The Monaco Historic was on this weekend, and the star of the vintage F1 race was 1990s Ferrari F1 driver Jean Alesi driving the 1970s Ferrari 312T raced by Niki Lauda. Everyone was enamored with its period-appropriate tight action on-track, and slightly less enamored with its even more period-appropriate crash.

First, let’s get acquainted with this 312T howling around the Monaco pinball machine with Alesi at the wheel. This car is from when Ferrari was running flat-12 engines, which Ferrari claimed made 500 horsepower at a bit over 12,000 RPM, as F1Technical recounts. It was more powerful than the typical Cosworth DFVs running around at the time, and it made Ferrari competitive again.

How much any of that matters anymore is questionable. Unquestionable, of course, is that is still sounds amazing.

The big drama of the weekend was Alesi was dicing on track with a Lotus 77 driven by three-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Marco Werner. It was somewhat ironic that Lauda in the 312 was Werner’s childhood hero, because he got tied up in the car crashing into the wall.Alesi went into the wall, Werner went ahead and won the race, though the organizers stripped him of the win.

SkySports F1 went so far as to say that Werner took out Alesi in the crash, as you can see in this race footage:

It was a weird crash, in that it didn’t really look like Werner tried to crash Alesi out, as Axis of Oversteer, a friend of Jalopnik, pointed out on Twitter:

Even those participating in the race didn’t quite buy that Werner deserved all the blame, with the new winner placing his trophy on Werner’s demoted car:

As it is, it’s kind of pointless to look for blame. These are old F1 cars. When they race, they race close. They also crash. As they did then, so do they do now. They also also sometimes blew up with no provocation whatsoever, so maybe everyone came out kind of lucky.

Imola was just the third round of the championship, and there had already been numerous high profile accidents in testing and racing before the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna prompted a radical overhaul in the approach to driver protection.

Heading in to the 1994 season there had been a big rule change, which had not only set about reducing costs and handing back control to the drivers. It had also attempted to reign in teams in their adventurous use of electronic control systems.

Williams had ruled the roost in the previous few seasons, with its active suspension a considerable factor in its title winning seasons. However, other electronic aids, such as ABS and traction control had started to become more commonplace too, whilst solutions like rear wheel steer and CVT (Continuous Variable Transmission) had been tested but not raced.

All of these were to be banned for ‘94 and would have a serious impact on the behaviour of the cars, both from an aerodynamic and mechanical point of view.

The reaction to the events at Imola from the sport's governing body was swift though, as by the Spanish GP, just two races later, the teams were forced to change the design of their front wing endplates and the length of the diffuser, as a way of reducing downforce and slowing the cars.

1: The long skirt-style endplate designs that had populated the grid in recent years were outlawed (left), as seen here on the Benetton B194.

2: This was followed just a race later by holes needing to be cut into the airbox or engine cover to reduce airflow to the engine, reducing power.

3: By the time the German GP came around in July, teams had further design constraints to comply with. The most important of these, and something that still exists today, was the need to have a plank installed on the floor. This was done as a method of controlling the ride height, as the plank could not be worn by more than 1mm during the course of a race.

4: Famously this led to the disqualification of Michael Schumacher's Benetton at the Belgian GP. The German's plank had been worn away at the front by more than the 1mm tolerance, resulting in him being stripped of his race victory.

5: The rear wing dimensions were also constrained, with an exclusion zone created 150mm behind the rear axle line, effectively outlawing the practice of using pre-wings. The changes came in for criticism from all corners on the grid, as whilst the teams understood the need for change, in order to improve safety, they'd been rushed, and in some circumstances put unnecessary stress and strain on other components. The push for increased safety continued for 1995, as the governing body made even more rule changes, including an increase in load testing, further changes to the cockpit dimensions, a reduction in engine capacity (3.5 > 3.0 litre) and comprehensive changes that affected aerodynamics.

6: The load and impact tests already undertaken had their speeds and loads increased, whilst a new side impact test was introduced.

7: The introduction of the plank in 1994 had only gone so far as to limit the downforce created by the flat bottoms first introduced in 1983. As such, a step plane had been created, which lifted the outer portions of the floor by a further 25mm, reducing the potential yield of the floor.

