To many of us, "playing the game," was important. This was often due to a distinct lack of those skills which separated the Stars (the term "Superstar" had yet to enter the vocabulary) from The Rest of Us. We played as hard and as fair and square as humanly possible. For most of us, "gamesmanship" was an alien and unknown term. If you won, you were gracious and praised your opponents; likewise, if you lost, you accepted it and congratulated your opponents. "Running up the score" was a violation of the unwritten code of ethics that the vast majority of us lived by. Good teams got a lead and then let us mere mortals play.

We were assured that this was the case in Life. Or at least Life as it was conducted on the Sports Pages. The conduct of (now Sir) Stirling Moss at Oporto during the Portuguese Grand Prix was a validation of this sense that Sportsmanship – how you played the game – was important. Moss won the race in his Tony Vandervell Vanwall, but failed to capture the point for the race's fastest lap when he misread "HAW REC" – for "Hawthorn Record" – as "HAW REG" or "Hawthorn Regular." But, that was not what made the race important to us.

For the 1958 Championship, Mike Hawthorn and Stirling Moss were locked in a battle for the World Championship. It was obvious that the margin that determined the Championship would be only a handful of points. On the last lap, almost as Moss took the checkered flag, Hawthorn spun his Scuderia Ferrari Dino 246 and stalled. That section of the track was slightly uphill. Hawthorn leaped from his Dino and tried to push-start it without any success. However, he then pointed the Dino downhill, got the car to start and managed to finish in second place – six points, and capture the point for fastest lap. This gave Hawthorn seven points to the eight that Moss gained for his victory.

The Clerk of the Course issued a statement that Hawthorn would be disqualified and that there would be an immediate inquiry. The reason Hawthorn was to be disqualified was that he had driven in the opposite direction of the race traffic. As Hawthorn tried to restart the Dino, Moss had come by on his cool-down lap and yelled at Hawthorn to use the sidewalk. Hawthorn quickly maneuvered the Dino down the sidewalk and executed a U-turn and headed for the checkered flag within the time allowed by the three-times (...although some say twice...) the fastest lap rule. Moss testified at the hearing that Hawthorn was well off the racing surface and should not be disqualified. The Clerk of the Course was swayed by the statement by Moss and placed Hawthorn second in the results.

Today, Hawthorn would have simply retired having been assured of second regardless. In 1958, to collect points you had to actually finish a race, so it was important that Hawthorn being included in the final results as a finisher, even if he had lost credit for that last lap. Even losing that last lap, Hawthorn was still second since he finished the 49th lap before third placed Stuart Lewis-Evans in another Vanwall.

Coming into the race, Hawthorn had already scored points in six events, the maximum allowed in 1958. Prior to Portugal the score for Hawthorn was 30 points to the 24 for Moss. In contrast to Hawthorn, Moss had scored in only four events. Had Hawthorn been disqualified and his seven points disallowed, Moss would have left Portugal with nine additional points to up his score to 33 points versus the 30 of Hawthorn. However, as it turned out, Hawthorn retained his lead leaving with 36 points after dropping the point he had earned for the fastest lap at Monte Carlo. Moss increased his score to 32 points.

When the season ended in Morocco that year, Hawthorn edged Moss by the razor thin margin of 42 to 41 points. Had the same results been obtained after Portugal, the final score would have been Moss 41 points to the 39 points of Hawthorn.

The action of Moss may have resulted in his losing the World Championship, but that was almost irrelevant. By his action, Moss was a Champion in the eyes of many. Ironically, during the 1960 Portuguese Grand Prix, Moss spun in almost exactly the same place as Hawthorn, duplicated the same action of using the sidewalk and returned to the race: only to be disqualified.

1958 and Hawthorn were fertile times for lessons in sportsmanship and Playing the Game. In both the Italian and Moroccan Grands Prix, Hawthorn's teammate – American Phil Hill, backed off and let Hawthorn into second place to score the points that proved crucial for winning the Championship. Today, I am certain Hill would be banned for life if he did that.

There are other moments we were aware of: Peter Collins turning his Lancia-Ferrari D.50 to Juan Fangio at the 1956 Italian Grand Prix; Alberto Ascari letting Jose Froilan Gonzalez take credit for a solo victory at the 1951 British Grand Prix; Innes Ireland giving his works Lotus 21 to Moss at the 1961 Italian Grand Prix to help Moss in his quest to beat the Ferrari cars; and later on Gilles Villeneuve keeping station and allowing his teammate Jody Scheckter take the win and the Championship in 1979 at Monza. There are countless other small moments as well such as Fangio showing another driver the best way around the track in Sweden by holding up his fingers to indicate which gear to use; or the dogged determination of the Alan Kulwicki Racing Team as it struggled from what seemed an impossible deficit to capture its Championship in 1992.

