Formula One Racing For Dummies

Introduction

Speak to any of your friends or family about Formula One, and they’ll definitely have an opinion. Some will claim that it’s far too boring because the cars just go around in circles for a few hours until the race is finished. Others will say that the sport is far too complicated now — that strategies have removed much of the gladiatorial aspect that once made it so popular.

But if you speak to someone who knows a little bit about it and has followed its ups and downs, you’ll find that there are hundreds of different reasons why people love Formula One racing.

Some enjoy following the drivers, some worship the cars, others are fascinated by the battle for technology, and still others just like being there at a race, soaking up the atmosphere.

The more people follow the sport, the more they tend to get hooked by the different aspects. You’ll find that you usually watch your first race (whether on television or at the race circuit itself) purely out of curiosity, to see what all the fuss is about. But as soon as you have seen it, you’ll love the experience so much that you will want to see even more.

About This Book

Formula One fans can rarely explain just what exactly got them interested in the first place. It is not as if you can play it during school games, and not many parents ever get to drive Formula One cars in their spare time. However, Formula One motor racing is attracting millions and millions of new fans every year — all of them hooked for different reasons.

This book helps you work out just what’s so interesting about Formula One and find out exactly what you’re missing if somehow this is your first contact with it.

If you have never watched a Formula One race before, this book shares with you the basics of Formula One racing. It looks at the design of the cars, and weird quirks like why the races start without a green go signal. I explore the mindset of drivers, and all the safety devices and tests that ensure they are protected as much as possible if they do crash.

But the book also contains key elements to help you, the fan, get more out of the sport. If you follow it at home and want to better understand what tire strategy is all about (because yes it is important to the outcome of every race!), there are chapters looking at that. But, if you want to take your experience of Formula One to another level and take the plunge in choosing to go to a race yourself, you’ll find plenty of information here about where best to go, how to arrange your trip, and what to do when you get there.

The great thing about this book is that you decide where to start and what to read. It’s a reference you can jump into and out of at will. Just head to the table of contents or the index to find the information or the element you want.

What You’re Not to Read

If you are a Formula One novice and just want to know the basics, you don’t have to read every part of every chapter in this book to understand what’s going on when you watch a race. When you see a Technical Stuff icon, for instance, note that the following information includes more complex details for those with some knowledge of Formula One who want to learn the sport inside and out.

There is also nothing to say that you have to read all the shaded text — that is, all the sidebars. These are included as useful asides to bring some color or interest to aspects that are not covered elsewhere, but if you skip them, you’ll still understand everything else.

Foolish Assumptions

As I wrote this book, I made some assumptions about you. The first one is that, because you’re reading this book in the first place, you’re no dummy. You want to find out about Formula One. Here are some other assumptions I’ve made:

You’re either completely new to Formula One racing or you’ve followed it but want to understand it in greater depth.

You know the basics, but you want to know more so that you understand better what you see the next time you watch a race.

You want to be able to join in conversations and banter with die-hard fans who have followed the sport for a long time.

And who knows, if your passion for Formula One is fired by reading this book, then what’s to say you won’t become a part of the sport itself and play a key part in future Formula One battles.

Icons Used in This Book

To make understanding Formula One Racing For Dummies easier, I used icons — small pictures in the margins — to highlight important information.

Tip This icon highlights helpful tips and advice that can save you time, money, or exasperation as you watch Formula One events or partake in its festivities.

Warning There aren’t many things you have to worry about as a Formula One fan. But when you should take extra heed, this icon warns you of what to watch out for.

Remember I use this icon to indicate important information or info that you want to add to your knowledge so you can impress your friends or fellow Formula One fans.

Technical Stuff This icon appears beside information that explains the finer points of Formula One technology that you may find interesting but that you don’t need to know. Feel free to skip this information at will.

Fromthecockpit Formula One teams and drivers engage in strategies, both on the track and off. This icon appears beside information that tells how teams plan and plot against each other to gain a competitive edge.

Truestory This icon appears beside info relating to actual events in Formula One history. What better way to show off your Formula One knowledge than to repeat these nuggets to the colleagues, friends, and family you want to impress?

