Formula 1 is the pinnacle of Single Seater car racing for several reasons that will be covered in this series of posts. For now, let’s get you introduced to the sport itself, and yes, this is very much a sport and a very difficult one I may add.

Formula One Championship is a race among 10 teams with each team running 2 cars every season all season. The competition is two folds, a Constructor (team) championship and a Driver’s championship. The Championship is usually 20-24 races all around the world and it usually starts in March and ends in November of every year. When a driver wins a race, they accumulate points for themselves and their team. For instance, a race winner would earn 25 points and his team will earn the same number of points, so on and so forth.

The points System is as follows: The winner receives 25 points, the second-place finisher 18 points, with 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and 1 points for positions 3 through 10, respectively.

The sport is very popular due to many factors, but probably the main one, is that every race is run on a Sunday and almost at the exact same time, every Sunday (especially in Europe, where the sport was born). The sport is run by a governing body called FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) The FIA was established in 1904 and is based out of Paris, France.

The teams are allowed to design their cars and engines as they like provided they follow the Very Strict guidelines that the FIA provides. The guidelines include the car weight (that should not exceed a specific value including the driver), the height & width of the car among so many other technical specs. Also in recent years, the FIA is imposing a specific Ceiling for the team’s budget in an attempt to make the competition more interesting. Earlie in the days, budgets used to be open and the teams that had more money would be able to make much faster & reliable cars than the rest of the teams and that meant only 2 or 3 teams would be able to compete for the titles.

“An important point to note here is that all teams must use the tyres provided to them by the FIA. No team can use any other tyre.”

These rules make the competition so special because, come to think of it, you would see two teams, or more, having different car designs, different engines and of course different drivers and they end up doing a lap on the racetrack with a time difference of a few milliseconds. Which is 100 times faster than a blink of an eye. The average time to blink is 1/3 of a second, just FYI 😊.

Big teams like Ferrari or Mercedes design and manufacture their own Chassis and Engines, but other teams can opt to make their Chassis only and buy the engines from an engine supplier. Like Red Bull, for instance, who won the Drivers’ Championship in 2021 with a Honda Engine powering their car. The engine is often referred to as PU or the Power Unit.

The decision to be a customer for an Engine supplier is usually done due to budget constraints and the fact that so many teams would like to compete but can’t afford to build both (Car and Engine) if they are not a car manufacturer to start with.

So, let’s discuss how racing is done so you can enjoy your next race as much as I do:

Formula One races all start from what is called, a Standing Start, which means all cars line up in a specific order behind the starting line and they start racing as soon as the Red Lights go off.
This starting order in an F1 race is called the starting grid.

That order is determined by a Qualifying session that takes place on the Saturday before the race on Sunday.
The qualifying session is run as follows: All 20 cars do a timed lap on the racetrack and the bottom (slowest) 5 cars are out of next session and they start the race on Sunday in the order they finished at so the slowest at Position 20 (last on the grid).

This session is called Q1 and it is 18 minutes long. After a short brake Q2 starts with the same rules, but now we only have 15 cars and the bottom 5 take positions 11-15. A few minutes later Q3 starts, and this is usually the most important of all 3 sessions since this will determine the Pole Sitter (the car that start the race from P1, the Pole Position) The teams usually save new sets of tyres for this session (especially the top teams) to give their drivers the best possible chance to start at Pole Position.

Before the race starts and at a certain time slot that should not be exceeded all the cars make their way out of the Garage and onto the Grid and they take the spot they earned the day before during qualifying. A few minutes before the race the cars are started. All the cars have to be started by the Mechanics with an external starter, unlike conventional cars F1 cars don’t have a built-in starter.

After that all the mechanics and team members must leave the Grid and head back to the Pit. As soon as the teams move away the cars do one lap (called Formation Lap) and go all around the track to come back to the same spot on the grid and they need to stop at an exact mark (usually in yellow) for each grid location. (The front wheel can’t be ahead of the yellow line)

The red lights turn on one by one then all go off together and the most awaited second of the full weekend is here, all the engines roar and the cars race for the first corner. This is probably the highest risk time during the full race. You have 20 cars going full speed and trying to overtake each other on a very limited space. Quite often we see major accidents during lap 1 at the first corner.

We had plenty of that this past season 2021. Some of which was actually very dramatic and changed the championship standings.

If there are no accidents or the accidents did not leave cars stranded in the middle of the track or in safe spots, then the race continues. This is what all drivers want, and they go at it like crazy the first few laps. Some drivers would be on softer compound tyres (Red) and they would like to make up positions they did not manage during the qualifying and the ones on the harder compounds aiming to keep the other drivers behind so they can dictate the race strategy.