In Modern Times, it is all about winning. Characters with Character are few and far between these days. But, that is a rant for another day. I promise.

Grand Prix and Formula One (1)

For many years, from its founding in 1922 until its demise after the Great FIASCO War of the early 1980s, the Commission Sportive Internationale (CSI) of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the successor to the Association Internationales des Automobile Clubs Reconnus (AIACR) in 1946, was the body that governed motor sports at the international level. At least in theory, as they say. For many years, at least in Europe and from time-to-time in the United States, the Premier League for racing was "Grand Prix" racing. As known as "Grand Prize" in the United States at one point, and its equivalent elsewhere: "Gran Premio" or "Großer Preis" and so forth.

The CSI created the regulations for this class from its inception in 1922 until the Second World War. They changed every so often and some of the regulations – which became known as a "formula" by the 1930s it appears – were pretty much flops and others fairly successful. Beneath the Grand Prix class – it was rarely referred to as the Grand Prix "formula" – was the equivalent of Division 1, the "Voiturette" class. This class had been around since the pre-War period – the "war" in question being the Great War or WW1 – and was successful at times and forgotten at others. The Voiturette regulations just prior to the Second World War are among the best remembered since some of the cars built to the regulations – it stipulated that the maximum capacity for the supercharged cars was 1,500cc – were used after the War, including the great Alfa Romeo 158 series.

When the AIACR morphed into the FIA in 1946, the CSI announced a new set of regulations for the Grand Prix class, which it chose to call "Formula A" rather than simply the "Grand Prix formula." It combined parts of the old Grand Prix formula, the maximum displacement of 4,500cc for un-supercharged cars and the Voiturette formula – the maximum capacity for supercharged engines being 1,500cc. It threw out the minimum weight limits of the old Grand Prix formula. The new Formula A came into effect with the 1947 season, but with the European economy still in ruins, not much support on the grids or from the organizers.

Along with the creation of Formula A, a new equivalent of the Voiturette formula was created as well. The new junior formula was called "Formula B" and went into effect with the 1948 season. Its regulations dictated that the maximum capacity for an un-supercharged car was 2,000cc and for a supercharged car, 500cc. The latter was spectacularly unpopular and the class was run almost exclusively with the 2-litre cars.

Somewhere around 1950, Formula A somehow became "Formula 1." Although the originator of the term is lost to history (despite several reasonable claims), the term stuck as did "Formula 2" for Formula B. The CSI even started using the term and by 1951 the terms were in general usage and the former terms lost in the mists of time. However, the term "Grand Prix" for the premier formula stayed in use until somewhere in the 1970s or so. But, in the early 1980s, it was "Formula 1" and remains so today.

The point? There was no "Formula 1" racing in the 1940s. It can be called "Grand Prix" racing or it can be called "Formula A" racing, but it was not "Formula 1" racing. All this hoopla about Ferrari's "first F1" irks the crud out of me. Given the assumption that by mid-1950 it was now "F1," the first Ferrari "F1" goes to Peter Whitehead who won the Junior Car Club Jersey Road Race in July of 1950. Scuderia Ferrari didn't pick up its first "F1" win until late October of 1950 when Alberto Ascari won the Gran Premio do Penya Rhin at Barcelona.

It is just me or does "Formula One" sound like something that you could pick up at the local drug store? Or something that would be more at home at a high school science fair? It really doesn't do much for me.

Now "Grand Prix" on the other hand, has a ring about it... .

Wondering Where the Lions Are... .

Is there anyone out there working on a scholarly and readable (yes, I realize that these are terms that tend to be mutually exclusive... .) history on motor sports and the German National Socialist Workers' Party – or to use the terms it is most often referred to as, the NSDAP or the Nazis? Or the NSKK – the National Socialist Motoring Corps? Although there are hints about all this here and there, but nothing of any consequence. Should there be any interest in such an item, I recently unearthed a picture of Rudolf Caracciola in full NSKK regalia (!) receiving an award from NSKK-Korpsführer Adolf Hühnlein. Should that create a yawn, let me add that in my many decades of following motor sports I had never seen Caracciola in NSDAP or NSKK garb. It knocked me on my heels, believe me!

Quick trivia quiz question: where and when was the first World Championship event created by the CSI? Easy as pie you say: May 1950, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Nope! How about 30 May 1925 and the Indianapolis 500. Don't they teach you folks anything?

Why isn't the FIA concerned with keeping this sort of motor sports history and the legacy of this first World Championship or the European Championships of 1931 and 1932 and the 1935 through 1939 seasons? Or why isn't it settled once and for all that the AAA National Championship was not contested prior to the 1916 season and then from 1920 onward. And why are still questions about who the AAA National was in 1920 and the European Champion of 1939?