Formula 1- The Pinnacle of Motorsport.

From cars racing at speeds up to 320 km/hr to changing all four tires within a span of 2-3 seconds, from milliseconds deciding the fate of your race to winning the race at the last turn, the last corner, Formula 1 is one of the greatest sights to behold in motorsport racing. Arguably, the greatest. I'm a fan, so I might have biased opinions but I'll try to speak facts here.

"Formula 1 is just cars driving around in circles", which is what a lot of people like to say.

Let's change their opinions.

Formula 1 originated in 1950, from the European Motor Racing Championships held in the 1920s to 1930s. The first Formula one race was held at a British circuit, Silverstone making England the birthplace of the sport. It has evolved ever since and has only got better each year. Today, the cars and the drivers compete at various purpose-built circuits or closed roads, better known as street circuits, all around the globe. Ten teams compete with each other at these circuits throughout the year, each team having two drivers. Twenty drivers overall and the teams also have some reserve drivers ( substitutes, as some football fans would like to call it, except that they don't substitute very often ). The races are known as Grands Prix and the championship standings are measured in points. Only the drivers who finish in the top ten score points. 25 points for first place, 18 for second, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, and 1 for the ten positions respectively. If a driver does not finish in the top ten, it's basically a certificate of participation (obviously kidding, they compete for positions after the 10th too). These points measure individual drivers' performance in one of the two championships that the sport has. One is the drivers' championship and the other is the constructors' championship ( for the teams ). The points system is the same for both championships but in the constructors' championship, the overall points scored by both drivers are considered. So, for the teams, quite logically, it is really important that both the drivers secure good positions. The present-day teams are Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes AMG, Alpine, Aston Martin, McLaren, Haas, Alfa Romeo, Alphatauri, and Williams. The drivers are Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez, Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz, Lewis Hamilton, George Russell, Pierre Gasly, Esteban Ocon, Fernando Alonso, Lance Stroll, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Kevin Magnussen, Nico Hulkenberg, Nyck de Vries, Yuki Tsunoda, Logan Sargeant, and Alex Albon. Quite a long list, I know.

Formula 1 is not as easy as everyone thinks. Except for the obvious factor which is racing, there are a lot of other things involved like pit-stop strategies, tire management strategies, managing the engines, gearboxes, and other parts as the teams are assigned limited parts, and so on. To look after the overall performance of the team and make sure everything is going smoothly and the way they want is the job of the team principal. The team principal is basically the manager of the team. Everything that happens in the team, goes through them. Besides, they have very important tasks during the race like reviewing possible strategies and talking to different people from the pit wall (Air traffic control towers for formula one maybe you could say?) and choosing the best possible options for the drivers and the team. The strategists, very obviously, come up with tire and pit stop strategies for the race depending on the track conditions.

Structure or a grand prix.

All formula one races happen on a weekend. That is such good news. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are the three days. On Fridays, there are two practice sessions FP1, and FP2, each lasting an hour. These practice sessions are for the drivers to get to know the track and try on different tire compounds. They can be regarded as minor tests before the major test which is the race. On Saturday, there is qualifying. Qualifying decides the order in which the drivers will start the race on Sunday. They have three Qualifying sessions to prove themselves, Q1, Q2, and Q3. In a qualifying session, the drivers set times around the track. The driver with the fastest time is on top and the other drivers are arranged in descending order. In the first qualifying session, Q1, the last five drivers, from 15th to 20th positions are eliminated. Then in Q2, the next five drivers from 10th to 15th are eliminated. Q3 decides the starting order for the top 10 drivers. Each session lasts 15 minutes. Qualifying is very important. If you have the fastest time, you start the race in first position. You are said to be on pole. In street circuits like Monaco, overtaking is almost impossible because of the narrow track. So, the position you secure in qualifying is the position you finish the race in, 99% of the times. Sunday, is race day. The drivers and the teams give it all. They implement everything they have learned in the past two days through different strategies and try to secure the best position possible.

What are these strategies?

We'll start with tire management strategies. Basically, formula one has five different tire compounds. Softs, Mediums, Hards, Wets, and Intermediates (Inters). The soft tires are the fastest but they don't last very long, hard tires are the slowest and you guessed it, they last longer. The medium compound tires lie in between, the wets and inters are used when it's raining for better grip. Based on how long the race is and how many laps the drivers have to do, there are one-stop and two-stop strategies. The tire management strategies also depend on the track conditions and the tire compound that gives the drivers more confidence is selected. Sometimes, the whole grid (all the drivers) is on one set of compound tires, suppose mediums, and some teams might gamble and select a different tire compound. It might or might not work out which is the job of the strategists. The tires degrade after some time and the degradation depends on the conditions, so the drivers lose some speed and control over the car. Well, that's not good. So, the drivers pit to change their tires. To Pit or to "box" is known for coming into the pitlane to change the tires. Come on, it's a noun. Can't really explain a noun, can I? So now, we move on to the pit-stop strategies.