8: Dramatic changes were made to the cockpit, with its dimensions altered to reduce the chance of incursion by debris. The length of the monocoque was extended by a further 150mm in front of the axle line, improving the crush zone ahead of the driver's feet, which now also had more space given the extension between the front axle line and the cockpit rim. The cockpit sides were drawn up higher (400>550mm) to better protect in the event of a side-on incident. The cockpit template was narrowed slightly (450>420mm) but extended forward and given a much larger radius.

9: The car's aerodynamics were impacted by changes to the front wing endplate height, a reduction in the overall height of the car and a lower rear wing. This view also shows how much of an implication raising the cockpit sides and impact structures had on the design of the sidepods.

10: The side view shows the impact on the dimensions of the car, with the wheelbase inevitably increasing to incorporate the safety structures. Meanwhile, you can see the dimensional implications on the front and rear wing endplates.

He conquered Pikes Peak before the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and had an inordinate grasp of how to make a race car faster when most of his competition wasn’t paying attention to those details. Then he took that track record into television for 20 years and launched another successful career. He never met a microphone he didn’t like, and nobody gave opinions on any subject with less filtering and more conviction.

But Bobby Unser, who passed away Sunday at the age of 87, should be remembered as one of the fastest, bravest and most skilled racers to ever sit in an Indy car.

“When I showed up to the track, for any race, the first person I always looked to see if he was there was Bobby Unser,” said two-time Indy 500 winner Gordon Johncock.

“Sure there was Foyt and Mario, Rutherford and his brother Al. But I wanted to know if Bobby was there. He was the one driver that I knew I had to beat each and every week. He was my main competition, he was the fastest, hardest-racing and most aggressive driver I competed against. When we lined up I looked around and wanted to know where he was starting, which was usually up front. Bobby knew how to win and fought every lap of every race to be in first place. If you beat Bobby, you accomplished something.”

“Nobody ran harder than Bobby,” says Bill Vukovich, who raced against Unser from 1968-1981. “And it was lap after lap, he always wanted to be in front.”

Growing up in Albuquerque, N.M., he was the third oldest of four brothers and racing was preordained, since his uncles pretty much owned the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. He quit high school after his sophomore year and won a stock car title at age 15 before scoring the first of his record 13 Pikes Peak victories in 1956 when he was 22.

Unser studied that mountain a lot harder than he had algebra or science and it paid off because the run up treacherous 19-mile course was on dirt with no runoff – just a deadly plunge down the 4,300-feet mountain.

“It taught us both a bunch about car control,” recalled brother Al Unser, another king of the hill in Colorado before becoming a four-time Indy winner.

As good as Unser was in the Rocky Mountains and as much potential as he’d shown in midgets and sprints on the west coast, the man who exuded confidence had none in the early 1960s when it came to moving up the ladder.

“I never considered Indianapolis because I didn’t think I was good enough,” he admitted back in 2008. “But Rufus (Parnell Jones) told me I was going and he got me a ride and I always be indebted to him.”

Unser was nearly 30 when he qualified as a rookie in 1963 and had missed four prime years of racing when he joined the Air Force from 1952-55. His first two Indy 500s didn’t make it past the second lap, and he was in his fifth season before finally earning his first IndyCar victory.

But everything changed in 1968 when he got hooked up with crew chief Jud Phillips and the Leader Card team. He led 127 laps and beat the heavily-favored turbine car and went on to edge Mario Andretti for the USAC championship.

“That put me on the map, and winning Indianapolis changed my life,” he said back in 2000.

The next big break was being hired by Dan Gurney. They were a formidable pair with their chassis knowledge and non-stop ideas for improving/tinkering, and with John Miller’s Offy engines they led a lot of laps and won a lot of pole positions. In 1972, Unser broke the IMS track record by 17 mph in Gurney’s Eagle and had seven poles and four wins in 10 races, but didn’t win the championship because of too many DNFs.

Gurney, who finished second at Indy twice, finally made it to Victory Lane in 1975 with Unser and they stayed together until 1979.

That’s when Roger Penske came calling and it was perfect timing – the ground effect era and the man who loved testing and experimenting.

“People said it would never last, that Roger and I wouldn’t be able to get along, but nothing could have been further from the truth,” said Unser in 1988. “He trusted me and gave me all the tools I needed, and I think the PC-7 was one of the best Indy cars ever.”

Unser led 50 laps in ’79 in the PC-6 and was leading with 20 laps to go when he had gearbox trouble and had to pit, eventually finishing fifth. In 1980, he qualified third and was leading at the halfway point before his turbocharger failed.

