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Anatomy of a Race Weekend

Qualifying

Starting

Pit Stop Strategy

Keeping Score

Drivers’ versus Constructors’ Championships

The Appliance of Science

Glossary

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ANATOMY OF A RACE WEEKEND

Like any good story, a race has a beginning, a middle, and an end. At the close of play, the driver who has covered the most distance in the shortest time is the winner; a checkered flag is waved at them as they cross the finishing line, arms aloft in victory, and they proceed from there to collect their trophy and a bottle of sparkling wine.

This story has an extended prologue, though. The team equipment arrives several days earlier, either via charter jet or by road, depending on how far away from home base the race is. At European rounds, the kit includes vast motorhomes that the teams use as operational hubs for their staff over the weekend. These might require up to five trucks just to carry all the pieces, which are assembled long before the action begins and then stripped and packed once the flag has fallen.

The Thursday before, the race is given over to media time, as journalists, photographers, and TV camera crews from all over the world charge from one interview slot to another in pursuit of a story. Formula 1 might take up just twenty or so of the weekends in a year, but in the age of the Internet its news agenda is a 24/7 monster that demands incessant feeding.

Drivers, naturally, look forward to Friday, when track activity begins with two 90-minute practice sessions. Each team arrives with a plan to make the most of this time; most drivers won’t need to learn the circuit, but they do need to cultivate an understanding of how the car behaves in changing conditions. They may try to fine-tune it to find more speed—an F1 car’s suspension is much more adjustable than a road car’s—but this time is devoted primarily to getting the best out of the tires.

On Saturday, another hour of practice takes place before qualifying begins—a crucial period that determines the starting order for the race.

FUN FACT

First practice for the Singapore Grand Prix is the only track session of that weekend to be held in daylight.

HISTORICAL TIDBIT

In 1985, the Belgian Grand Prix was cancelled after the practice sessions and rescheduled for later in the year. The track had been resurfaced with a new type of high-grip asphalt that began to break up. After protests from the drivers, the race was called off at 8:00 p.m. on the Saturday.

KEY PERSON

Former race engineer Laurent Mekies is the FIA’s recently appointed F1 deputy race director, responsible (among other tasks) for making sure race weekends run smoothly.

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QUALIFYING

The all-important process of setting the race’s starting order has changed a great deal over the years—even more so in the past couple of decades, as it has become a television spectacle in itself.

The starting grids for prewar events were often determined by drawing lots. But this opened the problem of how to weed out less-than-serious competitors in a transparent and meritocratic way, especially if there were too many entries. Ranking the drivers in order of times set during practice, with the fastest starting at the front (and a cutoff point beyond which the slowest were excluded), was the obvious solution.

In the immediate postwar era, all laps in practice counted, but as F1 evolved as a spectator sport, specific qualifying sessions became part of the crowd-pleasing package. Until 1996, these were split into two sessions—one on Friday, the other on Saturday—with a driver’s fastest time overall setting their place in the starting order.

Since then, the qualifying format has been altered regularly, usually with the specific aim of making it must-watch television. The challenge here is that the perfect qualifying lap is an individual feat, best accomplished when no other cars are around to get in the way.

There have been plenty of false steps and reversions, but the present setup has been relatively stable since 2006. The single qualifying session is now split into three phases. In the first, which lasts 18 minutes, all twenty drivers have to set a time, and at the end of it the five slowest are eliminated. In the second, which lasts 15 minutes, the remaining drivers run again and then the slowest five are dropped, leaving ten to contest the final 10 minutes.

A tactical wrinkle here is that everyone who makes it through to the final stage must start the race on the set of tires they used to set their quickest time in the second phase. Everyone else gets a free choice.

FUN FACT

Among the shortest-lived changes to the qualifying format—and certainly the most hated—was the “countdown” elimination format introduced at the beginning of the 2016 season. It was dropped after one race.

HISTORICAL TIDBIT

In 2004, all of Saturday’s track activities at the Japanese Grand Prix had to be cancelled because of a typhoon passing through the area. Qualifying had to be held early on the Sunday morning.

KEY PERSON

Sebastian Vettel currently holds the record for setting the most pole positions in one season—fifteen in nineteen races, set during the 2011 season.

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STARTING

As the seconds tick past before the race starts, a driver’s heart rate can spike to over 180 beats per minute. The stakes are high: a mistake at this point might scupper any good work done in qualifying, or cause a crash that could put the driver out of the race. A great deal of energy is about to be unleashed.

The work begins several minutes before the start itself, as the drivers work through a very specific set of procedures to get ready for the off. Having parked on the grid in qualifying order, the whole field undertakes a formation lap; this gives them the opportunity to work some heat into the tires and adjust the various electronic settings on the steering wheel, ensuring the car itself is set up for the start. Although traction and launch control systems are banned, engine modes are available to give power and torque delivery that will suit a getaway from a standing start.

