Formula 1

General Information

Formula One, or abbreviated ‘F1’, stands for a set of rules – i.e. the actual ‘formula’ – created by the motor racing world’s governing body, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).

This formula is applied to the F1 World Championships for both drivers and constructors, so actually, Formula One stands for the highest and most challenging racing class amongst all formula sports entertained by the FIA. However, it is very often associated with the World Championship itself.

The Formula One was first held as a World Championship in 1950. As of 2007, it consists of 17 single races which are also called Grand Prix. For each race, a certain amount of points – taking into consideration the driver’s final position – is attributed to the drivers, and the one driver who has accumulated the highest amount of points within a racing season, wins the F1-Championship. Since 1958 it is not only the drivers who compete for the title but also the teams of constructors; each team has two almost identical cars in the race and at the end of the season, all the points the two drivers have collected, are attributed to the team of constructors. The drivers’ and the teams’ championships are held parallely.

Points scheme

• 1st place: 10 points

• 2nd place: 8 points

• 3rd place: 6 points

• 4th place: 5 points

• 5th place: 4 points

• 6th place: 3 points

• 7th place: 2 points

• 8th place: 1 point

Grand Prix

The single races that constitute a Formula One season are called Grand Prix. Usually each Grand Prix is named after the country it’s held in. Should there be more races in one country, the second race of the season is given a different name. For example, second races in Great Britain, Spain or Germany were called Grand Prix of Europe.

The normal Grand Prix racing distance is around 305 km (189.52 miles); only in Monte Carlo (Monaco) the racing distance is reduced to 260.520 km (161.88 miles) because due to the winding and narrow streets an average speed of about 150 km/h (about 93 mph) cannot be exceeded and the race shouldn’t last for more than two hours.

The program of a racing weekend is very tightly scheduled. There are two free practice sessions on Friday(or on Thursday in case of the Grand Prix of Monaco), other practice sessions on Saturday and the qualifying sessions on Sunday. After one so-called formation lap the actual race starts.

Qualifying mode

First Qualifying round

All 22 cars may run laps at any time during the first 15 minutes of the hour. At the end of the first 15 minutes, the six slowest cars drop out and fill the final six grid places.

Second Qualifying round

After a seven-minute break, the times will be reset and the 16 remaining cars then will then run in a second 15-minute session - again they may complete as many laps as they want at any time during that period. At the end of the 15 minutes, the six slowest cars drop out and fill places 11 to 16 on the grid.

Third Qualifying round

After a further eight-minute break, the times are reset and the final 15-minute session will feature a shootout between the remaining 10 cars to decide pole position and the starting order for the top 10 grid places. Again, these cars may run as many laps as they wish.

 

Further regulations and flags

Since the 2006 racing season the changing of tyres during the race is permitted again and the obligatory motorization for F1-cars is the following: V8 engines with 2.4 litres cylinder capacity. Apart from that, all F1-teams have signed an agreement saying that they would limit test days to 36 days per season.

Stewards have the power to impose various penalties on a driver if he commits an offence during a race. Offences may include jump starts, causing an avoidable accident, unfairly blocking another driver, impeding another driver when being lapped, speeding in the pit lane etc.
The two most common types are the drive-through penalty and the ten-second time penalty. In the case of the former, the driver must enter the pits, drive through the pit lane at the pit-lane speed limit and rejoin the race without stopping. More severe is the ten-second time penalty (also commonly known as a stop-go penalty) where the driver must not only enter the pits, but must also stop for ten seconds at his pit before rejoining the race. During this time the driver’s team are not permitted to work on the car. Sometimes, when a driver commits an offence, this is also signalled by the race director using a flag, apart from that many flags are used for other reasons during the race.

Formula One-history

The first actual Formula One Championship took place in 1950, before that there was no uniform catalogue of rules. Until 1937 for example, there was no limit as far as cylinder capacities were concerned. It was already back then when the Grand Prix of Monaco was born, today this is the only race not held on a normal racing track but on the streets of Monte Carlo, the capital of Monaco.

During the first two racing seasons 1950 and 1951 the Alfetta by Alfa Romeo dominated the racing scene with her turbocharged engine (similar to the pre-war construction) and the legendary drivers Giuseppe Farina and Juan Manuel Fangio. At the end of 1951 Alfa Romeo retreated from the scene after 20 successful years in car racing.

Because of new “cheaper” rules Mercedes decided to re-enter the F1-racing scene in 1954 – from this year onwards turbocharged cars were admitted with cylinder capacities of up to 750 cm³ and normally aspired cars with up to 2500 cm³. Mercedes introduced the Mercedes-Benz W196 and Juan Manuel Fangio immediately took the title for them.

Between 1961 and 1965 the rules which had only been valid in Formula Two until then were elevated to Formula One standards which means that Ferrari, a team which had only been successful in Formula Two until then, automatically climbed up to the higher league – all this to the great disadvantage of small, British already F1-teams like Vanwall, Cooper, Lotus and BRM. All of these teams – except BRM – did not build their own engines so they were strictly dependent on Coventry-Climax.

For the Porsche constructors it was obvious that they would change league as well because the German automakers had already been building F2-cars for years, still their 4-Cylinder 1961 ex-Volkswagen engine was not ready to compete and the chassis of the Porsche Typ 718 was too plump compared to the far slimmer competition. Only in 1962 Dan Gurney managed to win the World Championship with the sleek 8-Cylinder Typ 804, only a week later Gurney also won in front of a German audience on the Solitude-Circuit in Stuttgart, the race was not part of the World Championship though. Due to the extremely high costs the F1 meant for an automaker and because Porsche lacked close connection to the series, the German constructors retreated from the racing scene at the end of this season and returned its sports-cars.

In the following years the rules concerning the motorization of racing cars were changed continuously, during this time it was predominantly Lotus who dominated the racing world, but when Cosworth made it’s Ford-DFV-V8-engine available to all teams – before it had only been used with the Lotus 49 – this should change instantly. The legendary engine became the most famous and successful of all times – different teams won 155 single races and 12 World Championships with this engine.

In the 1970s, because of ever-rising safety standards long circuits like the legendary Nürnburgring in Germany were closed for F1-races because the tracks were not wide enough, there were no or not enough gravel traps or the fact that due to the excessive length of the tracks rescuers would take too long to arrive at a possible accident site.

In the 1980s turbocharged engines banned the normally aspirated engines which had been used before to the rear end of the grid and in 1986 the strongest racing car ever arrived on the scene – the Benetton-BMW produced up to about 1330 bhp (back then the test blocks were not apt for such mighty cars, so the numbers are only estimated) – the long-time performance was a lot lower though.

Because of ever more sophisticated technical and electronic innovations at the beginning of this decade driver aids such as active suspensions, traction control and ABS became ever more common, especially with the Renault-Williams team, in 1994 these driver aids were banned. Because of two horrible accidents during the 1994 season the limits for the motorization were lowered again during the following seasons.

 

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