In 1981, the PC-7 he helped design was in a class of its own as Unser led 89 laps and lapped everyone except runner-up Andretti, who protested afterwards that his longtime friend and rival had illegally passed 11 cars exciting the pits. USAC agreed and Mario was declared the winner the next morning, which set off a protest that ended with Unser being reinstated in October.

“I didn’t do anything wrong and I certainly didn’t need to cheat because we had everyone covered all day,” was Unser’s defense the whole time.

At 47, he was the oldest winner at that time, and was testing a car for Pat Patrick at Phoenix in the winter of 1982 when he abruptly retired.

During his career he amassed 35 IndyCar wins, 52 poles and a pair of national championships while leading 3,933 laps. He was on the front row at Indy nine times and elected into the Motorsport and IMS Hall of Fames.

After retiring, ABC hired Unser to provide commentary for the Indy 500 along with Paul Page and Sam Posey and it was one of the most entertaining booths in racing history, as Unser spent a third of the race correcting his partners. He also worked for NBC and ESPN.

“You never knew what Bobby was going to say, and that made it exciting,” said Page.

Unser battled a multitude of health problems in his last decade but it didn’t stop him from going to the Chili Bowl every winter or the Hall of Fame dinner at Indy or PRI show. At the end he couldn’t walk but he certainly could talk, and that’s how we’ll remember him – preaching, giving advice, arguing and telling stories, because he always drew a crowd.

Unser is survived by his wife, Lisa; sons Bobby Jr. and Robby; and daughters Cindy and Jeri.

Race tracks that host international competitions are often given grades that are designed to reflect the level of competition this track can hold—but the qualifications can often be pretty murky. That’s why, today, we’re going to be delving into the FIA track grading system so that it makes more sense.

Most race fans have probably heard of track grading as it pertains to why one certain track can or cannot host a Formula One race, but the grading system goes a lot deeper than that. And it’s worth a quick exploration by race fans.

Basically, grading tracks is a way to determine the type of cars that can safely race on a track. These events are sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), so the standards are fairly high. That’s why Formula One can’t race on all the American tracks that IndyCar races on—F1 requires a much higher level of safety, maintenance, fan accessibility, and facilities.

That derives from F1's long term push for a higher level of safety to coincide with its high-dollar technical development. If you’re spending that much money and marketing yourself as the pinnacle of motorsport, having dangerous circuits kind of goes against the whole ethos of both F1 and the FIA; it just shows you didn’t do a good enough job doing the thing you claim to do better than everyone else.

So, there’s an incentive to regulate the standards of tracks, which the FIA generally does via a power-to-weight ratio. That means that super-powerful and super-light cars need specific track features to keep them both safe and to make for better racing (but that last point is debatable, depending on who you ask). Track standards also take into account the other track facilities, like ADA-accessible bathrooms and medical center staffing due to the potentially larger crowds the series can draw and the type of accidents that are most common for a certain series.

In essence, a well-graded track is an assurance that the drivers will be safe and the fans will have an appropriately good time.

Grade 1

Can host

• Group D and E cars with a weight/power ratio of less than 1kg/hp
• Historic cars, including post-1985 F1 cars
• Basically: Formula One

Examples

• Anything F1 competes on

Grade 1T

Can host

• Private testing of previous F1 cars

Grade 2

Can host

• Group D and E cars with a weight/power ratio of 1-2 kg/hp
• That includes some historic cars
• Junior single-seater racing like Formula 2, some Grand Touring cars

Examples

• Barber Motorsports Park (and most IndyCar road/street circuits), Circuit de la Sarthe, Donington Park

Grade 3

Can host

• Category II cars with a weight/power ratio of 2-3 kg/hp
• Some historic cars
• Junior single-seaters like Formula 3

Examples

• Most Formula E street circuits, Pau, Mount Panorama, Oulton Park

Grade 3E

Can host

• Electric cars with a weight/power ratio of 2-3 kg/hp

Examples

• Other Formula E street circuits, like Riyadh, Berlin, Sanya, Diriyah, and Santiago

Grade 4

Can host

• Category I cars, plus Category II cars with a weight/power ratio of over 3 kg/hp
• Some historic cars that don’t meet regulations from previous grades

