Wikipedia talk:WikiProject British Motorsport

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WikiProject British Motorsport This article is part of WikiProject British Motorsport, an attempt to improve and standardize articles related to Motorsport in the United Kingdom. Consult the project page for further information.


Guys, you have a lot of work to do with Stirling Moss Ericd 21:11, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Nationality

There's been quite a bit of argument elsewhere about what makes someone English or Scottish etc. Lots of people, including me, feel that an English birthplace doesn't necessarily make you English for instance. Other factors including descent and personal identity preferences come into play and we don't have knowledge of a lot of these drivers, especially the older ones. Obviously Jenson Button is English, he identifies with being English and there's no doubt about it - same for DC and Scotland. A lot of the others are less obvious and in some cases it's wrong and possibly offensive to label someone as English or Scottish simply based on birthplace. If Jenson's mother just happened to have been in Wales when he was born, he would be no less English, but by this token we might be calling him Welsh.

It has been pointed out that to say someone is English without verification is "anti-wiki", and birthplace does not constitute verification. So how do we avoid this and also avoid future arguments? Do we list drivers of uncertain nationality just as British, or do we work by "Racing drivers native to England" i.e. born there, instead of "English racing drivers".

One example of the problem is Duncan Hamilton who is currently down as both Irish and English, and another is Brian Shawe-Taylor who is listed as English but was born in Ireland. Bretonbanquet 17:42, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Good point, and something we should attempt to clear up to have consistency. If there is uncertainty, we could simply use "Category:British racecar drivers". The trouble is that all drivers race under UK licences. As you say DC obviously considers himself Scottish as he races with the flag on his helmet, Button considers himself English (as did Hill & Mansell) and Allan McNish asked DTM organsiers to use the Scottish flag next to his name on captions etc. so they can all go into their relevant countries. My suggestion would be to put drivers under their suspected nationality unless challanged in which case move it to British. Where possible cite proof of considered nationality on the talk page of the driver. This would seem to me the only logical way of doing it as there are so many articles that would need checking, and in some cases possibly no ablilty to check. I disagree with "Racing drivers native to England" as it doesn't actually say anything really. A driver born abroad might move to England at 1 year old and therefore be covered under the WikiProject but not eligible for the category. At the end of the day, nationality is what you consider yourself to be, I consider myself Welsh, yet my passport is British. Cornish drivers are also difficult to classify, there are some people who consider it to be a seperate nationality with it's own traditions and language. It would be interesting to hear what others have to say on this. Alexj2002 19:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

The standard and agreed approach used in WP:F1 is basically to go with the passport - which would match whatever the FIA have the driver registered as, and the flags used at the podium ceremony. This is the only definition which (once accepted as the definition) is unarguable - nationality then becomes a question of fact, not of opinion. This would of course mean that all drivers from Britain and Northern Ireland would go down as UK, because there are no Scottish, Welsh etc passports, only British ones. Likewise it is always the Union Jack which is used on the podium. Mansell, Hill and Coulthard are righly proud of their national identities as English or Scots, but that didn't change the flag that was used. My recollection is that this was also the case for Eddie Irvine (NI). If you list drivers under their nationality witin the UK you will be inconsistent with Wikiproject F1 - so please don't change the F1 drivers articles to English, Scottish etc as you will be re-opening an issue which has been debated many times and a concensus reached. Having said that, because this project is focussing only on Britain (or possibly Britain and Ireland!) perhaps a finer focus would be appropriate here where there isn't a conflict with the F1 articles. Having said that, I don't see that you can do anything other than 'this driver considers him/herself English/Scottish/Welsh/Irish etc', which is a rather nasty phrase. Do any of the racing bodies (TOCA etc) list drivers by nationality? Best of luck. --4u1e 07:41, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Just to throw some fuel on the fire - both Mansell and Button race with the Union Jack, not the cross of St George, on their helmets! Plainly British! --4u1e 07:43, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
The DTM [1] shows some drivers with Scottish flags next to them but others like Jamie Green with the Union Flag (there's a bit of a fuss over that term as well, it's only the Jack when flown at sea). Interesting also is this quaote from Allan McNish [2]. With Eddie Irvine I recall some fuss being made over the flag used on the podium in his book (Green Races Red IIRC) It's many years since I read it but I seem to recall them asking him if he wanted the Union Flag or the Republic of Ireland Flag, he answered "What do you think" and they flew the Republic flag despite him being from NI. Don't quote me on that though, might have recalled it wrong! If WP F1 is using British, perhaps for consistency we should do the same. 80.189.229.194 12:09, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

