Why F1's transformation matters on its big birthday

Even if the coronavirus crisis hadn't upended normality and sent much of the world into lockdown, 13 May 2020 would still have been a moment to pause and reflect - between the Spanish and Monaco races Formula 1 was supposed to have been enjoying.

Seventy years ago today, the first world championship F1 race took place at Silverstone, with Alfa Romeo's Giuseppe Farina winning from pole position. It was a famous affair at a packed track, with Farina edging an early battle with soon-to-be F1 legend Juan Manuel Fangio (who later retired with an engine issue) and then leading home an Alfa 1-2-3.

A lot has happened, accompanied by plenty of cliches, since that day. We can now look back on the world championship's birthday and compare and contrast the wildly different eras of 1950 vs 2020, as well as look for lessons that may help modern F1 move on from its current existential crisis (which has been around longer than COVID-19).

The 1950 Silverstone race featured 21 cars, a mix of pre- and post-war Alfa Romeos, Maseratis, ERAs, Talbots and Altas. But this relatively healthy size did not last. By 1952 and after Alfa's withdrawal, the decision was taken to run the world championship to Formula 2 regulations as BRM's expected challenge to Ferrari had continuously faltered.

In 2020, F1 has long been a comparatively stable championship in terms of its overall technical rules and entrants - even if there have been plenty of rules shake-ups and team changes in recent years.

Was racing as good then as it is now?

On today of all days, it's worth looking at that Silverstone grid again and comparing it to the final race of 2019, which is all we've got to go on due to the pandemic we're all so sadly familiar with in 2020.

Taking a look at supertimes helps give us an idea of the competitive spread of the two fields. Supertimes are based on the fastest single lap by each car at a race weekend, expressed as a percentage of the fastest single lap overall (100.000%).

F1 is massively more competitive overall than it was in the early years of the world championship

Based on supertimes, the gap between the pacesetting Alfa and best-of-the-rest Talbot, which took fourth and fifth at Silverstone with Yves Giraud-Cabantous and Louis Rosier, was 1.808%. The gap to the fifth (and slowest marque), Alta, was 10.850%. When the 2019 season came to a close in Abu Dhabi, the modern equivalent was 0.308% between Mercedes and Red Bull at the head of the pack, with the fifth fastest car, Renault, 1.769% off the pace and therefore closer than Talbot was to Alfa.

Looking at the equivalent Silverstone race in 2019 using the same supertimes calculation, Ferrari was only 0.093% behind Mercedes' benchmark and only two teams - Racing Point and Williams - were outside the gap from Alfa to Talbot 69 years previously.

Even though modern F1 has a clear problem in terms of its 'Class A/B' divide in 2020, F1 is massively more competitive overall than it was in the early years of the world championship.

PLUS: When was Formula 1 closest?

The Silverstone 1950 race was the first of just seven on the calendar, which also included the Indianapolis 500 that the main protagonists of the inaugural world championship basically ignored. At the time, the world championship itself was not regarded as significant as it is today and plenty of major non-championship events took centre stage.

Now, there aren't any non-points-paying events and the series has gone from being a collection of European races to the gigantic continent-straddling behemoth of the modern calendar.

In 2020, there should have been 22 events on five different continents. F1 is now a massive and complex environment compared to the world championship's infancy. So, while this brings inevitable gripes about bureaucracy (of which there was plenty in 1950!) and flexibility, it has become an ecosystem that provides for many people.

This change was of course driven by the commercialisation that transformed F1 through the 1960s and 1970s - starting with the arrival of sponsors and turbo-charged via Bernie Ecclestone and the growing importance of TV cash.

Returning to the first world championship race, the coverage of Farina's triumph was simply nothing compared to what is today. Although F1's current TV deals are much-maligned due to their reliance on pay-tv channels in major markets, the coverage broadcasters produce is all-encompassing in comparison to what little was on offer in 1950. If Autosport can be permitted to take a moment of self-indulgence, our first magazine was not printed until after the 1950 Dutch GP, the seventh race of the season, with specialist motorsport publications - such as Motor Sport - only being printed on a monthly basis.

Again, of course this transformation is understandable given the dramatic change in society overall since 1950, let alone F1, in the period we are discussing. But it is worth considering just how far things have come.

F1's transformation

There are so many areas where this applies, with safety developments surely being the best. Although the first fatality in an F1 world championship round did not occur until 1953 (when Chet Miller was killed in practice for that year's Indy 500), the championship was for so long marked by the spectre of death.

Thanks to crusading figures - including, but of course not limited to, Jackie Stewart and Sid Watkins - there has only been a single F1 death since that infamous weekend at Imola in 1994, that of Jules Bianchi following his horrendous accident in the 2014 Japanese GP, while in the Formula 2 support class tragically Anthoine Hubert lost his life in an accident in last year's Belgian feature race at Spa-Francorchamps.

Although the deaths of Bianchi and Hubert were tragedies, across the last 26 years it demonstrates the remarkable progress made. Looking back on the FIA's recent announcement of various safety initiatives it is looking to implement, that push is thankfully far from over.

The thinking behind this column's assessment is twofold. One, F1's 70th birthday is worth remembering and celebrating - particularly at time when its absence is being so keenly felt by those of us struck with passion for its competition. But secondly, the championship and motorsport overall are particularly guilty of looking back and yearning for what has happened in the past, which has had harmful impacts on the present and future.

Look how far F1 has come since the world championship's birth

There have been unpleasant knee-jerks (think, the 2016 elimination qualifying fiasco, which wasn't even that bad an idea - it was just typical of modern F1 trying to fix something that wasn't broken in a quest to satisfy dwindling interest levels). There have also been well-intentioned resets - such as the rule changes in 2009 and 2017 that slashed downforce and restored it, respectively - that haven't quite produced the desired outcomes.

Mainly, these things have been problematic because they have masked the true problem - that of a broken governance system that is backed up by a fundamentally unequal financial model. And that overall society is different - motorsport is a niche now more than it has ever been, especially compared to back in 1950 when 200,000 packed into Silverstone to see Farina take the first of three wins that took him to F1's first world title.

So yes, it's easy for some to despair that one team has won the last six world title doubles (something Farina's Alfa squad could never do given the constructors' prize didn't arrive until 1958). But look how far F1 has come since the world championship's birth.

Today, let's reflect on the magnificence of the past and marvel at the brilliance of the present, free of ultimately pointless point-scoring and thoughts of 'how good things used to be'. Nothing is perfect - so nothing can go from perfect to imperfect. Let's celebrate F1's history and look forward to all that is yet come.