On February 18, the Mercedes team will present its W13, a model that incorporates a number that has somewhat negative connotations in the rest of the world.
13 is considered the unlucky number in many cultures for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and the fear of it is known as triskaidekaphobia . It is so frequent that even in the 21st century some airplanes still do not have row 13 and many buildings are built without a 13th floor (going from 12 to 14 or putting 12 bis).
The importance of W13 has not gone unnoticed within the Mercedes team. Last month, when it emerged that the new car had yet to pass an FIA crash test, the team’s communications department made it clear to the media that the W13 prototype had completed its homologation process on the 13th . of January , while at the same time pointing out that the rules of the crash tests are framed within Article 13 .
“Great job, we’re not superstitious about these things!” joked a team spokesman.
In fact, Mercedes is the sixth team on the current F1 grid to have defied bad luck by having the number 13 in the name of their car. Four of the previous five cars have won races, with one even winning a World Championship, so the Brackley team has reason to be confident.
However, there was a time when using the 13 in motorsport was almost unthinkable. In fact, Colin Chapman, Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren, John Surtees and Ken Tyrrell are among the team bosses who have avoided that number and thus their marks have been bumped up from 12 to 14.
It is not surprising that superstition played an important role in previous decades. In other sports, bad luck could mean having a bad day, losing a match or a championship, but in racing, death lurked around every corner.
And it’s not just 13. In Italy, 17 is the unpopular number , while in America, and especially Indianapolis , green was considered a poor color choice for cars for many years.
Alberto Ascari, Ferrari 500
Double world champion Alberto Ascari, who was born on June 13, was a slave to numerology, and the statistics surrounding his death are known to almost everyone. His father Antonio died while at the French GP on July 26, 1925, and for the young Ascari the number 26 (double 13) became significant.
In 1955 he crashed into the port of the Monte Carlo Circuit at the Monaco GP , but managed to escape with only minor injuries. Four days later, wearing a borrowed helmet instead of his lucky blue helmet, he was killed in a test crash at Monza. It was May 26 and he had lived 13,466 days, only three more than his father…
But not only he was affected by the numbers. In 1966, and encouraged by his then-girlfriend, the young F3 driver, Francois Cevert , went to see a seer, who told him that he would not be 30 years old.
Just before qualifying for the 1973 US GP at Watkins Glen, he told his mechanics at Tyrrell that it was October 6, he was driving a Tyrrell 006, his bib number was 6, and he was sitting in front of building number 066. It was, he said, his lucky day. But it’s too late, at the age of 29, he died in a terrible accident.
It is believed that it was a Frenchman of a much earlier generation who started the fear of 13 in motor racing.
In 1925, 13 cars started the San Sebastian GP, and Paul Torchy was wearing that number when he spun out trying to pass a rival. The Delage pilot ended up against a tree and was killed instantly.
Just a year later, Count Giulio Masetti also died with a Delage when he crashed at the Targa Florio while running in number 13.
Subsequently, race organisers, especially in France, avoided assigning the number 13. That philosophy continued into the world championship era and thus has hardly been seen in Formula 1 since 1950.
When Mexican Moises Solana used the 13 in his rented BRM in his home run in 1963, it was seen as a highly unusual occurrence.
The number then appeared at the 1976 British GP, when Divina Galica , who used it in other categories, failed to qualify with the privateer Surtees.
For many years, F1 numbers were randomly allocated between teams, but even when the system of giving them in the order of the previous constructors’ championship was introduced, driver pairings jumped from 11 and 12 directly to 14 and 15.
But in 2014, when drivers were first given the opportunity to choose a bib number that they could keep throughout their career, 13 became commonplace. Pastor Maldonado opted for it, and the Venezuelan used it for two seasons with Lotus, with little success.
Pastor Maldonado, Lotus E23
Outside of F1, another to adopt the 13 was Le Mans 24 Hours regular driver Yves Courage , who used it on his Cougars and Courages for many years, while motorcycle racer and 500cc world champion from 1982, Franco Uncini , was another to use it.
