Hello & welcome to another edition of the
GK Nugget. It’s that time of the year when racing aficionados get very excited
and agitated talking about car changes, pit stops, tire quality and drivers.
That’s right; it’s the start of the Formula One World championship season.
Formula 1 is the most technologically
advanced, competitive, and dangerous auto racing in the world. Formula 1 cars
are designed and built to the limits of technology. Here are some astonishing
facts about this sport.
The Formula 1 automobile racing has its roots
in the European Grand Prix Motor Racing of the 1920s and 1930s. The “formula”
in the name refers to a set of rules to which all participants and cars must
comply.
Formula 1 cars are made up of over 80,000
components, if they were assembled 99.9% correctly; they would still start the
race with 80 things wrong.
A Formula 1 car’s cockpit is so tight that it
requires the driver to remove the steering wheel in order to get in or out of
it.
When a Formula 1 driver hits the brakes, he
experiences deceleration forces comparable to a regular car driving through a
brick wall at 300km/h.
F1 brake discs are made from a special,
indestructible form of carbon fiber. The discs heat up to around 1,200 degrees
Celsius – typically the average temperature of molten lava. During a race, the
average temperature in the cockpit will reach 50 °C.
Normal tires last 60,000 – 1,00,000 km.
Racing tires are designed to last 90 – 120 km (a formula 1 car on average covers 300
kilometers in a single race), which is why in a race drivers make
pit stops to change their tires. This helps keep the sport interesting as races
can be won or lost owing to the speed of a pit stop.
The fastest pit stop was conducted by the
Williams F1 team in June 2016 at the Baku, Azerbaijan circuit. The pit crew
changed 4 tires and sent the car out in 1.92 seconds. At that speed, by the
time you read this paragraph, they would have conducted 6 pit stops.
A Formula 1 driver burns an average of 600
calories per grand prix and loses four kilograms in weight due to prolonged
exposure to high G-forces and temperatures.
How expensive is the sport? The top 3 teams
(Mercedes, Ferrari & Red Bull Racing) each have an annual budget of over 400
million Euro (more than 2,800 crore Indian rupees).
Each team competing in the FIA Formula One
World Championship now travels around 1,60,000 kilometers a year between races
and test sessions. That’s almost 4 times around the earth.
If you thought driving a Formula 1 car was
easy; there are over 35 buttons, switches & dials on the steering wheel that
a F1 driver has to constantly fiddle with while driving at speeds touching 300 km/h, and
at the same time keeping the car on the road and listening to commands on the
radio from the team.
Today’s Formula 1 teams use an unbelievable
amount of computing power to collect and analyze data from every kilometer driven
by the car. The pit engineers inform the driver about the health of his car
through sensors installed in the car which are constantly sending data to the
computers in the pit garage.
As the reigning Drivers' Champion Nico
Rosberg announced his retirement from the sport in December 2016, the 2017
season is set to be the first since 1994 in which the reigning champion did not
compete.
This year the sport travels to 20 circuits
around the globe, starting this weekend in Melbourne, Australia & winding
down at the Yas circuit in Abu Dhabi on 26th November. There are 10
teams with 2 cars each, totaling 20 cars, participating in the championship
this season.
So grab a bowl of popcorn and park yourself in
front of your TV as the 5 red lights illuminate and then go out to signal the
start of the 1st Formula 1 race of the 2017 season, at Albert Park,
Melbourne, Australia today.
