arrows to blow an engine right in front of Schumacher, who skidded off into the gravel at Kyalami's fearsome Westbank corner, allowing Gordon the chance to claim his title, which he dutifully took, finishing third to Bellof's Ferrari and the McLaren of Mika Hakkinen, but that was enough for Gordon to claim the title by four points.

Gordon and Schumacher would be joined as great rivals first in Mike Hakkinen's Chrysler-powered McLaren and then by the resurgent Scuderia Ferrari and the unbreakable Alex Zanardi, but the rivalry between the calculating German racer and his more aggressive American rival would be the battle of Formula One for the second half of the 1990s and into the 2000s.

(18) Michael Schumacher's karma kept on kicking him in 1998, with first a crash that broke his legs at Mexico City and then when he returned mechanical failures galore. But his big-hearted, solid-ankled teammate Johnny Herbert, took the bull by the horns, chased down Gordon and teammate Rubens Barrichello and the strong McLaren team of Mika Hakkinen and Jacques Villeneuve and walked away with a huge victory in the championship.

(19) Years of work for McLaren, a massive fight over ownership after Martin Whitmarsh, James Hunt, Gordon Murray, Mansour Ojjeh, Gerald Forsythe, the Stone Brothers and John Watson all teamed up to shove the abrasive Ron Dennis out in 1994 and the work of Italian and American engineers on McLaren's engines all finally came good in 1999, as Mika Hakkinen and Jacques Villeneuve took their Chrysler-powered McLarens to first and third in the 1999 World title, with ten wins between the two drivers in 1999.

(20) Alex Zanardi raced for Williams in 1999 and 2000, but the team was struggling at that point to chase down Stewart/Tyrrell, Jordan, McLaren and Benetton, which led Zanardi to take a long-shot team at Ferrari for 2001 to replace the retiring Stefan Bellof. But the Scuderia, flush with cash and with an excellent team, just needed Zanardi's spirit and Greg Moore's persistence and ability, as well as a healthy dose of help from master aerodynamicist Adrian Newey, to take the Scuderia back to the top, which Zanardi ably did in 2001, 2003 and 2005.

(21) Sometimes you don't know what you have until you go out there and see what's rocking, a fact that Prodrive boss David Richards found out in 2004. Prodrive just got the best advantage of rules changes and had the services of leadfoot Juan Pablo Montoya and rookie Kimi Raikkonen, and they took advantage of it.

(22) Alain Prost was one of the best drivers there was in his time, but as a team owner and businessman he was even better, and back-to-back world titles in 2006 and 2007 proved it and the abilities of Spaniard Fernando Alonso, as well as Renault's efforts in its return to Formula One Racing.

(23) Michael Schumacher's final season in F1 before retirement (which didn't last....) saw him finally get a teammate who could top him on a regular basis in talented Brit Jenson Button. Helped ably by Herbert and with Schumacher showing a surprisingly humility towards his teammate, Button had the tools to go to a title, and after a string of rough results early in the season, Schumacher swallowed his pride and backed up Button, a fact which Michael would say taught him much. Button went away with the first title for Eddie Jordan in nearly a decade.

(24) Welcome to the top of the racing world to Jeff Gordon's long-tutored protege, British racer Lewis Hamilton.

(25) The Brabham name came back for 2007 after seven seasons away thanks to Australian investors, with the team led by legendary Australian racer Peter Brock and having Sir Jack Brabham's full approval, and with seemingly all of Australia supporting "our boys". In 2010, after getting better all the time in the chassis department and with powerful Chevrolet engines, Mark Webber and Will Power took Brabham to the top, with five race wins for Webber and three for Power and the first real Australian-born world champion. __________________

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FANTASTIC !!!!

The Beloff part is amazing - thought about him the other day...

Chipperback said:

I'm subscribed…especially if there's a Chrysler American Motors

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I'm taking the background from this mostly from Transport America, Canadian Power, From The Streets of Detroit and various other mini TLs I've done, as well as a healthy dose from your list of F1 champions from a couple years ago. I didn't figure you'd mind, because I'm quite open to admit where the inspiration came from.

Chrysler and American Motors are independent of each other, but American Motors and Renault are joined at the hip (Nissan came too) and in 2014 the whole mess is run by a second-generation auto industry man by the name of Romney. Chrysler and Peugeot-Citroen are not quite as connected as AMC and Renault are. Magna is Canada is the fifth North American automaker, if one doesn't count Tesla and Fisker and a bunch of other smaller automobile manufacturers. And all of the big four are involved in F1 in some way. How else could I have four Formula One races in the United States, plus Canada and Mexico?

Archibald said:

FANTASTIC !!!!

Click to expand...

Thank you, and keep in mind that much more is to come....

Archibald said:

The Beloff part is amazing - thought about him the other day...

Click to expand...

Stefan Bellof was Germany's greatest talent until Schumacher came along, born to race Formula One cars. Remember that this TL has Ferrari's cars driven by Gilles Villeneuve and him from 1986 until Gilles' retirement from Formula One in 1989. That's a pair of car-breaking leadfoots who could, and almost certainly would have, won a bunch of races during that time simply by never giving up, no matter how rough things got. Here, Bellof and Villeneuve, along with Niki Lauda, Bobby Rahal and Alex Zanardi, are the guys who run Ferrari's racing operations and test drive all of the cars. Bellof today runs a chain of Italian car dealerships in Germany, Denmark, Austria, Poland and the Netherlands, is an aficionado of vintage Formula One cars and a dedicated vintage racer. He did just reunite with his Ferrari 641 a couple months back to dominate the field in the Monterrey Historics Formula One race....

Gotta say, loving this! Are you planning an alternate IndyCar and NASCAR too?

I sure hope athleticsfan2kx dosen't decide to come back and ruin this thread like he did the last one!

Part 2: The Racers

1) Jordan Mercedes Grand Prix Team
2013 WCC Position: 1st
Team Principal: Eddie Jordan
HQ: Castle Donington, Leicestershire, United Kingdom

Drivers: #1 Sebastien Vettel (Germany), #2 Will Power (Australia)
Chassis: Jordan F1/14
Engine: Mercedes FT-027 1600cc V4 twin-turbo
Tires: Bridgestone Potenza
Fuel Supplier: Royal Dutch Shell
Sponsors: Red Bull, Mercedes-Benz, Blaupunkt, Telstra Bigpond, Australia Wineries, AC Schnitzer, Bridgestone, Rays Engineering

The team to beat, Eddie Jordan's operation knows they have a pile of targets on their back, but the team, its sponsors and drivers know that that's life on top of the world. Vettel is very keen to be the first driver to repeat as world champion since Fernando Alonso in 2007, and second-year teammate Will Power is just as hungry as Vettel is.

