DPTJ Script: Engines of Power: Formula 1's FISA vs FOCA Conflict Part 2 (1978-1983)

The explosive war between Formula 1 teams and the FIA that nearly killed the sport.

When we last left the Formula 1 scene, the 1977 season was underway. Over a decade had passed since the formation of the Formula One Constructors Association — an organization first formed to guarantee better starting, prize, and travel money for low-budget teams, but that had morphed into a powerful force that could challenge for control of the sport.

Meanwhile, the body of the FIA that sanctioned motorsport, the Commission Sportive Internationale, or CSI, had tried and failed to fight back. FOCA was simply just too wily and too clever, always one step ahead. And in 1977, FOCA had made the CSI look like fools by initially conceding to the CSI's revised ruleset to start the season, only to use that momentum to wrest better control over the rest of the European races. All the while, the smaller teams affiliated with FOCA were implementing ground effect into their race cars to find speed, while the bigger budget teams we associate with the CSI had realized they would be able to get a huge leg up on the competition by refining turbo-powered engines.

If it was clear that the simmering tensions were about to erupt, then the 1978 F1 season was the calm before the storm that saw both parties forming their game plan. Over on FOCA's side, the organization changed its acronym and reorganized in such a way that Bernie Ecclestone, who had been acting as the boss, was officially titled the chief executive officer. He appointed Max Mosley as his legal advisor, and the two were ready to continue asserting their control over Formula 1.

But the FIA realized that simply was not working. Pierre Ugeux, who had been appointed head of the CSI two years earlier, had proved to be a complete flop. Rather than being the CSI's silver bullet capable of taking down the growing might of FOCA, Ugeux had misfired at every turn. In 1978, FIA President Prince Metternich canned Ugeux and brought in the man who would become a key player in this fight: Jean-Marie Balestre.

Jean-Marie Balestre creates FISA

A former automotive journalist who had worked his way up through the ranks of regional French motorsport bodies, Jean-Marie Balestre was already well known for his take-no-prisoners attitude. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he'd taken control of an organization known as the FFSA — the Federation Francaise du Sport Automobile — which began to assert its own influence by shoving out the Automobile Club de France. The ACF had long served as the organizer of the French Grand Prix, but the FFSA had made so many friends in government that it effectively stole control away from the ACF.

Much of that had to do with Balestre, who was the kind of guy who refused to take ‘no’ for an answer. If anyone was going to legitimately bring a battle to Bernie Ecclestone and FOCA, the FIA reasoned that appointing Balestre head of the CSI would be the best way to go. He was elected by an overwhelming majority.

His first move was to completely get rid of the CSI.

If that sounds crazy, well — it kind of was. In his inaugural speech as President of the CSI, Balestre promised to put Formula 1 in order, and he was going to do it, or else he'd resign.

But why kill the CSI? That's still up for debate. According to a Motor Sport Magazine report from March of 1979, Balestre offered no reason for why he did away with the CSI and replaced it with the Federation Internationale du Sport Automobile — or FISA. The author of the story suggests that it might have been a way to start fresh, since the predominant sentiment at the time was that the CSI had become a useless organization. Words matter, after all, and swapping one much-maligned acronym for one with no previous associations was likely a good call.

The 1979 racing season would kick off in January with the Argentine Grand Prix, and by that point, Jean-Marie Balestre was prepared to assert the dominance of the FIA right from the very start.

And as it would turn out, the first lap of the race would prove to be the ideal time to exert control. Heading through the second corner, McLaren driver John Watson collided with Ferrari's Jody Scheckter, and because it was the start of the race, the scuffle collected Nelson Piquet, Didier Pironi, Arturo Merzario, Mario Andretti, and Patrick Tambay. Scheckter sprained his wrist, Piquet injured his foot, and Jean-Marie Balestre was irate that a FOCA car had just wiped out a grandee team.

Naturally, a red flag flew to bring a halt to the chaos, and during that period, Balestre began to call for a penalty for Watson. He was adamant that the British driver not take the green flag again — but there was nothing in the rulebook that would have disallowed Watson from restarting. He did so and finished third in a spare McLaren.

That likely should have been the end of the matter, but Balestre adamantly refused to lose, especially in this critical first conflict. After the event, he started to claim Watson was facing a multi-race suspension or a hefty fine, though at the end of the day, the race organizers decided £3000 was sufficient — or just under £15,000 today when adjusted for inflation.