It's very interesting to read these comments - I certainly would prefer to see "British" used to describe the nationality of these drivers, as the English / Scottish etc terms are open to huge rows and mistakes can be made. I had a big argument with someone (who wasn't interested in motor racing by the way) over the Chris Craft article when I changed "English" to "British" - Craft was born in Cornwall and maybe he identified with being Cornish, I argued. I was threatened with blocking and it got a bit ugly, to be honest. It looks like I've won over that particular argument, but it's a good indicator of how awkward this can be. I would sleep better, frankly, if I didn't receive abuse for using the term "British", as I have in other non-motor racing articles, but I guess we can't have everything in life... Bretonbanquet 18:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

This is a thorny one. British is correct in most cases though, and even the most patriotic Scottish, English and Welsh drivers seem to have no problem in accepting membership of the British Racing Drivers' Club. Personally, the only group I can see having an issue with this are people from NI, as technically the country is the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". So NI citizens will race under the Union Jack, but are not necessarily British. Although my passport explicitly states "British" as my nationality I was born in London so no confusion, I don't have any Northern Irish friends to hand to see what theirs say. Anyone? Pyrope 16:03, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
The British article states that the adjective now means "from the UK", rather than "from Great Britain", and I would agree with that. Of course some people in Northern Ireland would class themselves as Irish, but de jure at least I think it's agreed that they're British. Loganberry (Talk) 02:26, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
We went into the Northern Ireland thing in some detail at talk:Eddie Irvine a while back, if that helps. As it has been everywhere else, the agreement was that 'British' was the word to use, although we also came up with the idea of 'British driver from (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales)' to cover all bases. Cheers. 4u1e 03:54, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Irish Question

Here's something I want to resolve to avoid conflict in the future. Should articles relating to the Republic of Ireland be included in this category? If so should the category be renamed to British & Irish Motorsport? The BTCC races in the Republic, and there is association between the two countries, but they stage their own rounds of the WRC. I'm voting For the inclusion and For the name change. Alexj2002 19:43, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I would vote For and For as well, if only to avoid conflict over the issue of whether someone is Irish or British. It doesn't seem like a huge expansion of things if we were to include Ireland, so I think there's no problem with it. Bretonbanquet 18:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lack of Rallying articles

I note that there appears to be a lack of Rallying articles in the list. I would hope that some of my fellow wikipedians would help me redress this. We don't all drive round and round in circles you know! --Ewan 21:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Does "Motorsport" restrict you just to tarmac? Doe it restrict you just to cars, what about bikes - Motorcycle sport ??? Pickle
I think "motorsport" refers to cars, bikes, trucks... really anything with an engine that races on land. (Powerboats etc I think are a different kettle of fish.) I do take your point, though, Ewan - it's absurd that there's not one word on the British Rally Championship, for example, although that at least is mentioned in the "To-do" list. I've been writing about hillclimbing a lot, though, so I don't think I'm guilty of the "round and round in circles" charge! =:P Loganberry (Talk) 01:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Circuit navigation sidebar

As I've recently mentioned at Talk:Cadwell Park, the "circuit navigation" sidebar used on individual track pages doesn't really fit in very well with the norm on Wikipedia, as well as getting in the way of adding photos to the top of articles. I'm also uneasy about the "Select a Country" part; that could easily grow to ridiculous sizes as more and more countries were added. It already looks unwieldy with only half a dozen countries; it's just not going to be sustainable with twenty, and you could easily reach that number without leaving Europe. Is there any reason why a more standard type of template box couldn't be used? Something like this, at the very bottom of each track's page:

British motor racing circuits
Anglesey - Bedford - Brands Hatch - Bruntingthorpe - Cadwell Park - Castle Combe - Croft - Donington Park - Goodwood - Knockhill - Lydden Hill - Mallory Park - Oulton Park - Pembrey - Rockingham - Silverstone - Snetterton - Thruxton

This box is easy on the eye, fits in with the style used by other WikiProjects, takes up less space and can be easily expanded to accommodate other circuits. It's true that it doesn't contain quick links to other countries' tracks, but as explained above I can't see how that's going to work in the longer term anyway. Thoughts welcome! Loganberry (Talk) 00:09, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... no reaction. In that case I'm going to be bold and put it in myself. I've set up a template at {{British motor racing circuits}}, so the original navigation is still there if it's deemed necessary. For now I'm going to use the new template only in the Cadwell Park article, but I do intend to spread the box across other British circuits' articles unless there are objections... so if you do object, then please say so! Loganberry (Talk) 11:50, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I like the new menu bar at the bottom of the circuit guides and being the original author of the side menu I think it can now be deleted. Cocjh1 15:51, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bruntingthorpe