2) Prodrive Grand Prix Engineering
2013 WCC Position: 2nd
Team Principal: David Richards
HQ: Banbury, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

Drivers: #3 Jenson Button (United Kingdom), #4 Tomas Schekter (South Africa)
Chassis: Prodrive T35
Engine: Toyota RV10C 3500cc V12
Tires: Michelin Pilot Sport
Fuel Supplier: BP
Sponsors: Vodafone, BlackBerry, Adidas, Ineos, AMD Technologies, Virgin Atlantic

The 2012 champs started off 2013 well but got blindsided by the speed of the Jordan-Mercedes combination late in the season, a mistake that this experienced team hopes to not repeat. Toyota's decision to return to the 3.5-liter V12s instead of the turbocharged 1.6-liter units is a brave one, but the RV10C is a proven, powerful unit and nobody thinks that Button and Schekter don't know how to use it.

3) Team Lotus
2013 WCC Position: 3rd
Team Principal: Dany Bahar
HQ: Hethel, Norfolk, United Kingdom

Drivers: #5 Kimi Raikkonen (Finland), #6 Alexander Rossi (United States)
Chassis: Lotus 141
Engine: Chevrolet REF1-25 1600cc V4 twin-turbo
Tires: Goodyear Eagle
Fuel Supplier: Hess Petroleum
Sponsors: Google, General Electric, Chevrolet, Seagate Technologies, Hess Petroleum, Electronic Arts, Energizer Batteries

Lotus is ready to rock, courtesy of big-money sponsors, General Motors' newest turbocharged powerplant (the pride of Detroit, as GM motorsport boss Dale Earnhardt called it) and an excellent chassis, and lest we forget Finnish leadfoot Kimi Raikkonen and hungry Californian Alexander Rossi. Lotus' last world championship was with Ayrton Senna in 1987, but nobody counts them out here for a reason....

4) Stewart / Tyrrell Grand Prix Engineering
2013 WCC Position: 4th
Team Principal: Jackie Stewart
HQ: Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom

Drivers: #7 Lewis Hamilton (United Kingdom), #8 James Hinchcliffe (Canada)
Chassis: Stewart / Tyrrell F44
Engine: Ford Cosworth CA2014 1600cc V4 twin-turbo
Tires: Goodyear Eagle
Fuel Supplier: BP
Sponsors: HSBC, Petro Canada, Standard Life, Guinness, Marks and Spencer, Barrick Gold, Canadian National

Stewart/Tyrrell had the end of an era happen in 2011 with Jeff Gordon's retirement and have been finding things a little tricky since then, with that topping off in Jenson Button's departure to Prodrive. Despite that, Jackie Stewart and Gordon refuse to be pessimistic, and the team's new Ford/Cosworth engines come with the return of HSBC to the car and the return of the iconic British Racing Green, Arctic Silver and Dark Red paint the cars worse when Gordon was dominant. Lewis thinks this is a championship team, and Hinchcliffe, the 2013 Indycar champion, comes with a big reputation.

5) Team Prost EuroFrance
2013 WCC Position: 5th
Team Principal: Alain Prost
HQ: Guyancourt, Paris, France

Drivers: #9 Fernando Alonso (Spain), #10 Sebastien Bourdais (France)
Chassis: Prost AP18
Engine: Renault RS28-Y14 1600cc V4 twin-turbo
Tires: Michelin Pilot Sport
Fuel Supplier: Total
Sponsors: Carrefour, EDF, Total, Michelin, Dassault Group, Aeropostale, Matmut, SNCF

Prost has slid some in the standings from the highs of their double world championship in 2006 and 2007, but the team headed by "The Professor" Alain Prost is never one to be counted out, particularly when Prost has huge money behind him. This really is France's team, even if its lead driver is a Spaniard, and it shows in the sponsors and the support, with French President Francois Hollande being one of those who quite openly supports Prost's efforts. A typically-good Prost chassis is paired to Renault power, which has tended to be powerful but thirsty, though the French team claims to have licked the fuel consumption problem.

6) Scuderia Ferrari
2013 WCC Position: 6th
Team Principals: Stefan Bellof, Stefano Domenicali
HQ: Maranello, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Drivers: #11 Felipe Massa (Brazil), #12 Juan Pablo Montoya (Colombia)
Chassis: Ferrari F140
Engine: Ferrari Type 058 3500cc Flat-12
Tires: Bridgestone Potenza
Fuel Supplier: Royal Dutch Shell
Sponsors: Grupo Santander, Royal Dutch Shell, Fiat, Magnetti Marelli, Etihad Airways, Acer Electronics, SKF Materials

The Red Cars From Maranello had a season to be forgotten despite two wins by Felipe Massa and one by Juan Pablo Montoya. Ferrari does not like losing under any circumstances, and so to them the 2013 season was a disappointment. Nobody doubts the abilities of Massa and Montoya, and many think that the radical F140 and its naturally-aspirated Flat-Twelve engines are something of a Hail Mary play. Regardless of that, rumors out of maranello say that the F140 is the fastest Ferrari Grand Prix car ever at their test track, which should scare their rivals....

7) Brabham Motor Racing Developments
2013 WCC Position: 7th
Team Principals: Roland Dane, Geoff Brabham
HQ: Bowen Hills, Queensland, Australia

Drivers: #14 Mark Webber (Australia), #15 Brendon Hartley (New Zealand)
Chassis: Brabham BT84
Engine: Chevrolet REF1-25 1600cc V4 twin-turbo
Tires: Goodyear Eagle
Fuel Supplier: BP
Sponsors: Commonwealth Bank, BHP Billiton, Parmalat, Qantas, Foster's, Holden Automobiles, David Jones, Forgeline

Australia's Formula One team has high hopes and big bucks to play for, but this little team that could is pretty much everything Australia stands for - tough as hell but with a strong sense of fair play, always having a good time when the opportunity presents itself and do the job right the first time. Sir Jack Brabham said to ABC Television in Australia that this was "the greatest motorsports organization to ever come from Australia" and few have any reason to doubt him. Mark Webber himself has a point to prove as a result of the end of the race at Circuit of the Americas in 2013, where Vettel shoved him out of the way to claim the win. "We'll get them for that", Geoff Brabham said at the time. Many wonder if they are going to do just that in 2014....