As I mentioned, the number of laps decides the whether the drivers have to stop once or twice to change the tires. So, the race is called a one-stopper or a two-stopper. Now, the drivers can't come in whenever they want, can they? The pit lane has a speed limit. No more than 60 km/hr. Going from 300 km/hr to 60km/hr, you're definitely going to lose time and track positions. As I mentioned, in Formula one, races can be lost and won by milliseconds. So losing time does not sound like a great option. Luckily, most of the drivers face the same tire degradation and have to come in to change tires at about the same time. So, it opens a pit window. During that pit window, the drivers change their tires and carry on. With new, fresher tires, you gain some extra speed over people with older tires. So it's an advantage. This brings us to basically two strategies to get ahead of your rivals. Undercut and overcut. When you are competing with someone, you have two options. Pit before your rival or pit after. When you pit before your rival does, it's called an undercut. What happens is, you lose some positions because you pitted but now you are on faster and fresher tires so you can gain those positions. Additionally, your rival hasn't pitted yet, so when he finally pits, you can pass him as he will also lose positions. When that happens, we say that the undercut worked. You were behind your rival and you've just passed him without racing. An overcut is when you decide to pit after your rival and gain some advantage over him. Sometimes, when the driver you are rooting for is far behind first place, or maybe the position you want him to finish at. You've lost all hope, only a miracle could help you now. Exactly, SAFETY CAR ALERT!!! About the technical reasons first, a safety car basically comes in when there has been a crash or there is a car stationary on track. There are tons of other rules to that, we'll save them for later. But, when the safety car comes out on track, the cars have to slow down, no overtaking is allowed and the pack comes closer. All the cars can now see each other. This continues while the Marshalls clear the debris on track or recover the car. After the track is clear, the safety car comes in and the race restarts. All hope springs back to life, the drivers can now see each other. The gap is closed and overtaking becomes more possible. People hope for a safety car so that their driver gets another chance.

All of this is achieved with flags. You might've seen in movies the chequered flag that is waved at the end of the race. In formula one, there are a lot of flags. Yellow flags signify danger or threat or potentially, a slow car on the track. A Red flag means the race has been brought to a standstill and the cars return to the pitlane and garages. Usually, red flags are waved when there has been a massive accident or extreme weather conditions and very low visibility. The other flags are the blue flag meaning give way to a driver who is faster than you and a lap ahead, the green flag meaning the race is resumed, white and black flags, white flags, black flags with an orange dot and so on.

That is almost all the information you will need to get into the world of formula one. There are a lot of other things like team budgets, cost caps, off-season development, silly season, winter break, and numerous other terms. The budget that each team has is massive. Not all the teams have the same budget, it depends on where the team finished last season. So, this implies that not all the teams have the same cars. The cars and their performances are different for different teams. So, formula one is not only about getting the best drivers possible but also getting the best car and the best engineers. It is also a competition for who makes better racecars. Hence, the constructor's championship. I'll get to the economic and historical part of Formula one in a different blog. Also, the team management. Overall, it's a lethal business. If you don't perform, you're out. Only 20 drivers in the world drive those cars on circuits. That definitely says something. The sport is also very physical. The drivers don't just sit around in the car and drive normally. Driving at such great speeds means that the drivers have to experience some brutal forces due to sudden turns and brakes. It's like when a bus suddenly turns and you experience a force. It's measured in G's. Formula one drivers pull almost 5 to 6 G's while taking turns, and they do that 10 to 15 times on average, as there are 10 to 15 turns on each track. Some tracks have a lot more turns, I'm talking on average. For comparison, a normal car will never exceed 2 G's of force. One G is basically you experiencing your own weight. 5 G's mean that your body experiences 5 times your weight and it is one hell of a workout. The drivers lose 5 to 6 pounds just by driving each race. That is crazy enough.

In recent years, Formula 1 has grown immensely due to the Netflix Docuseries, Drive to Survive. The number of fans has increased exponentially and it continues to attract more people. It will soon be one of the most viewed sporting events in the history of mankind. All I have to say is that the sport is absolutely amazing. And for people who don't believe it's a sport, they can go watch Dora, the Explorer.

-Prathamesh Kapse

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