F1 does not ban outright traction control. The rules I read on what I presumed to be the official website and as of about 2 months ago stated that *extra* traction control systems are banned. This rule has been in place since the 1990s as far as I can tell. They then referred to an appendix I could not find, related to the regulated McLaren Electronics ECU I referred to earlier. I then looked up the McLaren site, but they were just as cagey about it. If you can do better, let me know.
FIA directors call a yellow/red flag every time it's wet these days, so I'm not sure where you saw wheelspin. Perhaps during those periods when they turned the system off and were trying to get heat into their tyres? I have seen that fairly recently.
We are obviously disagreeing on what constitues 'traction control'. I call it the same thing the ACO does, but apparently closed loop ECUs somehow don't count for many, so lets agree to disagree.
You are undoubtedly right on indycars/nascars TCS, but that ruling would be because they don't have to accelerate rapidly. Personally, I can handle no TCS, I don't like it, but considering I try to drive as if I don't have it anyway for efficiency and tyre wear, and I can't die, it's not a big deal.
ABS is a different matter though, and the true point of asking this question - Punters rarely notice TCS is enabled, but I get alot of sometimes rude comments about ABS being off, before they quit. It really seems like someone is propagating the idea that it is allowed in real life. No one as yet, has mentioned where this comes from.
A perhaps amusing story about how bad this is: Last week I was following a guy who kept smashing into walls on corner exits. Of course he was in the most powerful car he could find. His braking wasn't terrible, he wasn't overshooting enough to go off track much, but it was enough to wreck his racing line. He started to blame the lack of ABS, until I told him to turn his TCS up. I guess he didn't realise that while I can enable it, it's up to him to set it to the correct level.
Go figure.