A beginner's guide to Formula1

Formula1 also known as F1 is the pinnacle of motorsport. It is where the world's best 20 drivers and some of the best manufacturers compete at the highest level to emerge as the champions. Though this sport has been in existence since 1946, it is now that it is gaining momentum across the globe, all thanks to Netflix's docudrama Drive to Survive. Although this sport is about 20 cars and drivers racing each other on various tracks around the world, that's just not what Formula1 is about. There are a lot of nuances and technicalities behind the sport, which makes it a bit difficult for new fans to comprehend and enjoy it in its full glory. Today we are trying to solve this very problem and break it down thereby easing the entry barrier.

Heads up! This is a long read!

Teams and Drivers

Formula1 as of today (July 2022) has ten teams competing for the World Constructors' Championship (also knows as WCC), and each team has their pair of rock star drivers who compete for the World Drivers' Championship (also known as the WDC). So that's ten teams and 20 drivers in total.

Teams

Now let's discuss teams. The teams in F1 range from some prestigious automakers in the world like Ferrari and Mercedes to energy drink companies like Red Bull or even fashion outlets like Benetton(in the past). The teams take the responsibility of building a competitive car that the drivers can drive around the circuit in circles. While each team follows their own organisation hierarchy, generally the racing team is head by the Team Principal who oversees the entire operations of the team. A team comprises men and women from various disciplines like engineering, mechanics, media, commercial, and of course the drivers trying to ace their games. We only see a very small fraction of the team members during the grand prix (a fancy name for a race, referred as GP on many occasions), who are trackside. Majority of the engineering personnel and strategists who are fundamental in designing a race worthy car and winning races with the available machinery are sitting away in factories at the bases, watching and helping their hard work pay off. This is a sport where microseconds matter, hence the teams are in continuous pursuit for the few extra tenths by constantly learning the cars, improving operations and bringing in upgrades. The team hardly rests!

Drivers

Drivers are the rock stars of the Formula1 paddock. They come through a rigorous vetting process since their junior careers to reach their dream, F1 (well, let's not discuss pay drivers here, that for another rant). Drivers realize the potential of the machinery they drive. Successful drivers in history are the ones who could eke out the last bit that their machinery can offer and out drive it. While drivers alone cannot win championships, drivers do make a difference in F1.

A typical race weekend

The traveling circus, as Formula1 is often referred to, goes around various countries across the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe to race around in the various circuits. These races happen on Sundays, but there is so much action that happens even before the race. This 2022 season F1 plans to race in 23 such circuits, and that's 23 weekends in a year!

The Warmup

The weekend starts on a Wednesday when the teams arrive at the circuit. They then unpack and setup their motor homes. It is from here they build the cars and operate through the entire weekend.

On Thursday the teams build their cars and showcase the changes they have brought in their cars, these can be aero updates to improve the performance in general or updates specific to the nature of the circuit, juggling between downforce, top-speed and reliability. Along with this the Team Principals and the drivers appear in front of the media to answer the burning questions and speculations that the paparazzi bring.

Free Practice Friday

Fridays are for practice in general. Free Practice-1 starts Friday mornings local time. The teams test out the various upgrades they have brought and correlate the same with the simulator findings. Sim drivers employed by each team, drive a virtual GP circuit to understand the car's behavior in advance. The drivers then validate the setups based on the sim and make further changes based on their driving styles and feedback from the car. FP2 occurs during the afternoon, and since qualifying and race happens around the same time on Saturday and Sunday respectively, FP2 is all about collecting data on qualifying and race performances and making the required changes to maximize the outputs.

Qualifying

Saturdays host FP3, where the teams can further refine the setups after getting on top of the data from Friday to get ready for Qualifying, that follows. Qualifying is a process of deciding the starting grid for the race. All 20 cars are evaluated for single lap pace, the slowest five cars will be eliminated during Q1 and Q2 respectively. The remaining 10 cars take part in Q3 to determine the starting order for Sunday, the fastest car starting from the front of the grid also known as pole. Post qualifying all cars enter parc fermé conditions, which means no changes can be made to the car till the end of the race. In the event of any damage, like-for-like parts can be replaced. No other structural or setup changes can be done.