Watson was told he'd need to pay the fine within 48 hours, lest he be barred from starting the Brazilian Grand Prix. It was a perplexing move, largely because many people had considered the whole thing a racing incident, and because in Monza the year prior, no one was punished for a similar first-lap crash, even though it resulted in the death of Lotus driver Ronnie Peterson.

So, Watson refused to pay the fine. Instead, either FOCA or the Automovil Club de Argentina paid up on behalf of the McLaren driver; it depends on who you ask.

But it was not the result Balestre was looking for — and his frustration grew. He'd taken strong action, and it had been instantly undermined by the very group he was hoping to take down. He reacted by flying out to England to start complaining to the media that Ecclestone was a shady, backstabbing businessman. He claimed Bernie was forcing them to increase the reimbursement of travel expenses, lest FOCA teams boycott the event.

How did Ecclestone respond? By staying that running the Formula 1 championship should be done by FOCA, and that FISA should keep its nose out of their business. It was a bold return strategy, but at this point, he was probably feeling invincible. He had, after all, managed to so wholly exert FOCA's dominance over the sport that multiple people had been fired from their jobs with the CSI. After Argentina, where Balestre's leadership of FISA was undermined by someone else paying John Watson's fine, it makes sense that Ecclestone would think this was just another easy battle.

What Ecclestone didn't realize at the time was that he'd met his match in Balestre; if Bernie would play dirty, well, Balestre would do him one better.

Certain events on the 1979 calendar were strongly aligned with FOCA, and the Long Beach Grand Prix was one of them. Race organizer Chris Pook initially hoped to reschedule the race by a week in order to allow for a better television slot, and it was probably something that would have received an easy clearance in the past. But Jean-Marie Balestre absolutely refused to let this happen.

And in fact, Balestre doubled down. He sent some FISA officials to inspect the track, which they deemed unsafe. See, Long Beach relied heavily on the use of concrete barriers to mark off the racing surface as opposed to metal Armco barriers, and Balestre was not a fan. Long Beach had gone with the concrete in deference to the drivers preferences, but that didn't matter to Balestre; this was a minor battle, but it was one he could easily pick, and one he could win. Especially when he decided that Long Beach would lose its race date if it didn't comply.

Despite the fact that tensions simmered away between FISA and FOCA that year, there were few truly explosive battles. That was largely because Balestre had taken a page from Ecclestone's book in staging minor, easy-to-win regulatory battles all year long. For example, over the summer, Balestre decided that teams weren't allowed to use their sponsor names in formal communications, meaning Ligier Gitanes could only be called Ligier, and Marlboro Team McLaren was just McLaren. It was annoying, sure, but it was ultimately a minor affront.

But Balestre was working furiously in the background. He set up a slew of commissions designed to implement and enforce the rules dictating the sport of Formula 1, including the all-new F1 Technical Commission that was about to drop a bombshell on the racing world in early 1980.

You have to admit, it was clever maneuvering on Balestre's part. So many leaders before him had delved into the F1 world with guns blazing, thinking that all they needed to take on the likes of FOCA was quick thinking and a take-no-prisoners attitude.

Time and again, though, that approach failed. Balestre even gave it a shot in Argentina, only to have it thrown back into his face. But unlike his predecessors, he learned — and as a result, he was about to become a very effective thorn in FOCA's side.

Formula 1 in 1980

The 1980 Formula 1 season started off with two January races that went off without a hitch, but come February, Jean-Marie Balestre and FISA were about to kick into high gear.

Balestre's Technical Commission introduced a new rules package for 1981, and it seemed designed to cause chaos. First and foremost, Formula 1 would officially ban sliding skirts. These skirts were designed to prevent air from flowing beneath the car, and they were a critical component of FOCA's ground effect cars. FISA had just landed a huge blow on the opposition.

There were several other rules, including a weight limit increase from 575 to 625 kilograms — or, from 1,267 pounds to 1,377. Safety improvements included a more robust frontal structure to protect the legs of the drivers that had continually crept forward in the car design, as well as changes to the rear wing and cockpit protection. It also mandated that the FIA be given four weeks’ notice for any mid-season driver changes.

And that was just for 1981. The regulatory set also progressively banned technologies like diesel or rotary engines, four-wheel drive cars, and six-wheel cars, over the next few years. That latter point was also critical, because Williams had been developing a double rear-axle six-wheeler to introduce in the mid-1980s.

The big sticking point for FOCA was the fact that these regulations seemed designed to hurt their organization and also to give a leg up to the manufacturers like Renault and Ferrari. Eliminating sliding skirts killed the advantage FOCA teams had found in ground effect, and the FIA had decided to nip any further innovations in the form of experimental drivetrains. Plus, the increased weight limit seemed clearly designed to favor the manufacturer teams that were converting to turbo engines, since the turbos were much heavier than the previous engines.

