Template talk:Infobox racing car

Usage notes

I have deliberately left the pro-forma above unformatted for ease of copy-pasting. For Formula One articles, most details should be available. For other series simply leave blank any unknown fields and enter n/a for irrelevant or highly variable fields. Many customer cars will have had highly variable set up, I would suggest using either the most common configuration (if such a thing exists) or simply stating a brief range of options in leiu of precise specifications. Pyrope 09:58, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment

Does this work for a variety of racing cars? Views? Feel free to amend to improve. Thanks. 4u1e 15:47, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah i think its good. It would definitely work for a variety of racing cars and it would be a great addition to the pages if all the information could be found. Well done! Thunderous503 10:10, 22 August 2006

Some items are OK for F1 don't work for single-brand competitions or customer cars. For example, "Drivers" would be impossible to use in cars from F3000, F3, F. Renault, A1GP or Champ Car, since the same car is used by dozens of drivers in one year alone. It doesn't work for touring cars and GTs as well, for example, the BMW 318/320i E36 Supertouring, the Porsche 993/996/997 Supercup/GT2/GT3 versions. Even prototypes such as the Porsche 956/962 had hundreds of drivers. Likewise, it would be nearly impossible to collect data such as poles and fastest laps, especially if these cars continue to be used in club events, hillclimbing or historic racing. For rally cars it would be a nightmare, how many victories do the Lancia Delta Integrale, Ford Escort RS Mk I or Mitsubishi Lancer Evo have? I think championship/class titles can be kept, but races competed, race wins, pole-positions and fastest laps can go. Tyres doesn't work either, after all touring cars and GT cars have different tyres even in the same championship. --Pc13 19:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Good points, Pc13 - sorry I hadn't commented before, it was such a long time since I spread the word about it.

• Re drivers - true, but I think Pyrope has solved that by putting 'notable drivers', to keep it to the important ones. Of course we can now spend weeks arguing about who is notable....
• Re wins, poles and fastest laps - solvable by noting in what championship? i.e. Porsche 956/962 47 wins (WSC) 15 (IMSA) (numbers made up, btw).
• Tyres - fair point, I would think. Even in some F1 seasons one car has used more than one. Fittipaldi Automotive used three in (I think) 1981! Isn't there a way of making some stuff disappear if not used? 4u1e 10:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any articles about racing cars from the United States. Some of the WP:NASCAR articles link to the street car article, and that works well. The infobox could be helpful in the 2 major Indy series, so I left a message on the WP:AOWR talk page. One thing that jumped out at me is the Euro-centric spelling "tyres", which is unheard of here in the U.S. Looks good otherwise. Royalbroil ^T : C 15:29, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Tyres is actually a modern English variant, and produced arguments when it first began to appear in print. Prior to that, we used to use tires. While I am obviously going to be in favour of British English spellings, I would prefer to see tires in a template with international applications. Anyone who sees it and thinks that it is mis-spelled is free to look it up! Adrian M. H. 18:44, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

One thing's sure - we're never going to make everyone happy! Bearing in mind Royalbroil's comment about the likely lack of US built chassis to use this table, I suppose UK spelling would be most applicable. Unless anyone knows a cunning trick to give us an either/or version? 4u1e 23:14, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I've know all along that tyres is the correct spelling in England. I think that I am a fairly enlightened person, for know there are quite a few words and terms that are different or spelled different: "favor vs. favour", "recognize vs recognise", to point out a few. I was just pointing out that I would like to see a worldwide view if possible. I was mostly hoping that someone had a cunning magic trick, or that someone had a alternative word that would suit all applications! Could you create a "tire2" field that would use the spelling "tires" in the infobox instead of "tyres"? I would say go with the Euro-centric view if there is no other alternatives, because that is the main application of the infobox. Royalbroil ^T : C 04:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Well as I say, I would be happy to see tires with an i. Adrian M. H. 14:27, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not fussed either way. As far as the correct spelling goes, I reckon it is a case of live and let live. Unless we want every template duplicated because of one letter, it would probably be best if we accepted that different countries use different spellings. So far as I can judge, tyre is the accepted spelling in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Namibia, Kenya... oh you get the point. Wikipedia is an internationally cooperative project, so in some instances we will see British-derived spellings, and some US-derived. As a geologist it still makes my eyes water when I see my favourite minerals described as sulfides, but I accept that the person who wrote the article was probably American and so would use the non-ph spelling as common usage. You say tomato sauce, I say yum. Pyrope 15:05, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Canada uses tire, not tyre. —^Jack_Lumber ^/tɔk/ 21:51, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure all those New Zealanders, etc. won't mind seeing the older/US spelling. Adrian M. H. 15:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I didn't mean to start an "international incident", lol. I thought there might be an easy fix. I don't want to take up any more of anyone's time discussing little things like this. I'm sure that we all have better things to do. I wanted to point out that there may be some people in the U.S. that might be confused, but they should become more enlightened anyhow. It is fine as is, as far as I am concerned. Royalbroil ^T : C 16:28, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I think we leave it then, until such time as it becomes a problem. I feel uncomfortably like I'm pushing my own (current!) national variant, but as I say, since there is no correct answer and as things stand it will match the spelling in the text of the majority of the articles it appears in, we might as well leave it as it is. Review if it starts to cause problems (i.e. we start generating a lot of chassis articles in US English, which come to think of it would probably be appropriate for Lola/March/Penske/Reynard Indycars. All built in the UK, but used almost exclusively in North America). 4u1e 23:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

