Portal:Formula One/Featured article/History
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Michael Schumacher (born January 3, 1969) is a German Formula One driver. He is statistically the most successful F1 driver ever, with the most career victories and a record seven world drivers championships. As of 2004, he earns an estimated US$80 million annually, including a number of endorsement deals. One notable deal is with the German investment counseling company Deutsche Vermögensberatung, which will pay him US$8 million over three years for him to wear a four-inch ad on his post-race hat (pictured).
After an incredibly dominant era, Schumacher lost the 2005 World Drivers Championship title to Renault's Fernando Alonso. Read more...
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McLaren, founded in 1963 by Bruce McLaren (1937–1970), is a racing team based in Woking, England, which is best known as a Formula One constructor but has also competed in the Indianapolis 500, Canadian-American Challenge Cup, and 24 Hours of Le Mans. Its full title is currently Team McLaren Mercedes and will become Vodafone McLaren Mercedes from January 2007 following a sponsorship deal announced in December 2005. The team is managed by Ron Dennis and is controlled by McLaren Racing, a member of the McLaren Group.
In 1990 McLaren Cars was founded to produce road going cars based on the team's racing expertise.
McLaren is one of the most successful teams in Formula One, having won more Grands Prix than any constructor save Ferrari and numerous World Drivers' and World Constructors' Championships. When account is taken of the period of competition, McLaren emerge as the most successful team with 11 drivers' and 8 constructors' championships since 1966.
Renault F1 is a Formula One racing team that has competed both as an engine supplier and as a constructor since the late 1970s with several breaks. Renault introduced the turbo engine to Formula One when they debuted their first car at Silverstone in 1977. Although the Renault team won races and competed for world titles, it was as a supplier of normally aspirated engines to the Williams team in the 1990s that Renault first tasted world championship success. Renault returned to the category as a constructor in 2001 by taking over the Benetton team, which was renamed Renault in 2002. Their first championship as a constructor was achieved in 2005.
Renault F1 is coordinated from the team's UK base at Enstone, Oxfordshire where the chassis are designed and built. The engines are produced at the team's French site, Viry-Châtillon. The team is managed by Flavio Briatore. Renault has won 24 races as a constructor and has achieved one constructor's championship and one driver's championship. Renault also contributed to 5 driver's world championships and 6 constructor's world championships for Williams and Benetton. Renault's other motorsport activities are conducted through Renault Sport.
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Giancarlo Fisichella (born January 14, 1973 in Rome), also known as Fisico, is an Italian Formula One racing driver. He currently drives for the world constructors champion Renault team and has also driven for Sauber, Jordan, Benetton and Minardi. For most of his career he has consistently outpaced his team-mates, and was eventually declared the winner for Jordan of the chaotic 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix a week after the event. Until 2005 he had never been in a team with genuinely competitive equipment. Since joining the Renault team he has been overshadowed by world champion Fernando Alonso but has taken two further victories with Renault.
Like most current Formula One drivers, Fisichella began kart racing as a youngster. In 1992, he competed in the Italian Formula Three series, racing for the RC Motorsport team. He finished runner up in 1993, and in 1994 he won the championship, behind race victories in Monaco and Macau. He left open-wheel racing briefly in 1995, driving for Alfa Romeo in the international touring car series. In 1996, he made the move to Formula One, racing for Minardi for half the season before being replaced by Giovanni Lavaggi, the team needing a driver with funding.
Fisichella, tipped early on to be a successor to greats like Prost, Senna, and Stewart, made his full F1 assault in 1997 with Jordan, scoring his first podium at the Canada. That year he outclassed reigning Formula Nippon champion Ralf Schumacher, his team-mate. At Hockenheim he led for much of the race, but was denied the win by an inspired Gerhard Berger and a puncture. A superb second behind Schumacher at Spa in drenching conditions marked him out as a real talent and for 1998 he was snapped up by Benetton. The timing was unfortunate. Benetton were now without works Renault engines and would not win another race.
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Mark Alan Webber (born August 27, 1976) is an Australian Formula One driver. He was born in Queanbeyan, New South Wales, son of Alan, the local motorcycle dealer. He is the first Australian to race in Formula One since David Brabham in 1994.
After some racing success in Australia, Webber came to the UK in 1995 to further his motorsports career. He continued to win, although he gained his biggest headlines while driving for the Mercedes-Benz sports car squad at Le Mans in 1999 where he had two spectacular accidents during practice and warmup in which an aerodynamic fault caused the car to somersault off the Mulsanne straight. After Mercedes' withdrawal from the race, Webber began a partnership with fellow Australian Paul Stoddart, at that time owner of the European racing Formula 3000 team, which eventually took them both into Formula One when Stoddart bought the Minardi team.