FOCA spoke up right away, and more than anything, it wanted to know why its teams hadn't been consulted and why FISA had bypassed the two-year notice generally required to introduce new rules. It also asked if FISA was aware that this sudden pivot in developmental strategies would be a huge expense to all the teams that had invested in specific technologies only to now have to start over.

But by this point, FISA had taken a card from FOCA's playing book. All these aerodynamic technologies threatened the safety of the drivers and therefore no further time could be wasted. Ground effect must be banned. In fact, it should have been banned all the way back in the late 1970s — if only the CSI wasn't so afraid of the piddling FOCA teams.

Oh, and anyway, the president of the Grand Prix Drivers Association, which represented the interest of the drivers, had already signed off on the rules, so why are you complaining?

The president of the GPDA at the time was Jody Scheckter. He was racing for Ferrari.

FOCA-aligned drivers began to cut ties with the GPDA, but it was becoming ever clearer that nothing was off the table for Jean-Marie Balestre. When Clay Regazzoni was paralyzed from the waist down due to an accident at Long Beach, Balestre pointed the finger directly at ground effect. It was further evidence, he said, that his rules were correct.

That April came an FIA Plenary Conference that reiterated the belief that FISA was the only body that could actually make decisions about F1.

“The FISA exerts full control over the World Championships belonging to it and which, at the present moment, are the subject of a takeover by certain private associations foreign to the FIA,” the new article stated. “No constructor or association of constructors may organize or be associated with a national sporting authority for the organization of a Grand Prix. No competitor or constructor entered for a World Championship event may be organizer of this same event.”

The article was ultimately passed via a vote that, while divided, still ended with a majority for FISA. The decision basically refocused control of F1 back to the FIA, which was going to be tasked with becoming the overall organizer as opposed to some other subsidiary organization within the FIA.

That also gave the FIA and FISA almost unlimited control to implement rules and make decisions — and almost immediately, the FIA dictated that each race would feature an FIA-appointed starter, and that qualifying tires would be banned. It also nixed the South African Grand Prix from the 1981 calendar because, jokingly, the track security wouldn’t let Jean-Marie Balestre hop up on the podium.

The ball was in FOCA’s court, and it responded at the Belgian Grand Prix. One of FISA’s new rules mandated that drivers turn up to a 45-minute driver briefing, but that briefing hadn’t been mentioned in the pre-race materials for Belgium. As a result, FOCA decided against turning up, which meant the only drivers present were from Ferrari, Renault, and Alfa. FISA levied a slew of fines, which it would continue to do all season long as drivers just decided against turning up at the briefings. FOCA also dreamed up a counterproposal to FISA’s incoming F1 rulings, spending plenty of time coming up with a two-phase evolution of car development — something that FISA roundly ignored.

With tensions continuing to grow, things came to a head at the Spanish Grand Prix. Almost every single FOCA driver had racked up an impressive amount of fines, and now, Balestre said that if they didn’t pay up, they’d lose their racing license. FOCA drivers either said that they paid already, or they argued that April’s Plenary Conference didn’t actually approve the levying of all these fines. Balestre said it didn’t matter if anyone voted, because his word was law, and he issued instruction to the national racing authorities that sanctioned each Grand Prix that if a driver hadn’t paid his fines, they should not allow that driver to race. He also said the drivers themselves had to pay — that the team or a sponsor couldn’t pay on their behalf. And making matters worse, Jody Scheckter of the Grand Prix Drivers Association started speaking out on behalf of FISA, which meant plenty of drivers felt they weren’t being represented by their own union. He cautioned that a confrontation was coming — and on Thursday of the Spanish Grand Prix weekend, it hit.

Bernie Ecclestone stated that FISA must return the racing licenses to all drivers, or FOCA wouldn’t race. The national racing association of Spain offered to pay the bills just to ensure the race would, y’know, happen — but Balestre said no. He hosted a press conference that evening to double down on his argument that drivers must pay the fines themselves, but the media wasn’t having any of it. We’d gone several races since the first fines were levied, so why was FISA banning drivers from racing now? Why could a driver like Mario Andretti compete in other FIA-sanctioned events despite his fine? Why would he only be barred from F1?

