1968 Formula One season

The 1968 Formula One season was the 22nd season of the FIA's Formula One motor racing. It featured the 19th World Championship of Drivers, the 11th International Cup for F1 Manufacturers, and three non-championship races open to Formula One cars. The World Championship was contested over twelve races between 1 January and 3 November 1968.

Great Britain driver Graham Hill, driving a Lotus-Ford Cosworth, won his second Drivers' Championship, six years after his first. Lotus were awarded the Manufacturers' Cup for the third time. Repco produced a more powerful version of their V8 to help Brabham's compete against Ford's new Cosworth DFV, but it proved very unreliable: Jochen Rindt qualified on pole position twice but also only finished twice. Hill's main rivals were Jackie Stewart at Tyrrell Matra and 1967 champion Denny Hulme at McLaren.

The 1968 season turned out to be a turning point in terms of safety, with four Grand Prix drivers being involved in fatal crashes: two-time World Champion Jim Clark, Mike Spence, Jo Schlesser and Ludovico Scarfiotti. It was the last year where all the races were run on tracks with almost no safety modifications.

On the topic of technology, the 1968 headlines were dominated by the wings introduced by Lotus's owner Colin Chapman. He installed modest front wings and a rear spoiler on his Lotus 49B at the 1968 Monaco Grand Prix. Brabham and Ferrari went one better at the 1968 Belgian Grand Prix with full-width wings mounted on struts high above the driver. Lotus replied with a full-width wing directly connected to the rear suspension that required a re-design of the wishbones and transmission shafts. Matra then produced a high mounted front wing connected to the front suspension. This last innovation was mostly used during practice as it required a lot of effort from the driver. By the end of the season most teams were using sophisticated wings.

The following teams and drivers competed in the 1968 FIA World Championship.

Dan Gurney became the first driver to wear a full-face helmet at the 1968 German Grand Prix. He had helped to invent it with the Bell Helmets company and had already used it at the 1968 Indianapolis 500. Within some years, it became the obvious choice among drivers and was later deemed mandatory.

All cars had to be fitted with a rollbar that stretched out to at least 5 cm (2.0 in) above the driver's helmet, an electrical circuit breaker, an oil catch tank and a reverse gear. And the cockpit had to allow easy evacuation.

The FIA decided to permit unrestricted sponsorship on cars after the withdrawal of support from automobile related firms like BP, Shell and Firestone. Team Gunston, a South African privateer team, was the first Formula One team to paint their cars in the livery of their sponsors when they entered a private Brabham for John Love, painted in the colours of Gunston cigarettes, in the 1968 South African Grand Prix. In the next round at the 1968 Spanish Grand Prix, Team Lotus, initially using the British racing green, became the first works team to follow this example, with Graham Hill's Lotus 49B entered in the red, gold and white colours of the Imperial Tobacco's Gold Leaf brand.