Talk:Pole position

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Does anyone know if the term 'pole position' is used to describe a car at the front of the grid in other forms of motorsport? 999 22:00, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it used for basically every other form of motorsport that has qualifying...I know that MotoGP uses it, IRL in America does, most open-wheel categories (Formula 3000, etc) - i can't actually think of any that don't use the phrase. AlbinoMonkey 05:24, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

did the term come from indy?

At the Indianapolis motospeedway, grid position is listed on a giant lighted pole, with the fastest driver at the top of the pole. I assume this is where the term originated. Does anyone know for sure?

The pole in question lists the race order throughout the race though doesn't it? If so it seems unlikely to originate from there. --MartinUK 19:17, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

From The Language of Sport by Adrian Beard [1]

'Pole position', which is the leading position on the starting grid of a motor race, comes originally from horse racing in the USA. The 'pole lane' was the name given to the inside lane on a race course. 'Pole position' refers to one of a number of markers placed at intervals of one-sixteenth of a mile along the side of a racecourse. Presumably this idea of a marker on a track has been used to describe the best position.

Although, I must confess, that sounds a bit dubious to me. And he does say "presumably". Off the top of my head, I would have thought it might refer to either a "totem pole", like the one at Indy as discussed above (is that located at/near the start/finish line?) or the way that, in the old days, some racetracks used to have banners, supported by poles, across the start-finish line - therefore the car at the front of the grid would have the position nearest to the "the pole". But I have no evidence to support either of those theories. DH85868993 03:07, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

AFAIK, it comes from horse racing; whether the furlong poles have anything to do with it, IDK, but it wouldn't surprise me. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 22:45, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Inaccuracy

The "Formula One 1950-1995" section isn't quite correct: In the 50s and 60s (and maybe 70s?) the number and duration of qualifying sessions varied from race to race. I agree that 2 x 1-hour sessions on Saturday and Sunday was standard practice by the early 80s. Also note that for many years, Monaco held qualifying on Thursday and Saturday - the roads were reopened to normal traffic on Friday. DH85868993 02:54, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Move?

As it now reads, the page has more about qualifying than about pole pos itself. I suggest either move or merge to a "race qualifying" page, or adding much more about the importance of qual on pole (or not). TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 22:45, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

"the page is "pole positon" not "F1 qualifiying rules"

I try to edit the page and I get it reverted with the following reason above. This annoys me for some reasons:

1. My original intention was to make this article about pole position! This article currently is not about pole position. It just isn't and never has been for some time now. It is only about qualifying rules. If you had read my edits, I had attempted to relate the qualifying rules back to pole position, for example say how the race fuel qualifying era had changed what pole position means to drivers. Tbh the whole article is irrelevant and I was trying to do the lesser of two evils by keeping existing things and doing slight changes, rather than remove everything on the article.

2. The qualifying rules on this page are wrong! If you had read the citation I had provided (by the way I also notice a lack of sources on this page), you would see that this is true. At least if you don't believe that my edits add anything, at least let me edit the factual parts of the article.

That's all I like to say. I would like to hear feedback on this soon from people, otherwise I'll probably end up either editing this again or forgetting to do this out of boredom. Either way, this article has to change. Whether we change the title or change the content remains to be seen, because at the moment huge parts of this article are irrelevant. Fiddle and herman (talk) 20:56, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

The amount of F1-specific detail is excessive for this page, which is why I removed it. The concept isn't exclusive to F1, nor even motor racing, & so much on F1 & its iterations, & the F1 process, unbalances the page. Where, frex, is mention of the Daytona 500 process, then? Or Tour de France (presuming it has one...)? I'm all for fixing the mistakes, so if you've got citable corrections, put 'em back with my blessing & encouragement. Be aware, rule changes may make apparent errors where there aren't any in fact... TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 21:37, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Ok, that explains the revert better than "not f1 qualifying rules". If your criticism is that too much F1 rules unbalance the page, which is a fair point that hadn't occurred to me, then it seems getting rid of most of the text is the next best thing to do. Simply fixing the factual errors wont fix the underlying issue i.e. the irrelevance of the text to pole position. Fiddle and herman (talk) 22:32, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Suggested section: Why does the pole position matter?

I know nothing about racing, and I have no idea why the pole position matters. Does it give some sort of advantage/disadvantage to the driver? That'd be a useful addition to this page. BevansDesign (talk) 16:36, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Article rewrite?

Can please someone this article rewrite who has English as his mother language? (tr.: Could some native speaker please rewrite this article?) Large parts of this article read as if written by a German (no offense, I'm German myself). I'd take a stab at it, but I'm not confident I'd get it right, either. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:A62:1019:C001:F5DC:1CBE:63FC:2161 (talk) 17:16, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Article merge discussion

I DEFINITELY don't think that this article should be merged with this article titled Superpole. (A request was put in on the 23rd.) That article is quite underdeveloped. However, I don't see a problem with merging the pages since they're generally about the same topic, but if we do, it should be the other way around, with the Superpole article the one that is deleted and its info put in the Pole Position article. (We would note that it is called a Superpole in motorcycle racing.) Cavanaughs (talk) 16:12, 25 June 2020 (UTC)Cavanaughs

@Cavanaughs: unless I'm mistaken I think that the request is for Superpole to here. The IP just did it wrong.
SSSB (talk) 17:18, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Support merge Superpole into Pole Position. Superpole appears to be the term that the Superbike people use for essentially same thing. The Superpole article would make an excellent section in this article. Royalbroil 04:31, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Support: the superpole article doesn't have a lot of content, so it can be merged into the pole position article. NASCARfan0548 ↗ 00:28, 12 November 2020 (UTC)