Webber made an emotional debut in Formula One in 2002, scoring Minardi's first points in three years at his and Stoddart's home race. After an impressive first season, Jaguar Racing took him on as lead driver. During two years with the generally uncompetitive team Webber several times qualified on the front two rows of the grid and outperformed his team mates. He joined the former championship winning Williams team in 2005, for whom he achieved his best finish in Formula One to date; a third place at the 2005 Monaco Grand Prix.
Webber is a keen sportsman away from the track. He has won the the annual F1 Pro-Am tennis tournament in Barcelona three times and has recently set up the 'Mark Webber Pure Tasmania Challenge' trek across Tasmania to raise funds for cancer charities.
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Damon Hill is a British former race car driver and was the 1996 Formula One world champion. He was born in London on September 17, 1960, and is the son of the late, two time Formula One World Champion Graham Hill. He is the only son of a Formula One Grand Prix champion to win the championship himself. He took all but one of his 22 victories for the Williams team - including a victory at the 1994 British Grand Prix, a race his father never won. He also scored Jordan's first win and came within a few miles of being the only man to win a Grand Prix for the Arrows team and their Yamaha engine supplier at the 1997 Hungarian Grand Prix. Hill became president of the British Racing Drivers Club in 2006.
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Gilles Villeneuve (January 18, 1950 – May 8, 1982) was a Canadian Formula One racing driver. An enthusiast of cars and fast driving from an early age, he started his professional career in snowmobile racing in his native province of Quebec. He moved into single seaters - winning the US and Canadian Formula Atlantic championships in 1976 before being offered a one-off drive with McLaren at the 1977 British Grand Prix. He was taken on by reigning world champions Ferrari for the end of the season - in only his fifth season racing cars - and from 1978 to his death in 1982 drove for the Italian team. He won six Grand Prix races in a short career at the highest level. In 1979 he finished second by four points in the championship to teammate Jody Scheckter.
Villeneuve died in a 140 mph crash with the March of Jochen Mass during practice for the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder (see more below). The accident came only two weeks after an intense argument with his team-mate, Didier Pironi, over Pironi's move to pass Villeneuve at Imola. At the time of his death, Villeneuve was extremely popular with fans and with many journalists, on whom his death had a profound effect. Since 1982 he has become an iconic figure in the history of the sport, renowned for his car control and for a 'never give up' attitude. His son, Jacques Villeneuve, became Formula One world champion in 1997.
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The 2005 United States Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held on June 19, 2005 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The race was highly controversial because only six cars competed; all fourteen of the cars using Michelin tyres retired after the parade lap due to a safety issue with their tyres and the newly resurfaced speedway, leaving only the teams using Bridgestone rubber — Ferrari, Minardi and Jordan — to start.
Following several tyre failures before the race, most spectacularly on Ralf Schumacher's Toyota during Friday practice, Michelin advised its seven customer teams that they could not safely race on the tyres provided for them. The FIA, the sport's governing body, refused to allow a chicane to be installed, maintaining that such rule changes would be grossly unfair to the Bridgestone-shod teams, who had come prepared with properly working tyres. The Michelin teams, unable to come to a compromise with the FIA did not participate in the race on safety grounds.
Of the six competitors, Ferrari's Michael Schumacher was the eventual winner. The result significantly boosted his championship standing, placing him third overall — no driver above him in the table took part in the race. The situation created enormous negative publicity for the sport of Formula One, especially in America, a market in which Formula One has struggled to establish itself over the last 20 years.
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The Monaco Grand Prix (Grand Prix de Monaco) is a Formula One race held on the streets of the Principality of Monaco. Run annually since 1929, it is widely considered to be one of the most important and prestigious automobile races in the world alongside the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race and 24 Hours of Le Mans Its history, the spectacle of the event, and the glamour associated with it result in the race being considered the jewel of the Formula One crown.
The Monaco Grand Prix predates the organised World Championships; the Principality's first Grand Prix race was organised in 1929 by Antony Noghes, under the auspices of Prince Louis II through the "Automobile Club de Monaco" (A.C.M.). That first race was won by William Grover-Williams (a.k.a. "Williams") driving a Bugatti. The event was part of the pre-Second World War European Championship and was included in the first Formula One World Championship in 1950. The race is held on a narrow course laid out in the streets of Monaco, whose many elevation changes and tight corners make it one of the most demanding tracks in Formula One. On the race weekend frogmen (divers) are employed to rescue any drivers who crash into the harbour - this last happened in 1965.
Brazil's Ayrton Senna has won the most Grands Prix here, taking six victories. Five of them were consecutive from 1989 to 1993. However it is Graham Hill, a 5-time winner of the race, who is known as the "King of Monaco".
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- October 17, 2006 - December 6, 2006
Alain Marie Pascal Prost OBE, (born February 24, 1955 in Saint-Chamond, France), is a retired French racing driver and 1985, 1986, 1989 and 1993 Formula One World Champion. He took his first of 51 race victories at his home Grand Prix in France in 1981 for Renault but also won races for McLaren, Ferrari and Williams. In terms of World Drivers' Championship titles, only Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher have been more successful than the Frenchman in the sport's history.
