F1 cars from 1950 to 2025: Alfa Romeo 158 vs McLaren MCL39

Pretty much every single facet of Formula 1 today is unrecognisable versus the shape of grand prix racing at the start of the championship’s life – just imagine the idea of Juan Manuel Fangio and Giuseppe Farina sat side-by-side upon a sofa playing the usual social media-friendly parlour games, or Maurice Trintignant courting backlash for an ill-advised and hastily deleted Instagram story. It seems completely incongruous with F1 then, but it’s a key part of F1 now.

Thankfully, the core of the championship remains: build the best car with the materials available, race, and whoever finishes at the front by the end of the requisite distance wins. 

As of 2025, McLaren is doing the best job of that. As of 1950, it was Alfa Romeo that did so – winning six of the seven world championship races in F1’s inaugural season. The one it didn’t win was the Indianapolis 500, which it didn’t enter, but that’s already contentious enough without delving into the subject matter…

Indy tangent aside, we thought it might be a fun way to look back on F1’s progression through the years with a comparison between our current class of the field – the MCL39 – with Alfa Romeo’s 158. Will this extol the virtues of modern technology, or simply lend credence to a better-back-then crowd that savoured the days when race victors lapped the entire field? We’ll try to be objective.

Dimensions

There’s a reason why the 158 was known as the ‘Alfetta’ when it was first produced in 1938 (imagine turning up to an F1 round with a car designed 12 years ago now). It was an incredibly small package, conceived then as a voiturette, which eventually proved to be compliant with the original F1 (initially Formula A) regulations. 

Yet, it was a touch longer than some of the other cars on the grid in 1950, like the Maserati 4CLT and Ferrari 125, and far larger than most F1 cars around in the 1960s, as cars got smaller and lighter before the swell in sizes began in the modern day – a little bit like how phones became tiny, before smartphones started ballooning into pocket-sized tablets. It was also relatively heavy, although cited weight figures vary between 600kg-700kg, presumably to accommodate for fuel. 

Versus today’s cars, the 158 looks microscopic. McLaren’s MCL39 is typical of today’s era of cars, where the positioning of hybrid systems and underbody aero necessitated the need to make cars longer, even compared to cars from 15-20 years ago; today’s machines look huge. The 2017 aero regs brought back a maximum width of 2000mm after almost two decades of running to a ‘narrow’ 1800mm, and the 2022-spec rules retained this form factor. 

And then there’s the weight; again, versus many of the cars that succeeded it, the 158 was much heavier – but for the time, this was very much in the same ballpark. Cars of the 1960s slipped below the 500kg mark, but since then have continued to grow thanks to the safety systems, tyres and power unit parts on board. The 800kg figure of today’s cars includes the driver mass but excludes fuel.

Chassis and suspension

Before the monocoque entered the F1 vernacular in the 1960s, cars were built onto frames, with the bodywork panels affixed to it. The 158 was also developed long before common convention decreed that the engine block should become a stressed member, meaning that this was simply bolted into the existing framework. 

The trailing-arm suspension at the front was underpinned by a transverse leaf spring linking both wheel hubs, while the 158 used a swing axle at the rear to ensure both rear wheels operated independently under bump and rebound conditions. However, the limitations of this system – with little control over jacking, camber, and instability under extreme cornering conditions – prompted a switch to a De Dion rear layout.

Suspension layouts in modern F1 have two functions: they must fulfil a given role set out by vehicle dynamics engineers, and contribute aerodynamically. In recent years, teams have experimented with pushrod and pullrod inclinations at the front and rear; McLaren took a front-mounted pullrod layout and a rear-mounted pushrod when the current regs were introduced in 2022, and has also addressed the positioning of its suspension wishbone legs in order to restrict chassis movement to ensure a stable aero platform.

Current cars have also used torsion bars as dampers for multiple years, given their smaller size and weight versus conventional coil springs/damper units. 

