However, the ultimate prize in 1950 was a WDC which it wasn't in 1949. Seems like a big difference to me.
To me this is more what the marketing strategy wants to make us believe. If you want to sell F1 as a 'product', it certainly has to be invented at one point. It must have changed the automobile racing completely, in order to justify today´s importance. And then you also have an army of follow-up sellers today and not to forget all the statistic fans, who simply urge for some starting point, where 'everything' has begun and which they can use as a reference point.
But what happens, when you regard history not retrospectively, but rather in 'forward mode'? So let´s make the experiment of a time journey into the past and then live through history in a chronologically way again.
So what happend in 1947? Nothing really special, just the change of a Grand Prix formula, like what has happened before quite for a number of times, the last time before in 1938.
Ok, so now 1948. The Grand Prix formula remains still the same, same purpose, same sporting concept, same technical parameters, same races. Nothing really new, rather business as usual. The only change that is made is the introduction of an officially sanctioned second-level formula. This itself has absolutely no effect on top level Grand Prix racing, with the only exception, that you need an additional wording in order to be able to distinguish one from the other. At the time this is not even an official naming, as is expressed in the use of variants like 'Formula A' or 'Formula I', until 'Formula 1' gradually starts to prevail.
Next to come 1949, and hardly any change for the Grand Prix universum, but the FIM has introduced a World Championship. This isn´t something absolutely new either, as there have been national championships, continental championships and even world championships in motor racing before. Of course the FIA doesn´t want to stay behind and makes the same decision for 1950. And in contrast to the meaning of the modern word 'series', which is used so commonly today, it did absoluetly not have such a character at the time. There was no really overspanning organization behind, all the races were simply carried out as before, under great sovereignty of the national automobile clubs. Vastly different sporting regulations, different criteria for which entrants to accept and which to deny, financial terms negotiated very individually with the participants etc. etc.. Even what was to be regarded as a 'Formula 1 car' was down to quite different interpretations by the local race organizations. The whole 'World Championship' thing was hardly anything more than just a number of guys sitting behind 'green tables' remotely in Paris and awarding 'points' to drivers according to the results as delivered by the race organizers. The cheapest and most effortless way to do such a thing and the one with the least effect on what happened out there on the race tracks.
For example for this first World Championship season there was effectively only one serious contestant in form of the Alfa Romeo team. One can almost have the impression that the whole thing had been introduced as a marketing idea for the Alfa Romeo company to distribute the title among their drivers (with team orders being absolutely standard at the time), rather than to deliver any real sporting value beyond this. And did Ferrari care? As has been mentioned before, the Commendatore decided to leave out the initial round just because inadequate starting money. Whould he really have come to this decision if it had appeared to him as the 'historical moment' as which we regard that event today?
After 1950 there were of course further changes, which can be regarded of similar, maybe sometimes even greater impact. The opening for sponsorship, TV broadcast, the foundation of FOCA, Formula 1 being formed from a set of technical regulations which everybody is free to use into a trademark, the transformation into a franchise etc. etc., If you think deeper there will be even more.
So the more I spend my thoughts on this question the more I come always to the answer, that we have to face the hard reality, that there is not some 'point zero', where everything of our modern F1 has started from. Maybe 1894, but still this is debatable and there are obvious connection points to even earlier forms of competition, like horse or bicycle racing. But from then onwards, motor racing, Grand Prix Racing, Formula 1 etc. has always appeared less revolutionary than evolutionary, with a long long row of gradual changes until we reach the modern motorsport formats.
But as mentioned at the beginning of this point, this is hard to sell as a 'product'.
Edited by uechtel, 17 February 2025 - 21:44.
