User talk:BillCook/Formula One

George Abecassis
Hello there, Bill. Long time no talk.

I know I used to be somewhat more active on the F1 section of Wikipedia - for which I do apologize, but it seems to be very much under control at the moment - and I would rather leave it to the masters than to stick too much of an oar in where I would now be of little or no use whatsoever.

Anyway. I know I never got around to doing all the driver profiles, and that you had done them for as long as I now can remember - presumably with some kind of tabular template. I was wondering if you could push that template through George Abecassis and possibly the other A and B drivers which I previously edited. Regardless, if my memory serves me right, these were mainly drivers with only single-figures of races under their belt - it looks a bit weird now that these lead to red links where I forgot to redirect the names.

Feel free to tell me that it's not as easy as I make it sound and therefore I should probably do it myself instead. Thank you for your time. Bobo192 05:57, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Statistics are hardly useful when there's nothing else attached
I think it's great that you created a lot of articles about F1 drivers, teams and engine manufacturers, but I wish you'd have done so by actually adding any information of value that wasn't copied from F1 statistics site. I believe those number-centered articles are rather disrespectful to some of the drivers, overlooking their achievements outside F1 (Bernd Schneider is a good example), and teams and engine suppliers, overlooking the people who made them what they are (no mention of engineer Carlo Chiti in Motori Moderni). And calling Offenhauser an F1 engine manufacturer is factually wrong. They were never, in any capacity, an F1 engine manufacturer. The Indy 500 just happened to be part of the World Championship, for which Offy were the main engine supplier at the time. Please look at my changes to Derrington-Francis on how to actually improve the articles. By the way, I've also noticed you adding points tables to the season pages. There was no Constructors Championship before 1958, and teams and drivers didn't have permanent numbers throught the season before 1973. And please keep in mind, a chassis manufacturer is not necessarily a racing team (Dallara is a good example, Scuderia Italia should not be a redirect to it, they are and have always been two separate entities). --Pc13 19:08, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Pc13, whilst I agree that statistics alone don't make a complete article, I don't think there is anything wrong with Bill adding them to the F1 articles. One of the defining features of Wikipedia is that many users work together to make a complete article. It's not the responsibility of any one user to make a perfect article. In fact, I'd say that adding statistics to loads of articles is the donkey work that not many people want to do. Bill should be commended for taking it on. SamH|Talk 19:58, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Divina Galica
Hello. Great work on the Formula One pages. Really helpful, and someone to look up to, especially when I'm trying to seek updates as well. I was checking your Divina Galica semi-biography and noticed you refer to Divina as a male, while I've found references which cite Divina as a female. I didn't change your information on him/her, however. One of the pages that cite her as such is Grand Prix, in the Charlie Whiting article.

Diego440 10:52, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, you are correct, I have corrected and expanded the article regarding Ms. Galica. Thanks.  Bill, 18 Feb 2005

Sutton (constructor)
I have created this hole which you may wish to fill. Was this Sutton the same as Len Sutton, if so why did he not drive his own cars? -- RHaworth 10:47, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)


 * I just created the page per your suggestion. There was very little info about the team, since they only participated in one race, but Sutton (the constructor) was not related to Len Sutton (the driver).  Thanks for your input.  Bill, 19 Feb 2005

Esteban Tuero
All mention of Esteban Tuero (Minardi 1998) is actually with a mis-spelling in your pages. You spelt has first name Estaban. I've moved the Estaban Tuero individual page but theres a lot of pages still spelling his name wrong. Thought you might want to know. -- Hedley, 20 Feb 2005, 17:06


 * Thank you, I have corrected all the misspellings. Bill, February 25, 2005

Article - Suggestions?
I just wrote an article on Esteban Tuero, which is here. Is there any way you'd recommend I could improve it? I think it includes what is important, but just thought i'd ask. Hedley 19:24, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

2005 San Marino Grand Prix
Long time no talk. I have been focussing on so many things since moving on from my F1 work, and probably should come back here to see what's been goin' round recently..