Prost employed a smooth, relaxed style behind the wheel, deliberately modelling himself on personal heroes like Jackie Stewart and Jim Clark. He would start races conservatively, managing the wear on his brakes and tyres, leaving himself in a position to challenge at the end of the race. As a result of this approach he was nicknamed 'The Professor'. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Prost formed a fierce rivalry with Ayrton Senna, who joined him at McLaren in 1988. The two had a series of controversial races, including a collision at the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix that gave Prost his third Drivers' Championship. A year later at the same venue they collided again and Senna won the title. After a dismal 1991 with Ferrari and a sabbatical in 1992, Prost joined Williams, where he dominated the season before finally retiring at the end of the season. In 1997 Prost took over the French Ligier team, running it as Prost Grand Prix until it went bankrupt in 2001. In 2006, Prost started his fourth year in the Andros Trophy, which is an Ice Racing competition.
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- December 6, 2006 - January 10, 2007
The 1994 San Marino Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held on May 1, 1994 at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola, Italy. It was the third race of the 1994 Formula One season, and the first race of the season to be held in Europe. The race weekend was marred by the deaths of Austrian Roland Ratzenberger and three-time world champion Ayrton Senna as well as numerous other accidents and injuries, and was described by BBC Television commentator Murray Walker as "the blackest day for Grand Prix racing that I can remember".[1]
The race was eventually won by Michael Schumacher. In the press conference following the race, Schumacher said that he "couldn't feel satisfied, couldn't feel happy" with his win following the events that had occurred during the race weekend. Nicola Larini scored the first points of his career when he obtained a podium finish in second position. Mika Häkkinen finished third.
The race led to an increased emphasis on safety in the sport. It led to the reforming of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, and the changing of many track layouts and car designs. Since the race, numerous regulation changes have been made to slow Formula One cars down and new circuits, such as Bahrain International Circuit, incorporate large run-off areas to slow cars before they collide with a wall. The HANS device, a piece of equipment that provides head and neck support in the event of an accident, has since became mandatory.
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- January 10, 2007 - February 4, 2007
Mauricio Gugelmin (born April 20, 1963 in Joinville) is a former racing driver from Brazil. He took part in both Formula One and the Champ Car World Series. He participated in 80 Formula One grands prix, debuting in 1988 for the March team. He achieved one top-three finish and scored a total of ten championship points in the series. He competed in the Champ Car series between 1993 and 2001, starting 147 races. He won one race, in 1997 in Vancouver, finishing fourth in the championship that year. His best result in the Indianapolis 500 was in 1995 where he started and finished in sixth position, leading 59 laps. For a period, he held the world speed record for a closed race track, set at California Speedway in 1997 at a speed of 240.942 mph (387.759 km/h). Gugelmin retired at the end of 2001 after a year that included the death of his son.
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- February 4, 2007 - March 2, 2007
Motor Racing Developments Ltd., commonly known as Brabham, was a British racing car manufacturer and Formula One racing team. Founded in 1960 by two Australians, driver Jack Brabham and designer Ron Tauranac, the team won four drivers' and two constructors' world championships in its 30-year Formula One history. As of 2006, Jack Brabham's 1966 drivers' championship remains the only victory by a car bearing the driver's own name. The 1966 and 1967 drivers' and constructors' championships were won using Australian-built engines from Repco.
Brabham was the world's largest manufacturer of customer open wheel racing cars in the 1960s, and had built more than 500 cars by 1970. During this period, teams using Brabham cars won championships in Formula Two and Formula Three and competed in the Indianapolis 500. In the 1970s and 1980s, Brabham introduced innovations such as the controversial but successful 'fan car', in-race refuelling, carbon brakes, and hydropneumatic suspension. The team won two more Formula One drivers' championships in the 1980s with Brazilian Nelson Piquet, and became the first to win a drivers' championship with a turbocharged car.
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Thomas Maldwyn Pryce (June 11, 1949 – March 5, 1977) was a British Formula One racing driver from Wales. He was famous for winning the Brands Hatch Race of Champions in 1975 and for the circumstances surrounding his death. Pryce is also the only Welshman to lead a Formula One Grand Prix: two laps of the 1975 British Grand Prix.
Pryce started his career in Formula One with Token, making his only start for the team at the 1974 Belgian Grand Prix. Shortly after an impressive performance at a Formula Three support race for the 1974 Monaco Grand Prix, Pryce joined Shadow and scored his first points for the team in only his fourth race in Germany. Pryce later claimed two podium finishes during his career, his first in Austria and the second in Brazil. Pryce's third full season at Shadow was cut short by his fatal accident at the 1977 South African Grand Prix, where he collided at high speed with track marshal Jansen Van Vuuren. Pryce was considered by his team as a great wet weather driver. In fact, during the practice session for the 1977 South African GP, run in wet conditions, Pryce was faster than everyone, including the likes of Niki Lauda and James Hunt.
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