Only Even Numbers?

[Rollo]

Perhaps I should know the reason behind this but sadly I don't.

Whilst going through the annals at http://www.grandprix.com I was looking through race results from the fifties and came to the conclusion that most cars had only even numbers on them. Sometimes it gets silly to the point of having a car numbered 60 but no number 3.

Why only use even numbers? Is the reason something to do with convention of perhaps regulation?

[D-Type]

When this question was raised on the AtlasF1 Nostalgia Forum, the conclusion from the experts there was that nobody knows.

It was definitely a convention rather than a regulation and was not universal.

Suggestions put forward included: it avoided the 'unlucky' numbers 13 and 17;
it allowed odd numbers to be used for practice, including the mainly Belgian idea that this would foil the producers of pirate programmes as they wouldn't know the race numbers.

[V12]

I think off the top of my head - it had something to do with odd numbers being reserved for spare cars etc. Here is a picture of Fangio's Maserati 250F V12 from the 1957 Monaco GP which he only drove in practice, numbered 35 - the Maserati race cars were numbered 32, 34, 36, 38, 40.

[tsarcasm]

I have a pic. of 4x Astons at LeMans 53' in a row.

# 22-24-26-28

[D-Type]

Curious Martin Krejki's excellent website (http://wsrp.ic.cz/wsc1953.html#3) has the works Aston Martin DB3S team cars as numbers 25, 26 and 27 with private DB2 no 69 as a reserve entry. Le Mans numbering was (almost) unique - they numbered the entry consecutively with No 1 being the largest engined car, etc

Are you sure it is Le Mans and not 'the team cars for Le Mans' or similar? Or maybe the Reims 12 hours?

[tsarcasm]

I will wholeheartedly trust your memory d-type :) it was years ago....

[Don Capps]

When this question was raised on the AtlasF1 Nostalgia Forum, the conclusion from the experts there was that nobody knows.

It was definitely a convention rather than a regulation and was not universal.

Suggestions put forward included: it avoided the 'unlucky' numbers 13 and 17; it allowed odd numbers to be used for practice, including the mainly Belgian idea that this would foil the producers of pirate programmes as they wouldn't know the race numbers.

It was less a matter of "not knowing" and simply that there were often inconsistencies with the various clubs over the years regarding the numbering used. It was not necessarily done on a whim, even though it might have seemed the case even at the time, but was done to some rationale that each club came up with for its own reasons. It was, as Duncan points out, certainly a convention that each club developed on their own, their being no regulations or stipulations regarding this sort of thing for many, many years.

It is interesting that in 1964 the newly-formed F1CA (Formula 1 Constructors Association) suggested a numbering system for the British events, which was generally adhered to that year, although not necessarily with any exactitude when it came to the private entrants.

When the F1CA finally got the numbering system during the 1973 that was used in some shape or form for a number of years, it was done on its initiative, not that of the CSI. Only much later did the numbering system be applied by fiat and not as an independent initiative.