A Quick Introduction to Formula 1 with the Help of Data Visualisations
Learn what happens over a typical Formula 1 race weekend
With the release of Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive docuseries in 2019 and since the controversial finale to the 2021 Formula 1 season in Abu Dhabi, there has been a surge in the number of viewers for the open-wheel racing motorsport.
So this is an attempt to help new viewers understand the sport instead of just seeing it as cars going around in circles.
What makes Formula 1 so exceptional?
Formula 1 is a team sport. Depending on whether it’s at the front or back of the grid, how much in-house manufacturing it does and whether it produces an engine or buys one, an F1 team directly involves between 300 and 1,200 people. The collective effort of these people goes into the attempt to build a competitive car, which should also satisfy the technical regulations provided by the FIA, the sport’s governing body. Every few years, they change the rules to keep the sport competitive and exciting.
Yes, a competitive team and car might get you a place among the front-runners, but as a driver, you must be able to extract the most from the package to place the car where it needs to be. A modern-day F1 car can subject a driver to significant G-forces throughout a race weekend. F1 drivers experience 5–6 times the gravitational force under hard braking, and fast-sweeping turns, making them among the strongest athletes in sports.
A competitive team, car and driver make the perfect recipe for Formula 1 World Championship contention. There are two championships to win in this sport, Constructor’s Championship and Driver’s Championship. The driver and the constructor work together race after race to win points for these World Championships.
Other than building state-of-the-art, Championship-winning cars, Formula 1 is also a research and development powerhouse. One hundred twenty sensors on each car generate 3GB of data and 1500 data points per second, making it the pinnacle of motorsport.
For years, technologies developed within the closed walls of F1 team factories have had a trickle-down effect. Its technology has found its way into road cars and other industries, making our lives simpler, safer, and more efficient.
Simple buttons on the driver’s steering wheel, semi-automatic gearboxes, adaptive suspension, dual overhead camshaft engines, and hybrid power trains are all examples of technology developed and perfected by teams in Formula 1, which have found their way into consumer cars.
Formula one has also announced an ambitious sustainability plan to have a net-zero carbon footprint by 2030. F1 is working with partner Aramco and all the major fuel manufacturers in F1 to develop a 100% sustainable fuel to be introduced with a new engine formula in 2026. The 2022 season cars are already running on ‘E10’ fuel — a blend of 90% fuel and 10% renewable ethanol. The success of 100% sustainable fuel only means that we petrolheads will enjoy internal combustion engines without harming the environment — a win-win situation for both petrolheads and environmentalists.
What happens on a Formula 1 race weekend?
Formula 1 is a global sport. Thirty-four countries have hosted an F1 event since its official debut in 1950, with every race weekend during a Formula 1 season hosted at a different circuit in another country. My favourite circuit is the legendary Spa because of its change in elevation throughout the track coupled with sweeping turns, a mix of fast and slow ones.
Without exception, each racing circuit has something different to offer. Factors that influence the performance of an F1 car are air and track temperature, altitude of the circuit, and the quality of the asphalt.
Before I explain what happens on a race weekend, you need to know the basics.
- Friday: two one-hour practice sessions
- Saturday: another one-hour practice session followed by 3 qualifying sessions.
- Sunday: action-packed races.
- Sprint race on some Saturdays: Sprint race is a new concept by Formula 1 to reel in more viewers. As a motorsport fan, I’m not a fan of these sprint races. Drivers have too little time to practice, and it’s inclined more towards viewer entertainment than drivers’ convenience. So, I’m not going to explain sprint races in this article.
Practice sessions, qualifying? What for?
Every team on a Friday sends out both their drivers in their cars to perform on-track qualifying and race simulations. All 3 practice sessions aim to find an optimal car setup that the driver will benefit from for both, the qualifying session and the race. Drivers assess the performance of their car around the circuit and keep making car setup changes until they feel one with it. All practice sessions last for an hour, and in that duration, teams and drivers test different tyres and parts for the cars. The teams and their drivers evaluate the data generated after every practice session and ultimately pick the best-performing car setup for Saturday’s qualifying.
During the hunt for the best car setup, drivers go around the circuit as quickly and as efficiently as they can in their cars, and the time it takes to go around the circuit is called Lap Time. This is where the car setup matters the most. A driver can only push his car to its limits if he feels comfortable with the car setup.
Once a provisional Lap Time is put up on the board, every other driver and the team try their best to outperform and put the fastest lap around the circuit. The Best Lap Time by every driver is recorded and put on the board for teams and drivers to gauge their one-lap performance. With everyone’s lap times on the board, we viewers get an early indicator of who will do what sort of lap times during the race.
The fastest-ever lap around the circuit is what the qualifying session is all about. Drivers and teams compete for grid positions during these sessions. There are 3 qualifying sessions, and each session lasts for 15 mins.