The King of Spain ordered that the race go ahead no matter what, but there were two different motorsport bodies in Spain, and one agreed with the king, while one didn’t. Effectively, the organizers of the event decided it was not going to be a FISA-sanctioned race, so anyone would compete. After all, the Spanish Grand Prix was a FOCA-organized race. Balestre responded that if it wasn’t run under FISA rules, the Spanish GP wouldn’t count for a championship.

FOCA still boycotted, leaving the three FISA teams to get started on practice — until, after a half an hour, the session was red-flagged, and the FISA teams were escorted off the premises at gunpoint. Later that night, they all withdrew from the event, as it was a “pirate” race. The race went on, and a week later, the FIA voted to reiterate that the Grand Prix would in fact not count toward that year’s championship. Balestre also expelled the FOCA delegate that had somehow still managed to serve on the F1 Executive Committee.

By this point in time, Formula 1 was huge, drawing in floods of sponsor dollars — and those sponsors were getting worried. Philip Morris, which provided Marlboro’s critical sponsorships to the sport, gathered a group together at the company’s Lausanne headquarters to hash out some terms of agreement. Ecclestone and Mosley both turned up, but FISA sent representatives in place of Balestre. They ironed out a deal that would involve a smoother two-year transition period before the full-on adoption of FISA’s rules. Mosley in particular was proud of the move, and he faxed the agreement to FISA delegates everywhere.

And someone leaked it to the press.

It’s not clear who did so, but Balestre decided that Max Mosley himself must have sent the agreement out to journalists as he sent it off to FISA. To counter, Balestre said first that the rules he proposed were already set in stone, and second, that he’d had his own meeting with key Grand Prix host organizations who had all decided that in 1981, their races would be FISA events, and if FOCA didn’t want to come, they’d fill out the field with Formula 2 drivers. It also entirely precluded FOCA’s ability to host a rival championship, because 12 major international players had decided to back FISA. Ecclestone threatened to sue the organizers that had first agreed to deals with FOCA only to now side with FISA, while FISA claimed it didn’t agree to any of the rules that had been outlined in Lausanne.

All the while, the French Grand Prix was creeping up — and as his home event, Balestre was determined to nip any dissent in the bud. To do so, he offered to host a meeting with FOCA after the race, so long as it went off without a hitch.

There, FOCA laid out its demands: the ban on sliding skirts would be postponed by five years, but in exchange, the teams agreed to use less efficient tires to negate the impact of ground effect. FOCA asked for a bigger voice in the rules commission, and also for more stability in general. Balestre seemed to agree with everything… but he also said the details would still need to be approved by the FIA Plenary Council meeting in October.

Goodyear and Michelin were appalled by the idea that they were being asked to produce worse tires for motorsport; while Goodyear was willing to negotiate to find a solution, Michelin outright said no. Balestre shrugged his shoulders; if the tire makers wouldn’t agree, well, he supposed there would be no deal.

And in that interim period, the FISA Executive Committee fined multiple drivers for competing in the “pirate” Spanish Grand Prix, which was proving to be a critical moment for the championship. Goodyear began to threaten to withdraw and ultimately did at the end of the year.

FOCA claimed it had tried to arrange six different meetings with Balestre during this period, and that he’d turned them down — all while kicking off a continued assault on the teams. FISA decided that it would take charge of the distribution of starting and prize money, meaning teams would have to take or leave what they were offered. FISA took over negotiations for future races, with an eye to securing five-year deals that, again, featured no financial incentive for one team over another. He set an early date for teams to register to join the 1981 championship, but to do so, they had to agree to his extremely limited rules. Take it or leave it.

FOCA did not want to take it. It pointed to American open-wheel racing, which had just fractured into two separate championships as a result of this exact kind of bureaucratic infighting, as an example of what could happen if agreements weren’t reached.

It turned out that Balestre’s decision to oversee prize money was a key factor in convincing some on-the-fence teams to side with FOCA, who proposed its own championship if the FIA rejected its rules.

It should come as no surprise that when the FIA voted on the 1981 rules package, it decided to bring Balestre’s vision to life.

But it also brought into effect a more unified and arguably more professional championship. Going forward, seasons would have to consist of between 8 and 16 races, and if you wanted to fight for a championship, you had to enter all of them. All races would be regulated by the same rules, and drivers would have to secure a newly created ‘super license’ to race in these high-profile events. To race, a team would have to sign a contract agreeing to these rules or risk a hefty fine for, say, failing to turn up at a race.

FOCA responded by announcing its very own 15-race championship, of which 11 events would conflict with FISA’s 14-race calendar. Both calendars also shared eight races. This new sanctioning body would be called the World Federation of Motor Sport, the WFMS, and it would organize the World Professional Drivers Championship. It would adopt FISA’s rulebook, albeit without the bans on sliding skirts, and the points system would stay the same.