Powertrain, drivetrain and fuel economy

An internal combustion engine hasn’t really changed in its overall form, but the details and ancillary components are very different. Alfa’s inline-eight made use of a supercharger; the original 1938 car produced around 190bhp, but this was upped to around 350bhp by 1950. 

The fuel tank was kept in the tail of the car and, although its high fuel consumption was not much of an issue in 1950 given the speed of the 158 versus the other cars, it cost victory in 1951’s British GP as both Fangio and Farina had to stop twice for fuel, versus Ferrari’s one-stop for winner Jose Froilan Gonzalez.

Today’s engines are 1.6-litre V6s with turbochargers, and the addition of the MGU-H for recovery and MGU-K for recovery and drive brings the ultimate power figure up to around 1000bhp. The powertrains boast efficiency figures of over 50%, thanks to both hybridization and advances in ignition, timing and precision. McLaren has been supplied by Mercedes since 2021, after ditching its Renault deal, and will continue with the German brand to at least 2030.

Current F1 car gearboxes are eight-speed units to manage the torque from the current power units, and have been semi-automatic paddleshift operated since the 1990s. As engine power and delivery has progressed, so have the transmission units; Alfa’s four-speed ‘box was enough to put the straight-eight’s surprising might onto the road, but F1 moved on; five-speed units started to permeate the grid later into the decade and remained popular for years, particularly through the turbo-era. F1 is up to eight forward gears now.

What else is different? We’ve got direct injection over carburettors, engine management systems, all kinds of sensors… oh, and the engine sits in the back.

Brakes, tyres and more

The stopping power of a modern-day F1 car is incredible, as drivers can stamp on the brakes 100 metres before a slow-speed corner at well over 200mph, and ensure an 800kg monster can make it through at the right speed. The MCL39’s braking system has six-piston calipers to handle the size of the brake pads – carbon discs and pads have been in use in F1 for multiple years, thanks to their superior strength and performance over steel.

There is a common thread here: both cars use Pirelli tyres. When you look at them, however, there’s very little in similarity here other than the brand name and the form factor of a black, rubbery circle. In the 1950s, tyres were incredibly narrow with a distinct tread pattern – and, when you look at them face on, generally used positive camber; this was to reduce rolling resistance on the straights by reducing the tyre contact patch. As tyre manufacturers started to experiment with radial-ply tyre constructions over the then-common cross-ply structure, the tyres themselves could take more load; in 1971, the first slick tyre was produced by Firestone for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Twenty-seven years later, treaded tyres were reintroduced as a measure to slow cars down; grooved dry tyres lasted until the end of 2008, before slicks were reintroduced. Today’s tyres are produced solely by Pirelli, which has six dry compounds and two wet-weather constructions.

Drivers

Drivers were built very differently in the early days of F1. Rather than having to conform to today’s standard of a lean, athletic figure to trade off strength and weight, racers were far burlier figures. And they needed to be, if they were to control the cars of the time. Age did not weary them either; Farina was almost 44 when he won the inaugural Formula 1 world championship for drivers, Fangio was 40 when he took his first F1 title in 1951 (and 46 when he won his last), and Fagioli was 52 when he raced in 1950 (and 53 when he shared the winning Alfa with Fangio in the 1951’s French Grand Prix). 

In more modern times, it was usually common for F1 drivers to debut in their early-to-mid 20s before Max Verstappen’s appearance in F1 at the age of 17 rather changed the perception. F1 accordingly created a minimum age limit of 18 to give drivers more time in the junior categories. Norris was 19 when he made his F1 grand prix debut at the 2019 Australian GP, while Piastri was 21 when McLaren signed him for 2023. 

Drivers tended to span disciplines or championships during this era, straying beyond grand prix racing to drive in sportscars races. In that context, Norris’s experience in endurance racing after participating in the 2018 Daytona 24 Hours could be viewed as something of a throwback – although this came before his F1 career. Aside from exceptions such as Fernando Alonso, most drivers today are single-discipline racers, understandably so given the size of the modern calendar.