8) Autobacs Honda Formula One
2013 WCC Position: 8th
Team Principal: Aguri Suzuki
HQ: Suminoe-ku, Osaka, Japan

Drivers: #16 Kamui Kobayashi (Japan), #17 Nelson Piquet Jr (Brazil)
Chassis: ARTA MC5A
Engine: Honda RA814A 3500cc V10
Tires: Yokohama Advan Neova
Fuel Supplier: Eneos
Sponsors: Autobacs, Sony, Gran Turismo 6, Eneos, Japan Air Lines, Yokohama, Kyocera Electronics, Trust Power

Made in Japan and most definitely not a joke, Autobacs Honda is the pride and top accomplishment of Japanese racer Aguri Suzuki, one of Japan's best racing drivers in modern times. The team debuted in 2008 to high hopes and has established itself as an excellent midpacker known for its high levels of precision when building and designing cars, and their howling Honda V10 engines. Nelsoninho takes over from the departing Ralph Firman in the second car alongside Kamui Kobayashi, both drivers intent on showing that their effort is more than just a well-designed car. Honda's screaming V10 engines have the advantage of more torque than the rival naturally-aspirated motors and proven reliability, making this team one to watch in 2014....

9) Williams Grand Prix Engineering
2013 WCC Position: 9th
Team Principal: Frank Williams
HQ: Grove, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

Drivers: #18 Vitaly Petrov (Russia), #19 Ryan Hunter-Reay (United States)
Chassis: Williams FW36
Engine: BMW P92/1 1600cc inline-4 twin-turbo
Tires: Michelin Pilot Sport
Fuel Supplier: BP
Sponsors: Hewlett-Packard, RBS, Canon Cameras, Telefonica Europe, British Airways, IMAX Corporation

Frank Williams might just be the most persistent guy ever, but he also has more than a few clues on how to get attention - witness his "Cold War" driver lineup of Indycar star Ryan Hunter-Reay and the "Vyborg Rocket" Russian Vitaly Petrov. (Apparently the two rather like one another, mind you.) Williams' team is known for quality engineering and excellent strategy, but in 2013 the use of customer Cosworth engines did them no favors....so for 2014, they have BMW power once again, and BMW's loud boast that their innovative turbocharging system on the P92/1 engines is enough to vanquish the opposition will be put to the test. If its true, however, everyone in the field knows better than to discount this team....

10) McLaren Race Engineering
2013 WCC Position: 10th
Team Principals: James Hunt, Gordon Murray, Gerald Forsythe
HQ: Woking, Surrey, United Kingdom

Drivers: #20 Valtteri Bottas (Finland), #21 Kyle Busch (United States)
Chassis: McLaren MP5/2
Engine: Chrysler MR22A 1600cc V4 twin-turbo
Tires: Bridgestone Potenza
Fuel Supplier: Royal Dutch Shell
Sponsors: Mobil 1, Dell, Budweiser, Chrysler, Nokia, Scotiabank, Akamai Technologies, Loctite

McLaren's dismal 2013 showed in their results and the fact that Jenson Button bailed on them for a seat at Prodrive and Max Chilton headed to run against his brother in British touring cars. The pick of NASCAR standout and Las Vegas native Kyle Busch stunned the entire F1 paddock, though those people stopped laughing when Busch reset the Silverstone track record in an open test earlier this month. Chrysler's entry into the turbocharged four-pot stakes is known, like most Chrysler Formula One motors, for being bulletproof reliable, and Chrysler thinks they have the power problems of past motors solved. Nobody doubts Bottas, and those with some foresight remember what people said about Jeff Gordon in 1996. Is Kyle Busch the next American World Champion? Could be, there's only one way to know....

OOC: More in Part 2!

Stefan Bellof was Germany's greatest talent until Schumacher came along, born to race Formula One cars. Remember that this TL has Ferrari's cars driven by Gilles Villeneuve and him from 1986 until Gilles' retirement from Formula One in 1989. That's a pair of car-breaking leadfoots who could, and almost certainly would have, won a bunch of races during that time simply by never giving up, no matter how rough things got. Here, Bellof and Villeneuve, along with Niki Lauda, Bobby Rahal and Alex Zanardi, are the guys who run Ferrari's racing operations and test drive all of the cars. Bellof today runs a chain of Italian car dealerships in Germany, Denmark, Austria, Poland and the Netherlands, is an aficionado of vintage Formula One cars and a dedicated vintage racer. He did just reunite with his Ferrari 641 a couple months back to dominate the field in the Monterrey Historics Formula One race....

Click to expand...

1984 Monaco GP : best-F1-race-ever.
Only matched by the 1996 Monaco GP (when Olivier Panis won - what a crazy race that was !!!)

Archibald said:

1984 Monaco GP : best-F1-race-ever.
Only matched by the 1996 Monaco GP (when Olivier Panis won - what a crazy race that was !!!)

Click to expand...

Bellof won the 1984 Monaco GP in a Cosworth-powered Tyrrell (the last win ever for the Ford-Cosworth DFY in F1 competition) at the head of a three-car charging train of him, Aryton Senna's Toleman-Hart and Michele Mouton's Brabham-BMW, all three of which caught and dispatched Prost's McLaren-TAG before fighting it out themselves. In the aftermath of the acrimonious FISA-FOCA split, The FIA's subsequent discovery of hydrocarbons in Tyrrell's water-injection system did not result in the disqualification of the team, so Bellof's win at Monaco stood. The 1984 Monaco GP is best known for 'The Battle', the fight in the closing laps between Bellof, Senna and Mouton, with Mouton having the power advantage, Senna the best chassis and Bellof the advantage of naturally-aspirated throttle response, and third-placed Mouton had twenty-five seconds on fourth-placed Prost at the checkered flag despite the three-way dicing. Tyrrell got Honda power for 1985 in large part because of Bellof and Keke Rosberg's driving, and we all know how that ended up. Rumor has it that Ron Howard has planned out two sequels to the Formula One movie Rush, with the second focusing on the years of Foyt, Andretti and Lombardi, and the third including the 1984 Monaco GP....

1996 Monaco in this world was a crazy race, but not for the right reasons. Michael Andretti found himself in the Mediterranean and Karl Wendlinger, Ricardo Rosset, Giancarlo Fisichella and Pedro De La Rosa were all done for the season after two horrendous wrecks. (Nobody killed, thankfully.) Panis still claimed victory, but he got that after Jacques Villeneuve's Williams suffered a gearbox failure and Jeff Gordon, well on his way to his first F1 victory, threw it away trying to lap Johnny Herbert's McLaren at Mirabeau and wound up in the fence as a result. Only four cars took the flag at the end of that one, a day that most of the field would rather forget.

OOC: Part 2 of the racers!

