When Formula 1 was started back in 1950 there were essentially two rules: your engine needed to be naturally aspirated and under 2,5 litres in size. The safety equipment boiled down to the gentle suggestion of a leather helmet and whatever wild courage you could scrape together on the day. No seat belts, though.

In 2020 the mountains of safety regulations and improvement ensured the survival of French driver Romain Grosjean in a crash that many thought would cost the driver his life. Even though his car was ripped in two, his head got pushed through a barrier and the whole thing went up in flames, he survived with basically only burns on his hands. He started driving again less than a year later.

How did we get from A to B? A lot of dead drivers, one Flying Scot, a very persistent Professor of Neurology and a 7-kilo piece of titanium, but let’s untangle it.

But first off, a warning: I will be discussing quite graphic deaths and accidents, though not in detail. You should proceed with caution, depending on your comfort level. Any linked crashes are not shown to be exploitative, but to show the frankly quite horrid happenings in the history of the sport and also to contrast it with the safety standards we see nowadays.

And a major, major thank you to /u/trailrunninggirl for proofreading this post and giving some super helpful suggestions!!

What exactly is Formula 1?

Formula 1 is the highest level of single-seater car racing worldwide. Sanctioned by the Fédération International de l’Automobile (FIA), currently owned and run by Liberty Media, the sport hosts however many teams want to try their hand at building the best racing car in the world. It’s an engineering competition as much as a driving competition, with the teams constantly trying to figure out new wacky ways to make the cars drive better or quicker. A season is organized into a number of “Grand Prix” events, three-day spectacles that usually feature free practises, qualifying and a race that lasts about 1 and a half hours. A team features two drivers, with all of them competing for both the driver's and the constructors' championships.

Names you might know are Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and Williams on the team side and Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton, Ayrton Senna or Fernando Alonso (previous

I am conflicted about giving proper acknowledgements for those who created the SCPs I will be mentioning as I kind of want the reveal to be less obvious (not that I'm particularly subtle) but I'm going to be directly lifting some of the lines from their pages to keep the characters as accurate as possible. I'm thinking of crediting the chapter after the reveal I hope that's okay.

:Rolling Thunder:

Date: 6 months 9 days after "Liberation"

Location: London, England.

"Commander Tharsis, we're ready to begin the operation." The data analyst turned to her waiting for her approval to begin.

"With this the last major group of insurgents in the region will finally be dealt with. At least all this madness will finally be over."

The Commander was not pleased, not at all, a world full of billions of males. Males who found their race desirable, males who under any other circumstances would have welcomed them with open arms. It made her sick to think about the countless men the Empire had so easily ordered slaughtered. The looks she had seen on her girl's faces at what they had done when the bodies started coming in, over ninety percent of this world's armed forces were male.

Goddess, she could still hear the screams of the wounded and dying, fear and pain. And the hatred. How could a people, so masculine, hate so intensely? You could see it in their eyes as they watched their brothers die, the roars of rage during their suicidal charges. She still remembered the boy, his red hair and green eyes as he begged for his brother to live. She saw the pain and sorrow morph into a raging storm as he lashed out.

"Do you want to give them the opportunity to surrender?"

"No... we began our dialogue with orbital strikes killing untold millions, destabilized the world's production of food, destroyed waste and water treatment facilities and crippled their energy grids causing the deaths of countless more. Many are still dying... We then proceeded to spend the last six local months burning them out and hunting them down like vermin. When they reacted as any of us would have if we found ourselves in the same circumstances. There is nothing left to say."

The rest of the command centre was silent.

"If we offered, I doubt they would accept, even if by some miracle they did, what do they have to return to?" Her thoughts returned to the young man, his body swinging from the old tree one among dozens. By the Sea of Souls. Broken soldiers begging for forgiveness fr

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

Do your worst!

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!

Because she wanted to see the task manager.

They’re on standbi

Pilot on me!!

Nothing, he was gladiator.

Dad jokes are supposed to be jokes you can tell a kid and they will understand it and find it funny.

This sub is mostly just NSFW puns now.

If it needs a NSFW tag it's not a dad joke. There should just be a NSFW puns subreddit for that.

Edit* I'm not replying any longer and turning off notifications but to all those that say "no one cares", there sure are a lot of you arguing about it. Maybe I'm wrong but you people don't need to be rude about it. If you really don't care, don't comment.

When I got home, they were still there.

I won't be doing that today!

When Formula 1 was started back in 1950 there were essentially two rules: your engine needed to be naturally aspirated and under 2,5 litres in size. The safety equipment boiled down to the gentle suggestion of a leather helmet and whatever wild courage you could scrape together on the day. No seat belts, though.

In 2020 the mountains of safety regulations and improvement ensured the survival of French driver Romain Grosjean in a crash that many thought would cost the driver his life. Even though his car was ripped in two, his head got pushed through a barrier and the whole thing went up in flames, he survived with his mos severe injury being severe burns on his hands. He started driving again less than a year later.

How did we get from A to B? A lot of dead drivers, one Flying Scot, a very persistent Professor of Neurosurgery and a 7-kilo piece of titanium, but let’s untangle it.

If this entire thing seems familiar to some of you, it was posted over on /r/HobbyDrama two weeks ago and is now reposted here in a shiny updated, corrected and aimed at F1 fans version with an okay from the mods and the encouragement from some folks from over there.

But for this audience it might need another disclaimer: this is by no means an all-encompassing write-up on safety in Formula One, it’s more aimed at summarizing the basic developments and highlighting the progress made. So if y’all have more facts and figures, please drop them in the comments! Also, some quotes might seem familiar if you’ve seen The Killer Years, I’ll be posting a full list of sources in a comment tomorrow.

‘Everything goes’

Formula 1 developed out of the European Championship of Grand Prix motorsport racing in the 1920s and 1930s and started pretty much directly after the war ended, with the first races in 1947 and the first full World Championship taking place in 1950. It was quite the hodgepodge operation with no real understanding of the dangers of motorsport, and it showed.

If you had a barrier, it consisted of straw bales haphazardly placed at the side of the road. Drivers and constructors could ent

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

What did 0 say to 8 ?

" Nice Belt "

So What did 3 say to 8 ?

" Hey, you two stop making out "