Sidepodcast

• Length: 30:13 
• Size: 27.7 MB 
• File: peopleomnibus2.mp3 
• Transcript: peopleomnibus2.pdf 
• Torrent: peopleomnibus2.torrent 

Welcome to F1 People - Series 2. This is the omnibus edition of the series, which was seven short shows originally released over seven consecutive days. Now they are all gathered up in one place for easy listening.

Here are the links to the individual show notes:

1. Colin Chapman
2. Niki Lauda
3. Murray Walker
4. Eddie Irvine
5. Jean Alesi
6. Adrian Newey
7. Juan Manuel Fangio

This is the first omnibus edition we’ve tried, the idea came from a suggestion on Facebook by Dave Monks. I’d love to have your feedback - is it useful to have the information presented this way, or is it just clogging up your feeds with the same shows twice? Also if you missed a mini series, do you think this would be a good way to catch up or are the seven separate shows easier?

• Length: 3:53 
• Size: 3.6 MB 
• File: people9.mp3 
• Transcript: people9.pdf 
• Torrent: people9.torrent 

This is the second episode of the second series of F1 People, a set of shows from Sidepodcast that chronicle the lives of the important people involved in the sport we love. Yesterday we looked at Colin Chapman, and today we’re going to focus on Niki Lauda.

Andreas Nikolaus Lauda was born on 22nd February 1949 in Vienna, Austria. His family were not impressed with his desires to become a racing driver, but despite their disapproval, he took up the career. He started in the very low Formulas, and moved up the ranks to racing Porsche sports cars. Then his career hit a plateau, and to move onwards, Lauda took out a sizeable bank loan to buy an F2 drive with the then-new March team. He drove for them for one year in 1971, was promoted to F1 in 1972, and drove in both formulas that year. Lauda’s skills were heralded by the March team, but they were not very successful at that time within F1. Lauda took out yet another bank loan to get into BRM the next year. Unfortunately, this was another team struggling, but when team mate Clay Regazzoni transferred to Ferrari, he spoke highly enough of Lauda that the red team signed him up as well.

Continue reading…

• Length: 3:48 
• Size: 3.6 MB 
• File: history5.mp3 
• Transcript: history5.pdf 
• Torrent: history5.torrent 

Welcome to Sidepodcast’s History of F1. After the safety concerns of the ‘70s, the ‘80s saw many more steps forward in developmental terms.

The 1980s saw the introduction of turbocharging, which is another banned technology that took the forefront of a lot of the team’s attention. The Lotus team were concentrating on the ground-effect principle, whilst Renault re-entered F1 in with the first ever turbo. The technology was new, quick and exciting, but there were reliability problems, and the Renault did not finish an entire race distance until a year after the introduction.

1980 saw the first big disagreement between the two main F1 governing bodies, FISA and FOCA. The power struggle resulted in the Spanish Grand Prix being boycotted, and to avoid such situations in the future, the first ever Concorde Agreement was drafted up in 1981.

1980 also saw Team Williams dominating with their driver Alan Jones, whilst Ferrari were struggling with their own turbocharged car.

Despite the emergence of the turbo technology, Cosworth engines still dominated the grid, with 11 teams under their power in 1982. Turbos continued to improve, but Ferrari suffered more problems, this time with their drivers. Didier Pironi and Gilles Villeneuve were under team orders that Villeneuve should be given preference. Pironi overtook him at the San Marino GP, and Villeneuve decreed he would never speak to his team mate again. This turned out to be tragically true, when Villeneuve was killed whilst qualifying for the Belgian GP. The accident was terrifying, with the Ferrari skidding across the track and throwing the driver from the car, into the sand.

More accidents occurred this year, with Ricardo Paletti, a little known driver in a little known team Osella, killed at the start of the Canadian Grand Prix. He was coming through from the back of the grid, unaware that Pironi, in the Ferrari, had stalled at the front. Pironi also suffered from leg injuries in practice later that year, which put an early end to his racing career.

McLaren brought out a turbo powered car, steered by Alain Prost and Niki Lauda, and in 1984, the team won 12 out of 16 races, and took a record number of points to win the title. Lauda actually pipped Prost to the driver’s title, by only half a point. Hang on, half a point? This was due to the Monaco GP that year being stopped because of a massive thunderstorm. Half points were awarded to teams and drivers.

