how the lost track time F1 will never bring back still appeals

Stefano Domenicali wants to rid the Formula 1 weekend of free practice or at least shorten it.

That’s too much for an old hand like me. I’m still reeling from the loss of the race morning warm-up, and had I not forged a career as a motorsport journalist I reckon my anger wouldn’t have subsided at all more than 20 years after those half-hour slots of track time disappeared. 

I’m not complaining as a journalist about the loss of the warm-up in F1 or my world of sportscar racing. They serve no purpose for me; they get in the way of doing my job in the paddock.

But if I was going to races as a fan, I’d be upset about the absence of that little bit of track running on the morning of your arrival for race day as they were an essential part of my viewing experience. 

I didn’t like going into the race blind. Not so much a problem if I was getting my F1 fix at the British Grand Prix, where I was familiar with the cars from TV, but say it was the world championship sportscar at Brands Hatch. I wanted to be able to see the cars before the race started and learn to recognise them before they appeared over the brow of Paddock Hill Bend on the opening lap. 

Driver line-ups changed, liveries too, in those less homogenous days, and sometimes even the look of the cars. 

What about the front wing that sprouted on the front of the Richard Lloyd’s Porsche 956 at the Brands 1000 klicks round of the WEC in 1984? Imagine my confusion had I only got a brief glimpse of said appendage – cobbled together out of a Ralt Formula 3 wing, I would learn years later – on the warm-up lap? I would have been all of a fluster as I got ready for the charge to Paddock at the start. It would have played havoc with my lap-charting!

I have genuine affection for my days watching race day warm-ups on the other side of the fence. There’s something intoxicating about that early-morning atmosphere of a British race circuit, the thrill of engines being fired up for the first time of the day, the smell of fried bacon hanging in the air. 

Had there been no such things in my day as a paying punter, I wouldn’t have got to see the Lotus 80 in anger. That thing of beauty, Lotus’s soon-abandoned attempt to take the unfair advantage of the type 79 one step further, only raced three times and took part in six F1 meetings in 1979 before being mothballed.

But I can say I was there for one of those, that year’s Race of Champions non-points race at Brands. I have a rather rubbish picture of it somewhere, taken by my 11-year-old self on a Kodak Instamatic, to prove it. 

And I got to see the Cosworth-powered Lotus 80 before its sleek lines were sullied by a rear wing. Ground-effect tunnels stretching nearly the full length of the car were meant to do away with the need for one, though by the time it notched up its only podium at Jarama in Spain, it had sprouted a conventional wing at the back. 

Mario Andretti was entered in the type 80 for a race that had been hastily reorganised for the weekend after the Long Beach GP in April after it had been snowed off. He flicked back and forth between the 80 and the 79 over the weekend, before opting for the trusty steed that had taken him to the F1 title the previous year after one final try of the new car in the warm-up. 

And take pity on the Nelson Piquet supporter who was spectating near me at the same event four years later in 1983, the last non-championship race in F1 history. Someone who was dressed like the president of the Brazilian driver’s fan club – and might well have been for all I know – appeared not to be familiar with his hero’s helmet design. 

1983 Race of Champions

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Piquet was still listed in the solo Brabham-BMW BT52 in that week’s Autosport, but at some point he made a decision to opt out of an inconsequential race fought out by just 13 cars. In his place came Hector Rebaque, the Mexican returning to the Brabham fold after more than a year and a bit away from the team and F1. 

Rebaque didn’t distinguish himself that weekend with the car that went on to win the title with Piquet. Not in qualifying (he was 10th of the 13), not in the race (it is said that the team deliberately dropped the car off its jacks during a pitstop to put him out of his misery) and not in the warm-up (he spun at Paddock right in front of me and the aforementioned fanboy). 

It was only when Rebaque clambered out of the BT52 after that spin that my neighbour at Paddock realised his hero wasn’t racing that day. He might not have been able to identify his helmet design, but he did know what Nelson Piquet looked like. 

What if there hadn’t been a warm-up at Brands that day? Would our man have gone through the race cheering for Piquet, wondering why the 1981 world champion was so off the pace in a car in which he had won the season-opener in Brazil?

There is a serious side to this, however. I concede that F1 CEO Domenicali wasn’t thinking of me when he talked of remodelling the race weekend. My hair is far too grey for that. But I assert that the appeal of motor racing or any other sport isn’t all about the short sharp shock. 

The best sports stories have an underlying narrative. They develop over time. That could be over years – like the great rivalries, whether Alain Prost v Ayrton Senna or Muhammad Ali v Joe Frazier – through a season, or through an event. In motor racing, that’s a race weekend, through practice, qualifying and into the race whether there’s a warm-up or not. For a boxing match we can extend it out to the antics of the pre-bout slagging matches and the weigh-in. 

Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

I could throw in the enduring appeal of Test cricket, a five-day affair if a match goes its full duration, in the face of the growth of the short-formats of the game to support my arguments. I also don’t hear anyone clamouring for men’s matches at the tennis Grand Slams to be cut from a best of five sets to three. It’s worth pointing out that a reimagining of what constitutes a tennis match in something known as the Ultimate Tennis Showdown hasn’t really caught on. 

And I haven’t even mentioned the Le Mans 24 Hours yet. It’s the biggest race in my world and, some would argue, the world full stop. 

Perhaps I’m a dinosaur and what I want from a sporting event isn’t the same as someone half my age. Liberty Media seems to think so, and besides, Domenicali is really talking about an audience consuming an F1 race on some kind of screen, not those sitting in the grandstand or on the spectator banking.

But I thought I’d chuck in my two penn’orth in the debate about freshening up the grand prix weekend format. I know the morning warm-up is an anachronism, but I remember it fondly. I also thank it for giving me the chance to see the Lotus 80 in action with a racing legend at the wheel. 

And what about that Piquet fan at Paddock in ’83? I wonder if he looks back on the morning warm-up in the same way?