The problem was that a lot of race organizers had no idea they’d been scheduled for two competing events, so plenty of key people were caught off guard. And on top of it, Balestre said he’d revoke the national racing license of any track hosting a WFMS event. FOCA shrugged; so what? It would still race at those tracks. FISA was only hurting itself. It had seven teams committed to its series, compared to FISA's three, and deals with 10 race organizers.

FOCA was fully determined to stick it to the man — in this case, FISA — but… not everyone was so bold. Organizers for events like the Italian, Belgian, and British Grands Prix didn't want to risk getting caught up in some political kerfuffle and ultimately sided with FISA. Making matters worse, both sides hemorrhaged sponsors; no one wanted to spend their big-dollar marketing budgets on a sport that seemed perpetually on the brink of shooting itself in the foot.

If you were Bernie Ecclestone, what would you do next? Fighting back seemed to be a pretty poor plan of action, but caving to FISA would be an undeniable blow to the FOCA teams that had already hedged their bets on this brand new series — not to mention an admission of defeat.

But there was no other choice. In November, it announced that it would cancel the World Federation of Motor Sport and send in its requests to join Formula 1 — but that it would stop organizing travel for teams like Ferrari, Renault, Alfa Romeo, and more, which FOCA had been doing largely due to the fact that it was well versed in the world of travel contract negotiation. FISA extended the entry deadline to make sure everyone could turn in a submission in time, and canceled the Argentinian Grand Prix just to make sure that everyone could also make it to the first race of the year, and it pushed February's South African Grand Prix back to April — in turn shocking both race organizers and forcing a total rethink of the calendar that season.

So, the gang is back together and everyone is friends again, right?

Wrong.

Bernie Ecclestone announced that, for the first three races of the 1981 season, his FOCA teams would still be allowed to race with sliding skirts, because FOCA had signed a contract stating that the 1980 rules would still apply for these events. Which was sure to go over just fine with everyone over at the FIA.

Formula 1 in 1981

Heading into 1981, Grand Prix racing — as in, the idea that individual countries negotiated the terms for their own individual race deals that were then collated into a championship — was dead. In its place rose a Formula 1 World Championship that would see the FIA take over control of the race organization, rule making, prize distribution, and so much more. It didn’t seem like there was much point in fighting a battle that had already been decided.

But there was. Enter: the Maranello Agreement.

On January 19, both FISA and FOCA arrived at Ferrari's home base in Maranello for a marathon 13-hour attempt to hammer out a set of rules that everyone could feel good about agreeing to. This came to be known as the Maranello Agreement — the initial version of what we know today as the Concorde Agreement — and it established an uneasy truce amongst the FISA and FOCA factions.

This “truce” didn't necessarily mean the fighting was laid to rest. What it did mean was that FISA maintained its control over the sport — its rules, regulations, penalties, and more. FOCA, on the other hand, was left in charge of the sport's commercial rights. That meant that Bernie Ecclestone was now the sole man responsible for negotiating things like race organization and TV broadcast rights. FISA got the sport of Formula 1, but FOCA got everything else surrounding the promotion of the sport. Two months later, the Maranello Agreement was formally signed, with its name being changed to the Concorde Agreement in honor of the FIA's headquarters at the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

I want to take a moment to stress just how big of a deal this was. FOCA had just ceded control over everything having to do with the implementation of rules. They would have no say, instead having to quietly adopt anything FISA offered — something that would go on to become a problem. The rule also effectively killed off privateer teams by mandating that every team competing on the grid build its own chassis as opposed to buying those chassis from other manufacturers. In exchange, FOCA would earn the lucrative television rights and use them to give each competing team a bigger slice of the financial pie.

Did that mean an end had finally been brought to our battle? Absolutely not. Ecclestone and FOCA almost immediately turned up their noses at FISA by going on to compete in February's South African Grand Prix. See, FISA had told the race organizers that the track could either host a race in April, as it wanted, or preserve its February date but run the race as a Formula Libre event — or, basically, a non-championship F1 race that didn't have to follow the same rules as Formula 1.

South Africa decided to go with the Formula Libre option, and FOCA decided to send its crew out in full force to race, with their sliding skirts intact and the one-off return of Goodyear tires. That annoyed FISA, yes, but there was really nothing the organization could do about it.

Well, there was one thing it could do. Jean-Marie Balestre took aim at the Long Beach Grand Prix, which was considered to be a “FOCA” race.