Likewise, a rule introduced in 2016 banning twin-clutch systems put more of the onus on the drivers to get the start right.

From a booth overlooking the grid, the FIA’s race director decides when the drivers are ready and manually activates the final part of the start procedure on his console. This illuminates one by one a set of five red lights on a gantry facing the drivers. And then, after a short but randomly determined pause, the control mechanism extinguishes the lights all at once. This is the signal to go.

In the cockpit, the driver has been holding his foot on the accelerator to keep the engine running at the optimum number of revs. It’s up to him to react as quickly as possible as the lights go out, then balance clutch and throttle to get as much go-forward as possible without spinning the wheels.

The next thing to worry about is when to brake for the first corner.

FUN FACT

Sensors in the track surface automatically detect anyone moving before the lights go out.

HISTORICAL TIDBIT

One of the worst false starts in F1 history was at Monza in 1978. It resulted in the death of Lotus driver Ronnie Peterson, and it was caused by human error. The starter gave the signal to go before the entire field had lined up on the grid, leading to a huge crash at the first corner.

KEY PERSON

Former Brabham mechanic Charlie Whiting is the FIA’s race director and safety delegate. He is responsible for activating the start procedure at every Grand Prix.

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PIT STOP STRATEGY

You could run an entire Formula 1 race without any of the drivers making a pit stop. The cars don’t have to refuel anymore, and it would be easy to make tires that last a full Grand Prix distance.

Strategy makes the racing more interesting, though, which is why the tires are specially designed to offer a range of tradeoffs between grip and lifespan.

The basic strategic play in F1 is called the “undercut.” Here you look to overtake the car ahead by pitting first, then using your fresh tires to set a series of fast laps. This means that, when your rival makes his own stop, he’ll emerge behind you.

Sound easy? Well, going as fast as possible after your stop depends on leaving the pits with a clear track ahead. Getting stuck behind a slower car will spoil the strategy, so teams monitor all the cars via GPS to get a picture of who will be where at the crucial moment.

Tire choice—how many of each type you bring and when you use them—adds an extra layer of complication and is the key to an effective strategy. Pirelli, F1’s sole tire supplier, offers a family of five dry-weather rubber compounds: ultra-soft, super-soft, soft, medium, and hard.

In theory, the softest tires offer the most grip but have the shortest life, while hard tires last longer but provide less grip. Pirelli nominates three types for every circuit, and then the teams have to choose how many of each they want, out of a maximum of thirteen sets per driver, which must last them the whole weekend.

In a dry race, each driver must use at least two different tire compounds, which means making at least one pit stop. How many they actually make is up to them: the speed gain from softer rubber might outweigh the time lost through making more pit stops.

FUN FACT

Refueling used to determine the length of a pit stop. Since it was banned, pit crews have turned to a combination of technology and sport science to speed up the wheel-change process. The official pit stop record, held jointly by the Red Bull and Williams teams, is 1.92 seconds.

HISTORICAL TIDBIT

Lewis Hamilton moved from McLaren to Mercedes for the 2013 season, but suffered a brief moment of brain fade during the Chinese Grand Prix and pulled up in the McLaren pit box. The bemused mechanics waved him on.

KEY PERSON

Ross Brawn was the technical director of the Benetton team when refueling was introduced in 1994. He caught on to the idea of the “undercut” much faster than his rivals, sometimes putting less fuel in for a shorter, faster pit stop.

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KEEPING SCORE

Even after nearly seventy years, the Formula 1 World Championship’s scoring system remains a work in progress. But it’s a lot simpler than it used to be.

Unlike, say, NASCAR, where points are awarded all the way down to the minor placings, it’s been a key principle in F1 from the start that points should be valuable and hard to obtain.

From 1950 to 1959, points were awarded from first to fifth place. That number has gradually increased, albeit at a glacial pace—the top ten now get points on a scale of 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-3-2-1, but only since 2010.

As with so many of the changes made to the sporting side of F1, television, commerce, and technology have been the key motivators here. The modern system has to be transparent, easy to calculate, and readily understood by viewers. It also has to provide an incentive to push hard for the best results rather than stealthily banking points. Ideally, so as not to leave the last few races as dead rubbers, the championship should go right down to the wire.

Since 1991, the result of every race has counted toward both the drivers’ and the constructors’ championships. Before then, various dropped-score systems prevailed, in which only a certain number of a driver’s best results counted toward the final tally. For a few years, there was even a point awarded for setting the fastest lap.

A certain logic applied here: in the early years of the championship, there was no guarantee that every driver or team would or could participate in every round, and cars were far less reliable than they are today. Now the teams are contractually obligated to run at every round or risk being booted out of the championship entirely.

FUN FACT

Because of the dropped-score system of the time—only the best six results counted—Jim Clark scored the maximum possible points when he won the title for Lotus in 1963 and 1965. He actually won seven races in 1963.