11) Sauber Grand Prix Racing
2013 WCC Position: 11th
Team Principal: Peter Sauber
Headquarters: Zurich, Switzerland

Drivers: #22 Esteban Gutierrez (Mexico), #23 Bruno Senna (Brazil)
Chassis: Sauber C33
Engine: Mercedes FT-027 1600cc V4 twin-turbo
Tires: Bridgestone Potenza
Fuel Supplier: Royal Dutch Shell
Sponsors: Pemex, Tecate, Pioneer, Itausa, Safra Group, Embraer, Bridgestone

Peter Sauber's steady and strong operation went through 2013 stuck in the midfield and hating every minute of it, despite regular points finishes and Bruno Senna being one of only three drivers in the 2013 field to finish every race. Sauber's Mercedes connections have allowed them to acquire the same powerful mercedes engines that Jordan uses and there is little doubt of the ability of both Gutierrez and Senna. The team is sure to have a rivalry with both Jordan and the new Piquet Brazil squad, and the Swiss veteran hopes that 2014 is far better than years past....

12) Vector USF1 Automotive Technologies
2013 WCC Position: 12th (as USF1)
Team Principals: Peter Windsor, Chip Ganassi, Gerald Weigert
HQ: Detroit, Michigan, United States of America

Drivers: #24 Marco Andretti (United States), #25 Katherine Legge (United Kingdom)
Chassis: Vector F1/02
Engine: Ilmor-Vector 350A4 3500cc V12
Tires: Goodyear Eagle
Fuel Supplier: Hess Petroleum
Sponsors: Target, Rockstar Energy Drink, Lionsgate, Kobalt Tools, Pennzoil, Hess Petroleum, Discovery Communications, Forgeline

For years, USF1 has been the team with determination and work ethic outclassing the team's relative lack of funding. Not anymore, sunshine - they have a $75 million new facility in Detroit next to the $300 million Race City circuit, a pile of new sponsors, two new drivers, a bunch of technical staff, support from a famed American sports car maker and they launched their car to big fanfare on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood in the presence of dozens of movie industry bigshots. Ilmor has promised its new 350A4 engine is more powerful and less thirsty than before thanks to electromechanical valve timing and a lithium-aluminum rotating assembly and the new car has aero done by Bruce Ashmore and his guys. Is it USF1's time to shine? Could be....

13) Arrows Grand Prix International
2013 WCC Position: 13th
Team Principal: Laurence Tomlinson
HQ: Leafield, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

Drivers: #26 Robert Kubica (Poland), #27 Nick Heidfeld (Germany)
Chassis: Arrows A35
Engine: Yamaha-IHI ARE15 1600cc V4 twin-turbo
Tires: Michelin Pilot Sport
Fuel Supplier: Sasol
Sponsors: Orange, Sasol, Zepter International, Yamaha, LNT Group, Rockford Fosgate, Sky Broadcasting

Tom Walkinshaw's tragic death from cancer midway through 2013 left the future of Arrows in doubt....at least until three of Britain's most famous car nuts got in on the act. New owners Nick Mason, Jeremy Clarkson and Lawrence Tomlinson all have big hopes for the improved A35 and its turbocharged Yamaha motor, and its not coincidence that this team has put a helluva lot of miles on planes in the offseason, and big bucks back this effort. Arrows has come close to winning several times, this may be where a winning effort begins....

14) Force India Formula One
2013 WCC Position: 14th
Team Principals: Subrata Roy Sahara, Vijay Mallya
HQ 1: Silverstone, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom
HQ 2: Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Drivers: #28 Karun Chandhok (India), #29 Dane Cameron (United States)
Chassis: Force India VJM07
Engine: Ford Cosworth CA2014 1600cc V4 twin-turbo
Tires: Bridgestone Potenza
Fuel Supplier: BP
Sponsors: Sahara, Tata Group, Kingfisher, Air India, Bharti Airtel, Aditya Birla Group

An Anglo-Indian Formula One team seemed like a joke six years ago, but nobody's laughing now. Force India's five podiums in 2013 for Karun Chandhok have made it clear that this is a team to take seriously, and the arrival of Le Mans winner Dane Cameron just adds to the team's assets. The list of sponsors and supporters this team has - from India's richest and most powerful businessmen, to its current Prime Minister, to Bollywood stars Priyanka Chopra and Preity Zinta (who presented the car at its Mumbai launch party) - show that there is one of the biggest countries in the world rooting for these guys, and they do know how to make a winner in Mumbai....

15) Reynard Motorsport
2013 WCC Position: 15th
Team Principal: Adrian Reynard
HQ: Brackley, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom

Drivers: #30 Heikki Kovalainen (Finland), #31 Simona de Silvestro (Switzerland)
Chassis: Reynard F114
Engine: Proton Asiatech AR14A 1600cc V4 twin turbo
Tires: Michelin Pilot Sport
Fuel Supplier: Gevo Biofuels
Sponsors: Caterpillar, Microsoft, Virgin Active, Gevo Biofuels, Lululemon Athletica, Virgin Earth Challenge

How about this for a bolt from the blue? Take a moderately successful team led by a man with a world championship to his name, toss out pretty much everything you had before and bring in one of the world's most famous business moguls to help out. Then make the car a showcase of the technology of tomorrow - recycled carbon in its construction, an all-new carbon-fiber block-equipped engine and a fuel tank full of biofuels. Adrian Reynard and Richard Branson are no strangers to doing things in a way that others would never do, but what should worry the rest of the teams is this: Branson and Reynard are both masters at doing the impossible. If they get that here, look out. Kovalainen is well-known for his qualifying skill, and sophomore stunner Simona de Silvestro is known for being a driver who can drive a Formula One car anywhere, in any condition, and make it go fast. Reynard starts on the bubble at most places, but few figure they'll be there long....

16) Minardi Grand Prix Team
2013 WCC Position: 16th
Team Principal: Giancarlo Minardi
HQ: Faenza, Italy

Drivers: #32 Dan Wheldon (United Kingdom), #33 Robert Doornbos (Netherlands)
Chassis: Minardi M14/2
Engine: Chrysler MR22A 1600cc V4 twin-turbo
Tires: Michelin Pilot Sport
Fuel Supplier: Royal Dutch Shell
Sponsors: AMD Technologies, Parmalat, Kappa, Heineken, ASML, Fincantieri, Fondmetal

Everybody's favorite passionate underdog returns to the field, minus loudmouth Australian partner Paul Stoddard and with Italian and Dutch backing from everywhere, including the Chrysler MR22 engines, which begging from the Lamborghini and Chrysler Europe guys saw land in the back of Minardi's latest challenger. There is nobody in the field more passionate and more determined than Minardi, and if their typically-good chassis can use the Chrysler engines, it could make them much, much better than in times past....

