A beginner's guide to F1 - Part 1

Motorsports in India is seen with a stereotype, that it is nothing but simply going around the track 60 times without any infringements or any other sort of exciting stuff going on. Believe me when I say, it is one of the most entertaining sports which constantly keeps you on the edge of your seat. The reason many people don’t enjoy it is simply because they do not understand it. To them, terms like KERS, DRS, downforce are as understandable as any alien language and hence they cannot comprehend what they are watching on the box.

First of all, there are 11 teams who will be lining up on this year’s grid and each team can compete with two drivers on the grid i.e 22 drivers will be there on the circuit this year, each driving a single seater car. The dominant team in recent times has been the Red Bull Racing Team which has won 3 Constructors championship on the trot with their main driver Sebastian Vettel, who has also won the Drivers championship with the same team for the last 3 years. Their closest competitors are McLaren Mercedes, Scuderia Ferrari and Lotus Renault with Mercedes AMG Petronas and their new recruit Lewis Hamilton as potential dark horses. The driver (on the grid) with the second most world championships to his name after Vettel is Fernando Alonso of Ferrari with 2 and then Kimi Raikonnen (Lotus), Jenson Button (McLaren Mercedes), Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes AMG Petronas) all having won 1 Drivers championship.

After introducing you to the the contenders, here are the other teams. Sauber, Toro Rosso, Sahara Force India, Williams – who are more or less the midfield battlers with an odd race where they have a podium finish or a good qualification session. And the other two are are Caterham and Marussia who regularly struggle to make it past Q1 and in terms of championships are a non-entity (no offense to fans of either teams).

Formula 1 is a complex sport with things, and things such as the variation of few centimetres in the front nose can make a world of difference to the teams. This is probably why F1 hasn’t struck a chord with the general public as such but to explain it to you in a nutshell these are a few terms that you may regularly encounter while watching a television broadcast of the race:

DRS:- DRS stands for Drag Reduction System which is engaged by opening the rear flap wings which give you a faster straight line speed. But it can only be engaged in the DRS sectors and only if you are a second within the car in front of you when you cross the DRS check zones.

KERS:- KERS stands for Kinetic Energy Regeneration System which is used to provide a little speed boost after saving up energy from the car’s braking system

DRS Zone:- These are the pre-decided parts of the track where DRS can be used. There are generally 1-2 DRS sectors on each circuit.

Tyres:- Tyres of an F1 car come in 6 different compounds and are hence coded with different colours which are as follows:

Wet – orangeIntermediate – light blueSuper soft – redSoft – yellowMedium – whiteHard – silver

These tyres are dependent upon the weather condition. For example, the intermediate is used for drying conditions.

A normal F1 weekend starts on a Friday, except for Monaco (where it starts on a Thursday). There are 2 free practice sessions on Friday, one in the morning and another one in the afternoon, lasting one and a half hour each while another practice session on the Saturday morning lasts for an hour only.

The business, as they say, starts with qualifying in the afternoon with 3 sessions taking place. Q1 lasts 20 mins and at the end of the session, the six slowest cars drop out and the rest go through to the next qualifying session. Q2 is 15 minutes long and at the end of that session, a further 6 cars drop out and fill up the grid position depending on their time. The final qualification or Q3 is 10 mins long and is a straight forward shootout and the driver with the fastest time gets the pole position for Sunday’s main race.

Sunday’s race is determined by the distance covered by the drivers. The regulation is that the distance of a Formula One race is the least number of laps exceeding 305 kilometres, the only exception again is Monaco where the same distance is 260 kms. The race is preceded by a warm up lap and the cars line up again and are flagged off when the five red lights illuminate. The winner of the race as well as the team gets 25 points, 2nd car gets 18 points, 3rd gets 15, 4th accumulates 12 and then onwards points are gained upto 10th position with a receding difference of 2 points per place. The points are accumulated at the end of the season to determine the Drivers and Constructors championships.

While this was just to give you a basic knowledge of the sport, Part 2 will cover circuits, a bit of F1 history and a more in-depth look at the technicalities of the cars.