Q:
A: 1950-52 were pretty straightforward. They didn't even need team orders. The 1953 Italian GP was won by Fangio after his teammate Gonzalez caused an accident at the final corner of the last lap which delayed Farina and put Ascari out. 1954 saw the streamlined Mercedes, which probably would have been banned if it hadn't been voluntarily withdrawn. In 1955 Fangio was "beaten" by Moss at Aintree, but he was probably put under pressure by the Mercedes management to allow the Briton to win for commercial reasons. In 1956 Fangio won the title as a result of a shared drive in the Argentine GP and this led to a change of rules for the following season. 1957 was a simple season again, even if the format of the grid was changed at Monza from a 3-2-3-2 to a 4-3-4-3 so that there would be a red car on the front row! 1958 saw Moss with four wins lose the title to Hawthorn with one win, which was quite a scandal at the time...Hawthorn got the necessary points at the last race because his teammate, Phil Hill, almost stopped before the line to allow Hawthorn to finish in front. The 1959 USGP was the world championship decider, and a fix in qualifying helped decide the title race. After practice a new faster time was "discovered" for the American Harry Schell, which put him on the front row of the grid and relegated Tony Brooks to the second row. At the start Brooks' car was hit by his teammate von Trips and the resultant pit stop put him too far down the field to challenge for the win that he required. 1960 saw the first mass-boycott of a race, the Italian GP; the British manufacturers were protesting at the use of the unsafe banked section, which would favour Ferrari's obsolete front-engined cars. 1961-63 was a quiet time on the scandal front, but 1964 saw the title decided at the last race by Ferrari team orders again; this time it was Bandini letting Surtees through on the run down to the chequered flag. 1965 was scandal-free, but 1966 saw Surtees sacked by Ferrari because of internal politics. 1967 was quiet again, but 1968 saw the introduction of the high front and rear wings by Lotus; Matra also introduced structural fuel tanks, but they were deemed dangerous as well and were banned for the 1970 season. 1969 saw some huge accidents due to the high wings, and they were banned and replaced with a smaller version. 1970-75 had individual disqualifications, but not real scandals. 1976 soon changed things...the original McLaren-Ferrari grudge match. After several months of legal proceedings, disqualifications, reinstatements, disallowed qualifying times and bad press everybody was happy to move on to 1977...then Colin Chapman came up with ground effect. He perfected it for the 1978 season, prompting Brabham to come up with their "fan car"...quickly banned too. 1979 passed fairly quietly. The 1980 Spanish GP was excluded from the championship after a controversy over dates, and the Jones-Piquet rivalry became a major talking point, culminating with Jones driving into Piquet at the Canadian GP to win the world title. 1981 wasn't much better, with Piquet and Jones still at war, the FOCA-FISA war starting up, protests about fixed and sliding skirts and car running well under the weight limit. The Lotus 88 was banned without racing once too. 1982 saw the height of the FOCA-FISA war, with the British teams boycotting the San Marino GP because of the fall-out from the "water cooled brakes" scandal; the short-lived Pironi-Villeneuve feud; protests, disqualifications and the banning of ground effect...no wonder it's generally considered to have been one of the most turbulent in the history of the sport. 1983 was relatively calm, with nothing proven against any team despite several accusations...it ended in drama though, with Prost fired by Renault for still-unclear reasons. 1984 saw Tyrrell banned for the whole season (with the loss of all their points to date) for their ingenious "fuel additives" technique for running under the weight limit. 1985 was calm, despite the odd disqualification. 1986 saw the start of Piquet vs Mansell, and 1987 the continuance of it. 1988 was also quite calm, before the Prost vs Senna storm erupted in 1989, ending in their first coming-together at Suzuka...12 months later, Prost and Senna at it again at Suzuka deciding the title the other way. 1991 saw Bertrand Gachot jailed for assaulting a London taxi driver and the Bernie Ecclestone-inspired "transfer" of Schumacher from Jordan to Benetton on the eve of qualifying for the Italian GP; it also saw Prost fired for the second time in his career, this time by Ferrari, for criticising his car in the media. 1992 was quite straightforward. I'm going to take a break...if no-one else fills in the blanks in the next couple of hours I'll come back and do the Schumacher years... EDIT...even managed to miss out the drivers' strike at Kyalami over the new superlicences in 1982...and the 1981 South African GP being taken off the calendar because they wouldn't hold the race when the FIA wanted them to... EDIT 2...The Schumacher years. 1993 was quiet...Andretti being sacked by McLaren was the one slight controversy. 1994 was probably the most controversial season since 1982; even without the various high-speed accidents all through the first half of the season and the Imola weekend it would have been. Schumacher was disqualified in Britain, and banned for two races, for ignoring a black flag...he was able to keep on racing until his appeal was heard, though. Hakkinen was also banned for a race following an incident in Germany. Schumacher was again disqualified in Belgium (his "plank" under the car was too worn), and his appeal was dismissed, meaning he would finally serve his ban in Italy and Portugal. At the title-deciding last race of the season Schumacher drove into Hill and put both cars out, somehow he escaped being thrown out of the championship. 1995 saw Mansell strop off into the sunset for the last time, Hill take Schumacher off the track at Silverstone and Taki Inoue having two run-ins with the safety car...1996 was calm, but 1997 saw the infamous Villeneuve-Schumacher crash at Jerez which finally led to Schumacher being excluded from the championship for the whole season, as he should have been in 1994. 1998 started with a team orders controversy, as Coulthard let Hakkinen win the Australian GP; the team orders debate would continue later in the season when Ralf Schumacher was prevented from passing Damon Hill as they ran 1-2 at the end of the Belgian GP. That race also saw the largest accident in F1 history and the infamous Coulthard-Schumacher collision. 1999 was pretty calm, Schumi's broken leg excepted. 2000 had its moment of controversy, but no-one was able to prove that any of the teams were illegally running traction control systems...this led to the reintroduction of "legal" TC for 2001...the speed with which all the teams came up with a TC system after supposedly not using them for 6 years showed better than anything else just how much the rules had been broken before. That'll do...just about everybody who comes in here remembers the last 6 seasons!