Anyway, I'm sure you've seen the Wikipedia overview (created by NickF) for yesterday's SM Grand Prix, but I personally think that we should import this same format over to all the other races. What do you think of this layout? Bobo192 | Edits


 * Hi there. I just looked at the new format by NickF and I like it, with one exception: I think the race results should appear above the qualifying results. I know qualy takes place chronologically before the race (obviously!), but the results of the race seem more important than (and, hence, should appear before) the results of qualifying. Your thoughts? Bill 25 Apr 2005    p.s.&mdash;just checked your wiki stress meter, hope things get better soon! :)


 * Hi, thanks for the nods to my format; I agree, race is more important than qualification, so should be first. My only concern is it might not seem logical to someone who doesn't know F1 that well... maybe put the quali in a smaller font &mdash; or maybe have the quali results on the right of the race results table &mdash; separated by a blank column (it would fit on my monitor but might be a bit wide for eg 800x600?). I would have a play but am going away for a couple of weeks &mdash; please experiment away! NickF 23:04, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Formula One/Two
Hi, you listed the 1953 German Grand Prix as a Formula One race - I think it was actually Formula Two. No time to check this right now, I'm more in a pre-WWII mode, but if this is indeed incorrect (I seem to recall at least one season of the World Championship in the 50's was run for Formula Two), no doubt a lot (all?) of the other ones are wrong too, not to mention pages that link to them (e.g. Hans Stuck's post-WWII Formula "One" career). Noel (talk) 21:54, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Pre-WWI Grands Prix
I see you entered a lot of the historical Formula One per-race results. You don't by any chance have any interest in entering the per-race data for the pre-WWII Grands Prix, in particular the Grandes Epreuves which counted toward the European Championship (auto racing), do you? I'd like to use them to extend the race results tables of drivers like Hermann Lang who had both pre-WWII and post-WWII racing results to include the pre-WWII results too (which for many of them are more significant than their post-WWII results - e.g. Lang was European Champion in 1939). Rather than enter the results directly on the driver pages, it seemed to make more sense to copy the format used for the post-WWII results. Noel (talk) 08:14, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

2005 USA-Race
DNS stands for when a car does not take a a race start. Makes sense. By having Ret listed that mean the driver has actually started in that race and will count a race starts towards the driver race start tally.. The formation lap does not count as a lap at all as it is not added towards the race classification. For when does a driver 'start' a Grand Prix? To my mind he does so only if he is on the grid when the flag drops or light goes green at the final start. Should a driver have failed to compete the formation lap, for instance (as was the case with Prost at Imola in 1991), he cannot truly be said to have started the race. In the case of restarted events such as the British GP in 1986, poor Jacques Laffite certainly did start the race, but this was declared null and void and he was not presented to take the restart, which is the only one that counts. For true official race results is best to get them off www.forix.com as they receive their race results from the officials. Yes I know formula1.com is official but not 100% official in statistics. If you decide to leave it as Ret then you must give all the drivers a race start count!

I have spend hours in researching and asking many F1 statistician who are famous and know more on Grand Prix. All the statisian I have contacted and got back told me it is actually DNS not Ret, they also have mention the formula1.com is not very accurate with their race results. The formula1.com is incorrect as listing as ret instead of DNS for 2005-USA. This were the responses from the following people. Renowned F1 statistians, like David Hayhoe or Autosport's Peter Higham agree that all Michelin drivers were DNS in 2005-USA, but consider a RET if a driver didn't made a re-start, for example. That was the common view in the past - no contemporary source listed Lauda as a DNS in 1976-Germany - and they simply ignore the current "null and void" FIA rule. I totally agree to change it as DNS not Ret as they didn't take part on the first lap.

Here is a intersting fact. Button will start his 100th race start in the 2005-China race. But according to wikipedia when doing the math by adding all Button race starts it would be his 101st race start in China as Button has been listed as Ret instead of DNS for this year 2005-USA race. Does this make sense to you. That means wikipedia will have an extra race start for all the drivers who have no started in the 2005 USA race have an extra race start which wouldn't be official to the drivers stats.

I am trying to help you all to have accurate data on Formula 1 on wikipedia. I DO beleive the formula1.com site doesn't not give out accurate race classifications. As I have been involved with FORIX and autosport.com for many years as my job is to look for incorrect data on their server. Andreas 04 October 09:36

F1 portal featured article
The F1 portal (in which I assume you have some degree of interest, as your name is listed on WikiProject_Formula_One) is intended to have a regular rotation of a 'featured article'. I've swapped a few in and out over the last couple of months, but I think it would be better if there were more of a community attempt at deciding this, proposals, votes, that kind of thing. So - why not pop over to Portal_talk:Formula_One and make a suggestion. Ta. 4u1e 00:23, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, I'll take a look. Bill, 2006-05-28

Selected articles on Portal:F1
Hello again.