Number numbers are one thing, but what about car chassis designations, and racing them for more than one season?
Colin Chapman was probably the first F1 team owner to consciously skip 13, though he still wouldn’t have to use it. The Lotus Type 12 was an F1/F2 of sorts, but next in the sequence, 14, was the internal number for the Elite GT car.
“Dad wasn’t superstitious,” says Chapman’s son, Clive. “But you’re right to say that Team Lotus always avoided 13, and still does. Although there was a 33/R13, but we suspect it was numbered by Reg Parnell Racing, it was never a works chassis.
The next legendary driver to avoid 13 was Brabham . The team’s co-founder, Ron Tauranac, was born on January 13 and even wore that number in his first steps in motorsport. Therefore, it was his partner Jack Brabham who decreed that there would be no BT13, jumping from the BT12 Indy to the BT14 , a customer single-seater made for so-called Formula Libre racing.
None of the above brands would have used 13 in F1, but Bruce McLaren had the option to do so. His M12 was a CanAm customer car, but the next model his team built, the 1970 F1, was called the M14 . In a tragic turn, Bruce only contested three Grands Prix with him before losing his life in a CanAm test crash in June of that year.
McLaren is also a rare example of an F1 team eschewing 13 in allocating chassis numbers, simply because not many cars were built in large numbers. However, when in 1977 McLaren built chassis 13 M23 for Brett Lunger and the BS Fabrications team, it was designated 14.
Like Brabham and McLaren before him, John Surtees was another owner/driver who eschewed wearing the 13, although he had just hung up his helmet when he opted to skip it and call his 1973 F1 car the TS14 . Whether that choice brought him luck is debatable: at that year’s British GP, all three of his entrants retired in the accident caused by Jody Scheckter’s spin.
Outside of the British-based teams, Guy Ligier was another who opted not to wear 13, despite his preference for only using odd numbers alongside the initials of his friend Jo Schlesser, who was killed at the French GP of 1968. Ligier’s F1 cars went from the 1979 JS11 to the updated 1980 JS11/15 and JS17 in 1981.
The last big name in F1 to actively avoid the use of 13 was Ken Tyrrell. His first Renault-powered car in 1985 should have been the 013, but instead it became the 014.
“Ken wasn’t particularly superstitious,” recalls his son Bob. “But it was decided to omit the unlucky 13. Why tempt fate?”
Some well-known customer race car manufacturers also avoided that number. There was no Merlyn Mk13 , while Chevron boss Derek Bennett did not make a B13. Curiously, he also skipped the B11 and its multiples B22, B33 and B44, after an accident at Oulton Park with a vehicle bearing the number 11.
Just four years after Ken Tyrrell ignored 13, the number was used for the first time by a major F1 team, and it’s perhaps not surprising that the guy who chose not to indulge in superstition was the earnest Frank Williams. However, even he hesitated.
“It’s funny, as the FW07 is the only design of ours where 13 or more cars were built,” recalls his son Jonathan.
“There were 16 chassis in total, but they intentionally didn’t assign chassis 13, the chassis was numbered 01 to 12, then 14 to 17.”
“I asked my father about it many years later, and he said it was due to racing superstition. Then I asked him how he assigned the 13 to a design – the FW13. He thought for a moment and replied: ‘! We should have forgotten the superstition!'”
Thierry Boutsen, Williams FW13 Renault.
The FW13 was the first purpose-built Williams with a Renault engine. The team began the 1989 season with the FW12C, built on the previous year’s Judd V8, while Patrick Head and his teammates perfected the new model.
The first signs were not positive. In fact they finished it late, when the team understood the requirements of the new engine and it finally showed up with four races to go in the season.
On their debut in Portugal, both Riccardo Patrese and Thierry Boutsen retired after their radiators filled with tire debris. The next race, at Jerez, his front wings hit the ground so hard that Boutsen’s came off the hook in free practice, and Patrese refused to race that car.