17) Marussia F1
2013 WCC Position: 17th
Team Principals: John Booth, Nikolai Fomenko, Roman Abramovich
HQ 1: Banbury, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
HQ 2: Moscow, Russia

Drivers: #34 Maria de Villiota (Spain), #35 Adrian Sutil (Germany)
Chassis: Marussia MR03
Engine: Renault RS28-Y14 1600cc V4 twin-turbo
Tires: Michelin Pilot Sport
Fuel Supplier: BP
Sponsors: Rusal, BASF, Konica Minolta, Russian Standard, Polyus Gold, Marussia Automobiles

Third-year outfit Marussia didn't exactly cover itself in glory in its first two seasons in 2013, with an unreliable, evil-handling car on the track in 2013 that didn't get either of its drivers very far. Cash worries were ended by the arrival of one of Russia's wealthiest men as part of the team, and the new MR03 and its aerodynamic improvements, combined with the tossing of the aged BMW V10s in favor of Renault turbo power, should give the Russian squad much more bite. Maria de Villiota and Adrian Sutil both get to race here as a result of persistence in lower formulas, but its well known that the Russian owners want Russian drivers in the cars, and with Sergey Sirotkin and Diana Starkova in the wings, most figure that will come to pass sooner rather than later, though it is said that both de Villiota and Sutil have long careers ahead of them as well. Plenty of sponsor money and strong backing should ensure Marussia's problems are a thing of the past....

18) Rebellion Racing
2013 WCC Position: Did Not Compete
Team Principal: Alexandre Pesci
HQ: Geneva, Switzerland

Drivers: #36 Nicolas Prost (France), #37 Kyle Marcelli (Canada)
Chassis: Rebellion RFormula-Two
Engine: Toyota RV10C 3500cc V12
Tires: Michelin Pilot Sport
Fuel Supplier: Royal Dutch Shell
Sponsors: Cisco Systems, Lafarge Materials, Allianz, Lufthansa, Dalsa Technologies, Hugo Boss, Lemo Services

Perhaps the best privateer sports car team on Earth moves up into the world of Formula One and brings Alain Prost's son with them out of GP2, along with Canadian sports car ace Kyle Marcelli. The ORECA-built RFormula-Two chassis is a new but quality-made piece, and this team has swept the sports car world primarily through high-grade preparation and dogged persistence. They start having to prequalify, but whether they remain there, even in the hotly-contested world of Formula One, is anyone's guess.

19) Piquet Grand Prix Brazil
2013 WCC Position: Did Not Compete
Team Principal: Nelson Piquet
HQ: Rio de Janiero, Brazil

Drivers: #38 Tony Kanaan (Brazil), #39 Jamie Alguersari (Spain)
Chassis: Piquet NP214
Engine: Mercedes FT-027 1600cc V4 twin-turbo
Tires: Bridgestone Potenza
Fuel Supplier: Petrobras
Sponsors: Petrobras, Bertelsmann, Vale Inco, American Express, Airbus, Bang and Olufsen, Enkei Wheels

Nelson Piquet's dream becomes reality thanks to his old friends and rivals in the Fittipaldis and a bucketload of Brazilian mining and oil money. The first full-time grand prix team from South America comes with Indycar veteran Tony Kanaan and Spanish hotshot Jamie Alguersari in the cockpit, powerful Mercedes engines and special fuel from Petrobras which the company claims will make the cars even faster. Is Nelson Piquet's next world championship going to be as an owner? It's not at all impossible....

20) Status Grand Prix
2013 WCC Position: Did Not Compete
Team Principals: Mark Gallagher, Larry Holt, Dave Kennedy
HQ 1: Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada
HQ 2: Silverstone, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom

Drivers: #40 Luis Felipe Nasr (Brazil), #41 Danica Patrick (United States)
Chassis: Status 01
Engine: Chevrolet REF1-25 1600cc V4 twin-turbo
Tires: Goodyear Eagle
Fuel Supplier: BP
Sponsors: Motorola, Nike, Rogers Communications, Aeon, Under Armour, 3M, Alliance Entertainment, Encana

Merge an excellent group of British engineers, designers and technicians needing money with a stack of Canadian cash and brilliant team leaders and you pretty much get Status GP. Their ability to compete in F1 after years of struggling for cash in lower formulas came as a surprise, but not once one saw the addition of Canadian-based Multimatic Motorsports to the team's strength. Open-wheel-racer Danica Patrick and defending GP2 runner-up Felipe Nasr are looking forward to both the challenge and the glory, and Multimatic's addition to the team brought with them their world-renowned aerodynamics team and Chevrolet power for the cars with the money, and few think this team will be an embarassment to anyone, regardless of results. That isn't exactly to say that they will try to be slow, but this is Formula One....

Okay, so what brings this world into play, you ask? Well, there are some big differences, so I'll explain those out to give all the race fans an idea of what became of racing in this world. Let's just say that things are a little different from the world we live in, and for the most part its better....

1) Detroit Took Over Le Mans....And then Formula One

It's no secret that both IOTL and ITTL that the world of racing got interesting in the 1960s. First Cooper then Lotus vanquished the Indy roadsters and Ford sought to buy Ferrari, only to have the old man brush him off, which enraged Henry Ford II to such a degree that he wanted to beat Ferrari, which thanks to Carroll Shelby's Cobra Daytonas and then Eric Broadmore and the car which became the Ford GT40, Ford got that Le Mans win. At the time, the wildest road racing series in the world was North America's no-holds-barred Can Am series.

What changed? Dan Gurney decided to prove his worth to the world, and Jim Hall convinced the guys at General Motors to give him the support to go kick Ford's ass at Le Mans. Hence, when the GT40 arrived, it came with the Chaparral 2D close behind, which became the Corvette Le Mans. Chevrolet's Corvette Grand Sport was one of the finest GT racers of the era, and the Detroit invasion brought a pack of the best American racers to Europe to show the locals how they raced in America. And believe me, they had never seen guys like A.J. Foyt and Al Unser and Roger Guldstrand....

Dan Gurney sealed the deal in 1967 - he won Le Mans with AJ Foyt and the Formula One World Championship in his own car. (To this day, nobody else have EVER done that.) His wins were so huge that he couldn't not make America pay attention, and that convinced Ford to give Keith Duckworth and Mike Costin the resources to make an Anglo-American Formula One engine. Welcome to the world, Cosworth DFV....

The DFV would end up winning damn near everything in sight - turbocharged DFVs powered McLaren M8s to Can Am wins, it owned Formula One for over a decade, won Le Mans in 1975 and 1980 and first conquered the Indy 500 in 1971 (thanks Mark Donohue and Roger Penske) and went on to dominate it. With over 150 F1 wins and over 200 Indycar wins for race cars with the DFV for power, Ford couldn't NOT run with it, and run with it they did. Such was the dominance of the DFV that GM eventually gave up trying to beat it in Formula One....instead, they decided to own GT racing. Jim Hall's Corvette Le Mans won Le Mans in 1968 and Corvettes won Le Mans' GT categories in 1965 and 1966, followed by winning it every year between 1970 and 1976, the last years using big-block power to outgun Porsche's turbocharged 911s and Ferrari's howling 512 Berlinetta Boxers. And that was to start....

