History and Formula One - Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: Winston Smith Returns

The recurring theme of this column has been the problem with history and motor sports.

There are barely enough copies of the coveted Henry N. Manney III Memorial Wooden Spoon Award in stock to honor the various historical howlers that occur on a routine and recurring basis in the motor racing Press or litter the Internet and the World Wide Web.

Try to beat back the riptide of motor racing ignorance little by little is more akin to swimming the 100 meter freestyle with lead overshoes and a rucksack on your back - apathy, a lack of incentives to want to be correct, and The Power of Common Knowledge continue to triumph. Which means that this column has the good fortune to most likely never want for subjects to discuss, eyebrows to raise, and for feathers to ruffle.

One minor matter that seemed to pass by the eyes of many was that within the casualty lists generated during the FIASCO War, one of the unnoticed casualties was the Championnat du Monde des Conducteurs - the World Championship of Drivers which the Commission Sportive Internationale (CSI) of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) - which became the Federation Internationale de Sport Automobile (FISA) in 1978 and today is known as the Conseil Mondial du Sport Automobile, the World Motor Sport Council - created to commence with the 1950 season. It ceased to exist as of 31 December 1980 and was replaced on 1 January 1981 by a newly created championship owned by the FIA and operated by the FISA: the FIA Formula One World Championship. This is the championship which continues to operate to this very day.

When I first mentioned this in a series of articles on the grand war between the FISA and the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) - the FIASCO War - about a year ago, scarcely a soul made a peep, raised an eyebrow, nor did it raise much of anything such as even a remote interest in this revelation. Nor was it much different when Winston Smith made his last appearance in this column and re-stated this same information. It was generally yawns all around until suddenly a few realized what was being said.

Naturally, this elicited several delayed and very visceral reactions to any such notion. It was deemed that anyone daring to question the continuity of the FIA Formula One World Championship back to its inauguration year of 1950 was being, well, well, ah, difficult. After all, "What does it mean?" was a common reaction of those few who bothered themselves with even considering such an outlandish - and patently foolish - notion. It was deemed not to be a significant event.

Perhaps, it really doesn't mean much of anything. Nor was it even a "significant event." Specially if no one seemed to notice at the time or later despite the FIA placing this information in each copy of its Annuaire du Sport Automobile or Yearbook of Automobile Sport for a number of years. No exactly hiding this piece of information from the public.

Perhaps it simply means that while it might be historically correct - and who pays any attention to history? Except when there is money to be made, of course - there is not much reason to really care about it one way or the other. After all, if a tree falls in the forest - or a vacuum for that matter - and no one hears its, does it really make a sound?

If the FISA and the FIA created a "new" championship and not a soul seems to have noticed, did the FISA and the FIA indeed create a "new" championship? The easy answer is, naturally, "Of course not! The FIA Formula One World Championship of 2004 is the very same one which was created in 1950."

The hard answer is, naturally, "Well, maybe. Maybe not."

Whereupon Common Knowledge comes to the fore to squash any dissension on this point. It is, after all, Common Knowledge that the FIA F1 World Championship began in 1950. And, it is not called Common Knowledge for nothing.

But, just perhaps, this is actually worth discussing anyway.

I have something of a bone to pick with Common Knowledge and its longtime partner, Statistics.

Let me start with Statistics. Or rather, that which is often passed off as history but is really merely nothing more than Statistics. Site after site on the World Wide Web (better known as the good ol' "WWW") dealing with Formula One and its history usually offers little more than tables of Statistics. These Statistics are generally lists of the World Champions, seasonal standings, most pole positions, and so forth and so on and on and on. Some sites even offer race data in the form of results, the starting grid, the fastest lap(s), and other pertinent information about specific races.

Some of the data found at such sites is really quite complete and reasonably accurate. Most race data would seem merely cribbed from other - unacknowledged - sources, errors and all, with little effort to add anything to the data. After all, it appears to be a basic, untouchable tenet of Common Knowledge that Statistics constitutes the basis of F1 history. Common Knowledge holds that Statistics are the best and most useful basis for the evaluation of drivers and constructors - those with Good Statistics are worthy of praise and adoration and those with Bad Statistics are deemed unworthy and open to scorn.

If I seem a bit harsh on Statistics, I mean to be. It has become the lazy way of dealing with history within what is known as F1. More times than I can imagine, I have seen - or heard - that "Formula One began in 1950 with the British Grand Prix at Silverstone." This is, naturally, Common Knowledge.

Indeed, I have informed on occasion of this fact in exactly those terms.

It is certainly asking way too much to ask the casual F1 fan to have much of a clue about the history of F1. First, it is not necessary to the enjoyment of the sport at the level with which most literally view the sport, something they share with NASCAR fans, incidentally. Second, The casual fan of F1 is perhaps the casual fan of any number of other sports. His or her interest in the sport of F1 as such is not very deep. Generally they belong to the Couch Potato Corps and eyeball whatever sports or other entertainment the television offers up for consumption. Most of the viewers of an F1 race probably belong to this group.

There is, however, a group that takes F1 with a level of interest that exceeds what could be called "casual" interest, but not quite that where they have taken it to any real extremes in terms of being all that concerned with "F1 history" beyond a certain point. These sorts tend to be dedicated to a particular driver or team. They also are those who take the effort to buy the various racing magazines, trawl the various F1 sites on the WWW, and who may actually take the time, effort, and expense to attend F1 races.

These folks know what Common Knowledge is in F1 - and what isn't. They know that the magic date is 1950 and that if it isn't listed, it wasn't an F1 race. That somehow the FISA and Jean-Marie Balestre stage-managed a rupture in the lineage is irrelevant since Common Knowledge never mentions such an occurrence. This also makes it, therefore, Historically Untrue.

Let, therefore, it be known that none of this nonsense about "old and "new" championships never happened. The information in the editions of the FIA Yearbook of Automobile Sport carrying such statements were obviously misprints or simply erroneous information that found its way into print. If you have a Yellow Book and its has this information within its covers, try to find one that has the "correct" information.

But, before I allow Winston to drop this column into the tube to correct the record and appease Big Brother, I just wonder if there was a reason that this obviously hand-handed tactic taken by the FISA slipped by with such a lack of notice or any other comment?

Could it be that, as Mike Lawrence warns us, this is merely a matter of "following the money?" After all, that was the "real" reason that the FIASCO War was fought - money. Or rather, the control of the money.

Or, was it simply that everyone was so focused on the trees that they forgot about the forest?

Or, perhaps, just maybe it is that no one really cared if there was a "new" championship because it would have been inconvenient to recognize such a fact openly. Or some other similarly lame excuse.

Winston and I are going to mull this over and ponder longer on the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics of Formula One's history.

We will be back...