If we get real problems, we'll just have to change it to "black round things at each corner"! ;) Adrian M. H. 23:32, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Tyres is clearly unambiguous, as opposed to racing tires you out etc. Also note that "The first practical pneumatic tire was made by John Boyd Dunlop, born in Scotland, while working as a veterinarian in May Street, Belfast". Both of these countries use the English English spelling... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.18.180 (talk) 17:57, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Replace "logo" with "image" ?

imo it'd be better to have a picture of the actual car in the infobox instead of the company's logo. Or maybe change the field to "image/logo" or something like that and use a picture of the car if available and the logo when no picture of the car is available?--BSI 17:02, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not keen. The logo is an instant handle on the car's identity, whereas as photo (even if it is a good one) is nowhere near so useful. For one thing, with many racing cars, visualy many cars from a similar era all look alike, certainly to a non-enthusiast, so one, green, cigar-shaped '60s F1 car looks pretty similar to another green, cigar-shaped '60s F1 car. The second problem that I have is that the quality of the shot is highly dependant on who took the photo. So while an indistinct, poorly metered and composed snap might be ok for illustrating an article, it isn't any good for the instant recognition that an infobox illustration requires. Pyrope 16:42, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Logo parameter

I have removed the logo parameter all together. Most, if not all, of the logos being placed in these infoboxes did not have rationales for their inclusions written on the image description page and per WP:NFCC, their use in the infobox is purely decorative. — Save_Us † 13:47, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

On second thought, what I did was add the image parameter back, but not for logos at all. The use of logos in this manner in any shape or form is a violation of WP:NFCC. On the other hand though, people were using the parameter for adding images of the cars in question, so I added the parameter back and removed the logos. — Save_Us † 14:19, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Purely decorative, or useful for identification? I'd argue that the latter was more the case, and as "uses involving identification and critical commentary may qualify as fair use" then it was OK. AlexJ (talk) 14:21, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Irregardless, there is still a lack of proper rationales written for these images which you appear to be readding to articles. Read WP:NFCC #10 (c). If you're going to readd them back in, I would first right a rationale for its inclusion in the article and then I would take it to WP:NFCC's talk page for furthur review. — Save_Us † 15:02, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

My apologies, I didn't see you added the rationales to them before you readded them. Nonetheless, I'll probably go through and make sure the logos all have valid rationales, but all of the uses right now are mostly without any kind of rationale. — Save_Us † 15:15, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Possible additional fields

The AUTOCOURSE annuals I use to reference F1 car articles (usually) have information in these additional fields regarding each chassis, which are not currently included in the template, excluding engine specifications (Benetton B186 used as an example):

• Sponsors (Benetton SPA/Sisley/Riello/Flying Tigers/EUROBAGS/Frizerca)
• Number of chassis built (7)
• Oil (Castrol)
• Spark plugs (Champion)
• Driveshafts (Benetton)
• Clutch (AP)
• Suspension dampers (Koni)
• Wheel diameter (front: 13 inches, rear: 13 inches)
• Wheel rim widths (front: 12 inches, rear: 16.25 inches)
• Brakes (SEP/AP/Brembo)
• Brake pads (SEP/AP)
• Steering (Jack Knight/Benetton)
• Radiator(s) (Behr)
• Fuel tank (ATL)
• Battery (Hitachi)
• Instruments (Yamaha)
• Gearbox weight (100 lb/45 kg)
• Chassis weight (tub) (130 lb/59 kg)
• Formula weight (1208 lb/548 kg)
• Fuel capacity (42.9 gal/195 litres)
• Fuel consumption (4.5 mpg/63 litres per 100km)

