Formula One Features — September 1994

Formula 1 is not a very enlightened business when it comes to sexual equality. It is a macho sport in which, traditionally, women have looked pretty, made sandwiches or, in the old days before computer timing, used stopwatches. Today things are changing. There are still plenty of bimbos hanging out, but increasingly girls are winning important jobs.

If you talk to the engine builders in the Formula 1 paddock most will tell you that the new 3-litre regulations will not make a huge difference when they are introduced next year. After the accident at Imola the FIA demanded that Formula 1 horsepower levels be reduced to around 600 horsepower next year and proposed a fuel-flow valve to achieve this. None of the engine men wanted such restrictions and, after a meeting at Ferrari's headquarters in Maranello, Italy, they agreed unanimously to come up with the idea of a return to a 3-litre formula, just as Formula 1 had between 1966 to 1985.

When Frank Williams announced that he had hired David Coulthard, he was asked why he was hiring an unknown 23-year-old Scotsman to replace the late Ayrton Senna.

There's been a lot of talking in Grand Prix racing in 1994 about cheating. But how easy is it to hoodwink the Formula 1 authorities. Cheating is not something which Formula 1 racing is used to seeing. The sport has long been dominated by a clique of self-made team bosses, who operate with what might best be described as the morals of secondhand car dealers. They have always had a code of honor. Deliberate cheating was taboo because stability is the best environment in which to make money.

There will be a radical change in F1 design next year, but most of the design parameters will not be changing. The 1995 rules demand that the underside of the car - which is currently flat - has to be 'stepped' so that on either side of the central section of the car, the bottom of the car must be raised by 2.5cm. This may not seem much but it will have a dramatic effect, removing as much as 50% of the downforce generated by the current flat bottom.

Formula 1 has a language all of their own which cane be rather difficult to understand. Here we offer you a few of the more common phrases which one hears in a Grand Prix paddock.