“The red lights turn on one by one then all go off together and the most awaited second of the full weekend is here”

After racing for 2 full laps the DRS is enabled!! So, what is DRS? DRS is short for Drag Reduction System. This is a part in the big Wing at the backside of the car. It is a Moving wing basically. When it is Open it makes the back side wing smaller in size and that means less drag (more speed) to overtake the cars in front. However, drivers can only use this system if they are within 1 second of the car ahead during a “detection zone” determined by FIA before the race. Usually there are 2 detection zones in each track.

The main idea behind introducing this system a few years back was also to make the race more fun to watch with more overtaking opportunities becoming possible due to the speed advantage this generates.

A rather technical but an important point to note here is about cars running behind each other’s.

When a car is running very close behind another car the one in the back is subject to turbulent air caused by the one ahead. The air coming from the car in front is usually hot (from the exhaust) and this causes a lot of problems for the car behind. Running in these conditions affects the car performance, increases the tyres degradation, and may cause the car to overheat which would drive the car performance down.

So, drivers usually try to use this DRS to overtake as soon as they possibly can.

Another factor that also is very key to overtaking is (the name of this page) Slipstream.

Slipstream meaning: When a car is driving down the track at a high speed it creates an area of lower pressure right behind it. When a chasing car is very close it can actually use this to its advantage and in the last possible split second overtake the car ahead.

This is very dangerous but the F1 drivers are not your usual racing drivers, and they perform this maneuver to perfection every time, I have never seen an accident happen due to this all the 40 years I have been following the sport. This is maybe my favorite part and when you are watching it feels like something actually pushed the car in the back to make the move.   

And since we are talking about drivers, it is worth it to mention that not any racing drive can get in an F1 car and race. They would need a Super Driving license issued to them and this is also done by the FIA.

During a race many issues can happen that would require the intervention of a Safety Car. The safety car can be Virtual (VSC), which means the drivers need to drop their speed by 40% and no racing and overtaking is allowed, and all cars stay in their respective track position. Or in case the problem on the track is significant (like a big accident with debris that needs clearing or fence mending, then a physical safety car is introduced to the track and all cars must drive behind it with no overtaking allowed.

Here comes a very tactical point. Under the safety car (if the pit lane is open, indicated by a Green Light sometimes it is closed indicated by Red Light) the cars are allowed to do a pit stop and change their tyres. This is something the strategy team decides on based on where their car is and would that benefit the car over all position in the race. Something worth noting here is that during the safety car a team can change their cars tyres and send the car back without losing too many track positions because all the other cars are running slowly behind the safety car.

If a car goes in for a pit stop, it then joins wherever position based on how quickly it was sent back to the track.

Before the race starts all the cars that have been lapped (they are one lap or more down on the track compared to the race leader) are supposed to unlap themselves, so they are asked by the race director to overtake all the cars ahead of them (this is indicated by a green light at the top of the safety car) and assume their track position as it was before the safety car.

This rule is designed so these (usually slower cars) would not actually ruin the race if they are one lap down and stay on the track in between cars that have lapped them already (much faster cars). So, in order to keep the race integrity and not ruin the opportunity for some of the faster cars these cars are asked to unlap themselves.

This is what happened and did not happen in full during the final race in Abu Dhabi last season. The Race director decided to only ask the 5 cars that were between the two title contenders (Max & Lewis) to unlap themselves and left the rest in the back. The reason is that these cars (the spirit of the rule) would have changed the race outcome, so by removing them he allowed racing to continue.

Mercedes on the other hand thought that was a breach to the rule and has contested the outcome.

The safety car is also used to check on the track before the start of the race or during rain to determine if the track is safe enough to race or not.”

Regardless of the outcome, this last season was one of the most fun to watch, it has been a very long time since we have seen two different teams compete this hard.

A witness to this is that both the drivers competing for the title reached Abu Dhabi race with the exact same points tally.

Another very important role for the safety car is when there is Rain on the track or the track is very wet.

If the race has not started yet and there is a lot of rain that makes a standing start very risky (lots of water kicked up by the tyres so the drivers cant see properly) the race director may opt to do a rolling start.

All the cars are asked to drive around the track behind the Safety Car while its lights are flashing, this would continue until racing is deemed safe on the track. Then the flashing light at the top of the safety car will go off and the safety car would exit the track and all the cars has to follow the race leader (or the car that was in P1 at the grid) till the start finish line then racing can begin.

The safety car is also used to check on the track before the start of the race or during rain to determine if the track is safe enough to race or not.

Since safety is a very important issue, there is always a Medical Car also available on the track and it would be deployed immediately if there was an accident that may include any injury. The medical car has a doctor always onboard and will be attending to the driver incase needed.

There is also a medical center on each track that all drivers get taken to incase they were involved in an accident, and they are checked immediately and if there is any need for further medical checks, the tracks are all provided with Helicopters that can lift the driver to a dedicated hospital within a short flight that is not longer than 20 minutes if I remember correctly.

If the weather is bad enough for the helicopter to fly, the race would not start or would be stopped until it is clear enough to safely fly any injured person from the track.