Fifty Years of Formula 1
I have been watching Formula 1 for fifty years. Half a century of grands prix, of drivers who lived on the absolute edge of what was physically possible, of machines that sounded like the world was ending and looked like they might kill their drivers at any moment — and sometimes did. I have watched the sport change beyond recognition, mostly for the better, occasionally for the worse, and always with the compulsion of someone who simply cannot look away.
The era I keep returning to in memory is the late eighties and early nineties. Nigel Mansell and Ayrton Senna represent everything I loved about that period — raw, unfiltered driving talent operating at the absolute limit of human capability and mechanical grip. Mansell with his helmet visor steaming up on cold circuits, willing the car to go faster through sheer physical force. Senna in the wet at Donington in 1993, weaving through five cars on the opening lap in a display that still does not seem entirely real when you watch it back. These were men doing something that could not be replicated by anyone else on earth, and the whole world knew it.
Formula 1 today is safer, faster, and in many ways more technically sophisticated than anything those drivers would recognise. I understand why the sport had to change. The losses were too great — Ayrton Senna at Imola in 1994 remains the single most devastating moment I have experienced as a motorsport fan, and I know I am not alone in that. Safety had to come first. It had to.
But I would be dishonest if I said some of the edge has not gone with it. The sport is extraordinary, but the sense that a driver is genuinely defying something elemental — that the gap between brilliance and disaster is measured in millimetres rather than committee decisions — that feeling is harder to find now. The cars are almost too good. The drivers are almost too safe. Almost.
The Halo, and Why It Matters
The most visible symbol of modern F1 safety is the Halo device — the titanium structure that arches over the driver's head and has, objectively, saved lives. When it was introduced in 2018 I was sceptical, as most purists were. It looked wrong. It interrupted the visual language of an open-cockpit racing car. I did not want it.
Then came the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, 2021. Hamilton and Verstappen were fighting for the championship lead and racing each other with the intensity that only a rivalry of that magnitude produces. On lap 27, Hamilton exited the pits and took the inside line into the first corner of the chicane to defend from Verstappen. As they came to the second corner, the pair collided. Verstappen's Red Bull went airborne and bounced directly down onto Hamilton's Mercedes — the rear wheel of the Red Bull coming to rest on the Halo cockpit protection device above Hamilton's head. Hamilton sat beneath a Formula 1 car, the two men separated by the width of that titanium arch. He climbed out unaided.
A furious Verstappen walked away without checking on his opponent. Blame was exchanged. The rivalry did not cool. And I sat watching the footage back thinking about what would have happened without the Halo — and found I had nothing more to say against it. I still think it looks awkward. I am very glad it exists.
Growing Up at Brooklands
I grew up in Weybridge, Surrey, which means I grew up at Brooklands. The circuit is not an abstract piece of history to me — it was the place where I played as a child. The banking, the trees, the strange atmosphere that a place carries when it has hosted genuine human drama and then gone quiet. Brooklands opened in 1907, was the world's first purpose-built motor racing circuit, and closed to racing in 1939. By the time I was running around its grounds it had been an aircraft factory, a test track, and finally a museum. The physical bones of it were still there — the famous banking at each end of the oval, cracked and mossy and overgrown in places, but unmistakably a racing circuit.
Some of my teachers at school, the older ones who had grown up in Weybridge when it was still a place where people remembered the circuit in use, talked about the banking after dark. Stories that circulated among children the way local legends always do — that if you went to the oval track at night, you could hear sounds that had no business being there. Not voices. Engines. The high note of cars that had not run on that track for decades, drifting across the banking in the dark. Whether you believe in that sort of thing or not, I will tell you that standing on the Brooklands banking on a cold evening, with the wind coming through the trees and the museum closed and the place empty, it is not difficult to believe it. There is something in the air there that ordinary places do not have.
That is what fifty years of following Formula 1 from Weybridge feels like. History is not abstract. The sounds are still there if you listen in the right place.
Why I Started Collecting in 2026
I started collecting the 2025 Topps Chrome Formula 1 Diamond 75th Anniversary cards in early 2026. Late to the party by any measure, but I was drawn in by the set itself — 50 cards covering the 2025 grid alongside some of the legends of the sport, with a parallel ladder that gives collectors something to chase at every budget level. The Diamond 75th Anniversary branding feels right for a product celebrating three-quarters of a century of Formula 1, and the Topps Chrome finish on these cards is genuinely beautiful in hand.
My immediate goal was to complete the base set, and I am almost there. The base cards are affordable, well-produced, and give you the full grid in one place — from the current champions down to the rookies, with the legends scattered through the D75 numbering. Once the base set is done, the obvious next question is which variants to chase within a reasonable budget.
I currently have two PSA 10 graded cards in my collection, which felt like a significant moment — not because PSA 10s are unusual in the hobby generally, but because getting a card back with that grade means the copy is as close to perfect as the grading companies can certify. My intention is to add more graded examples over time, selectively, focused on the cards that mean most to me rather than chasing every variant in the set. Budget is real. Priorities matter.
This site was built partly because I wanted better tools for tracking what I had and what I wanted, and partly because the checklist information scattered across various sources was frustrating to work with. Building D75 Cards was the obvious solution. Some features have been built with the help of AI coding tools — Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT — but the content, the opinions, the card images and the collecting perspective are original and personal. This is a real collection tracked by a real collector.
If you find yourself in Weybridge, visit the Brooklands Museum. They have the banking, a Concorde, WWII aircraft, and more motorsport history per square foot than almost anywhere in the world. And if you stay until dusk — well. Listen carefully on your way out.
What This Site Does
D75 Cards makes the 2025 Topps Chrome Formula 1 Diamond 75th Anniversary checklist easier to browse, search, track and understand. The site groups each parent card with its known variants, print runs, estimated values, rookie status, team data, collection tools and wishlist tools.
The goal is to help collectors quickly answer practical questions: which variants exist, which cards are already in a collection, which cards are still wanted, and how current market guidance compares across raw, PSA 9 and PSA 10 values. Let us know any feature requests and we will try to accommodate.
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