Ayrton Senna joined McLaren in 1988 and took the championship in Japan, despite a deciding race that saw him stalling on the grid. 1989 saw Senna and Prost in-fighting after a broken agreement about not challenging each other on the track. Senna overtook Prost and the pair fell out, and later in the season, the pair collided and went off track. Prost took the championship, whilst Senna’s superlicense was revoked, causing him to comment on the manipulation that may have been happening behind the scenes.

Turbo charged engines were banned in 1989, but a couple of years earlier, another major piece of technology was beginning to take shape. 1987 saw the one year that Williams took the crown from seven McLaren titles. But it was Team Lotus that introduced the new “active suspension”, that was computer controlled. This technology was the turning point of the sport - from normal-ish cars into more technologically complex machines.

That’s all for this episode of Sidepodcast’s History of F1. Next time we’ll take a look at the 1990s, where it was all about two very different but brilliant drivers.

Theme music: Friction Bailey, Hope in my History.

• Length: 3:49 
• Size: 3.6 MB 
• File: history4.mp3 
• Transcript: history4.pdf 
• Torrent: history4.torrent 

Welcome to Sidepodcast’s History of F1. So far we’ve travelled from the 1900s through to the end of the 1960s, and seen the Formula 1 World Championship begin to take shape, and some of the legendary drivers stamp their mark on it. Now we take a look at the 70s where safety concerns and car development were top of everyone’s priority list.

In 1970, the revolution of aerodynamic engineering began to take place. It started with the creation of wings, which meant more downforce for the cars. Essentially this meant they had more grip and could coast round corners much faster than previously. In the early days, the wings were not fastened particularly securely, and it wasn’t unheard of for them to fall off at unexpected moments. After a few too many accidents, wings were banned for a short time.

The early 70s saw the rise of a new star for Lotus, Emerson Fittipaldi, a young man from Brazil who won his first race in 1972. The rivalry between he and Jackie Stewart meant that the next four championships were alternated between the two of them, until Stewart retired in 1973. Stewart almost made it to the 100 Grand Prix mark, but gave up one short of the feat. Why would you do that?

In 1975, Ferrari began to make their comeback – despite the fact that the season was littered with protests about driver safety. In the Spanish race, a car came off the track and actually hit the crowd, killing four people, and causing some drivers to refuse to continue to participate.

Ferrari driver Niki Lauda won five races and had nine pole starts to take his first championship. He went on to win two more. The next year, 1976, Lauda was involved in a horrific accident at the Nurburgring, which saw his car burst into flames. Lauda suffered facial burns and inhaled toxic gases, so much that he was not expected to survive. However, Lauda did manage to pull through and was miraculously driving again only six weeks later. The Nurburgring track was taken off the calendar, but returned in a dramatically altered and much shorter state.

Niki Lauda’s main competition came in the form of James Hunt, a British driver for McLaren. He won the 1976 championship, but only just. Lauda was leading the championship by 3 points in the last race, but had to retire after torrential rain. That handed the championship to Hunt, who finished the race in the terrible weather, without knowing where he had placed or if he had clinched the title.

Lauda reclaimed the crown the next year in 1977, despite quitting the team with two races to go. The team calculated the position he needed to finish in to claim the title – 4th – at the US Grand Prix, and Lauda delivered and then joined Bernie Ecclestone’s Parmalat Brabham team.

In development terms, the cars began to sport air boxes above their heads to increase flows around the engines. Engineers changed their titles to designers, and began to increase their knowledge of aerodynamics. The cars began to take shape, using a streamlined body and undertray developments to the downforce and speed things up. There developments were called “ground effects” and impressed a lot of the drivers.

They were not without their problems though, because the new developments meant the setup of the car was incredibly important. One tiny degree the wrong way would mean the cars were unstable and ultimately not race worthy. F1 became a highly sophisticated balancing act. Eventually, the effects were banned in 1983, to make F1 more about driver skill and less about car setup.

That’s all for this episode of Sidepodcast’s History of F1, join me for the next instalment were we look at the 1980s.

Theme music: Friction Bailey, Hope in my History.