Conflicted
is what I’m feeling; torn between what’s gone before, and what the future holds. It’s something of a midlife motorsport crisis, and it’s one echoed in this racing-avoured issue of CAR.
On the one hand – rmly in nostalgia’s grip – I remember watching Lauda, Hunt, Scheckter, Villeneuve, Prost, Senna and Piquet battling it out for the F1 World Championship in cars that looked as distinct as their driving styles. As a kid, it utterly mesmerised me, and it wasn’t just beautiful cars such as Lauda’s Ferrari 312T2 and Piquet’s Brabham BT52, the scream of those V12s, V8s and 1,6-litre turbo engines, or the close racing; you really got a sense of individual personalities, too. This was a time before celebrity-obsessed digital media reported on the minutiae of an F1 driver’s life. Can you imagine James Hunt in this age of social-media scrutiny? Smartphones would melt.
So, yes, part of me wishes F1 could return to those glory days. But the other part also realises I’m looking back through a suitably retro camera- lter app. I’ve no doubt what I regard as F1’s golden age was looked upon by F1 fans – who grew up in the pre-war era – as overblown and vulgar compared with the brave gentlemen racers who wrestled huge, skinny-tyred beasts wearing little more than Chinos, Polo shirts and cloth caps.
This other part of me is beginning to look at Formula E with genuine interest. When it started back in 2014, it seemed gimmicky. Bar one or two names, I’d never heard of any of the drivers and all the cars were exactly the same. One-make formulas with the same engine and chassis have rarely grabbed my attention.
Formula E has evolved quickly, though, and – as you’ll see in our feature on page 188 – has of cial-team buy-in from heavyweights such as Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes-benz, Nissan, Porsche and Renault. Is this the future of motorsport? Formula E must be making an uncomfortably large blip on Liberty Media’s radar, especially when F1’s owners rst caught sight of that Gen2 racecar making the current crop of F1 cars look positively archaic.