The History of F1 Design | Hacker News Reader

The History of F1 Design

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82 pointsanonyonoor59 comments

I tried to read this. I gave up after the forced slow-scroll and convoluted layout.

It's a shame that all this lovely artwork and data is trapped in this horrid presentation automation.

This would be much cooler if right-click accelerated scrolling / moving through the timeline (or just scrolled for you when held down) and left-click quickly stopped scrolling.

A bit like tring to read a pop-up book. I think there's a reason they're not made for adults.

PS I am sure there are some examples but you get what I mean.

And it breaks the cookie popup, I can't scroll that to switch them off! Incognito mode it it then.

Wow, I read your comment before I clicked. What were they thinking.

I’ve been getting into F1 this summer since the movie got my interest up.

The movie is itself (I think) capitalising on the increased popularity of F1 brought about by the Netflix series. It is a great series and by all accounts has really turned the sport around in terms of popularity, a very clever move by the FIA. Netflix have tried to replicate it for other sports but, I believe, without the same success.

> It is a great series and by all accounts has really turned the sport around in terms of popularity

Is this causation or correlation ? Should your comment have a "in the US" asterisk? The series premiered in 2019 and F1 still had global audience drops in 2020 and 2021 (TV, so covid isn't solely to blame). Meanwhile, F1 audiences is now growing while DTS viewership is dropping [1].

> Netflix have tried to replicate it for other sports but, I believe, without the same success.

Maybe because F1 has long been one of the most popular worldwide sports and DTS wasn't actually driving the increase. The cumulative DTS viewership is in the single digit (edit: mid double digit million, actually) millions. Global F1 viewership is in the high three digit millions and the increase in viewership from 2020 to 2024 is in the hundred million range.

1- https://www.planetf1.com/news/drive-to-survive-viewing-figur...

2- https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/formula-1-drive-to-sur...

Give yourself a treat and visit an Apple Store for a Vision Pro demo: ask to see the newly released immersive video where you're in the cockpit with Brad Pitt as he roars down the road. Fantastic!

…I will definitely do that

If you live in a region where F1TV is standalone (eg: US) and not part of an expensive sports package (eg: UK) it's good value. You can watch old races and related content, and each race weekend there is a good 4 hours worth watching live (qualifying and race, with good pre/post content). You can open multiple streams with the main race footage, any driver's live on-board video and radio, and various screens of telemetry. It's worth watching on a mobile device even if you are at a race watching live from the stands.

Yea, I subscribed and used it to watch the Hungarian GP this past weekend. The driver view was really intense!

I’ve been catching up by binging a lot of content that was recommended to me. The movie Rush (2013) was great. Brawn on Hulu was a fantastic story. Currently shopping for some vintage gear from them.

Watching a little Drive to Survive on Netflix too.

The Senna series from 2024 is also pretty good.

I really enjoyed it, worked really well on my desktop

It's terrible. They should just add a button to switch to a normal layout without scroll jacking. What were they thinking?

Not sure what you mean. This is an art director's wet dream. It's got animated 2.5D/parallax, it's got killer art, and it's different! /s

Worked great on iPad. Was nice to see something designed well for a swipe oriented experience.

Other than the strange scrolling (works on my iOS Safari, but why?) this is very well done. Clearly a lot of thought went in to it, many nice details in the assets and overall presentation. The illustrations of the drivers and their cars are separate layers than move ever so slightly. That amount of care isn't strictly required but it was done and my day is better for it. Thanks.

No affiliation, no interest in F1, just basking in good work.

Finally, the v12 Ferrari engine sounds the best. Fight me.

I like the Renault V10 better, although the Ferrari V12 is a close second.

I think even Hamilton agrees! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I0R5yZ80rA

I only have those four samples to compare. The v12 is violence. Though Lewis' expression is priceless.

F1 has never been the same for me since they got rid of the engine sound, I miss it so much

Not a great engine, but I loved the sound the BAR Honda V10:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBxw4whvBiA

The Renault V10 is simply sublime.

Here it is, after winning the championship at the hands of Alonso, “singing” we are the champions:

https://youtu.be/8aArSn4IhHI

Love all of these, but my ears say the Mazda 787b beats everything. Chorus, oh the chorus! https://youtu.be/QtUEPwHnxmU

I kinda prefer the Honda V12 like they used in the RA300. Sounds like Godzilla's about to eat you.

I used to like the V12 sound on TV but when I watched a race in Monza I could barely take the sound after a while. It was just too loud and intense. Even with earplugs.