Beyond the Book

In addition to what you’re reading right now, this product also comes with a list of teams and drivers, a 2024 Formula One event calendar, and more. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to https://www.dummies.com/ and enter Formula One Racing For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box.

Where to Go from Here

This book isn’t like many other Formula One books you’ll get from the bookstore. After finishing this bit, you don’t have to turn the page and continue reading in order. Instead, feel free to turn to whichever chapter takes your fancy. The most important parts of this book are the table of contents and the index at the back because they can guide you to whichever bit of information you are after.

You don’t have to read these chapters in order because they are all standalone. So choose now where you want to begin your journey in Formula One and above all else — enjoy!

Part 1

Speeding through the Basics

IN THIS PART …

Discover why Formula One is so popular

Find out why sponsors are in love with the sport

Get a feel for what is at stake

Understand how Formula One is policed

Chapter 1

Just the Formula One Facts

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Understanding what Formula One is

Bullet Discovering who the most important people in the sport are

Bullet Getting a glimpse at a Formula One car

Bullet Visiting the Formula One tracks

Bullet Understanding the sport’s business side

Bullet A calendar of events

Formula One racing is, as its name suggests, the pinnacle of motor racing around the world. Small children don’t dream about growing up to race in lesser series. Above all else, they want to be a winning Formula One driver.

These days, the sport is a truly global circus, and it has never been as popular as it is right now. Almost every race on the calendar is a sell-out, and some events can boast as many as 400,000 fans over a three-day race weekend.

At that same time, F1 has an average of 70 million people tune in to watch each race across a combination of free-to-air television and pay channels. That cumulative TV audience for the full season is around 1.5 billion.

It is this sort of global following that has attracted huge sponsorship, left race promoters queuing up to host grands prix, and television stations around the world falling all over themselves to broadcast it.

Shows like the Drive to Survive series have further brought a new young audience to F1, meaning only the Olympic Games and the soccer World Cup come anywhere close matching it in the popularity stakes — and they take place only every four years.

Formula One: A Grand and Global Sport

Part of Formula One’s mass appeal is that it is truly a global sport. Not only do the best drivers from many countries fight for glory on the track, but they also use the best cars and the best engines from around the world.

A case in point: Currently, in 2023, Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc and Spaniard Carlos Sainz drive for the Italian Ferrari team that is run by French team boss Frederic Vasseur.

The global appeal increases further because, every season, the sport travels all over the world to unique tracks, each of which provides different challenges.

Formula One really is like a traveling circus, as the cars, teams, and drivers shoot across the globe. At the end of the 2023 season, F1 had a triple header in the United States (Austin), Mexico and Brazil on consecutive weekends before ending the year with back-to-back races in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi.

Fans come from around the world, too. At any given race, you can find not only local supporters, but also others from around the world who have traveled to the event. A quick look around the grandstands at Formula One events inevitably shows a host of different nation’s flags.

This mass appeal has been the story of the sport since the official Formula One world championship began in 1950. Before then, although Formula One races took place, there was no officially sanctioned fight for the world title.

Drivers and Other Important People

Like most hugely successful sports, Formula One is jammed pack full of superstar names. Just like Lionel Messi in soccer, or Roger Federer in tennis, the big-name drivers in Formula One have millions of fans around the world worshipping their every move and hoping that they can win.

But the drivers aren’t the only big names in Formula One. Many of the team bosses are personalities in themselves. Some — like Red Bull team boss Christian Horner and Mercedes chief Toto Wolff — are almost as well known for their appearances on Netflix and in social media as they are for the great work they’ve done for their teams.

Drivers

The drivers are, without doubt, the central focus for almost everyone in Formula One.

Without the drivers there’d be no racing, and without the great battles, the psychological wars, and the fact that there is always a soap opera following them, there’d be no interest in following each twist and turn of a Formula One racing season.

The best-paid drivers these days earn money that many of us can only dream about, but they definitely work hard for it. They not only have to take massive risks in driving Formula One cars at 200 mph, but they also have to work with their teams to get the last tenths of a second out of the car, deal with the media, and attend promotional events for their sponsors. (You can find detailed information about the life of a Formula One driver in Chapter 7.)

