Apologies for the clumsy title but let me explain my question. Whilst re-locating my autocourse collection I was looking at the 1976 and 1986 editions. One covers James Hunts championship year in a Mclaren which was a sheet metal tub powered by a 450 bhp Ford DFV, fast forward a decade and Alain Prost won his seccond title in a very different Mclaren with a carbon fibre chassis and a turbocharged Porsche engine giving almost twice the power. A year after Hunts championship the first wing car and first turbocharged engine contested Grands Prix and four years later the first carbon fibre chassis raced. Has any other period of the Formula one championship seen such massive developments in engines, chassis construction and aerodynamics?

Try starting at the beginning - not the seventies! - and (hopefully) enjoy the developments and changes.

The beginning being the 1906 French Grand Prix.

The 1930s Mercedes Benz and Auto Unions spring to mind.

Neither of them are Formula one.

Formula 1 have not always been contested by Formula 1 cars, I think that this forum recognize that the sport we follow is Grand Prox racing, with which ever rules and regulations have governed these since 1906 and forward.

Last 'non F1 car' to race in a F1 race was only somewhere between 20 and 25 years ago.

To answer the opening post, hard to quantify since I am not sure that power and speed is really the true measure. I think that Grand Prix racing have always been evolution in progress, and ever so often some quite exceptional steps were made by a team, which forced all others to catch up. Personally the 1930ies interest me, since the race cars were very very advanced, and arguably incorporated features not used again until the 1980ies.

are you talking about a ten year timespan? if so 1968-1978...

IMHO 1906 when the first Grand Prix was held, not Formula One as we know it today possibly, but still races for cars that conformed to a set of rules, which after all is what Formula One is, a set of rules, it might be better to ask when was the period of least change, that might throw up some interesting answers

They were still called Grand Prix races.

For my money - and I don't have much - it was the late 50s through to the late 60s. In just one decade from dinosaur front-engine to monocoque rear engine; from the basic 1906 layout to the basic 1996 layout, in such a short time. The word revolution springs to mind (at least my mind).

Another way of looking at it is this: from 1906 to the late 50s, you had the story of steady refinement of the front-engine rear drive concept. There were of course flamboyant abberations (try typing that after a six-pack of Peroni) such as the Auto Unions. Since the early 60s, there has been a process of steady - and sometimes not to steady - refinement of the rear-engine rear drive concept.

Well I mean - six wheels - wings on stilts - but refinement nonetheless.

Amazing - I typed all that despite having six fat fingers on all four hands, and didn't spill a drop.

There have been innovations that changed F1 along the years , such as the rear-engined car in the late '50s, the monocoque in the first half of the '60s and I appreciate that these developments have been around for a while - the rear engine since the '30s, the monocoque even before - but those are the dates when they were introduced and became mainstream technology.

It is difficult to argue - in my opinion - that the second half of the '70s and the beginning of the 80's was the period when several ideas that were in incubation for a while came out and dramatically changed the game, to an extent that still today we cannot properly figure out how to manage the development that ensued [see some interesting discussions in the technical forum].

In the same year, 1977, there was the appearance of the turbo engines and the radial tires [on the same car, Renault] and the first ground effect car, the Lotus 78. Then, in the early '80s, McLaren introduced the first full composite materials chassis.

Have the rules of F1 now made it pretty difficult to have any radical innovation - they just don't allow scope for it. Or have we just to a point where you can't really improve on things that much - I mean is the high nose always going to be better than the low nose - if so that would mean we will only have that nose in F1 etc.

Difficult to see where innovations are going to come from or how important they will become in the future, I can't see blown diffusers making much impact on the motor industry but I dare say some one some where is working on the desgn of a road car with one.

With the concepts of rear engine, monocoque, wings, ground effects, high nose, an all but spec motor, and KERS in place it will be fascinating to see where the white heat of Grand Prix competition will lead us next.

I agree - take the period '59-'69 and not much links the cars - engine location, chassis configuration, aerodynamics, tyre technology....... it all changed in this period. What came before was evolutionary, and what has followed has also been evolution, but the fundamental changes were in the '60s.

I agree that too many rules about design detail thwarts innovation, radical or minor. Watching Grands Prix over the last half century, I have have often looked at the latest bright idea and wondered if that was that, so far as development goes so why should now be any different if it is allowed to be.
In many ways one could say that the decade of greatest innovation was the first (i.e. 1906-14 (slightly short)) as the Mercédès which finished in the first three places in 1914 was so very different from those of 1906 which finished 10th and 11th some 4 hours after the winner

This is a tough question, IMO.

I'd say 1959 - 1968 for the rear-engine car, wings and sponsorship...

Many small revolutions, and a whole flood of evolution... There have always been cars after which motor racing would never be the same again: the 1901 Mercedes, the 1912 Peugeot, the 1923 Miller, the 1934 Mercedes-Benz, the 1962/67/78 Lotuses, the 1977 Renault, 1992 Williams... and many, many in between! Period of greatest innovation? I'd say 1894 to 1993, but that's only my interpretation.

