Formula 1 – A Beginner’s Guide

Formula One racing has been growing in popularity in recent years, helped by the Netflix production Drive to Survive and the new Brad Pitt film F1: The Movie. What happens in the sport? Read on for an introduction to many things F1.

The field of cars is made up of 10 teams, with two cars and two drivers per team. Even though the driver’s number is somewhere on the car, it can be difficult to tell who is who. Luckily each car has a “T-camera” (named thusly due to its shape) behind the driver’s head. The camera is either black or bright yellow, and this differentiator stays the same for the entire season. So, at a glance, you could tell that the particular red Ferrari you see is either Charles Leclerc (black camera) or Lewis Hamilton (yellow camera).

Two other prominent roles are Team Principal and Race Engineer. The Team Principal is the boss of the team, sometimes he’ll get on the radio to the driver directly; usually he simply oversees all that goes on with the team. Some are more visible, like Christian Horner of Red Bull, or Toto Wolff of Mercedes. Others, such as Andrea Stella of McLaren, let the owner (Zak Brown) take the limelight. The Race Engineer tends to be heard more than seen – it is this person who is the direct contact with their driver, passing along crucial information and strategy calls, and listening to driver feedback. A team can have hundreds of employees, many of whom travel with the team, such as mechanics, pit crew, engineers, strategists, caterers, and more.

Currently F1 races at 24 tracks in a season. Some are purpose-built as race tracks (Austria, Belgium, Austin TX) and others are repurposed roadways, known as “street” tracks (Monaco, Azerbaijan, Miami). The race length is usually 1.5 to 2 hours long, and the distance is always (except for Monaco) the fewest number of laps to exceed 305 kilometers, or 189.5 miles. The cars’ speed in Monaco is slower than other races due to the tight nature of the streets, so that race distance is 260 km / 161.5 mi. Lap-wise this ranges from 50 (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) to 78 laps (Monaco). Since a race can be delayed due to weather or on-track accidents, there is also an upper limit of time, which is three hours.

The shape of the Formula One car is distinctive, with its front and rear wings and a somewhat teardrop shape when viewed from overhead. The front wing is like an airplane wing, but inverted – instead of providing lift, the wing helps pull the car to the ground, called logically “downforce.” The middle bulges, called sidepods, can contain various cooling equipment as well as small wings and vanes to help direct air around the car. The driver sits in almost a full recline; imagine sitting in a tub with your feet propped up, and that’s a close approximation! Since the wheels are exposed, this style of car is also called “open wheel” racing.

So, we’ve got the cars lined up in their boxes (the “grid”) and we’re ready to go – but there’s one last thing before the race proper, and that’s the “formation lap.” The cars go around the track once, the idea being the drivers can get some heat into their tires and brakes. These cars normally travel up to 200 miles an hour or more, so many components work better with greater heat. The formation lap is over, everyone is lined up in their grid boxes once more, and time for the countdown. Five red lights go on in sequence, then they all go out at once, and the race begins!

You’ll see up to five different colors of tire, weather depending. The softest compound tires have red stripes, the medium have yellow, and the hardest have white stripes. They have to use two different types in a race, so you might see cars start on the yellow mediums, then a third of the way through, pull into the pits and change to the white hards to last until the end of the race. The tires degrade slowly throughout the race, so sometimes teams will stop a second or third time for fresher tires. The last two tire colors only come in during wet conditions: the green-walled intermediates, and the blue-striped “full wets” or “extreme wets.” The full wets can push aside up to a bathtub’s worth of water per second, but are slower than intermediates (also called “inters”). Since the goal is to go fast, it’s a task for the strategists to decide which tire will be best for which conditions, juggling the trade-off between speed and degradation.

In order to help with passing, the rear wing of the car can open up, creating a gap to allow air to flow through, reducing downforce and drag, but increasing speed. This is called DRS, the Drag Reduction System, and can only be used at certain straight areas of the track, and under certain conditions. Before each DRS zone is an activation zone, and the following car must be under one second behind the car in front in order to trigger their DRS. Frequently you’ll see a line of cars all racing close enough to each other so they all can use this, and that’s known as a “DRS train.” In these situations, it can be difficult for cars to pass each other – but it does happen!

During the race you might see different color flags being waved about trackside (as well as flashing on an electronic board). The most common is the blue flag, which tells one driver that’s travelling a lap behind that a faster car is coming up behind them, and to let them pass. Normally those passes go smoothly – but if two slower cars are battling it out for position, they might be more concerned with their duel and not immediately move over, allowing other faster cars to catch up too. If the slower car doesn’t move over in due course, they could get a penalty, like five or ten seconds added to their time (and that could be the difference between scoring or not scoring points).

Hazards on the course can bring out yellow or red flags. A single yellow indicates caution, there could be debris on the track from a previous collision, or a car might have spun out. A waved, or double yellow, indicates a dangerous situation, like a crashed car on track. During a double yellow, cars must stay in their respective positions, no passing allowed. A red flag means a very serious accident, and that stops the race until the area is cleared and any barriers repaired. A red flag can also come out if rain becomes too heavy and it is deemed too dangerous to continue for the time being. In all of these cases, when it’s clear enough to resume racing, a green flag is flown.

There are other flags too: the checkered flag waved at the end of the race; the black and orange (nicknamed “the meatball”) in case a car has parts coming off and has to pit for repairs; and the red and yellow stripes, indicating localized dangerous track conditions such as an oil spill.

At the end of the race, points are awarded to the top 10 drivers: 25 for first place, 18 for second, and a sliding scale down to one point for 10th place. The top three are awarded trophies, stand on the podium and the anthem of the winning driver’s country is played, followed by his team’s national anthem. For example, George Russell wins, we hear the British anthem; he races for Mercedes, a German team, so we hear the German anthem next. Then comes the champagne!

All these points add up for two championships: the WDC or World Driver’s Championship, awarded to the driver finishing with the most points; and the WCC or World Constructor’s Championship, for the team that accumulated the highest points. While the WDC has more prestige, the money comes from the WCC standings at the end of the season. To balance things out, while the highest amount goes to the top team, scaling downward to the last team, development time such as wind tunnel hours or time spent with CFD (computational fluid dynamics) works in reverse. This enables the bottom teams to get more research for their next year’s car (although with less money, they’ll still have to budget things).

I hope you found this informative, and hope to see you at the track!

For further reading:

F1 Racing Confidential : inside stories from the world of Formula One by Giles Richards

Growing Wings : the inside story of Red Bull Racing by Ben Hunt

The Limit : life and death on the 1961 Grand Prix circuit by Michael Cannell

Formula One Racing for Dummies by Jonathan Noble (this was invaluable in writing this piece)

for younger readers:

Superfast Formula 1 Racing by Dustin Albino

Formula One Cars by John Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton by Ma Isabel Sánchez Vegara

and on DVD:

Senna, a biography of one of the great drivers

Jackie Stewart: Weekend of a Champion, where director Roman Polanski follows driver Jackie Stewart throughout the 1971 Monaco Grand Prix

1976: Hunt vs. Lauda, which follows James Hunt and Niki Lauda’s battles throughout the titular year

- Dennis, West Windsor Branch