However, just a few weeks later, in excruciatingly wet conditions in Adelaide, Boutsen survived the chaos to win a red-flagged race. Any lingering doubts about the FW13 and bad luck were forgotten at that point, and indeed in 1990 Patrese won Imola and Boutsen triumphed in Hungary with the same model.
However, Head does not have fond memories: “It is not a car that looks back and views with fondness or pleasure!”.
And since FW13, F1 teams seem to have had little to no qualms about using that number. In 1992 Michele Alboreto and Aguri Suzuk i piloted the Footwork FA13 with little or no luck, and that continued with the FA13B early the following year when Derek Warwick replaced the Japanese pilot.
In 1994, Sauber bestowed the C13 name on its second F1 car, that of Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Karl Wendlinger . It was a tragic year for the category and, following the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at Imola, tensions rose at the following race in Monaco.
In the Thursday morning session, Wendlinger suffered serious head injuries when he had a big crash at the chicane, but luckily the Austrian not only survived but was able to get back in the car the following year. So was that C13 a lucky or unlucky car? It is a difficult dilemma to answer, depending on how you look at it.
Mika Hakkinen, McLaren MP4/13 Mercedes-Benz por delante de David Coulthard, McLaren MP4/13 Mercedes-Benz
Then, four years later, came the car that really put 13 in doubt. Coincidentally, Ron Dennis contested his first grand prix as a mechanic for Moises Solana at Cooper in 1966, although not in 13 on that occasion. Given his nature, it is perhaps not surprising that the McLaren boss was happy to use the MP4/13 designation in 1998.
With him, Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard would achieve nine victories that season, and the Finn won the world championship in Suzuka.
The next car to wear the number also won races, and somewhat against the odds, in 2003.
“I don’t recall any real discussion of the use of the EJ13 name,” recalls former Jordan GP business chief Ian Phillips . “EJ [Eddie Jordan] probably said ‘I’m not superstitious,’ and that’s it.”
“The only time he claimed to be superstitious was when Benson and Hedges proposed the snake design for 1997. He didn’t like it and claimed that everyone in Ireland was afraid of snakes and that he would be a laughing stock. But we voted and it went through . And it was probably our most admired decoration!”
In 2003 the Silverstone team was on the ropes financially, with uncompetitive Ford engines and Giancarlo Fisichella along with paid driver Ralph Firman . The car barely performed all season and only finished in the top six once, on a rainy afternoon at round three in Brazil.
That was the day that Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber had big crashes on the pit straight and the race was red-flagged, not before Fisichella moved to the front of the grid with good strategy and tenacious driving in the awful conditions. . The team was convinced they had won, having twice crossed the finish line as the leader before the red flag. However, the victory was given to Kimi Raikkonen.
But it later emerged that the F1 timekeepers had made a rare mistake and Fisichella received his winner’s trophy at the next race, at Imola.
In 2017 Red Bull used the RB13 in the fourth year of the hybrid rules. It was a more or less good car given the performance of its Renault engine and the good form of Mercedes and Ferrari, and it took three wins with Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen. However, the team added 100 points less than the previous season.
A year later, its sister team Toro Rosso (now AlphaTauri) introduced the STR13 of Pierre Gasly and Brendon Hartley. They scored points with him, but the team fell from seventh to ninth in the championship that season.
The switch to wearing the 13 triggered by Frank Williams 33 years ago continues this year with the Mercedes W13.
In earlier times, when teams were small and led by one man, and there was not so much security, no one questioned that number was avoided.
In the modern stage, it would be much more difficult to justify. Teams are now owned by manufacturers or corporate shareholders, sponsored by multinationals operating in countries where 13 doesn’t matter, and employing hundreds of engineers who rely on data rather than luck. Therefore, the old superstitions are no longer in today’s F1.
But then, each driver is a person and can have their own opinion on the matter, so it will be interesting to hear what Lewis Hamilton and George Russell think about the number 13…