Does this really qualify as a racing circuit? Surely it's rather more of a proving ground, along the lines of MIRA or Millbrook, the former of which at least has held sprints but still doesn't qualify. I think Bruntingthorpe should be removed from the template unless it turns out that it has held circuit races. Loganberry (Talk) 15:21, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree with you - even if it has held the odd race it isn't a primary purpose of the facility. Alexj2002 14:14, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
I would agree with that, too. Adrian M. H. 17:24, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 17:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Win Percy

Hi. Just drafted a first shot at this page. If anyone has his proper BTCC stats to hand, could you fill the infobox in please? Thanks. Pyrope 19:27, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Standard lead for UK drivers

Suggested standard lead for UK F1 drivers, but approach could probably be consistent for all UK motorsport. Can you guys comment here. Thanks. 4u1e 17:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:27, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Motorsport

I thought it would be a good idea to post a reminder about our parent WP; WikiProject Motorsport. We currently have only two editors listed on the List of Members, but I'm sure that there are more of you out there! Those of you who haven't already contributed to it are more than welcome to do so, particularly if you have specialised knowledge of any racing discipline that doesn't have a dedicated WP. If enough editors get together and coordinate their efforts, we can make a big difference to the neglected areas of Wikpedia's motor racing content. Regards, Adrian M. H. 20:18, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Changes in Templates

Hi, I'm currently making some changes over on the WikiProject Motorsport Assessment Page. Look in the statistics section. Only 240 articles have the template WikiProject Motorsport on it. I'm thererfore going to propose something (I think this has been discussed a while back). Can every single Motorsport article have the template on it's talk page. My reasoning for this is that some drivers have only the Formula One template on the article. However, surely (by the way, this goes for virtually all articles), they haven't got to Formula One someway. They haven't just been thrown into F1, I don't think any drivers done that. They've gone through other forms of Motorsport. Therefore, surely the Wikipedia Motorsport template is needed for every single Motorsport article?. I'm going to do a vote on this (on this page, plus the Motorsport project and all the child projects) so we can get a decision on this. By the way, don't bother voting on different projects, as only one of your votes will count! Davnel03 16:53, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Agree


  • Disagree


  • Leave Comments Here

New discusssion on Motorsport talk page. Davnel03 18:01, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GT Racing

I have noticed that this is one element of British Motorsport that seems to be lacking on Wikipedia. Up until a few days ago there wasn't even an article on the British GT Championship, and the one on the Britcar series seems to be quite lacking. Outside of these two pages there isn't much of anything on either of these two GT series, or other sports car series.

Granted, these projects also fall under the care of Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports Car Racing, but I believe they should also be covered here in British Motorsport. Any help on expanding information on British GT and Britcar, as well as other sports car series, would be great. The359 18:01, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

You're right, yes. In the long term, national GT racing is on my "list of subjects" to which I intend to contribute. Like you, I would really like to see it better represented. I will add a section about it to the Subjects page of WP:MS in the meantime. Adrian M. H. 20:09, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Standard width for driver infoboxes

There are numerous driver articles which contain multiple infoboxes, for the different series the driver has competed in. One issue is that the various driver infoboxes are different widths, which means that the infoboxes don't always "stack" neatly - contrast Olivier Gendebien (all infoboxes the same width) with Julian Bailey (different width infoboxes). The current infobox widths are:

  • 25 em: F1 driver, A1GP driver, V8 Supercar driver, WRC driver
  • 24 em: Former F1 driver, Former Champ Car driver, Former F3 driver
  • 22 em: BTCC driver, BTCC alumnus, DTM driver, Junior series driver, Pickup Truck driver, Infobox racing driver
  • 270px (which is very close to 24em): all the NASCAR driver infobox templates

I propose that we standardise the width of all driver infoboxes at 24em, to improve the visual appearance of articles containing multiple infoboxes. Please leave comments here. DH85868993 14:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Following broad support at WP:MOTOR, all motorsport people infoboxes have now been changed to a standard width of 24em. -- DH85868993 12:05, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] BTCC templates

I've recently become acquainted with some of the BTCC templates. Here are my observations/thoughts:

  • I've added template:BTCC 2006, template:BTCC 2007 and template:BTCC season into Category:Motor racing navigational boxes
  • You may wish to consider establishing a hierarchy of BTCC template categories, i.e. Category:BTCC templates with sub-categories Category:BTCC infobox templates and Category:BTCC navigational templates. I'm happy to do the work if you think it's worth doing (which it may not be, considering there are only 5 BTCC templates)
  • template:BTCC 2006 and template:BTCC 2007 seem to be a bit broken. If you look here, you can see that if you have a collapsible template directly above one of the BTCC templates, it expands behind the header line of the BTCC template, which is incorrect. (the same applies for template:BRDC International Trophy)
Had a go at fixing the BRDC template, it seems to have worked. Pyrope 12:35, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Having a separate navigation template for each season is a bit different to how most of the other motorsport WikiProjects do it; most of the others have a single template which gets updated at the end of every season and added to/removed from articles as appropriate. I'm not saying what this WikiProject is doing is wrong, just different to most of the others.
  • You may wish to consider creating a "BTCC circuits" template (similar to template:Formula One circuits and template:Champ Car Tracks) which could be included in the circuit articles instead of template:BTCC 2006 or template:BTCC 2007.

Regards. DH85868993 08:18, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Motorsport Library

I've made a suggestion at WikiProject Motorsport for a list of hardcopy references and who holds them, to help with referencing articles. This was prompted by the realisation that I have access to quite a lot of material which I'm not currently using. Please comment here. Cheers. 4u1e 16:44, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion of WikiProject Motorsport subproject reorganization and its changes to WP:BMS

I'm bringing this up here due to the discussion currently going on at WP:MOTOR, which some in this project might not be aware of. I have brought up a proposal for the Project that would reorganize all subprojects under the WP:MOTOR umbrella to be based off of a form of motorsport, rather then specific series, like WP:WRC, or nationality, such as WP:BMS. This is designed to prevent large amounts of overlap inbetween projects as well as to streamline projects to cover all popular forms of motorsport.

The current proposal would however greatly alter WP:BMS. Due to this projects main area of expertise, British F3 and other smaller formulas as well as the BTCC, as well as the latter's similarity to WP:AUSMOTOR's concentration on V8 Supercars, the concept is for the BTCC sections of WP:BMS and WP:AUSMOTOR to be merged into a new WP:Touring Car Racing, and joined by various other major touring car championships. At the same time, British F3 and other formula series will be placed into a new project, entitled WP:Formula Racing.

I realize WP:BMS does infact go beyond British F3 and BTCC, and covers a wide spectrum of other areas of motorsport. However I believe these areas are also covered by other projects (such as WP:Sports Car Racing for British GT and WP:F1 for higher echelon formula drivers), and therefore these sections could be moved to their care in order to standize series that use similar formulas.

This is by no means an attempt to shut down your project, nor is it even a plan. It is merely a discussion for all members of subprojects beneath WP:MOTOR, and we'd welcome any input, suggestions, or opinions you'd like to put forth on this proposal. Feel free to even make your own proposal. Thank you. The359 07:47, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Free use pics from Renault World Series at Castle Donington

My friend at flickr uploaded several images of the event using Creative Commons Attribution 2.0. I don't know what any thing about the cars or series, but I'm hoping that someone here would. You can find an image here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/estoril/1351370097/ . They look like very cool cars that I wish I was watching in person! Enjoy! Royalbroil 03:54, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Cheers RB, it does look like a good event! I'll upload a few when I get chance. Pyrope 09:02, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
I uploaded most of the historic stuff, but I'm not best placed to pass judgment on the rest. Dump them into this category if anyone does upload any more! ta. Pyrope 20:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
I'll see what came out of my camera and upload any good ones shortly. I still need to sort out my Goodwood FOS pics as well. AlexJ 22:35, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Richard Lloyd Racing up for GA

Richard Lloyd Racing (formerly GTi Engineering) is up for GA nomination. The team started out in the British Saloon Car Championship and was based at Silverstone Circuit, so any input regarding their BSCC years or even their sports car years will be helpful. The359 (talk) 04:22, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A question maybe you guys can help with

I know this page is meant to be for improving the project, but I was hoping you guys could help me. I attended an event at Anglesey Circuit on July 9th 2006, and I was hoping someone would be able to tell me whether it was BARC or BRSCC. I know it had Caterham Super 7s, among others - photos are on flickr if anyone is able to recognise them. Thanks. -mattbuck (Talk) 20:15, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

It was most likely a BARC meeting. The Caterham Graduates were a BARC affiliated club in 2006. Pyrope 21:40, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks very much. Couldn't find anything on google to tell me the answer. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:15, 7 May 2008 (UTC)