The whole reason FISA and FOCA sat down at the same table together to hash out an agreement in Maranello had to do with Long Beach. Balestre wanted to nix the race, but Renault — one of FISA's grandee teams — was reluctant to do so considering its ties to other American companies. Ferrari had leaped at the opportunity to agree and force the warring factions to sit down at the same table.

Balestre had backed himself into a corner. He'd refused to sign the original Maranello Agreement and had continued taking pot shots at Long Beach during the first few months of 1981 — but his grandee teams had all aligned against him in promising that they'd show up at Long Beach. Ecclestone eventually offered him a concession on the agreement if Balestre would just sign the damn thing, and on March 11, just four days before Long Beach, the Concorde Agreement came into being. The contents of that agreement, critically, have never been made public, even though Balestre had kicked off his campaign at FISA promising transparency and accountability in his governance.

One big change we are aware of came in the F1 Commission. There, manufacturers and FOCA teams could each appoint three representatives to stand for their interests. Race organizers and sponsors also got votes, while the reigning World Champion would be a non-voting advisor, and FISA would have the deciding vote in any matters where things were tied.

Tensions between FISA and FOCA were smoothed out, sure, but the chaos in Formula 1 wasn’t over — and this time, FOCA turned inward to fight against itself. Ten teams united to protest the Lotus 88, a twin-chassis design that was revolutionary in the way it seated one chassis inside another to effectively create ground effect in a way that circumvented the rules.

While Jean-Marie Balestre himself didn’t feel that the 88 was illegal, he did think it violated the spirit of the rules, while FISA itself decided that the second chassis qualified as a moving aerodynamic part and should therefore be banned. Colin Chapman of Lotus fought the decision in FIA’s Court of Appeals and lost, and an attempt to revitalize the car at the British Grand Prix failed.

What made the whole thing even more perplexing was the fact that Ecclestone was in charge of the Brabham team, and the Brabham BT49C was just as illegal as the Lotus 88, albeit for different reasons. Brabham designer Gordon Murray dreamed up a hydraulic suspension system that, with the flick of a switch, would suck the car closer to the ground, where it would gain an aerodynamic advantage from its fixed skirts. Flick the switch back, and the car appeared perfectly legal when it came time for the scrutineers to pore over it before and after a race.

Frank Williams was adamant that this technology should be banned, too, but only Renault joined his protest — and it became clear later in the year why that was. FOCA teams like Arrows, Fittipaldi, Osceola, and Tyrrell had all attempted to copy that suspension. Balestre even went on to legalize the system later in the year.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that this isn’t exactly a good look for two parties that routinely attempted to accuse the other of ignoring safety — only for those parties to ignore safety the moment it became beneficial for them to do so. Power had been distributed and solidified, and there was very little anyone could do to challenge either FISA or FOCA, even though frustrations continued to mount on the part of the teams.

You could see that power percolating as the 1982 season approached. Ecclestone, in addition to racing with illegal hydraulics, also had Brabham racing with turbo engines for the first time. The GPDA fell apart, leaving drivers with no recourse to advocate for their own rights. The only reason things changed came dow to Niki Lauda.

See, Lauda had inked a deal with McLaren to return to Formula 1 after a few years of retirement — and when he did so, FISA asked him to sign an application form for his new super license. The former World Champion parsed the language and found something strange: If he signed the form, he wasn’t agreeing to a superlicense. He was agreeing to a superlicense for the duration of time he was a McLaren driver. If Lauda were to, say, switch teams halfway through the year, his superlicense would be invalidated.

Making matters even more complex was an additional article at the bottom of the form that read, “I will do nothing which might harm the moral or material interests or image of International Motorsport or the FIA Formula One World Championship.”

Lauda couldn’t believe it; as he saw it, these new superlicense rules were designed to quite literally silence drivers, and to turn them into pawns that would have no choice but to play the game as others saw fit.

He refused to sign, and after the 1981 holiday season, he tried to figure out if any of his fellow drivers were in the same boat. While most drivers had signed, six hadn’t: Lauda, Didier Pironi, Gilles Vileneuve, Bruno Giacomelli, Andrea de Cesaris, and René Arnoux.

The first race of the season took place on January 23, 1982, in South Africa. Three days before, on January 20th, Pironi stood before FISA representatives at the track to explain the concerns he and his fellow drivers had — and FISA responded that any resolution would have to wait until the FISA Executive Committee reconvened later that year in Europe.