I dropped notes round a while back to those who have listed themselves at WikiProject_Formula_One to ask for suggestions for selected articles on portal:Formula One. There was a pretty good response, both in terms of how it might work and of articles suggested. Damon Hill came out with the most support and was brought up to Good Article standard after a lot of work by Skully Collins before going on as the F1 portal selected article a couple of weeks ago. It is now at Featured Article Candidates as a Featured Article candidate (why not drop by and see if you can help polish it further?).

Several people who responded to the original request suggested that a monthly or bi-weekly 'Selected Article' could act as a catalyst for an improvement drive to get more articles up to a higher standard. Although it wasn't quite what I had in mind when I started, this seemed to work pretty well for the Damon Hill article, so I've drafted up a process for doing this more regularly. See Portal_talk:Formula_One/Management_of_selected_articles for details. Essentially the suggestion is that we vote for an article to improve every couple of weeks and at the end of the improvement process the article goes on the portal as the new 'Selected Article'. I'd be grateful for any comments on how this might work - I'm sure some of you are more familiar with things 'Wiki' than me - as well as your votes for the next candidate (by 16 July).

You may also want to help with the article Gilles Villeneuve, which was the next most popular after Damon Hill. The idea is to try and get it up to GA standard by 16 July and then put it on the portal as the 'Selected Article'. I hope you can help! 4u1e 15:05, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

French Grand Prix
I put back Michael Schumacher hat-trick in 2006 French Grand Prix, but slight modified to avoid confusion. --Aleen f 1 03:07, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I was going to do so, but got too busy. - Bill, 19 July 2006

Bill Homeier
Hello. I believe that you initially created the article for Bill Homeier. For the 1955 Indianapolis 500 you show him as retired with an accident, but from what I have read it appears that he did not start the race and was the relief driver in the #77 for Walt Faulkner, which completed all 200 laps and finished 5th. I think that maybe this error came from incorrect information at the F1 official site[]. I think that the official site is incorrect because it looks like some of the data for him was copied from the 1954 race []. Please note that both show him at 18 on the grid and 74 laps completed, so I think that the official site is wrong. I wanted to check on this with you, since you loaded the data in the first place to make sure that I am not off-base in my conclusion. If you would can you confirm for me how the article should be changed and I would be happy to take care of it, or if I am wrong, please let me know where my logic is off. Thanks --Brian G 02:00, 28 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with you that the info for Bill Homeier is wrong. The correct info is located at 1955 Indianapolis 500, specifically Footnote re: car #77. I changed B. Homeier's page to reflect accurate info. In the future, please feel free to make any changes you find necessary; I may have started the article, but it is fair game for editting for any (legitimate) reason. - Bill 28 July 2006


 * Thanks. I was just a little tentative becuase I know that you and the others on the F1 Project have put in a grreat deal of work and I had conflicting sources.  I'll be more bold in the future. --Brian G 12:40, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Rodger Ward
Hello, again. I found this article and it was missing much information. I added some, but it is missing the great looking F1 results table that you have put on a number of driver's articles. I looked in the history to see if someone had deleted it, but I didn't see it in there. I was wondering if you had an easy way to create this table from the work you did earlier, and, if so, if you would be willing to put it on this article, and, of course, any other editing as you see fit. Thanks! --Brian G 23:12, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I acquired the F1 race data from the official F1 website using Visual Basic, which also tailored the data into Wiki format. Then I would create the page for each driver. However, since there was already a pre-existing page for Rodger Ward, I probably bypassed him. (For the pages I did create: little did I know at the time that there were (are) so many data errors on the official F1 site; I figured at the time, they're the "official" site of F1, so their result data must be "official", too. Oops.) - Bill 2006 August 05

Ferrari's records
BillCook, I posted the Scuderia_Ferrari records on a forum. You wrote into that article that Ferrari had the record for the longest gap between wins and gave the number 53 years, 2 months and 27 days. Someone called my attention toward the fact that Scuderia Ferrari was founded in 1929 and participated as constructor only since 1948. This gap is impossible. Was it a typo? You can reach me at ciroa@lycos.com --Ciroa 02:31, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks
Hi Bill. I didn't realise you still edited Wikipedia. I'd just like to say thank you for all your contributions to Formula One-related articles, especially for creating all the race report articles back in 2004. Regards. DH85868993 (talk) 21:57, 23 November 2012 (UTC)