2) Foyt and Andretti and Donohue and Mears and Rahal and Cheever and....

What changed America's involvement in racing forever was "The American Team", the combination of A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti, fierce Indycar rivals, as teammates at Team Lotus in Formula One starting for the 1976 season. Neither knew the other would be there until they had signed, thanks to Chapman's wish to have both of them racing for them, and he had help from a brilliant young Chicago-native engineer in Dale Coyne, brought to him by Foyt. The two didn't take long to play off each other's strengths, and their domination of the 1977 and 1978 Formula One seasons, with Foyt being world champ in 1977 and Andretti in 1978, led to a massive surge in interest for Formula One in America....and the fact that Andretti's successor as world champ was a pretty Italian woman with fire in the belly driving for a small team made good didn't hurt.

1978 saw the arrivals of Bobby Rahal and Eddie Cheever to Formula One to join Andretti, Foyt and Donohue (now driving for Shadow), and Mears arrived in 1980, with the Yanks scoring frequently. Mears went home with the world title in 1981, and the attempts during the FISA-FOCA split to put North America on FOCA's side saw many other American racers - Johnny Rutherford, Brett Lunger, Kevin Cogan, Elliott Forbes-Robinson, Tom Sneva, Al Unser Sr. and Hurley Haywood - all taking the wheel of Formula One cars, usually with good results. The politics of the split didn't harm the growth of the sport, and by the mid-1980s, Formula One and Indycars were both big business in America....and IMSA followed. The rest, pretty much, is history. Foyt, Andretti and Donohue headed back to Indycars by 1983, but Mears would go on to be one of the biggest stars of Formula One in the 1980s, thanks to him being one of the few guys who could, and frequently did, go toe-to-toe with the likes of Ayrton Senna, Niki Lauda, Nelson Piquet, Keke Rosberg, Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost. (It does have to be said that Mears often called the ones he feared the most were the lunatics in the Ferraris and the pretty woman who drove for Brabham....) Eddie Cheever would be known for his persistence, driving in Formula One from 1978 until 1991 with several teams, with nine wins to his credit, three of them earned in 1983 where he finished third in the points to Gilles Villeneuve and Keke Rosberg and being the first-ever winner of the Grand Prix of the Soviet Union in Moscow in July 1986.

But How Did Detroit See All of This as a benefit for them? Pretty simple, actually. When Detroit took chances on engineering and design in the 1960s, they scored huge for them....

3) From the Racetrack to the Road

You thank GM for a lot of this. You see, Detroit cars in the 1950s were huge, lumbering beasts. Braking and cornering was not a strong suit and subtlety was most definitely not in the cards, but what got Detroit`s attention in the late 1950s was the rise of that funny little car from Germany. Nobody thought the Volkswagen would be anything to anyone, but by the time of America`s short, sharp economic recession in 1958 everyone knew it was there, and Detroit made responses to it, of course. The result was the rather average Ford Falcon and Plymouth Valiant....and the ground-breaking Chevrolet Corvair. You see, to most Americans, the rear-engined, flat-six powered Corvair was a revelation, and better handling and safety made the little Corvair a bonafide hit, giving Detroit confidence in the idea that better engineering could make cars that sold better than others. And it didn`t take them long to prove it, thanks to the advancement of new suspensions and disc brakes and other advancements in the 1960s. Turbocharging? Oldsmobile's F-85 Jetfire pioneered that, thank you very much. Anti-lock brakes? The 1968 Corvette showed how well those worked, thank you very much. Cast-aluminum engine blocks in mass-produced cars? Chrysler's Slant-Six made that idea a reality. Fuel injection? Thank you again to GM, which made practically every small-block Corvette made after 1966 with it.

The success of the Corvair was followed in later years by a much more responsive Detroit. American Motors' fabulous little Gremlin and Hornet, with their ground-breaking I-4E engines, proved to be fast-sellers and small-car icons, while Ford's decision to make the bargain-basement Pinto bit them and hard, resulting the European Escort, Fiesta and Capri replacing it in 1977....and they sold in vast numbers. The early 1980s Detroit small-cars - GM's J-Bodies, Chrysler's K-cars, Ford's Fiesta and Sierra and AMC's Spirit series - were some of the best in the world, and the confidence of the times led to Detroit having a common view that the best way to make the most money was to make the best cars, even if it cost more to make up front. End result? Much of the time, the world watches to see what Detroit does, and Detroit (and now, Chicago and Toronto too) pay close attention to what the world does.

Does it get better? Oh, it does....

4) The Great Society That is the United States of America

America began changing after World War II - the war had forced many changes, but those changes got a lot louder after the war. With hundreds of thousands of black GIs returning having proved themselves in many of the toughest battles of the war and more than a few legends made among them, they returned to change the country. It also changed the way it worked in a few other ways....

The civil rights movement became a battle for the soul of much of America's black community, but it also became one for a lot of white Americans, too. Black police officers in many areas became a wide reality after the 1940s and 1950s, and by the time the civil rights movement began splintering in the 1960s, there was big divisions among White America, and it showed in the way they looked at life. Some fled out to the suburbs, but some others stayed in the cities, made peace with their new black and Hispanic neighbors and began building better places. White Flight? It happened, but for more than a few people, a dream was a wonderful home in a city neighborhood where everyone one needed for a great life was within walking distance, and where the men who had proved themselves in war and peace were neighbors, not something to be afraid of. Even the infamous Watts, Newark and Detroit riots of the 1960s didn't stop that, and so America entered the 1970's with a lot of soul searching being done.

But wait a second....didn't Detroit encourage the growth of the suburbs? Weren't they the people being the two-cars-in-every-garage idea?

Oh, they were, alright. But what changed that was a very well-decorated man by the name of Eisenhower.

General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower, Commander in Chief of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, was a farsighted man. He knew well what utility the autobahns built in the Third Reich were, and he built the Interstate Highway System in the United States partly to emulate the idea of easy movement for people. But he also remembered that America's railroads carried their weight and then some in the war, and so the Transport America Act, which built the Interstate Highways, also included lots of subsidies for mass transit systems and railroads, with the goal of the best transport network in the world for America. He got what he wanted, of course. And General Motors, well, the largest maker of locomotives in the world by the time of Transport America's passage in 1953 made sure that they left a lot of the railcars alone. GM made more money by operating and maintaining a lot of the electric railways of America than they did by turning them into bus systems....and so a lot of them stayed just as they were. GM found themselves charing the locomotive market with General Electric and Alco (before the latter was bought by Chrysler in 1969, somewhat to GM's chargin), but when you own dozens of streetcar lines, it's easy to make it possible for these places to work. GM also actively promoted the idea of commuter rail lines, having seen systems work so well in the Northeast. Toronto's GO Transit, which began operation in 1964 using GM equipment, became the template for many across America.

