I like formula 1 racing, and I was watching the British Gran Prix today and noticed that the nose looked different than I remember. It comes to sort pf a point, and is raised pretty high off the ground. Have they always been this way, and I just never noticed?
Tick tock, tick tock.
Okay, it seems I’ve answered my question after a little checking.
I found these pretty things.
It is kinda interesting, so I’l leave this post here.
Peace,
mangeorge
To the best of my recollection, the Benetton team had the first “hanging” nose wings in the mid-1990s when Michael Schumacher was driving for them. All the other teams took the innovation and ran with it after that.
They rewrote the rule book for 2009, the rear wing is very narrow while the front wings are all basically identical and wide. But the “high nose” has been around in one form or another since about 1990.
Comparison of the 2008 & 2009 cars here.
They’re all unfortunately bloody ugly compared to the recent past, though general F1 aesthetics did peak around 1996 in my book.
I don’t think they’re ugly at all. But I understand how a traditionalist wouldn’t like them.
Are you a Brit? If so, I was hoping one of your lot would chime in, considering the popularity of F1 in the UK.
The new design does resemble “the finger” in the horizontal, I’ll give you that.
I actually think this year’s cars look pretty damn good. Yeah, the very wide front wing is a touch odd, but they’re improved out of sight for having rid themselves of a lot of the extraneous winglets that festooned them of late. In every one of those side-by-side photos I prefer the newer car.
Also, 1996? The year Ferrari perpetrated this monstrosity? Never! 
The point of the high noses, incidentally, is not just to get a bit more front wing space in, it’s so the air going under the car is kept cleaner; the undertray is a highly sensitive area, aerodynamically speaking, and huge amounts of effort go into managing the airflow through there.
I’m not a Brit (I’m one of the 10 American F1 fans), and I was thinking of the 96-ish Williams more so than the Ferraris. McLaren had some clunkers in that time period too. 
All the flits and uprights were getting out-of-hand I’ll admit, but 09 regs created a car that no longer looks (to my own eye, at least) purpose-built for speed. It’ll be interesting to see how a FOTA series will write their rulebook if indeed that series comes to pass.
You misspelled 1967.
I was going to say the same thing. 67 was the last year before wings, IIRC.
F1 is hugely popular here in the UK. There were 100,000 people at Silverstone for the qualifying on Saturday. The BBC has the television rights back this year and cover the entire qualifying session, the race, and do a dedicated F1 news show. Last night was the first episode of a new series of Top Gear. They ‘revealed’ the secret identity of The Stig as Michael Schumacher and the crowd went wild. Of course it was a one-off but was quite cool.
I can see why. I think that, like baseball, one needs to know more about the sport to be a true (rabid) fan.
The drivers seem to be pretty aggressive. Are there fistfights and such off the track?
Very rarely. There are plenty of altercations - usually along the lines of “you made me crash!” “I had the inside line!” “You are a dick!” (only in broken English) and so on between drivers walking away from their cars after a crash. I can’t remember a fistfight having occurred in my lifetime.
Unlike in, say, NASCAR, it’s pretty rare for a damaged car to be able to limp back to the pit area, since chances are it will be stuck in a gravel trap or stalled (F1 cars don’t have onboard starter motors). I’d WAG that this reduces the chance of an actual physical altercation since the drivers have had a couple of minutes to cool off while the marshals give them a ride back to the pits.
FTR, the prettiest of the modern-era F1 cars is the Jordan-Yamaha 194.
Senna punched Eddie Irvine once for having the temerity to unlap himself (twice!). To be fair, though, Irvine was immensely punchable. But that’s the last case of handbags I can recall, and that was in '93.
I’d forgotten about that. Irvine was immensely punchable, though.
Quotable too, though. “Why does Schumacher wear a funny-shaped helmet?” one journalist asked. “He’s German; he’s got a funny-shaped head,” Irvine replied.
You both rather badly misspelled “Lotus 72 John Player Special”.
I can accept that answer.
Seriously? That thing’s just an overbuilt go-cart.
Personally, I’m rather fond of the current crop of cars — though they’d look much better with the front and rear spoiler setup of the 2008 cars.
Actual driver fistfight: Nelson Piquet v. Eliseo Salazar @ the old Hockenheim in '82.
Near fight: Schumacher v. Coultard at a very wet Spa in '98.
The funny thing is, in that picture all four wheels are off the ground. The designers then introduced wings to ***stop ***the car from flying, which makes “wing” a rather strange name to use.
Ah, the cigar shaped cars were things of pure beauty. I’m right behind Clark’s Lotus for the award.
Ugliest car? Cliched answer is the Tyrrell P34, but there have to be some other contenders (mostly from the ground effect era, I’d bet).