Nowadays we talk a lot about the pace of change in all walks of life. It seems to me, though, that the era when there was the greatest amount of change in automobile racing was the 70s. I am basically talking about the tremendous volume of changes that had a lasting effect on racing. Commercially, there was consolidation of sponsorship in Formula 1 and all other disciplines of racing. In 1970, a good number of GP teams had some form of commercial sponsorship, however, all teams were sponsored by 1979. Commercial sponsorship not only provided money to teams, but also made racing commercially interesting and sellable on TV, and TV made things more interesting to sponsors. Broadcasting also expanded greatly during the decade, especially in the third world. Thus, by the end of the decade, Bernie Ecclestone in F1 and NASCAR in F1 had began to expand live TV coverage of racing events. The early days of cable TV also provided more outlets and programming needs. Turbocharging, although wid...