The GSOH - Round One - 2012 vs 1971

[crmalcolm]

The next match of the GSOH bracket puts 2012 up against 1971.

Summaries from Wikipedia:


2012 - The championship was contested over twenty rounds, which started in Australia on 18 March and ended in Brazil on 25 November. The 2012 season saw the return of the United States Grand Prix, which was held at the Circuit of the Americas, a purpose-built circuit in Austin, Texas. After being cancelled in 2011 due to civil protests, the Bahrain Grand Prix also returned to the calendar.

The early season was tumultuous, with seven different drivers winning the first seven races of the championship; a record for the series. It was not until the European Grand Prix in June that a driver, Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, won his second race of the year, and with it, emerged as a championship contender. Alonso maintained his hold on the championship lead for the next seven races, taking his third win in Germany and finishing on the podium in the United Kingdom, Italy and Singapore. However, costly first-lap retirements in Belgium and Japan allowed his rivals to catch up, and defending World Champion Sebastian Vettel – like Alonso, a two-time title winner – took the lead in the sixteenth race of the season. Vettel, too, encountered difficulties throughout the season; contact with a backmarker left him to finish outside the points in Malaysia, while alternator failures at the European and Italian Grands Prix cost him valuable points and exclusion from qualifying in Abu Dhabi led him to start from the pit lane. Vettel entered the final race of the season with a thirteen-point lead over Alonso. Alonso needed a podium finish to stand any chance of becoming World Drivers' Champion, but in a race of attrition that finished under the safety car, Vettel finished in sixth place, scoring enough points to win his third consecutive championship, becoming just the third driver in the sport's sixty-three-year history to do so. In the World Constructors' Championship, Red Bull Racing secured their third consecutive title when Sebastian Vettel finished second at the United States Grand Prix.

In addition to seeing seven different drivers win the first seven races, the 2012 season broke several records. The calendar for the season included twenty races, breaking the previous record of nineteen, which was first set in 2005. Six current or former World Drivers' Champions – Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Räikkönen, and Michael Schumacher – started the season, breaking the record of five established in 1970.

This was the last season for 7-times world champion, Michael Schumacher as he announced his retirement from Formula One for the second time, after the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix.

Three days after the Brazilian Grand Prix, reports began to surface suggesting that Sebastian Vettel's championship was under threat and that Ferrari would be filing a formal protest against the race results. The challenge centred on a pass Vettel made on Jean-Éric Vergne early in the race. At the time, the first sector of the circuit was under yellow flag conditions following the spin and retirement of Pastor Maldonado at Curva do Sol, the Interlagos circuit's third corner, which feeds onto the back straight. Vettel overtook Vergne along the straight, which led to claims that the pass was illegal because of the yellow flags. Intense media speculation suggested that the challenge threatened Vettel's championship because as the race finished behind the safety car, any post-race penalty had the potential to demote him in the race standings, and Vettel would not have enough points to secure the title. Ferrari wrote to the FIA, requesting clarification on the matter. The FIA reviewed the incident and declared that Vettel's pass was legal as a green flag was being shown by a marshal adjacent to the pit exit, meaning the track was green from that point onward; the confusion had been caused by a digital board showing a yellow flag on the exit of Curva do Sol some one hundred metres before the marshalling post. Both Ferrari and Red Bull Racing announced that they were satisfied with the ruling, thereby preserving Vettel's championship.



1971 - The World Championship of Drivers was won by Jackie Stewart, driving a Tyrrell Ford, and the International Cup for F1 Manufacturers was won by Tyrrell Ford.

After the death of 1970 World Champion Jochen Rindt the previous year, Lotus had a desultory season, with young and inexperienced drivers such as Emerson Fittipaldi appearing in the cars. The team spent a lot of time experimenting with a gas turbine powered car, and with four wheel drive again. Using their own chassis heavily inspired by the Matra MS80 but with conventional tanks, Tyrrell and Jackie Stewart easily took success in 1971. Of the eleven World Championship races, Mario Andretti, Jacky Ickx, Jo Siffert, Peter Gethin and François Cevert won one race each, while Stewart won the other six races.

Jo Siffert and Pedro Rodr?*guez, who had an intense rivalry driving for John Wyer's Gulf-sponsored works Porsche endurance sportscar team, both lost their lives racing in 1971. Rodriguez died driving a Ferrari 512 sports car at an Interserie race at the Norisring, Germany, in July, while Siffert died in a fiery crash at the World Championship Victory Race non-championship Formula One event at Brands Hatch, in October.

The battle of the 12 cylinder cars (Ferrari with their Flat-12 boxer engine, BRM and (to a lesser extent) Matra with their V12 engines) against the lighter Ford Cosworth DFV V8-powered cars proved to be the main theme throughout this season. Dunlop, one of the manufacturers supplying tyres to F1 teams, withdrew from Formula One and left the American giants Goodyear and Firestone to battle it out for this season.

This was the first season where at least 22 cars started every championship race, except the Monaco Grand Prix, where 18 cars started.

The maximum race distance for World Championship Grand Prix races was reduced from 400 km to 325 km.

With the Mexican Grand Prix having been cancelled due to crowd control problems the previous year, the United States Grand Prix was the last World Championship race of the 1971 season.

There was one more non-championship race to contend, the World Championship Victory Race at Brands Hatch, England, three weeks after the United States Grand Prix. The race lasted for less than half of its intended distance following a number of accidents. On lap 2, Henri Pescarolo and Reine Wisell collided at the Druids hairpin, with both cars retiring. Then Mike Hailwood and Ronnie Peterson also collided and had to pit for repairs. Hailwood's car was deemed unfit to continue, but Peterson rejoined the race, albeit nearly a lap down. Siffert had fallen several places at the start, but had made his way back to 4th by lap 14. Approaching the fast Hawthorn Bend at high speed on lap 15, his BRM suffered a mechanical failure which pitched it across the track into an earth bank. The car rolled over and caught fire, trapping him underneath, and he died from asphyxiation before he could be extricated. The race was stopped with the track blocked, and all the cars were stranded out on the circuit except for John Surtees, who was able to drive around to the pits, his car damaged by debris.

[BTCC frog]

Both were great seasons. Jackie Stewart prevented there being much of a title fight in 1971 but it did include classic races at Monza, the famous slipstreamer with the smallest winning margin, and Zandvoort as Jacky Ickx and Pedro Rodriguez lapped the field in the wet.

But 2012 had an amazing title fight between Vettel and Alonso, and a lot more classic races including Alonso vs Perez in Sepang, and Brazil. I voted 2012.

[S griffin]

I am with BTCC Frog here. 71 had some great races with Monza and Zandvoort

However 2012 was ultra competitive, 7 different winners from the first 7 races and performances of cars fluctuating race by race. And no one complained much about the season finishing under SC....