Race

Sundays are the final showdown, and this is where it all counts as race wins bring in the world championship points. The winner takes home 25 points while the car in 10th position takes home 1 point, no points are awarded for the cars that finish beyond 10th . There is an additional 1 point for fastest lap, provided a car in the top ten positions holds it.

Recent changes to the format

Although the above has been the general weekend structure, F1 has brought some slight changes to the weekend structure, in 3 circuits this year. This change replaces FP2 on Friday with a Qualifying that decides the starting grid for a Sprint race(a 100 km race where pit stops are not mandatory) on Saturday. The result of the sprint race will be the starting order for Sunday's race. The top eight finishers in a sprint get points starting with 8 for the winner and 1 for the car that comes eighth. Many new fans are liking this, while the older ones are not favorable towards this change from F1.

The Constants and the Variables

Like any other sport in existence F1 has its own constants and variables.

Constants

Constants constitute the common items across all team. These include rules, regulations, directives, track limits, penalties and so on.

Regulations

All teams have to build a car following the regulations shared by F1. It is surprising to see how each team interprets the regulations and build very different cars. The team that does a better job is normally ahead of the pack. Regulations also define the fuel composition to be used by the teams, homologation windows for various components, a $145 million budget cap per team among many other things.

Tires

All teams will be supplied the same number of tires across three different tire compounds soft, medium, and hard from a pool of tires from Pirelli. Pirelli's pool of tires have 5 compounds, namely C1 to C5, C1 being the hardest to C5 being the softest. Three consecutive compounds will be chosen for a race based on the circuit by Pirelli. It is left to the teams to use the tires effectively to ace their strategies. Intermediates and Wet tires will be provided as well in the event of wet sessions.

Others

Few track specific rules like track limits, pit lane speed limits and other penalties like engine and controlled parts penalties etc. are also common across all the teams.

Variables

Few key variables in F1 are as follows.

Cars

The teams build the cars within the limits of the regulations, some get it right and some terribly wrong. The right ones fight for the championships while the rest try to pick up the crumbs. Not all teams on the grid are from the automobile industry and hence they buy their engines from other teams within F1 who make such engines. Engines are another factor along with aero that determines the car's position in the field.

The Weather

Unlike other sports, a rainy weather doesn't halt the race. Instead, it spices up things more. Rains bring in unpredictability and can ruin race strategies. A strong gust of wind can push the car out of the track and cause a crash. A hot weather means higher tire degradation there by make strategies tumble.

Strategies

Each car has to make one mandatory pit stop during a race and change to an unused tire compound. However, there are many factors that can ruin a race just by stopping at the wrong time. Strategists take various decisions during the race, which are sometimes passed to the drivers through their race engineers. Collectively they decide the right time to pit, push, tire compounds to change into and so on.

Fuel

While F1 decides the fuel composition, the teams research and develop their own fuel by tying up with petroleum companies. This also changes the engine performance there by influencing the results.

Team Budget

Team budgets depend on the corporations behind the teams. A smaller operating budget means less updates and new parts to improve the car. At the same time the larger teams with deep pockets keep improving their cars, which is a differentiator during the closing stages of the championships. It also enables/disables the team to employ cutting edge technologies depending on the cash at their disposal.

Drivers

Of course the list is never complete without the drivers. The bigger teams are able to attract star drivers with attractive perks and a stronger car. Drivers are in the lookout for the best drive they can get, to win races and world championships.

The Race

The race is the main event of a grand prix weekend. It's the ultimate shootout between the teams and drivers to make the maximum possible points. The race runs for around 2 hours and the cars go round in the circuits lap after lap, and the total number of laps change as per the circuits. Never miss the lap one in a F1 race, it produces some of the best entertainment, when everyone goes all out to make up the positions they lost during qualifying, leading to epic moves and crashes and drama. The drivers need to survive lap 1 to race further.

Races are not just won on pure pace, strategies, fuel management, tire management, driving styles everything carries its own weightage. Teams acing every detail come out victorious. And they do a lot of planning prior to the race, rehearsing and planning for every possible scenario out there. There have been races where strategies won races than outright pace.

Pit Stops

Every car in a race must run two different tire components. This forces teams to make one pit stop at the very least per car. Cars run as slow as 80 km/h in the pit lane, there by losing time and ground to the ones on the track. Effective pit stops help in getting the car out on the right tire at the right time and make a difference. Pit stops are a very important part of strategies.