For some drivers, the stress of being a successful Formula One star proves too much; they turn their back on the sport and find something a little bit more relaxing to do. One example of this was Nico Rosberg who was so mentally exhausted after winning the 2016 world championship that he quit on the same day he picked up his title trophy!

For those who can cope with all the pressures and risks — and become the very best by regularly winning races — the rewards can be mighty.

Although the money, attention, and the thrill of driving fast cars are ample rewards for being a good Formula One driver, nothing is better than actually winning. Some aces claim that winning gives them the best rush of excitement they have ever experienced in their lives — but you can make up your own mind by looking at Chapter 11, which explains what happens after a win and how winning a race doesn’t signal the end of the driver’s day.

Team bosses

There’s a saying in Formula One that behind every great driver lies a really great team.

The team makes sure that the drivers have the right machinery running in the right way. Each driver knows that, without their cars, they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere.

After all, drivers would look pretty stupid sitting on the grid with their bum on the track and no car around them.

The leader of each team — whose responsibility it is to pull the resources and personnel together — is the team boss.

There is no single job description that covers every team boss in the pit lane because they all have unique ways of running their teams — and each squad is different anyway. Some bosses like Toto Wolff at Mercedes are shareholders, whereas others like Mike Krack at Aston Martin are employed by the team owners. Although a driver can achieve race victories quickly in the sport, especially if he’s signed to a leading team in his first few years of Formula One, a team boss requires many, many years to turn an outfit into one of the best.

This is a task that requires them to do the following:

Recruit the best staff: If a team is successful, then it is obvious that the best staff in the pit lane will want to join. Every front-running team in Formula One has the best designers, the best mechanics, and the best engineers. The fight for glory is so intense, though, that staff often move around — tempted by big money offers — and teams often go through phases of incredible success followed by periods of lackluster form after their top staff are recruited elsewhere.

Have the best facilities: Formula One is about high technology and having the best of everything. Teams must spend millions of dollars on state-of-the-art factories, wind tunnels, simulators, and computer technology. This is why many experts from the aerospace and computer industries have found employment in the sport. Nowadays, entire cars are put together on computer screens and the kind of technology often only used in the aerospace industry is brought into action. Teams can no longer afford the process of trial and error when it comes to building their new car or improving their current one.

Build a car that can take on the very best in the field: No matter how good your staff is, or how good your equipment, a Formula One team is always judged by the speed of its car. There is so little difference between all the cars in the field that the fight for glory is intense — and that is why teams seek out the tiniest advantages in every area of their car. Rules and regulations can be changed, handing certain teams an advantage, and when new technology is found to improve speed, teams try to keep what they are doing a secret for as long as possible.

Find a way to pay for all the preceding: This is no easy task. After all, money makes the cars go round! In fact, this is why modern team bosses have to be as good at attracting sponsorship and business backing as they are at running racing cars.

The huge prizes for success in Formula One, which include the prospect of earning millions of dollars in extra sponsorship backing or increased television rights money, mean that team bosses also have to deal with an incredible amount of politics within the sport.

There are often arguments revolving around money, the changing of rules, and even the threat of protests from rival teams if they think you are pushing the boundaries of the rules too much. There are agreements in place to make sure there is no foul play, though, and rulebooks have to be followed (or gotten around) so that Formula One remains an even contest.

To find out more on the responsibilities of team bosses, head to Chapter 6. If you’re interested in the rules teams have to abide by, go to Chapter 4.

The Top Cats: F1 and the FIA

The sport’s leaders are not just those who run the race teams. There are two key figures who have overall control of Formula One. First, there is Stefano Domenicali, who is CEO of the Formula One group that currently owns the commercial rights to the championship. He is in charge of setting the calendar, signing the deals, and shaping the future. Alongside him is Mohammed Ben Sulayem, who is president of motor racing’s governing body, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA). The FIA is the regulator of the series and must ratify any calendar and regulation changes, as well as ensure everyone is following the rules.

