Formula One Features

Team by team update, winter 1998-1999.

Apart from the fact that both are 4-wheeled land vehicles used for conveying people, and powered by petrol-fuelled piston engines, there is very little similarity between a Formula1 car and a road car.

Choosing 10 moments from the F1 season is not easy because as usual there were many significant and dramatic events. It would have been nice to include the moment at Monaco when Mika Hakkinen bounced his McLaren off the wall at Ste Devote and got away with the error; it would have been nice to include the moment when Benetton youngster Alexander Wurz stood up to a bullying Michael Schumacher at Monaco, showing that while this generation of drivers may be overawed by the German's skill, there are new men out there who intend to tip him from his pedestal. But with only 10 choices, these are what I think were the most significant moments of the year:

Formula1 is experiencing a sudden surge of interest by organisations, particularly motor manufacturers, to participate directly in the World Championship.

The Goodyear Formula 1 team of engineers had every right to be down-hearted after the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka. They had lost the World Championship to their rival Bridgestone - and in the worst possible way, a high-speed tyre failure.

Benetton did not have a good year in 1998 but it was always going to be a difficult season because for much of the 1997 season former team boss Flavio Briatore was fighting to keep his job rather than planning for the future. In the end Briatore was removed as head of the team and when his replacement David Richards joined the team it was too late to change very much.

Last Christmas I fell asleep in front of the fire after a large dinner, and dreamt that the FIA had decided on a radical rethink of the Formula1 rules for introduction at the start of the new millennium.

The most astounding thing about the 1998 Formula 1 World Championship was not that McLaren produced a scintillating car - which was spectacularly dominant in Australia in March - but that it took until the Japanese GP in November for Ron Dennis's team to win the World Championship.

In February 1996 the Bridgestone Corporation announced that it would be entering Formula 1 in 1998.

It is not every day that technology flows from Super Touring Cars to Formula1 but, with both Benetton and Williams testing front axle differentials, this is exactly what has happened.

Five years ago there was much speculation that technology was eroding the role of the Formula1 driver, diminishing his contribution to conducting the car at the greatest possible speed around a track.

When Grand Prix cars had the engine mounted in the front, ahead of the driver, the cooling system was placed head of it in the faired nose of the car.

All the Formula 1 teams seem to have a Junior Team of some kind of other these days. But why? What are they trying to achieve and what do they gain from supporting drivers in the junior formulae?

Until the 1940's, the sole reason for building a car to go Grand Prix racing was to advertise the quality of the production road cars bearing the same name.

The 1998 Formula 1 season has not been very interesting to date. The two McLaren-Mercedes have dominated and only Michael Schumacher's victory in Argentina has dented the unblemished McLaren record. Race fans around the world may appreciate the McLaren efficiency but it is not making for fascinating TV viewing - unless, of course, you have trouble sleeping...

Nowadays Formula 1 team owners keep a very close eye on what is happening in the world of karting. Most of the current Grand Prix stars spent their teenage years racing karts on a professional basis and drivers in top-level karting have risen rapidly into Formula 1, the most notable being Jarno Trulli, who went from karts to F1 in the space of 18 months. Six months later he led his first Grand Prix.

This year the designers and engineers have had to cope with new limitations on brake equipment - calipers that must be made from a material that has a Young's Modulus no greater than 80Gpa; single calipers with a maximum of six pistons and two pads; and a maximum disc thickness of 28 millimetres.

The cars of the two premier single-seater open-wheel racing formula - Formula1 and Champcar - look quite similar to the eye but underneath their sleek, sponsor embellished exteriors they are as different as chalk and cheese.

Writing this article following the opening race of the year in Melbourne, it is easy to judge which of all the different details of the new 1998 Formula1 cars are the right solutions. In every detail, as well as overall package, the McLaren has got it right.

The Honda Motor Company is expected to announced on March 28 at the Twin Ring Motegi CART race in Japan that it is about to launch a major Grand Prix campaign which will be ready in time for the 1999 season. Although it is yet to be officially confirmed we believe that Honda has settled on a two-pronged attack with a supply of V10 engines for British American Racing and for a completely new Honda F1 team, which will build its own cars in Japan and will be run by former Grand Prix driver Satoru Nakajima.

The Grand Prix Ball in Melbourne on the Friday night before the Australian Grand Prix celebrated the 50th anniversary of Bernie Ecclestone's involvement in motor racing.

The Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne marked Bridgestone's first Formula 1 victory and the dominance of the McLaren-Mercedes team suggested that part of the reason for the team's breath-taking victory was the competitiveness of the Bridgestone tyres.

Formula 1 Preview: 1998

Formula 1 merchandising is fragmented, but there is no doubt that it is a boom industry. A couple of years ago the sport had almost no serious merchandising at all, while American sports were turning over billions of dollars a year selling memorabilia to the fans. In 1995, for example, an estimated $11.1 billion was spent on US sport merchandise. Those involved in the National Football League (NFL) made an estimated $2.9 billion and college sports sold an incredible $1.7 billion with teams such as Note Dame and Michigan State taking a big slice of the income. The National Basketball Association (NBA) turned over $2.6 billion even ice hockey turned over more than $937m.