Is there any way that this additional information could be incorporated into the template?--Diniz (talk) 16:37, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Where there is a will there is a way. My main questions are of notability and stability. On the notability front, just how important is it that we know who manufactured the radiators, or battery, or instruments, any number of those components listed? Also, the sponsors do not relate to the car, they are a part of the team's commercial operation, not its technical one. From a stability point of view, how many F1 cars maintain the same gearbox/chassis weights or fuel capacity and consumption? This point is especially true of consumption figures, as these will very much depend on the track, gear ratios used and the tuning of the engine. This is, I'm afraid, one of Autocourse's main flaws; they don't think hard enough about spraying around technical "facts". Most of these are trivial, and so do not belong in a general interest encyclopedia. There is a Motorsport Wiki out there who would love to have all this, I'm sure, but its too much for here. We don't want to obscure the important information (e.g. Chassis construction, suspension type, engine details etc.) with trivia. The only field I can see being an addition to this template is "numbers built", but even there we run into the problem of what you mean by "built"? For example, there are eight BRM P261 chassis numbers listed in some references, but in actuality two of these are just renumbered rebuilds of older chassis. So do they count? Just some thoughts. Pyrope 13:37, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed response; sorry I didn't see it earlier! I see what you mean and agree with it. Perhaps "numbers built" could be made an optional parameter for when the number is certain?--Diniz(talk)

Conditional fields

Several of the fields in this template don't have "if" checks around them. Therefore if you leave out a field it displays the field name. This is not desirable. When the 'logo' field was changed to 'image' it broke at least one page. See Toyota MR2#SARD MC8-R. If the fields were displayed conditionally there wouldn't be this problem and the template would be more flexible. I don't have the experience yet to feel comfortable fixing this myself. swaq 20:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

F1 car field

Why does it say to "Only fill (Y, yes, whatever) this field if the car is a pre-1980 F1" ? What's the distinction between pre-1980 and post-1980 cars? DH85868993 (talk) 13:06, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

It's the field that generates the "only includes World Championship results" footnote. After 1980 there were only two non-Championship races so that footnote is a waste of space. In fact, it is better to delete the field entirely if you are dealing with a >1980 F1 car or some other class of vehicle. Pyrope 13:55, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 14:06, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Of course you can also delete it if you choose to include Tasman/non-C/libre results. Definitely needs rephrasing in light of that, so I'll put some thought into how best to achieve that. Pyrope 14:11, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone object to me renaming this field "WC_results_only", to clarify its purpose? Obviously I would update all the existing transclusions. DH85868993 (talk) 11:37, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

No, that sounds like a good idea. Pyrope 14:20, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Done (and transclusions updated). DH85868993 (talk) 01:58, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Predecessor/successor

Could someone add a predecessor/successor field? This would be especially useful for modern F1 cars which are only used for a single season.

Might need to add two options for both, as things like the new Merc could said to be successors of the BGP 001 and the Merc W54 or whatever the last racing one was. -mattbuck (Talk) 13:31, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

That should be easy enough to do simply using the <br /> operator. Pyrope 16:14, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

• Fields added as requested. -- de Facto (talk). 06:25, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

HowTo? Multi-Engined / Hybrid

With the recent LeMans win of the Audi R18 e-tron quattro and other race entrants with more than one power-plant location/types/energy-source should we modify this template ie.

Engine -> Engine(prime) and Axillary-Engines plus their type/location fields
And also Fuel -> Fuel and AltEnergySource could be fuel-cell, flywheel, Li-Ion or something?
--Mkouklis (talk) 07:01, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

I have advertised this discussion at WikiProject Motorsport, in the interests of increased visibility. DH85868993 (talk) 11:10, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

I like the idea in theory. Obviously the new trend in racing in general, not just sportscars, is to have hybrid power. How has the F1 group been handling this? --Sabre ball ^{t c} 19:33, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't like "Multi-Engined." We're not really seeing cars with multiple engines. And I don't think anyone in the sport would call the hybrid systems currently being installed "engines" either. At least I've never heard or read someone from the sport refer to them in that way. I say we go the obvious route. Add a field that deals specifically with hybrid power. Given that, though, is anyone aware (as I am not obviously) of a car(s) running two engines? Sabre ball ^{t c} 19:39, 6 July 2012 (UTC)--

Citroën Sahara, made from 1960 to '66, was a series production twin engine example:

http://www.machine-history.com/node/1043

Citroën 2CV article describes it. Mosler TwinStar is more recent. Chaparral 2J is a racing car with a 2 cylinder snowmobile engine in addition to a Chevy V8. Yiba (talk) 11:28, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Axle track ??

I noticed Lotus 16 infobox says "Axle track" and confirmed its repeatability on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_racing_car/testcases#Example_testing_both_new_fields when only one figure is entered for 'Track'.

Could someone fix it? Separating it into Front Track and Rear Track might be problematic for 3 axle cars. Yiba (talk) 08:39, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I think it's OK as is - if the front and rear track are the same, the infobox just contains the one value, if they're different just set the parameter to "Front:<front track> <br />Rear: <rear track>", as is done in Tyrrell P34 for example. As you say, separating it into two parameters could be problematic for 3 axle cars. DH85868993 (talk) 14:55, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Non-F1 fields

Lately I have been doing a lot of work on articles for racing cars outside Formula 1—most notably Volkswagen Polo R WRC—and I have spotted a few fields that these articles could benefit from. However, I think they have been neglected since this infobox is written overwhelmingly in favour of Formula 1 cars.