Rockets on Wheels: The Cars They Drive

When you ask people what a racing car looks like, a lot of them describe a souped-up road car, with a big engine, massive tires, and a really good paint scheme. Some of them may even imagine that the doors are sealed shut to increase safety when out on the track.

A Formula One car, however, is very different from anything else you see on the road. It is the ultimate prototype machine, featuring design ideas, technology, and materials that many people associate more with a modern-day fighter jet or spaceship than with an automobile.

Because they aren’t required to be street legal, Formula One cars have evolved differently to road cars. Their design has been centered on the quest for speed rather than comfort, and they are almost literally rockets on wheels.

Key elements in the design

Following are some of the elements and characteristics that make up a Formula One car and give it a completely different appearance to other types of racing cars (see Figure 1-1):

Open wheels: Unlike the road car sitting in your garage, one of the most obvious elements of a Formula One car is that its wheels aren’t covered. In this way, Formula One cars are similar to the US-based IndyCar series.

Central cockpit: Formula One design teams don’t worry about the comfort of passengers — because they don’t have to. Formula One cars have room for only one driver. The cockpit is mounted in the dead center of the car, which is vital for a car’s center of gravity.

Agile and lightweight: Although Formula One cars have got heavier in recent years, they still weigh less than a road car. The use of high-tech materials, including carbon fiber, has made modern Formula One cars super-lightweight and therefore very fast.

Lack of bumpers: Formula One is a no-contact sport, which is why you won’t find any safety bumpers at the front or rear of the car to fend off the attention of other cars. Instead of bumpers, you find aerodynamic wings.

Aerodynamic wings: The front and rear wings of the Formula One car, which are designed to push the car down onto the ground through the creation of downforce, are very exposed — which they have to be if the car is going to be quick. (They also provide perfect billboards for sponsors.) These wings are the result of months of research in high-tech wind tunnels.

The Halo: Towering over the driver in the cockpit is the Halo, which is a safety device aimed at deflecting debris away from the cockpit in the event of an accident. It was introduced to Formula One in 2018 and has saved many lives already.

In general terms, a Formula One car is the ultimate single-seater, open-wheel, racing car. You can find similar looking machinery in IndyCar, Formula Two, Formula Three, and Super Formula cars. But even though these other cars look the same as Formula One cars, none of them are as fast over a single lap as a Formula One car is — even though some machines, like top-level dragsters, can accelerate faster and reach higher top speeds in a straight line for a short period of time.

To find out more about what defines a Formula One car and what is underneath the bodywork, take a look at Chapter 5.

FIGURE 1-1: Formula One cars look very different to other racing cars.

Prepping the car for maximum performance

At this top level of motor racing, each team must use its equipment to the absolute maximum. If the car has just one weak area, all the rival teams will do their best to exploit this weakness for their own advantage and the team is likely to suffer. The cars are made ready for race performances in three ways:

Factory testing: Nowadays teams do almost all of their preparation work at their factories rather than at race tracks. They have state-of-the-art machinery, computer simulations, and dyno testing facilities to design, build, prepare, and test every component on the car to make sure that when it is ready to hit the track, each component is as good and robust as possible.

Simulator running: With teams now banned from testing their cars after the season is underway, a lot of their running takes place in the virtual world. Most teams now have sophisticated simulators that are good enough to evaluate new car developments and allow drivers to work through setup changes so they can be as well-prepared as possible for the real race on the weekends.

Race weekend running: When the race weekend is underway, teams can’t just decide to sit in the grandstand and see what their driver can do. Teams have to work hard on car setup, tire strategies, and advising drivers in order to find the final tenths of a second that can make the difference between winning and losing. For more on how these activities affect the race’s outcome, see Chapters 9 and 10.

Up and Down and All Around: The Tracks

Every race provides a new challenge for the teams and drivers — and that is because each track on the calendar is unique. Circuit designs have evolved dramatically over the years. Formula One has traditionally not taken place on ovals — even if the Indianapolis 500 was part of the World Championship from 1950 to 1960.

Some venues have been on the calendar since the 1950s, like Silverstone and Monza, with their track designs and facilities being upgraded over the years. There are also plenty of brand-new venues, with the newest additions to the calendar being Las Vegas and Saudi Arabia. Every track has different characteristics, with different top speeds, unique corners, and very different layouts.