Examples

• Goodwood,

Grade 5

Can host

• Alternative-energy vehicles

Grade 6A

Can host

• Autocross

Examples

• Autocross Nová Paka, Seelow Autocross Circuit

Grade 6R

Can host

• Rallycross

Examples

• Trois-Rivières, Circuit of the Americas’ rallycross course

Grade 6G

Can host

• Ice racing

The FIA spends most of its time detailing the mandatory requirements for permanent circuits of Grade 1 to 4, adding on special dispensations for certain series, like F1 or WEC. And these rules are complex. Appendix H of the FIA’s international sporting code spends 134 pages outlining every single requirement, which can range from the width of the track to the type of medicine that has to be included in the medical center. But some of the big ones for Grade 1 tracks include:

• Track dimensions. Straights can’t be longer than 1.25 miles, and tracks must be at least 2.18 miles long (with the exception of Monaco). Tracks are not recommended to be longer than 4.35 miles. Permanent tracks must be at least 40 feet wide, but temporary tracks like Monaco may be narrower. And then there are regulations for things like grid spot spacing, banking, pitlane width, and more.
• Barriers. There are certain requirements for barriers and run-off zones depending on the layout of the track. There aren’t really set rules, but it’s probably a smart idea to follow the FIA’s suggestions of including some combination of grass, sealed surface run-off areas, curbs, deceleration beds, stopping barriers, and energy-absorbing barriers.
• Medical center. There are some serious requirements for medical centers. They have to be permanent for all Grade 1-4 tracks, and for higher-level events, there must be two doctors present who are proficient in resuscitation, plus two surgeons, one of whom must be trained in the initial treatment of burns and the other that has to manage spinal injuries and concussions. The medical team needs to be able to speak English and deal with trauma. And there needs to be a whole host of medical technology: ventilators, heart-rate monitors, oxygen reserves, x-rays, ultrasound equipment, and more.

Among countless other things. There are formulae for determining the number of cars allowed on track during a specific event, and there are requirements for the advertisements that line the circuits. There are regulations for fans and regulations for drivers. Basically, developing and subsequently maintaining a Grade 1 circuit is an expensive, time-consuming job, which is why there are currently only 37 circuits that can host F1 events. You have to really want that license.
But it’s also not super easy to figure out what, exactly, goes into designing a specific grade of circuit unless you’re really serious about it. Which generally means you have money. Which is generally the best way to get the FIA to notice you in general.

A self-proclaimed “religious” Formula 1 fan, four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon joins Tom Clarkson for the latest Beyond the Grid podcast and reveals just how close he got to making the full-time switch from stock cars to F1.

In 2003, Gordon swapped cars with then-Williams driver Juan Pablo Montoya (who later went on to compete in the Cup Series) around Indianapolis’ road course for a television feature. And, as the Californian reveals in the podcast, Williams founder and former Team Principal Sir Frank Williams did in fact discuss a move to F1 with Gordon.

Gordon says: “So there were a lot of discussions that went on that got more serious than I thought they would after that [test], because I did have so much fun with it and I started thinking: ‘Can I train my neck enough to do this, can I learn the tracks, can I be competitive?’"

There weren’t just talks with the Williams head, but also with BAR, previously known as Tyrrell, who were readying for their maiden Formula 1 campaign in 1999.

“There was one other conversation: Jacques Villeneuve was a part of these talks and conversations when he was at BAR… when that was all being formed, I think they wanted an American driver, somehow I got on the list, and we had a lot of discussions,” continues Gordon.

Not only did BAR try to pry Gordon's talents away from stock cars, but the champion says that then-Formula 1 chief Bernie Ecclestone also held discussions to try and sway the NASCAR star towards F1.

“He was involved yes, I had discussions with him and they were not long discussions, you know, but I think there was some talks about a big interest in an American driver. There always has been, right?

“I don’t really know why it hasn’t really worked out and the reasons why I mentioned earlier, I think Alexander Rossi is probably one of the closest we’ve seen to really have success. But just again, trying to have that American driver in a car that compete up front would be exciting and fun for me to see. So anyway, yes, Bernie, when I would come to the racetrack, he and I would chat real quick about it and he was like ‘We’ve got to get you a ride… what have we got to do?’"

Gordon goes on to reveal more about those talks with Williams and BAR – and why an F1 switch ultimately didn't happen – and discusses that 2003 swap with Montoya, whether Lewis Hamilton could be successful in NASCAR, and so much more. You can hear the full episode of Beyond The Grid in the player above, on Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

“He would have been the most fantastic partner,” says Head. “The potential was massive. He was a great guy, and I have nothing but positive memories.”