In the past few months, I have gained big interest in a new sport. This sport is quite different from anything I’ve seen before with its intense drama, notable figures, and high speeds. Of course, I am talking about motorsports, specifically Formula One. Formula One is the pinnacle of world motosports because of the required skills from not only drivers, but everyone on the team. Driving a car that gets up to speeds of over two hundred miles per hour requires a great deal of skill and knowledge. But designing and maintaining that kind of machine also requires intense coordination and patience. In this blog, I am going to outline everything a new Formula One fan needs to know. Now, there is so much to cover so I will only be going over enough so that you can understand what the sport is about.
First, let me explain what Formula One is. Formula One is a race of the fastest open-wheel, open-cabin, single-seated, four-wheeled cars in the world. In the past, the cars were unregulated in every way so it was up to each team to innovate and design their own car. Now, the FIA, the governing body of Formula One and most motorsports, has regulations on the size, weight, and power of the cars. This emphasized the design of the car and ability of the driver over all else. Not to mention it made The whole sport safer. The season consists of twenty or so races between ten teams. These races go on all over the world from The United States, Austria, Japan, Australia, and Bahrain to mention a few. The season goes from mid-March to mid-December with most races happening every other weekend, and on some occasions back to back weekends. Each team consists of two drivers for a total of twenty drivers on the grid. The goal of each team is to get the most points by the end of the season so they win the Constructors Championship, which is a fancy way of saying the best team in Formula One. Teams get points by where their racers finish. The goal of each individual driver is to win as many races as possible and get as many points as they can so they can win the World Championship. The point breakdown goes as follows: first gets twenty five points, second gets eighteen, third gets fifteen, fourth gets twelve, fifth gets ten, sixth gets eight, seventh gets six, eighth gets four, ninth gets 2, tenth gets one, and eleventh through twentieth gets zero. That is all of the most important information you need to watch a Formula One grand prix, but I will explain some more aspects of the sport in more detail further down.
The points taper off dramatically so if you are not consistently getting top three, there is not a good chance of winning a season for you or your team. With some drivers being able to do that, it creates a big gap in the final standings of the Constructors Championship. This is why the teams are split into two distinct groupings. You have the Best, which are the top three or four teams who are constantly getting both drivers finishing in sixth or higher. In the last few years this has been Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari or McLaren depending on the year. Otherwise you have the Rest, which are the midfield teams competing for any points they can get so they can get fourth in the end becoming the “Best of the Rest”. This consists of Alpine, Alpha Tauri, Aston Martin, Williams, Alfa Romeo, and Haas. Some of these teams are better than others. For example, you will see Haas and Williams in the last few positions most of the time. But, that’s not to say that they aren’t competitive. Each team and racer has races where they do amazing and outperform their expectations. This is what makes the midfield so much more appealing than me. It isn’t as predictable and there is a lot more competition between teams.
The dynamic of the racers also plays a large role in Formula One. The goal of wanting to win as many races for yourself but also for your team creates an interesting relationship between teammates. This is because you want to beat your teammate to win races, but also want them to do good so your team gets more points. It doesn’t help that each team’s cars are slightly different so the only real measurement is to compare yourself to your teammates. If you and your teammate have the same equipment, and you beat them everytime, you can confidently say you are the better driver.
But why do the teams perform so much differently? They all have talented engineers and racers so what is the big difference? Well, That would be money. In the past, there was no limit on how much a team could spend on Research and Development so the bigger teams were able to have more people and resources to make better cars. This would create big gaps in how cars performed, and the outcome of the championships. But, In the last few years, the FIA have enforced a budget cap so that smaller teams can be more competitive with larger teams.
Finally, the breakdown of the race weekend. The weekend starts on Friday with two practice sessions. These can be used to test the ever changing car design, get a feel for the track, and overall just to gather data. Saturday consists of a practice session and the qualifying session. The practice session is the same as the others. The qualifying session is for the determination of where drivers will start at the start of the race. There are three phases of qualifying intuitively called Q1, Q2, and Q3. In Q1, all twenty drivers push their cars to the limit trying to get the fastest lap possible. Then, the slowest five drivers are eliminated. Then in Q2, the remaining fifteen drivers try to get the fastest lap possible, and again the slowest five drivers get eliminated. Finally in Q3, drivers really push the limits of their machines to fight for pole position, or starting spot number 1. Each car starts respective to where they finished from P20 to pole position. Pole position is a distinct advantage because it means there are no cars in front of you when starting the race. This means clean air and no one to crash into. Qualifying is some of the most exciting racing you will see the whole weekend because of how much the drivers push their cars. Finally, come Sunday, we get to the race. The race starts when the starting lights go out. The first lap is always chaotic with every car fighting for an early overtake, taking massive risks. The race then settles down and for about two hours twenty drivers fight to beat each other in the fastest cars in the world.
Thank you for reading my blog, and I hope you found this crazy sport as interesting as I did. There is so much more to talk about with Formula One, but it can be a lot to take in on one sitting. If you are interested in watching the first race of the 2022 season, it starts one Friday March 18th with practice and the race is on Sunday March 20th.