The Right Stuff for Business

Formula One is not a sport for those without money. It is not like soccer, where you and your mates can buy a ball, use some jumpers for goalposts and then play to your heart’s content for hour after hour.

No, Formula One eats money. The massive development costs, the use of space-age technology, plus the expertise required to create a winning car, means that some teams find it hard to stay below the cost cap limit of around $140 million. And that is before they have to pay those big-buck salaries to their drivers!

With such a high cost, only the very best teams in the world are ever successful in Formula One. In the old days, a rich team owner was able to fund a season himself, cars and engines lasted the whole season, and drivers’ wages weren’t that much. But nowadays, there is an intensive development race, with 23 grands prix per year and the top drivers earn tens of millions of dollars.

Luckily, the growing expense of the sport has been matched by the huge following it has around the world, which means sponsors are only too willing to pay teams a lot of money in order to get their logos onto the sides of cars.

Without sponsors and the money they bring to the sport, Formula One as we know it wouldn’t exist. In fact, a team’s success on the track very much depends on how well it can attract sponsors off it. It is no wonder that modern day Formula One teams employ sponsorship and advertising experts to help them find this much-needed money.

A RICH MAN’S PLAYGROUND

In the early 1900s, Formula One racing was purely the domain of rich gentlemen who found no better way to spend their money than to go racing on weekends. This scenario didn’t change for several decades, although teams began to realize that they could actually pay drivers for their talent, not just because they were paying for the racing seat.

The growth of sponsorship in the 1960s, allied to greater media and public awareness of sport, helped lift Formula One until it really exploded in popularity in the 1980s — thanks to widespread television coverage. It has boomed ever since and now there is almost no holding it back.

For more details on the incredible popularity of the sport and its growth from a rich man’s playground to what it is today, see Chapter 2.

Of course, sponsors don’t just hand over the money in exchange for a few well-placed stickers on the car. To make the most of every dollar they spend, the sponsors create huge marketing efforts, schedule big promotional events, unleash social media campaigns, and produce television ads and billboard signs, all taking advantage of their relationship as Formula One sponsors. So important and time-consuming are these sponsor-driven events that some say Formula One is a sport between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. on a Sunday and a business every other minute. Head to Chapter 3 to find out more about the business side of grand prix racing.

Getting the Most Out of Formula One

If you enjoy watching Formula One races, then the sport can be absolutely magical. It takes place on weekends, when most people are free — free to sit in front of their television sets to enjoy the spectacle in the comfort of their own homes or free to travel to the event itself and enjoy the spectacle in person. Whether you’re watching from your front room or the grandstands, you’ll discover that each race is guaranteed to throw up enough surprises, excitement, and intrigue to keep you glued to the edge of your seat right up to the fall of the checkered flag.

Tip Finding out about different tracks in each country can be a bit of a daunting prospect — especially when you consider that more than 20 races appear on the calendar each year. If you’re thinking about traveling to a race, head to Chapters 12 and 13, which will be a huge help. They tell you all you need to know about how Formula One decides where to go each season, as well as providing pointers on how to actually get there yourself.

Formula One is one of the world’s most exciting and most interesting sports. It can provide you with a lifetime of enjoyment if you make the effort to understand a little bit about it.

A few decades ago it was almost impossible to find out the latest goings on at the races — television did not cover it, newspapers were not really interested in it, the Internet was not invented, and social media did not exist.

Nowadays, you’re hard-pressed to avoid an information overload. You can find hundreds of websites that give the latest Formula One news; social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook are full of Formula One content; and programs on television and YouTube analyze the races and profile the stars. There are also plenty of newspapers and magazines that cover the latest gossip about the Formula One fraternity.

Finding your way through this minefield of information can be a bit intimidating unless you take some advice from the experts. For help go to Chapter 17, where you get tips on finding the information you want.