Vietnam wound down to a population hungry for change and for a better society, and in the 1970s and 1980s they made it possible to do something about it. The "One World" idea, as revolutionary economist Rudi Dornbusch called it in 1985, was the idea that everyone in a nation counted, no matter how rich or poor, and that the nation would be its strongest, proudest and most capable if everyone did their jobs well and did them with the thought to how it effected everyone in the world around them. Detroit was at the front of this - the infamous Baltimore and Lordstown incidents in 1974 showed them the need to work on its industrial relations, and the work of George Romney at AMC during this time cemented the idea into the minds of businessmen around the nation. By the late 1980s, America's middle classes were the wealthiest they had ever been, and the "Long Boom" of roughly 1980 to 2008 became one of the affluent times in American history, and people of all classes and incomes took advantage of it in their own ways.

Health Care? The Advancement of American Health Care Act of 1986 made it possible to buy into Medicare at any age over the age of majority, set up subsidies and extensive regulations to allow all Americans to get good health insurance coverage at cheap prices, and by 1990 it was reality nationwide.

Energy? Nuclear power runs much of the show in America - 270 nuclear reactors built between 1960 and 1995, and most of those remain in operation, providing nearly half of America's electricity. Three Mile Island in this world is one of the better-run nuclear facilities in America, and March 28, 1979 is a normal day at the plant. Renewables make up nearly another quarter of that, with hydroelectric dams and channels, pumped-storage systems, wind turbines, solar projects, waste-to-energy facilities, geothermal power projects and the incoming ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) systems allow much of the rest to be easily gotten. Natural gas is cheap and used to heat homes. Millions of American cars and light trucks run on ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel or cellulosic ethanol, and more are to come. GM's Chevrolet Volt series hybrid and EV1 electric car made the world swoon in the late 1990s, and now they want to be the winners of the future with hydrogen fuel cells.

Transport? Aside from the cars, Amtrak and several freight railroad-run passenger lines are now joined by growing high-speed train systems in the Northeast, Texas, California, the Midwest and soon the Pacific Northwest and Florida. Amtrak makes its money on the long-distance trains, running its flagship routes like the American President, Super Chief, Empire Builder, Silver Star, California Zephyr and Southern Crescent with services as good as many very good hotels - cross America in style on Amtrak's silver, sky blue and gloss black liners on rails if you want to do it right. High-speed trains and commuter airlines make sure that if there is a place in America you have to go, you can get there quickly and comfortably, and in modern times American airlines have more focused on their international routes. Pan Am especially is really good at that, and if you are crossing an ocean, one of their Boeing 2707s will allow you to experience just how wonderful flying at over twice the speed of sound is.

Work Life? American employers are in many cases some of the best in the world for this. More than a few business in both blue-collar and white-collar fields have daycares for families, paid for or subsidized by the company. For those in white-collar fields, flexible work hours are common and many in said fields have offices that are more like lounges. Cubicles are employers that suck. Blue-collar industries are harder, of course, but many heavy industrial places are much nicer places to work than in times past - thank the UAW and Detroit for much of that benefit, as over the past generation the Detroit makers have built or rebuilt plants to such standards, and they saw productivity go up, absenteeism go down, better product assembly and fewer health care costs. Not coincidence, that.

The result of all of this is that most Americans have more time and more money to dedicate to leisure pursuits, and they have lots of ways of doing it. The movie industry? Bigger than ever before. Sports? All of the major sports leagues have made profits for decades, and Major League Soccer has come to be one of the fast-growing sports in America, though baseball, basketball, hockey and most of all football still rule the roost.

And you know what else that does? Makes for lots more money available for race fans, and they spend it. They spend a LOT of it.

A Grand Prix of Iran?!?! How in the world does that happen....

Iran ain't the pariah it is IOTL. It's pretty much the exact opposite. You see, the Federal Republic of Iran is pretty much the big guy on the block in that part of the world, the most advanced and powerful nation in the Islamic world and a genuine good guy in the world. How did that happen? Shah Reza Pahlavi decided to try and handle his problems before they became big ones.

Iran's politics changed dramatically in the 1960s and 1970s as Iran started to change, and the White Revolution's effects of turning Iran into an industrial power took fruit. Pahlavi saw the growth of opposition to his rule early on and managed to start advancing the interests of these people in the 1960s and 1970s, nipping many of the problems that led to the Islamic Revolution IOTL in the bud while aggressively pushing for the nation's economic and social development. Pahlavi's death from cancer in February 1981 left Iran with his wife Farah ruling until the Coronation of his son in January 1982, a period that was met with massive protests and upheaval but one which saw Khomeini and many of the harder-line clerics defeated by the supporters of the changing state....though this came at the cost of the end of the Pahlavi dynasty to rule the nation at their will. Iran's first open elections since 1953 happened in 1985, and the Persian Constitution of 1988 made Iran's dynasty much less powerful than before, but still politically influential, and left the nation with a secure democratic government. All the while, economic progress, particularly in the booming 1980s, turned Iran from a moderately wealthy nation into a very wealthy one, and indeed many of the dreams of the Pahlavis were shared by the succeeding democratic governments.

As for racing there, Pahlavi himself was one of those who built the beautiful Sorkheh Hezar Park track in the late 1980s, and when the facility was reworked for international racing in the 1990s, it was made into one of the world's best facilities. Formula One loves it there, even though Tehran in late February can have a little crazy weather - they had actually had a snowstorm the week before the race in 2005 - the city and its fabulous racetrack have been a Formula One staple since the first race in 2003, and Iranians pack the place solid like clockwork, as every year more than 200,000 people watch the race. The first podium for an Iranian F1 driver happened there in 2006, as Armand Mazandarani drove his Williams-BMW to a third-placed finish at Sorkheh Park, filling for the injured Mark Webber and to a massive roar from the crowd after the handsome Iranian had started fifteenth and pulled his way to third. The track is also home to Iranian national championships, which happen to be recently dominated by a woman....

TBC....

TheMann said:

1962 – Dan Gurney (United States) Ferrari 156C (3)
1964 – Dan Gurney (United States) Ferrari 1512
1967 – Dan Gurney (United States) AAR Eagle T2A - Shelby-Weslake (4)

Click to expand...