HISTORICAL TIDBIT

In a misguided attempt to raise the stakes, double points were awarded in the final race of the 2014 season, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Purists hated the idea. Fortunately, it didn’t influence the outcome of the title chase: race winner Lewis Hamilton would have been the champion with or without double points.

KEY PERSON

As F1’s “ringmaster” until early 2017, Bernie Ecclestone has been the driving force behind most of the changes to the scoring system since 1991.

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MANUFACTURERS’ vs. DRIVERS’ CHAMPIONSHIPS

Which of the two titles is the most significant? The answer depends on who you ask.

To most F1 fans, it’s not a question at all. The drivers’ title is the most important and that’s that. You could argue, too, that the wider world shares this point of view: when you hear about the result of a race on the news, the name of the driver usually leads. The identity of the constructor is only cited to lend context and is rarely treated as something of interest in itself.

Some fans follow teams rather than drivers—perhaps the price of merchandise is partly to blame for that. For the most part, though, the human factor trumps the mechanical in the affections of the masses.

Commercially, the constructors’ title assumes a far greater significance, and it can make or break careers. The trophy was first awarded in 1958 as part of a concerted effort to charm teams and manufacturers into a formula that had endured a shaky start. The first two years of the championship had been dominated by prewar machinery, and the dearth of new F1 cars led to it being open only to Formula 2 cars in 1952 and 1953. New engine rules from 1954 on stimulated interest, but F1 was still a sticky commercial pitch for years after that.

More pressingly, in the modern era a team’s position in the constructors’ standings at the end of the year determines their share of the prize pot. This unlocks revenues worth tens of millions of dollars—so, if you were to ask a team principal which of the two championships is the most significant . . .

FUN FACT

You might imagine that, every year, the champion driver would be in a car made by the champion constructor, but on ten occasions they haven’t.

HISTORICAL TIDBIT

McLaren hammered Ferrari by 143.5 points to 57.5 in the 1984 constructors’ standings, but the McLaren drivers—Niki Lauda and Alain Prost—were separated by the narrowest margin of all time: half a point. Prost missed out because the Monaco Grand Prix, which he won, was stopped early because of rain, and half points were awarded.

KEY PERSON

The late Enzo Ferrari’s eponymous team is the most successful of all time, with sixteen Constructors’ Championships at the time of writing.

THE APPLIANCE OF SCIENCE

Picking the right moment to make a pit stop isn’t a matter of guesswork. In effect, when a driver comes into the pits, he is giving up track position. For this reason, teams have to keep an eye on which cars are ahead of their drivers, especially backmarkers who might slow them down either before or after the stop. Any delay could prove costly—the outcome of the 2017 Australian Grand Prix was decided when Lewis Hamilton pitted from the lead and then emerged behind Max Verstappen, who held him up for several laps. Hamilton eventually finished second.

Teams have evolved sophisticated strategic tools to help them track their own performance, measure it in real time against what their opponents are doing, and then use that intelligence proactively to make decisions that can shape the outcome of the race. The key to success here is the tradeoff between richness and simplicity: a race is a constantly changing environment, and team strategists must be able to absorb both the big picture and the granular detail at a glance.

This technology has great potential in other fields. The McLaren team, for instance, has been working with London’s Heathrow airport to adapt their race strategy tools into a system that can help air and ground traffic controllers optimize the flow of aircraft.

GLOSSARY

DEGRADATION

On your road car, you generally change your tires when—or shortly before—the outer layer of rubber wears out. F1 tires rarely reach this point. When drivers and engineers talk about “degradation,” they mean that the tire has lost its ability at the chemical level to grip the track surface. As a rule of thumb, the softer the rubber compound, the more chemical grip it offers, but the quicker it loses that grip—while still having plenty of material left on the outer casing.

PIT STOPS

Both an essential process and a tactical move, a pit stop represents the peak of team activity: getting it right demands perfect synchronization between the driver and his pit crew, and the right calls from the engineers on the pit wall. For safety, the pit lane is segregated from the main part of the circuit and is subject to a speed limit.

PRACTICE

Each Grand Prix weekend features three practice sessions in which teams and drivers try to perfect their cars’ mechanical setup and get a feel for how the tires will behave in the race. Drivers spend so much time on simulators in the modern era that there is no need to “learn” the circuit as such, even for rookies.

REFUELING

Stopping for fuel has been an irregular feature of F1 since the World Championship began in 1950s. Until the 1980s, it was very low tech—basically tipping a churn of petrol into the fuel tank via a funnel. It was outlawed in the 1980s after a number of incidents (including Nigel Mansell suffering chemical burns to his testicles after a spill), then reintroduced from 1994 to 2009, using a similar technology to aircraft refueling.

TELEMETRY

Data gathered from the many sensors measuring cars’ behavior is transmitted wirelessly to the teams, a process referred to as telemetry.

UNDERCUT

A strategic move in which a driver passes another without actually overtaking the opponent on the track, undercutting usually involves pitting first and then going faster before the other driver makes his pit stop.