Flags

F1 is a dangerous sport, and hence safety is of prime importance. There are a multitude of flags in the sport that convey various messages to the drivers and the spectators.

While this is not the complete list of flags, it is a good place to start.

Safety cars

In the event of an incident during the race, the race control deploys VSC—Virtual Safety Car or SC—Safety Car to tackle the situation. A Safety Car is another vehicle that leads the pack, guiding the race cars behind in an event affected race, like bad weather or racing incidents like crashes, cars stopped on track etc. No overtaking is allowed under a safety car. When the safety car ends all the lapped cars are let to overtake the safety car and join the race in their definitive order. That brings all the cars closer together and neutralizes the time advantage the race leaders had. Safety cars influence race strategies a lot.

A VSC is deployed when the actions required at the track needs the cars to slow down, but not necessarily demand a full SC. In the case of a VSC all cars need to run at reduced speeds(40% slower) with no overtakes.

Few Common Terminologies

Let's discuss few common terminologies spoken by long time viewers and commentators alike during the race.

DRS

Aka Drag Reduction System is available to the drivers' disposal once race control activates it. This system enables the drivers to open a flap on the rear wing of their cars at specific portions of a track when they are within one second from the car ahead in the detection zone. Activating DRS reduces the drag effect and provides a speed boost, which could help with overtaking.

When a train of cars has DRS on one another, it is normally referred as DRS train.

Slicks

The normal dry tire compounds are called slicks. Drivers change from wet weather tires to dry tires when the track dries up and the term slick is normally used in a wet race.

Deg

This refers to the tire degradation in a particular car.

Wheel Spin

Tires can only provide so much grip, so when an engine supplies more power than the tires' surface can 'hold on' to, then wheel spins occur.

Downforce

Downforce is a measure of how much vertical aerodynamic load is created by a Formula 1 car's aerodynamic surfaces. At high speed the downforce created by airflow around the body of an F1 car will be far in excess of its weight. Theoretically this so big in number that, it would even allow the cars to drive along the ceiling of a tunnel.

MGU-K

Motor Generator Unit – Kinetic. The kinetic energy through braking is lost as it becomes thermal energy through brakes units. With a Hybrid system, this lost energy is recovered by the unit as electrical energy and stored in the battery, which can then be used to power the motor during acceleration. Maximum revolutions are limited to 50,000 rpm and output to 120 kW. When powering the F1 machine by using electrical energy stored in the battery it adds 15.7 HP to the engine.

MGU-H

Motor Generator Unit – Heat. It captures thermal energy generated from the engine’s exhaust. Hot exhaust from the engine’s combustion chamber is normally lost via the exhaust pipe. The thermal energy recovery system reuses this thermal energy to generate electricity.

Unlike the MGU-K, F1 regulations do not place energy usage restrictions on the MGU-H. Electricity generated by the MGU-H may be fed directly into the MGU-K, effectively bypassing the MGU-K restrictions and tapping the full power.

ERS

The energy flow is controlled by a computer known as the ERS (Energy Recovery System). It is the brains of the power unit, and its software determines how ell the engine and the two MGU’s perform under rapidly changing environment and driving conditions. The ERS control unit includes AC/DC and DC/AC converters to convert electricity between battery and MGU-K/MGU-H. Deploying the stored energy for additional horsepower during overtakes is called battery deployment. The process of charging up the batteries is called harvesting. One could see that a car is harvesting energy by the blinking red lights behind the car, and cars are subtly slower during this state.

Post Race

The top three drivers are escorted to the podium along with a team member from the winning team. The trophies will be presented along with champagnes. Both the winning driver's and team's national anthems will be played during the award ceremony. Meanwhile the teams would be in the process of packing up and transporting the various components to the factory/the circuit that follows. Hence the name, the traveling circus.

Championships

At the end of the year, the team, and the driver who holds the maximum number of points are crowned the constructors' and drivers' champions respectively. The prize money payout for the teams depend on their championship standings.

Though this has been a long read, I hope this brings you one step closer towards F1, a sport I love and enjoy. I may have missed many details here, but this wasn't aimed to be an user manual, only a beginner's guide. Want to know what to do next? Checkout the below links for some great content related to F1.

F1 Official website

2022 Driver Standings

2022 Constructors Standings

The Race for some crisp and in-depth analysis on F1.