Daniel Sexton "Dan" Gurney could possibly be the most famous and most successful American car nut since the likes of Billy Durant, Henry Ford and Walter Chrysler. His dad was a famous Opera singer (yes, really), but Dan ended up making his name known in the car world for a reason....

A hot rodder from a teenager, Gurney was known for both being able to drive exceptionally smoothly and well, but he could turn really aggressive when he wanted to or needed to. Gurney's Grand Prix run started with Ferrari in 1959, and when him and Phil Hill were together from 1960 onward, they proved able to dismantle the F1 field, and they proved it many times, while Gurney's relationship with Carroll Shelby, a relationship that began when the two were teammates for Ford at Le Mans in 1965, resulted in the beginning of a major business relationship between them, which also resulted in the 1967 world title. Gurney was one of those who convinced Henry Ford II to back the Cosworth DFV program, and when he did he also got a major benefit. Winning the Indy 500 in 1972 and the Daytona 500 in 1973 was where he decided to retire, with his friend Jimmy Clark openly supporting the decision and the two going into business together.

Gurney's company, the Gurney Technology Group, grew rapidly through relationships with the Detroit automakers in the 1970s, but it rapidly came into a league of its own after the company, thanks in part to the negotiations led by now-Sir Jim Clark, turned the financially-crippled industrial behemoth known as British Leyland became the lean, fabulously managed, style-heavy firm known as Gurney Austin Rover. Gurney's takeover in 1982 was one of the biggest auto industry moments of the 1980s, and Roger Penske's then-brave decision to do much of the marketing for the firm's cars in the 1980s in America made him tens of millions. Gurney's motorsport involvement also included being a hired gun several times (including rejoining Foyt and teaming up with Dale Earnhardt to win Le Mans for Lotus in 1985, coming three weeks after Colin Chapman's passing), an amazing comeback in the 1980 Indy 500 and several one-off Formula One drives, including his spectacular second place for Alfa Romeo at Road America in 1983 and his near win in the Haas Lola-Buick at Detroit in 1986. Gurney's motorsports efforts included decades of competitiveness in Indycars (including winning the 1991 Indy 500 with Porsche and Willy T. Ribbs) and IMSA sports car racing. Gurney was also instrumental in saving Riverside International Raceway when an outcry (in large part led by him) led to Fritz Duda selling the track to Gurney in May 1988. Riverside was rebuilt to its greatest glory ever by Gurney and southern California race fans after the purchase, and it hosted the 1993 United States Grand Prix West, where Gurney paced the field during pace laps in his 1967 Championship Eagle-Weslake, to the massive adoration of the crowd.

Today, AAR is a top-level Indycar team, the defending SRP champions in the IMSA American Sports Car Championship and one of the biggest names in automotive research and development, employing 16,000 people in 21 countries. Gurney's son Alex now runs AAR as well as races on his own, and you always know that Dan is always happiest when he is out in one of his vintage cars. Dan had many offers to return to full-time driving after his 1973 retirement but never took them aside from the many one-offs and fill-ins he did, he never took these....though some have said that even at age 82 he can still take a car around Riverside faster than anyone else....

^ 1958 – Alberto Ascari (Italy) Ferrari 246

I'm saddened that you've written my boyhood hero Mike Hawthorn out of *history. Now if he had (come out of retirement and) lived... what a timeline that would make!

I just saw this today and subscribed. Oh crap, it's weird seeing Senna as only a three-time WDC and not being upset because of the boosted US presence. Jeff Gordon as a multi WDC? Yes. Oh hell yes.

The Mann - do you have something in store for François Cevert ? please...

Gurney Austin Rover Motors



"The man that many in Britain's financial and political circles sniffed at in 1981 when he made his intention to join Jim Clark in saving British Leyland, now cheer the name 'Daniel Sexton Gurney'.

The man that Margaret Thatcher said would be "An American vulture", showed the Prime Minister how labor peace can be won and strengthened while increasing productivity.

Where Arthur Scargill and the coal miners stayed at war with the government. Dan Gurney and his team worked with the auto unions and the rest of British ailing auto industry followed suit. Taking the American example of GM, Ford and Chrysler and their strong partnership with the UAW and making it work .

And does it work? Smashingly so, as our English cousins would say. Beginning with the debut of the new Metro, which stunned Audi and Lancia in Group B. Tony Pond's incredible rally season setting the tone.

And the record sales of the Metro, including the limited edition hot hatch TP5 Works which has Volkswagen and Renault afraid, very afraid.

Americans, especially those who love British motoring, now have a place to hang their hat, beginning with the Metro, and coming soon with a two new sedans. There's a planned Mustang-Camaro fighter with Lotus handling in the pipeline, and Gurney promises a 1988 return of a modern-day Mini.

Further proof that when you look up the word "winner" in the dictionary, the best definition is a picture of Dan Gurney."
-- "The American Resurrection Of Austin Rover" by David E. Davis Jr. Automobile Magazine April 1986

JimTheB said:

^ 1958 – Alberto Ascari (Italy) Ferrari 246

I'm saddened that you've written my boyhood hero Mike Hawthorn out of *history. Now if he had (come out of retirement and) lived... what a timeline that would make!

Click to expand...

Hawthorn isn't out of history, he just never won a world title. Still picked up a buttload of race wins in F1, won Le Mans three times and generally was a good man in a racing car. His kidneys, however, were what failed him, and he died aged 44 in 1973.

spdoyle said:

I just saw this today and subscribed. Oh crap, it's weird seeing Senna as only a three-time WDC and not being upset because of the boosted US presence. Jeff Gordon as a multi WDC? Yes. Oh hell yes.

Click to expand...

Senna was only a three-time world champ because he has a mountain of rivals - Prost, Piquet, Lauda, Schumacher, Mansell, Bellof, Mears and Villeneuve is tough opposition, not to mention the many drivers who may not be the caliber of the above who he'd have to race against. He got more than a few licks in, but when you're racing the best there is, even a great like Senna isn't gonna win all the time. It's worth pointing out that Senna's three world titles were with three different teams....

As far as Jeff Gordon goes, that one is simple. Ford didn't want to lose one of their golden boys but had no room for him in Indycars, and they nipped Chevrolet's attempt to have him race for them instead by introducing him to Jackie Stewart, who liked the kid a lot and arranged for him to work up the ranks in Europe. British F3 champ in 1993, European F3000 champ in 1994 and it was off to F1 for Stewart/Tyrrell. In 1997, he outdueled Villeneuve and outdrove Schumacher to be world champ. Gordon retired from F1 at the end of 2012, with 32 poles, 27 race wins, three world titles and having made his name known worldwide. Now, he's one of Ford's motorsports bosses, a partner in the team and a seriously good hired gun driver, hitting up everything from NASCAR to Le Mans to V8 Supercars and never being off the pace at any of them....