Chapter 2

The Most Popular Sport in the World

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Why Formula One is the pinnacle of motor racing

Bullet What makes Formula One, Formula One

Bullet How Formula One came to be as it is today

The days are long, long gone when Formula One was a sport that only a few people were interested in. Today its TV viewing figures across the globe are measured in billions, putting the sport on a par with the soccer World Cup and the Olympic Games. Formula One’s popularity has gone through a tremendous boom in the last few years thanks to its owners, Liberty Media, making it more open to fans; offering different race weekend formats, opening up social media channels, and helping attract a new audience through Netflix’s Drive to Survive series.

Perhaps Formula One’s biggest challenge now is making sure that it can live up to the high expectations that fans have for it, and balancing out the different needs that come from delivering a true sporting contest that produces entertainment and suits the needs of sponsors.

In can be a sort of vicious circle because the sport’s basic gladiatorial appeal generates huge TV coverage, which in turn has brought in big corporate money to feed the technological appetite that has always been central to what Formula One is all about — and the influence of sponsors sometimes can prevent the show being as pure as fans would like it. (Head to Chapter 3 if you want to know more about the role of corporate sponsorship in Formula One racing.)

As the money has increased, the scale of the sport and its reach have flowered. In addition to its traditional base of Europe, the Formula One World Championship is now fought out in the Americas, Asia, Australasia, and the Middle East; currently, Africa is the only continent without an F1 race — although that is being worked on. There are more countries that want to stage Formula One grands prix than there are available dates (go to Chapter 15 to find out what other race venues you can look forward to in the future) as many emerging economies look upon hosting a grand prix as a way of legitimizing their newfound status on the world stage.

So whenever Formula One representatives start to sound a bit pompous or self-important — as some of them can do — bear in mind that some serious statistics back the claim that Formula One is the most popular sport in the world.

What Makes Formula One?

In racing terms, formula implies the rules for a pure racing car, a single-seater with open wheels — a format largely unconnected with, and unrecognizable from, road cars. Formula One implies that this is the number one series in formula racing.

The premiere racing sport in the world

Formula One stands at the technological pinnacle of all motorsport. It’s also the richest, most intense, most difficult, most political, and most international racing championship in the world. Most of the world’s best drivers are either there or aspire to be there, and the same goes for the best designers, engineers, engine builders, and so on. It’s a sport that takes no prisoners. Underachievers are spat out with ruthless lack of ceremony. Formula One takes its position at the top of the motorsport tree very seriously.

Formula One traces its lineage directly back to the very beginnings of motor racing itself, at the end of the 19th century, when public roads were the venues. All other racing series have sprung up in its wake.

Remember Unlike most racing categories, Formula One isn’t just about competition between the drivers. It’s about rivalry between the cars, too. The battle between teams for superior technology is always an ongoing part of Formula One.

Comparing Formula One and other types of racing

Racing in America for a time overlapped in its development with European racing; then it veered off in the direction of oval track racing.

IndyCar racing in America

The top single-seater category in the United States is IndyCar. These cars look like Formula One cars to a casual onlooker, but a Formula One car is faster around corners and more powerful. Another difference is that Formula One cars never race on ovals; instead, they exclusively race on purpose-built road racing tracks or street circuits. Furthermore, each Formula One team designs and builds its own cars rather than buying them off the shelf from a specialist producer.

NASCAR and touring car racing

Non-formula, roadcar-based racing spawned NASCAR in America and touring car racing in the rest of the world. Both are for cars that look from the outside like showroom roadgoing models but underneath the skin look very different. NASCAR tailors for American production models and races mainly — though not exclusively — on ovals. Touring cars are based on European or Australian road cars and, like F1 cars, race on road-racing or street tracks.

FORMULA ONE AND THE BABY FORMULAS THAT CAME LATER

The reason why the sport is called Formula One is rooted in history. Pioneer motor racing placed no limitations on the size or power of the competing cars. With technological advances, this free-for-all quickly made for ludicrously dangerous conditions — especially as the early races were fought out on public roads. As a result, the governing body of the sport at the time began imposing key limitations on the format of the cars in terms of power, weight, and size. Only cars complying with this formula of rules could compete. The rules of grand prix racing have adapted to the technology and needs of the times. The rules formulated for racing immediately after World War II were given the tag