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In the 70 years since the Formula 1 World Championship began in 1950, 33 different drivers have won championships, 108 have taken grand prix victories and 342 have been registered as points-scorers.
Autosport, which also celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, has been a big part of the F1 landscape over that time - including of course the 2020 Australian GP that never was.
As part of a special series of retrospective features using the Motorsport Images archive, we'll be looking back at moments that defined each decade of the world championship, starting with the 1950s.
A decade of dominance for Juan Manuel Fangio, in which the great Argentine collected five world championship titles, it was also one of chivalry unheard of today, and significant technical advancement as rear-engined machinery came to the fore.
PLUS: Big debate: When was F1's real greatest era?
The Alfa Romeos of Luigi Fagioli (3) and Fangio accelerate away at Silverstone at the dawn of a new era: the very first world championship grand prix.
Lagging behind them is their team-mate Giuseppe Farina, who will go on to win the 1950 British Grand Prix and build the foundations for what will end with him becoming crowned the inaugural world champion.
PLUS: The dogfight to become F1's first 'Alfa' male
It's a motley selection of 21 cars on the grid in this post-war make-do-and-mend era, but it's a great occasion, attended by King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Elizabeth (the future queen), who watch from a makeshift scaffold at Stowe Corner.
Tenacious, stocky Jose Froilan Gonzalez leads the Alfa Romeo of compatriot Fangio on the way to Ferrari's first world championship grand prix victory, in the 1951 British Grand Prix at Silverstone.
It brings an end to a run of nine successive Alfa Romeo world championship GP wins dating back to the inaugural round at the same venue the year before.
Gonzalez will go on to win only one other points-scoring grand prix - also at Silverstone, in 1954, highlighting his affinity with the airfield venue.
A familiar scene in grand prix racing, but an unfamiliar context. Ferrari's Alberto Ascari leads as the field plunges through Eau Rouge and climbs Raidillon at the start of the 1952 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa.
With Formula 1 on its knees following the pullout of Alfa Romeo, the world championship is run for Formula 2 machinery through 1952 and 1953.
Ascari, who has missed the season-opening Swiss Grand Prix while qualifying for the Indianapolis 500, wins all six remaining points-scoring races. He extends his streak to nine at the start of 1953, his second title-winning year.
They might as well have come from outer space. The futuristic, streamlined Mercedes W196s make their debut in the 1954 French Grand Prix at Reims, highlighting German technology as the country rebuilds just nine years since the end of the war.
The maestro himself, Fangio, is recruited to drive, and his #18 car pips the sister machine of Karl Kling to victory, almost a minute ahead of the best of the opposition.
Fangio, who has already won two 1954 GPs in a Maserati while Merc prepares itself, goes on to claim his second title.
The Lancia D50 of Ascari is winched out of the harbour following his accident in the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix. His only injury is a broken nose, and four days later he will attend a Ferrari test session at Monza.
Ascari, wearing and jacket and tie and borrowed helmet, takes over the sports-racer from Eugenio Castellotti, crashes inexplicably and is killed.
The sport's first multiple world champion, the smooth-driving, intelligent yet highly superstitious Ascari is mourned far beyond his native Milan.
A beautiful study of the late Sir Stirling Moss at the wheel of his Mercedes W196 during the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree, as he becomes only the second driver from the UK to win a world championship Formula 1 event after Mike Hawthorn's French GP triumph in 1953.
He is chased home by Fangio - en route to his third title - and will never know whether the great man 'gifted' him a home victory.
Remarkably, Mercedes scores a 1-2-3-4 wipeout at the Liverpool venue, with Moss and Fangio chased home by the journeyman Kling and 48-year-old silver-haired Italian veteran Piero Taruffi.
Moss is inch-perfect at Aintree on his way to scoring the first victory for a British car in a world championship grand prix. And famously, his win in the 1957 British Grand Prix comes not in the Vanwall in which he has started the race, but the sister machine of Tony Brooks.
PLUS: Sir Stirling Moss' 10 greatest drives
Leading in the #18 car, a pitstop to fix plugs drops Moss out of contention. Brooks, in pain from a recent crash at Le Mans, pulls in to be relieved by Moss, who charges back into the fray.
Moss gets up to third, before the clutch explodes on Jean Behra's leading Maserati, and the chasing Mike Hawthorn Ferrari gets a puncture on the shrapnel.
It's a beautiful day as sunlight bathes the majestic Nurburgring, and shines upon the most celebrated drive of the regal Fangio, pictured at the wheel of his Maserati 250F in between the Ferraris of Mike Hawthorn (leading) and Peter Collins during the 1957 German Grand Prix.
Maserati has botched its planned pitstop, obliging Fangio to carve 10 seconds per lap out of the advantage of the non-stopping Ferraris.
This he achieves, lapping eight seconds under his pole time to take his 24th and final grand prix win en route to his fifth title.
Two inseparable 'mon ami mates' at the 1958 British Grand Prix at Silverstone - Peter Collins wins the race, with his bow-tied Ferrari team-mate Mike Hawthorn second.
Collins, who passed up his best chance to win the title when he handed his car over to Fangio in the 1956 Italian Grand Prix, is surely title-winning material. But he will never be crowned.
Two weeks later, he crashes fatally in the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring, and Hawthorn is devastated.
The Ferrari of Hawthorn leads Jean Behra's BRM at the start of the 1958 Portuguese Grand Prix on the Oporto street circuit.
Hawthorn will finish a distant second to Moss's Vanwall, one of many high-scoring results that mean he will become the first British driver to become crowned as world champion.
But there is controversy in Portugal: Moss speaks up for Hawthorn, who is threatened with exclusion for pushing his car the wrong way after a spin. The points Hawthorn keeps as a result are enough to deny Moss the crown.
Monaco 1959, and the Cooper-Climax of Jack Brabham gives chase to Behra (Ferrari) and Moss (Rob Walker Cooper) on the way to the Australian's maiden world championship race win.
The tangled machines of Bruce Halford (Lotus), Cliff Allison (Ferrari, partially hidden) and Wolfgang von Trips (Porsche) lie forlornly at the roadside.
PLUS: Jack Brabham's 10 greatest drives
Brabham's success will kick-start a season that will give him the first of his three world championship titles and, significantly, put rear-engined cars at the top of the F1 tree.
It was possibly the most bizarre venue in Formula 1 history, and the staging of the 1959 German Grand Prix at Avus also uniquely adopted a format of being decided on an aggregate of two heats.
The Berlin track was a long blast up either side of a dual-carriageway, with a concrete hairpin at one end and a 43-degree banked turn at the other. Small wonder that tyre supplier Dunlop was worried about the strain on its rubber, and the race was split into two parts.
It gave Tony Brooks his final grand prix win, a late hurrah for the front-engined Ferraris on a power circuit.
For more from the Motorsport Images archive, click here.