In particular, I think fields for "first win" and "last win" would be worth including (not unlike driver articles), and an alternative results summary table for entries, wins, podium finishes and titles as the current version has a field for fastest laps, which aren't recognised in all forms of motorsport. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 22:54, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't have strong feelings either way regarding "first win" and "last win". Regarding the summary table, rather than having two alternative tables, I wonder if it would be preferable for the table to just display whichever of the "races/entries", "wins", "poles", "fastest laps", "podiums" and "titles" parameters are given values, e.g. if the "races", "wins" and "poles" and "fastest laps" parameters are given values (as in most of the existing F1 car articles), then those four columns would be displayed, if "entries", "wins", "podiums" and "titles" are given values, then those four columns would be displayed. (Obviously this would need some clever template coding, but I think it should be possible). One possible issue is that if all six parameters were populated, then the table would have six columns, which might be too many, although if we shorten the labels to "Races", "Wins", "Poles", "Pod", "FL" and "Titles" (with appropriate links) then that might fit (I'll try doing a mockup). One point to note is that for a car, a column labelled "Entries" can be ambiguous - people might interpret it as "the number of races in which the car was entered" or "the number of individual entries". From memory, I think that's why we went with "Races" in the current template. DH85868993 (talk) 23:31, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

@DH85868993: The problem with the table in its current form is that you can't pick and choose which ones you fill in - all four will show, even the ones that don't apply. Like in the Polo R article; "fastest laps" doesn't apply, but the rest do.

Also, in addition to "First Win" and "Last Win", I think a "Last Event" field would be good to have for cars that compete over several seasons or cars that get replaced mid-season. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 23:54, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

@Prisonermonkeys: Regarding your first point, yes I agree, I'm suggesting changing the table so that it only displays whichever fields are populated (which reminds me, I must do that mockup I mentioned earlier). I don't have strong feelings either way about a "Last Event" field. DH85868993 (talk) 00:02, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

@DH85868993: okay, so jow do we go about introducing these changes? I'm no good with complex markup. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 21:35, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I did the mockup and even with all seven columns (labelled "Entries", "Races", "Wins", "Poles", "FL", "Pod" and "Titles"), the populated infobox wasn't any wider than the current "4-column" version. I have asked Frietjes for help with the coding. DH85868993 (talk) 00:02, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

OK, the table now supports any combination of "Entries", "Races", "Wins", "Poles", "Fastest_Laps", "Podiums" and "Titles". And I've added fields for "First_win", "Last_win" and "Last_event". DH85868993 (talk) 00:01, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Image caption

Is it possible to add the "caption" field, so that a caption could be shown right below the picture? Micap (talk) 15:13, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I just discovered that this template already provides "caption" field, but it was not shown in "documentation" subpage. I fixed the error. --Micap (talk) 15:35, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Hybrid systems

There is discussion related to this template in progress at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Motorsport#Template:Racing_car_and_hybrid_systems. DH85868993 (talk) 21:26, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

No newlines in Infobox

I have noticed that the Infoboxes in Aston Martin Vantage, Ferrari 488, and Porsche 911 do not have line breaks. I think this is a problem with the visual editor. Relevant issues filed are phabricator:T179259 and phabricator:T213922. The first one suggests that the problem are incorrectly defined templates. What can we do with the template to mitigate this problem? Bobi.1 (talk) 22:42, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean, as those infoboxes look perfectly fine and as they always have. What browser are you using? Pyrope 10:33, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Pyrope, what I mean is that in the source code they are missing line breaks. If I click on edit source, it is a mess. Bobi.1 (talk) 10:53, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

"image_title" parameter

Hi. Named parameter {{{image_title}}} is shown when the mouse cursor passes over the infobox image. For example at Mercedes-AMG F1 W11 EQ Performance. Cheers, --LaFleur93 (talk) 18:30, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

@Frietjes: Any ideas on how to fix this? DH85868993 (talk) 02:22, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

DH85868993, fixed. Frietjes (talk) 02:30, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

@Frietjes: Thanks! DH85868993 (talk) 04:01, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Tracking

@Pelmeen10 and DH85868993: I added Category:Pages using infobox racing car with unknown parameters. you can see which parameters are being flagged as unsupported or ignored using "show preview" after opening the page in edit mode. in some cases, this might suggest a new parameter that we should add, in other cases this might be a typo, or something trivial that should be removed. at the moment there are only about 85 pages in the category, which is pretty good considering there are over 1000 transclusions of the infobox. Frietjes (talk) 14:36, 8 July 2020 (UTC)