Opinion: Kevin Turner

Notable exceptions aside, regulatory changes throughout the history of motor racing have attempted to keep speeds in check. But lap records are there to be broken…

“History shows that Hamilton’s pole record will probably come under threat at some point”

Lewis Hamilton’s 164.3mph lap to take pole position at last weekend’s Italian Grand Prix was the latest example of Formula 1’s internal battle: the competitors’ search for speed and the rule makers’ attempts at keeping them in check. To be fair to F1, the 2017 regulations were unusual in that they were designed to create faster cars, following criticism of the 2014-16 machines. They are now the fastest F1 cars ever, as shown by the various lap records that have fallen since then.

But more common is for the rules to change in order to keep speeds down, usually by reducing power or, in the case of both the interim 2021 regulations and full-fat 2022 changes, by cutting downforce. Which means Hamilton’s pole record at Monza will probably stand for a while. History shows, however, that it will likely come under threat at some point in the future.

When Giuseppe Farina won the first F1 world championship race at Silverstone he averaged just under 91mph, having taken pole at 94mph. The anomalous inclusion of the Indy 500 as part of the world championship in the first 11 seasons meant that the Indycar event held both race and pole average speed records for most of the 1950s. But the German GP’S move to Avus in 1959 changed that. Tony Brooks, in the front-engined Ferrari Dino, took pole at 149.1mph. He then won the event, run over two heats around what was essentially two stretches of dual-carriageway joined at one end by a hairpin and at the other by a banked curve, at 143.3mph.

The world championship never returned to the venue, so the record survived the switch from 2.5-litre engines to 1.5 litres and then the first season of the three-litre rules in 1966. But more powerful cars and ever-improving chassis meant speeds at the old Spa and pre-chicane Monza increased. When Dan Gurney won in his Eagle at the 1967 Belgian GP at Spa he did so at a whisker under 146mph, while Jim Clark’s pole in the game-changing Cosworth Dfv-engined Lotus 49 had moved the qualifying mark to 151.6mph.

Both records were increased at Spa over the next three years as wings and rudimentary downforce arrived, but Pedro Rodriguez’s 149.9mph victory for BRM in 1970 was the final GP on the old 8.8mile circuit. That left Monza and the 1971 Italian GP to become the first world championship race to go through the 150mph barrier, BRM’S Peter Gethin winning at 150.8mph in a race more famous for the fact that 0.61 seconds covered the top five finishers.

This was the last hurrah for the pre-chicane Monza that encouraged slipstreaming. Gethin’s mark and Chris Amon’s 156.1mph pole for Matra remained untouched through the 1970s, the arrival of ground-effects and the early days of turbocharging.

But Monza, Silverstone, pre-facelifted Hockenheim and the Osterreichring remained fast, and speeds climbed through the 140mph region in the first half of the 1980s, at least in qualifying, when special tyres and cranked up boost levels could do their work.

Finally, Keke Rosberg smashed the 160mph barrier at Silverstone as he took pole for the 1985 British GP in his Williams-honda. Thanks to the fuel restrictions of the era, the race record remained.

It was Brands Hatch’s (final) turn to hold the British GP in 1986 and, by the time F1 returned to Silverstone, Woodcote had been tweaked and steps had been made to limit the turbos’ power. By 1989 they were gone and, though the cars were soon lapping most circuits quicker, the high-speed records remained out of reach.

When Silverstone was heavily revised for 1991, Monza once again became F1’s fastest circuit. Even with the Williams FW14B and Nigel Mansell on top form, the British GP pole was ‘only’ 148mph in 1992, but Mansell’s Monza mark was nearly 158mph.

All the gizmos, such as traction control and active suspension, were banned for 1994, and engine size was cut from 3.5 to 3.0 litres. Further restrictions in the wake of the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna meant it took until the turn of the millennium for performance to get back to its 1992-93 levels.

But the agile and powerful cars of the V10 era in the early 2000s finally brought the records back within reach, at least at Monza. Juan Pablo Montoya broke Rosberg’s pole record with his 161.4mph lap for Williams-bmw in 2002 and pushed that to 162.9mph two years later. In between, Michael Schumacher finally broke Gethin’s race record in the 2003 Italian GP, averaging 153.8mph.

More rule changes in the second half of the decade meant both benchmarks looked safe until the arrival of the wider, slick-shod turbo-hybrids in 2017. Kimi Raikkonen broke Montoya’s pole record in 2018 with a 163.8mph lap, which has now been usurped by Hamilton. Schumacher’s race record, though, remains –

Charles Leclerc’s 2019 win is the fastest in recent times at 151.2mph.

Expanding our analysis to before F1, it’s perhaps sobering to point out that Mercedes driver Hermann Lang averaged 162.6mph at the 1937 Avusrennen, while Luigi Musso qualified on pole with a three-lap average of 174.5mph at the 1958 Race of Two Worlds on the Monza banking. The speeds F1 cars now reach have been seen before, but the ways they reach them – on slower circuits and with greater restrictions – are new territory. Which is perhaps what you’d expect in a sport that’s constantly pushing the boundaries.