That meant that if the drivers wanted to race, they needed to sign their superlicense agreements. If they didn’t, Jean-Marie Balestre promised their cars would fail scrutineering.

Niki Lauda and Didier Pironi refused to accept those terms, and on Thursday morning, just before practice was about to start, GPDA secretary Trevor Roe arranged for a bus to pick up each and every one of the drivers as they arrived at the gates. Lauda and Pironi found plenty of willing participants and were able to convince many others to join their cause.

29 drivers got on that bus, with only two remaining at the track. Those 29 drivers were shipped off to a hotel ballroom accompanied by a slew of fascinated journalists, where they set up mattresses in preparation for a strike.

When the clock ticked over to 10am and practice officially began, not a single car left the pits. The race organizers threatened to impound the cars, while Ecclestone said that actually, if the organizers had an issue, they should just sue the drivers, who he viewed as a replaceable commodity. The argument makes a lot of sense when you realize that Lauda abandoned his contract with Brabham back in 1979 — and it also makes sense of why Ecclestone immediately fired Ricardo Patrese and Nelson Piquet, who he'd signed for 1982.

The organizers of the South African Grand Prix announced that the event would be postponed a week, and that the drivers would be paying for it. Meanwhile, all the teams would select new drivers from a pool of 150 superlicenses.

Back at the race track, the wives and girlfriends of the drivers pelted Balestre with dinner rolls while at the hotel, various drivers took turns telling jokes or playing piano to keep everyone occupied.

Enough progress was made during overnight negotiations for the drivers to turn up at the track on Friday for practice. The team bosses had managed to convince Balestre to “freeze” negotiations until after the race, and to allow the drivers to compete without having signed the superlicense forms.

The problem was that after the race, all of those drivers once again had their licenses suspended, they were all fined, and some received bans for two to five races. The drivers retaliated by forming the Professional Racing Drivers Association in order to advocate for their rights — and the FIA court of appeals actually agreed with them. The drivers still had to pay a fine, but the FIA told FISA that the drivers have a right to be heard in any matters concerning their wellbeing.

Whew! That surely must be the end of things, right?

Wrong.

In an effort to bypass the rules, FOCA teams turned up to the Brazilian Grand Prix with water-cooled brakes. Basically, this was intended to exploit a loophole in the regulations that stated that when a car was weighed after a race, it needed to have all its fluids topped up to be weighed at its peak. But with these water-cooled brakes, FOCA drivers basically just had little tanks of water that dumped out within the first few laps of an event, thus meaning the car could run under the mandated weight throughout the race, then have its fluids topped back up after to make weight.

The whole goal here was to find an advantage over the speed of the turbo teams, and it did work —Williams and Brabahm were both monstrously quick during the race, resulting in a protest by Renault and Ferrari. The race stewards rejected the protest, but the grandee teams appealed the decision, which meant that this whole affair would have to be overseen by FISA. But with the trial several weeks away, and there were events to run in the meantime.

Including Long Beach, a race at which Ferrari showed up ready to fight by introducing a dual rear wing setup. According to the outfit, no rules explicitly forbade the use of more than one wing; it only said how big the wings could be, and its wings were of legal size.

Now, we had teams from both ends of the spectrum trying to play creative rule interpretation games, and FISA simply wouldn't have it. Keke Rosberg and Nelson Piquet, two FOCA drivers, were disqualified from Brazil for running its water-cooled brakes. Gilles Villeneuve was disqualified from Long Beach for running the dual-winged Ferrari. Both parties were frustrated, and it saw FOCA threaten to boycott the San Marino Grand Prix.

And for the first time, boycott they did — all with the exception of Tyrrell. A mere 14 cars turned up at Imola for the race, which is memorable for the intra-Ferrari fight between Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi regarding who should be allowed to finish first. Fascinatingly, though, there were enough cars in the field for the event to qualify as a round of the World Championship — they'd need at least 13 cars on the grid to make an event count, and with Tyrrell defecting from FOCA, it saw the grid bump from 12 to 14 cars.

FOCA threatened to boycott the Belgian Grand Prix as well, forcing an emergency meeting in Casablanca between FISA and FOCA where the commercial pressure effectively forced both parties into coming to a vague agreement.

And then, just as the war was expected to reach new heights… it ended.

FOCA takes victory

In the middle of 1982, the momentum that had been pushing the battle between FISA and FOCA toward greater and greater attacks was suddenly arrested.