I suspect that annual sales of road cars with blown diffusers will be something like the number of cars that raced with them in 2011. It was a clever tech trick but if designers aren't constrained by the narrow rules of F1, there are lots of other ways to develop downforce.

I think that one of the greatest innovations was the ability to buy a competitive engine/transmission package and build a car around it. The engine/transmission package may not have been the best all of the time, so the best teams who used it had to come up with something extra on the chassis or aerodynamics side. The Copersucar-Fittipaldi and McLaren M23 had a lot in common, but only one of them was quick enough to win a race.

Very interesting point.

How do you separate general technological advances from innovation?

Turbo engines and radial tyres existed in motorsport outside F1 so it could be argued that Renault were not innovators but the first to exploit the inevitable. However the Lotus 78 (which many people prefer to call a wing car rather than ground effects) was a true innovation. Lotus were not the first to consider the ideas that delivered the 78 and 79, but they were first to make them work in any field.

The 1.5 litre turbo engine was made possible by applying developments in metallurgy, machine tools, lubrication etc but as a concept it was not new. McLaren's composite chassis borrowed ideas from aerospace technology, but racing car designers had been doing that for donkey's years.

My road car is vastly more safe and comfortable to drive than an Austin 1100 but the only thing that might confuse a 1960's mechanic would be the engine management system. Of course, the mechanic would be mightily impressed by the build quality, even of the least significant components. In the case of my road car, design innovation can be followed on one track to the Austin 1100 and Mini and on a second track to the electronic magic.

I agree Charlie. The turbos were already around etc, of course. The distinction between technological advance and innovation is well made; there would be a lot more to say about that.

Until the end of the '70s, you could exactly - as you pointed out - buy engine and transmission, build your own chassis and stand a chance to compete. From that moment on the game changed. It became a competition based on investments on industrial scale, scientific research and just to stand a chance to succeed you needed the backing of a car maker. That is - also, but not only - what I meant.

It could be argued that the German cars before the war - Auto Union in particular - also were quite advanced and introduced innovations, but there was no follow up and did not become mainstream technology, for a number of reasons, as we know.

This is why I believe the late 70s - early '80 were the crucial years. Computer modelling and simulation further compounded the technological jump.

The result, however, is that all the cars look the same, they all look like big insects, so ugly they are. I am not up to date on the technical developments, hence I don't know whether this is because everybody gets the same solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations or it is simply herd behaviour.
I would think probably the latter, or they wouldn't be chasing one car.

I would narrow it down to 1959 to 1964...

Generally front engined skinny-tyred, carburetted, large-cylindered tube-framed cars to the beginnings of the tyre revolution, the establishment of monocoques as the only way to go, much higher levels of engine development, almost universal use of fuel injection, suspension developments that took the handling refinements away from the designer and into the hands of the driver and his mechanics.

For mine F1 really only copy and improve and adapt.. Monocoque design is really an aircraft technology and was old hat there really when they started making racecars like that. Carbon Fibre ditto. Wings were used on no end of cars before F1, as was turbo charged engines. Slicks were though developed for most roadracing around the same time. But F1 went away from them! Fuel injection was used elsewhere, including road cars before F1. Even transaxles were used in road cars long before F1
Wind tunnel development was prewar for aircraft.
And what innovation from F1 have my road vehicles got? Really none at all.

Nothing wrong with that.

The question was about the period when F1 race car design had the greatest innovation and development, not necessarily that race car should invent something that didn’t exist before or that it should be in everyday car.

It seems to be a good question to be made and discussed in a forum such as this. Some of us may learn something they didn’t know and consider other people’s points of view.

I don't really disagree with the thesis here but with a few details: IIRC slick tyres were a drag racing innovation, and I can't remember effone going away from them voluntarily.
Probably one could argue that your road car has an electronic engine management system that is a direct result of racing development and integration of electric/electronic systems.
Oh and an anorak moment when I point out that when you write that wind tunnel development was prewar for aircraft, you would be referring to the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 (Wright brothers' work) or pre-US Civil War if you count Cayley's whirling arm experiments.

It was only a few years ago that F1 was using treaded tyres. In an attempt to make the racing less boring!

As for efi and engine management. Very maybe but really pollution laws made efi and management mandatory. Not any performance concerns.

We seem to be arguing but we are not really - the treaded tyres you refer to were imposed on the designers by the rulemakers (as you say in an attempt (which failed) to make the racing less boring) and were not the choice of the designers, any more than is the ridiculous rule which makes them use the less suitable tyre compound for some of each race.
Engine management systems that control our road car engines exist because of racing development, whether they improve performance or not. That they meet pollution standards is an aspect of performance insofar as fuel efficiency is improved.