Formula 1 in photos: 100 memorable moments

‘Our sport is rich in stories, legends and drama, and to capture that in images is the perfect way to remember the 100 defining moments of our 75-year history,’ writes Stefano Domenicalli, president and CEO of Formula One, in his foreword to Formula 1: The Impossible Collection.

He’s right about allowing pictures to tell the story. The new book from Assouline – hand-stitched and in pole position for fans’ coffee tables – presents a nostalgia-fuelled and fascinating photographic whizz through the championship’s highs and lows, from its gritty beginnings in 1950 to the unfeasibly high-tech and finely orchestrated global showcase it is today.

Happily, though, the rich imagery is accompanied by just enough insightful text by author Brad Spurgeon, a former Formula 1 journalist for The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, to inform and intrigue us along the way.

Spurgeon explores the inevitable duels that characterise FI as a form of gladiatorial combat and add to its ‘travelling circus’, soap-opera appeal. He cites the rivalry between Ferrari’s tenacious Niki Lauda and McLaren’s ‘playboy’ James Hunt, the latter taking the title in 1976, the year of Lauda’s famous crash (more below); Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost’s battling through 1989 and 1990, whereby they ‘knocked each other off the track’ at the Japanese Grand Prix two years running (the first year as McLaren teammates); and Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill’s showdown in 1994 at the title-deciding Australian Grand Prix – culminating in another collision.

There are also perfectly captured moments of joy and triumph. There’s Juan Manuel Fangio nonchalantly raising an arm from his Alfa Romeo on winning the 1951 title, at the Spanish Grand Prix; Nigel Mansell dousing Senna in Moët in 1992, having secured the championship at the Hungarian Grand Prix, driving for Williams; a young Schumacher beaming on his 1991 debut (as a stand-in driver for Jordan) at the Belgian Grand Prix; Fernando Alonso held aloft by his Renault team in 2005 on becoming the youngest champion (aged 24 years and 59 days, a record since broken), having finished third at the Brazilian Grand Prix; and Max Verstappen and Red Bull celebrating their 2023 driver’s and constructor’s titles.

Then there are the crashes, which, gruesomely, stick in the memory and are a reminder of F1’s darker side. Lauda is pictured, burnt, bandaged, unbowed, having raced – and finished fourth – in the 1976 Italian Grand Prix just six weeks after being given the last rites following his smash at the old Nürburgring circuit in Germany.

And homage is paid to Senna, at the time perhaps the sport’s biggest name, killed during a deadly weekend at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994, that, between practice, qualifying and the actual race, saw the deaths of Senna and Roland Ratzenberger, and injuries to Rubens Barichello and members of the crowd. F1’s earlier days, we learn, were riskier still, and the book acknowledges a sobering list of fatalities and injuries.

Mention is made, of course, of the vastly improved safety that’s now a signature of the modern-day sport, alongside the dizzying array of technology that aids today’s drivers in tandem with their huge supporting teams.

It may all look like a video game, but rare indeed is the driver who can perform with split-second precision while enduring the physical and psychological pressures of a race – think G-forces up to five times your bodyweight, in a cockpit that may be 60°C, as you average 220mph and know that 19 other cars on the track could kill you if you get it wrong. Only elite athletes who have spent their youth rising through the ranks of competitive (and for most, prohibitively expensive) go-kart racing are in the running today, writes Spurgeon (Verstappen, who became the youngest-ever F1 driver at age 17 in 2015, happens to be the son of an F1 driver father and a go-gart champion mother).

Thanks to social media, Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive – taking us behind the scenes of the sport with the drivers as they travel, prepare and just hang out – the televised races themselves, and subscription-based streaming of all the action, we all probably feel we know more about our Formula 1 heroes (in this house, Lando Norris) and/or ‘villains’ (sorry, Max Verstappen) than ever before.

But in other ways, we are perhaps more remote from the action than fans during F1’s earliest, less regulated days, suggests Spurgeon, who recalls having free access to get close to drivers and cars, trackside and in the pits and paddock, when attending the Canadian Grand Prix as a boy, in 1967. This book, he writes, is a chance for a close look once again – albeit from your armchair, and without the noise and the (soon-to-be-phased-out) fossil-fuel fumes.

Formula 1: the Impossible Collection, £1,150, 2nd edition, text by Brad Spurgeon, forewords by Jean Todt and Stefano Domenicali, published by and available from Assouline