It isn't exactly clear why, because there were still more reasons for the fight to continue. FISA once again banned ground effect in the future, this time by introducing a rule stating that all F1 cars must have flat bottoms. It also banned six-wheeled cars and four-wheel drive after Wlliams debuted a six-wheeler. But Williams driver Keke Rosberg saw his championship hunt pick up steam despite the chaos, and most FOCA teams had ultimately decided to commit to turbo engines. There was very little left to fight for.

Plus, the shocking death of Ferrari's Gilles Villleneuve at Zolder was followed soon after by the death of Ricardo Paletti at the Canadian Grand Prix, and that was followed by a career-ending crash for Didier Pironi. It's entirely possible that people began to feel as if all that in-fighting was pretty trivial compared to the very real danger involved in Formula 1.

FOCA didn't protest the December 1982 ban on ground effect, and that was that. The following year, when it was proven that Brabham had used illegal fuel to power Nelson Piquet to a championship, Jean-Marie Balestre simply shrugged his shoulders, allowed the title to stand, and even defended Piquet against attacks from the grandee teams that felt he hadn't been punished harshly enough.

In 1987, the initial Concorde Agreement expired. After that, Bernie Ecclestone stepped back from team ownership and instead created the Formula One Promotions and Administration company, now known as Formula One Management, or FOM. This company took over managing television rights and race organizers fees, which it then distributed to various teams in a scheme that proved to be incredibly profitable for just about everyone involved. Later, in 1993, Max Mosley ran against Jean-Marie Balestre for the role of FIA President and won. Other former FOCA personnel were promoted to key FIA roles, including Charlie Whiting, Brabham's former mechanic, being made the official FIA Technical Delegate, while the role of FIA Deputy Race Director went to Herbie Blash, Brabham's former team principal.

Just like that, the tables had turned. FOCA had taken over the FIA. FOCA had won the war.

The reverberations of the FISA/FOCA war

Throughout F1 history, we've had several instances where the FIA got involved in a lengthy fight with the teams competing in the sport — which most recently included threats for certain manufacturers to split from F1 back in the mid- to late-2000s.

And depending on how you look at contemporary motorsport, it's happening again. In 2024, FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem took exception to the fact that drivers used curse words on broadcasts and in press conferences, which resulted in fines for both Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc. The Grand Prix Drivers’ Association expressed its desire to be treated like adults and to not have their language policed — but over the off-season, the FIA doubled down. It introduced a new set of rules banning misconduct, political or religious statements, and cursing. Violate the rule once, and you could have to pay 40,000 euros. Violate it three times, and you'll be banned from competing in Formula 1 for a certain period of time.

If you've made it through these last two episodes of “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” then you know that a sanctioning body actively picking a fight with the folks who turn up to the track to do the racing is a bad idea.

And that's only one small part of the impact here. F1 teams and the FIA still use the Concorde Agreement as a way to renegotiate the various rights and rules of the sport, and Formula One Management still exists as its own separate entity, distinct from the FIA — though today it's owned by Liberty Media and not Bernie Ecclestone.

Ultimately, the battle between these two parties pushed Formula 1 into a new era of professionalization — which was, ultimately, what both FISA and FOCA wanted right from the get-go. This battle is the reason why we have a limited number of teams allowed to enter the sport, and why each of those teams must commit to running two cars for the duration of a season. It's why privateers are a thing of the past. It's why every single F1 race weekend is organized the exact same way, no matter where you are in the world. It's the whole reason why Formula 1 is worth several billion dollars, and why we have such incredible levels of specialization when compared to other forms of motorsport.

Is that professionalization a good thing? I think the answer to that question depends on who you ask, because for every person who adores the glamorous lifestyles they saw on Drive to Survive, and who loves the high-tech arms race that defines the sport today, you have another person who wishes ticket prices were actually affordable, or that it was still possible for teams to provide a third car for local talents.

What is very clear is that without the decades-long spat between Formula 1 and its sanctioning bodies, the sport would look drastically different today.

Bibliography

• Poachers turned gamekeepers: how the FOCA became the new FIA

• Motor Sport Magazine, Continental Notes, August 1967

• Motor Sport Magazine, Continental Notes, December 1967

• Motor Sport Magazine, 1970 Spanish Grand Prix race report: Stewart the matador

• Motor Sport Magazine, Continental Notes, December 1972

• Motor Sport Magazine, Continental Notes, January 1973

• Motor Sport Magazine, Continental Notes, July 1977

• Atlas F1, Back to the Future: The FIASCO War, Part 1

• Atlas F1, Back to the Future: The FIASCO War, Part 2

• Atlas F1, Back to the Future: The FIASCO War, Part 3