Normally I find complaints about scrolljacking on HN tiresome but the comments here are entirely justified. A truly awful design.

Books to read:

How to build a car by Adrian Newey

Total Competition by Ross Brawn

You will know more about the world of F1 than you need to

Bonus:

The Mechanic by Marc Priestley

Seconded. If you want to learn about the basics of race cars in a pop sci way while being told an entertaining story then How To Build A Car is a great book and a very easy read.

Interesting that they just skipped the entire Verstappen dominance era, but decided instead to jump to the budgeoning McLaren Piastri-Norris dominance (about a year old only).

Of course with 75 years of history you need to trim it down, but that's an interesting choice...

Really cool, too bad the scroll design is so janky

Another good article along these lines: https://www.ft.com/content/e6a19b6c-331d-46b5-b239-fa7f4d90b...

I've only recently gotten (back) into F1 but a lot of the technical stuff is really interesting to read about. Like the Williams FW14, which absolutely dominated for a season before its active suspension technology was banned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_FW14

There was a lot of innovation crushing people until it got banned. (Or sometimes banned before it could crush).

Ground skirts, banned, and then Lotus 88 immediately after that also banned. McLaren's multiple brake pedals got banned after like one race?

Pretty sure if you go back to the 70s and earlier there's a long list of banned tech.

Six wheelers were cool. I kind of miss the times when they had way more technical freedom.

Not a follower of F1, I never knew that Red Bull built their own cars. I thought they were just sponsoring a team using other cars. I don't know if knowing that caffeinated drinks made enough profit to finance building race cars from the ground up is something to be impressed by or not. That's a lot of caustic swill that humans have ingested over the years to make that happen

They also have sponsors (this year the team's name is Oracle Red Bull Racing, another team has the Google Chrome logo on their cars), and each place in the championship comes with a monetary prize.

I have fond memories of watching F1 races with my dad in the late '90s and early '00s. Legends like Lauda and Gilles Villeneuve were mythical figures from a distant past to me. Now, for my children, Schumacher, Häkkinen, and Damon Hill are in that very same position... how time flies.

How much of this is Disney trying to retain the streaming rights for F1 when Apple is now invested and interested? I would buy an Apple Vision Pro if they could get races covered by those new 8k spatial video cameras! And skipping Verstappen for Norris is kinda ridiculous.

Agreed, I couldn't believe they skipped the RB19

Scroll hijacking at its worst

This is exactly what happens when Chrome lacks native autoplay controls and most designers do not even consider that some users might block autoplay altogether. On Firefox, which I have configured to block autoplay, the article opens with a blank space. No video, no fallback, no context. Just dead air.

It is honestly bad practice that Chrome does not provide proper user-level control over autoplay anymore. This encourages lazy design patterns where autoplay is assumed as default behavior and accessibility or user preference gets ignored.

That said, Firefox could improve too. At least show a play button, a poster frame, or something to indicate there is a video element there. Right now it just looks broken. Both browser vendors and designers need to do better.

So odd they just skipped over Max in their history timeline.

4 consecutive world championships. Most wins in single season ever in history.

Though no one probably got to the end due to the horrible UI of that page.

Crazy to me they had Prost instead of Senna in the 80s section

Indeed. The only thing that stopped Senna was that unfortunate fatal accident :(

He was on track to easily surpass Prost in titles. 3 vs 4.

Senna should have 4, got robbed in 1989

Skipping the MP4/4 is an odd choice too, as it is widely considered the pinnacle of F1 car design and with results to show for it.

We’re actually working on racetrack.ai as we speak since this sport is gaining traction.

I waited about 30 seconds in safari on macOS 15.6 and couldn't scroll at all

I opened it, got some coffee, and then tried opening it again in a new window. Somehow it worked perfectly on the second attempt after being broken.

Maybe give it another try? I'm on Safari as well.

Sucks that you even have to consider this though.

Well, I guess it's not a coincidence that the F1 race car on the initial view bears Chrome sponsoring

Could be your adblocker.

Firefox reader mode gets all the text and some pictures.

seems the f1 cars that are already difficult to drive, will now push drivers to the limits in terms of skill under 2026 regulations.

Doesn't scroll at all after loading.

Too little focus on early F1 evolution!

Unusable on an iPhone. Can’t scroll

unusable for me

Safari/WebKit seems to be the issue. Perhaps try another browser?

Sorry for the inconvenience.

"designer" website = pass

Please don't do this here. We're looking for curious conversation, not dyspeptic dismissals.

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