https://www.theguardian.com/sport/that-1980s-sports-blog/2013/oct/14/remembering-1982-f1-world-championship With F1 becoming a little boring in the last years,maybe we need to go back to around 1982 ...without the tragedy of course.
I remember that season like it was yesterday. Especially remember seeing Villeneuve's Ferrari at Long Beach with the extended wings.. it just looked so kooky! in those days in the USA you only followed F-1 via Autoweek & Road & Track. R&T's articles were several months behind the event. on TV they showed Long Beach, Monaco and Watkins Glen or in this case - Las Vegas & Detroit. Some time you would see highlights of a particularly thrilling race - like France in 79... So I was amazed when our local news station from Youngstown OH showed a "horrific race car crash today from Europe" then went on to show Villeneuve's accident. I literally stopped and froze... it was the worst thing I'd ever seen, literally made me cry. if you did not know F-1 you would not have seen that it was his actual body being flung against the catch fencing.. just awful. Years later the guy who owned the Good Year store in our town had a huge wall poster of Villenueve in the pits at Long Beach. He gave it to me - and it literally covered one entire wall in my bedroom!
That season was a mess in so many ways, and the beginning of my dislike of Balestre and his "flexible yardstick" rulings. Loss of Gilles, Ferrari losing the championship due to the loss of both Gilles and Pironi in PRACTICE incidents, the political mess and organization battles, etc. if we think FIA/FOM is meddlesome now, we would have had a collective aneurism back in '82. I could not stand Balestre, which is probably part of the reason Senna reigns supreme for me...he didn't take the b.s. from that megalomaniac. '82 was exciting for all the wrong reasons, imo.
You are not wrong there. Re Ballestre. Have you noticed that most sporting federation leaders are self-appointed tyrants? That goes for athleticism, cycling, football, the Olympics, and of course motor racing. Who really appointed Ballestre, Mosley or Todt ?
Balestre (From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marie_Balestre ): After the war, he worked as a journalist for Robert Hersant at a successful French automobile magazine called L'Auto-Journal. Balestre continued to work with Hersant as he expanded his publishing operations, which made Balestre a wealthy individual. He was a founding member of the Fédération Française du Sport Automobile, a French national motorsport organization, in 1950, and in 1961 became the first president of the International Karting Commission of the FIA. He was elected president of the FFSA in 1973 and president of the FIA's International Sporting Commission in 1978. He was instrumental in transforming the International Sporting Commission into the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA) in 1978. So Balestre was not "self appointed". Mosley and Todt were both elected by the international members of the FIA (albeit both in one horse races). Both campaigned in such a way that their rivals eventually realised it was pointless to run against them, and so they were both voted in. Again, neither of were actually "self-appointed". About the only person in power in F1 who really has been "self appointed" is Bernie Ecclestone - And that's mainly due to the fact that no one else saw the need for anyone to take control the way he did!
That's right. Bernie actually offered the teams a share of the pie when he took control of the F-1 commercial rights for the paltry sum of $100K each. The teams declined the offer and the rest, as they say, is history. That $100K investment in Bernie's plan would have paid off hugely for the teams but they obviously didn't comprehend what was coming as Bernie's vision solidified F-1 (as we recall there was a brief split in F-1, "non-points races" and a lot of upheavel leading up to this) The other magazine of note in the U.S. that had F-1 news was FORMULA (later renamed RACECAR). FORMULA was a monthly, glossy full color racing magazine. I had just read an extensive interview with Villeneuve, put the magazine down, turned on the TV news which reported the incident from Zolder. It was a shock to say the least, will never forget it. BHW
We will never know what may have been. The example of CART, in which the teams were stakeholders, shows that teams running their own series doesn't necessarily works.
Agree. There must be a singular vision for an organization to survive. Too many bosses gives us C.A.R.T, as you stated.