Grid spots are positions that drivers start their race from on Sunday. The better the qualifying lap, the better the grid spot. The better the grid spot, the better the chances a driver has to claim victory on Sunday’s Race. So, at the end of the first qualifying session, the 5 drivers with the slowest lap times can no longer take part in the next qualifying rounds and occupy the last 5 grid positions for Sunday’s race. Similarly, at the end of the second qualifying session, another 5 drivers with the slowest lap times are knocked out and occupy the grid positions in front of the drivers knocked out from the first qualifying session. The third qualifying session is for the remaining top 10 drivers. Personally, this is the best session out of the three. The remaining 10 drivers give it their all and compete for the pole position, i.e. the first grid position for Sunday’s race.
Teams are only allowed to change the setup of their cars during free practice. Once a team enters the qualifying session, the car setup remains the same until the end of Sunday’s race. So, in a nutshell, a car’s setup can crucially make or break a race weekend for the driver and his team.
Race influencing factors
A good car setup, a great qualifying session and a race win from the pole position are what every driver dreams of for a race weekend, but it’s not that simple. The world’s top drivers compete against each other in this sport, and surely they will not make it easy for each other. Teams and drivers factor in many strategies to maximise their results on Sunday.
Here are some factors that influence the results of a race:
- Tyres: Tyre wear plays a significant role in every race. Air and track temperature, quality of the asphalt, fuel quantity, and every driver’s unique driving style influence the rate of tyre wear. Formula 1 tyres differ from tyres intended for road use. These tyres are called slick tyres and don’t have a tread pattern. Slick tyres have 5 compounds, and only 3 are available for a race weekend- soft, medium and hard compounds. The FIA and Pirelli select the 3 compounds depending on the circuit’s temperature and the asphalt’s abrasiveness. The intermediate and rain tyres are the only tyres with tread patterns intended for wet/rain conditions. The intermediate and wet tyres can evacuate 30–85 litres of water per second per tyre at 300km/h.
- Pit stop: Pit stops are made for a new set of tyres, a new front wing in case of damage, or simply a tweak to the front wing setting. Teams and their drivers discuss tyre strategies before and during every race. Teams and drivers invent tyre strategies so drivers can maximise their results depending on the grid position. Drivers are told by their teams when to pit; in some rare cases, the driver insists on switching to a new set of tyres. There are 23 people for this job alone, called the pit crew. Each has its role, whether it’s a wheel on, wheel off, gunman or front jack. All four wheels are changed, and they may tweak the front wing, cleaning the rear wing and visor and potentially clearing out the sidepods. Then it’s off and away. These guys must be efficient and quick because the driver loses crucial time during a pitstop. When a driver enters the pit lane, the driver can not go over the speed limit of 80 km/h for safety reasons. Drivers come in the pit lane, maintain the speed limit, park the car efficiently in front of their garage, switch tyres, get a new wing in case of damage or tweak it, leave the garage, keep the speed limit till the exit of the pit lane and resume racing. On average, it takes 23.06 seconds for this entire process. Anything more than average is considered a long pitstop. Long pitstops can ruin the race strategy and the race result. Long pitstops can be anywhere between 30 to 55 seconds.
- Weather: Weather influences the performance of the driver, the car and the tyres. A circuit where the air temperature is high results in higher asphalt temperature, and the higher the temperature, the more stress it puts on the tyres, the car and the driver, too, up to some extent. Drivers have had to go easy on the car/tyres in some races because they get too hot. Overheating the car or the tyres can cause some performance loss. In these conditions, drivers lose a lot of water weight when they sweat in the car’s cockpit and might lose up to 5 kilograms per race. Sometimes it is also likely to rain in the middle of a race, or it could start in wet conditions. Generally, these high-performance cars can be tricky and sometimes unpredictable in wet conditions.
- Reliability & Other Factors: A competitive car that breaks down often is unreliable. Formula 1 cars are always meant to be performing at a high level. It’s got one job; go fast. Performing at a high level puts a lot of stress on the car’s mechanical bits, and sometimes these mechanical bits fail during the race. Reliability problems put drivers out of the race, and it’s a bitter pill to swallow for them. Picture this, a driver is on the verge of winning a race, but the car breaks down, and it’s not even the driver’s fault. A competitive car needs to be reliable to be a race winner or even win the world championship title. There have also been other factors which have led to drivers not finishing in points. These factors are shown in the visual below the visual of reliability factors.
- Luck: Luck makes everything unpredictable in life, whether good or bad. In Formula 1, it makes the race result interesting. Drivers could perform well in qualifying, expecting to start the race from a good grid position and have a good result. Still, the first lap is always unpredictable and, frankly, a nail-biting moment when you’re rooting for a particular driver to start the race well. In the past, drivers have qualified for the first grid position but crashed out in an attempt to make an even better qualifying lap and could not start the race on a Sunday because the car needed a lot of fixing. On many occasions, Drivers had the potential to start from first and win the race but had their race sabotaged because of a first-lap mishap.
Race Craft
Racecraft combines a driver’s overall racing skill, theoretical knowledge, and decision-making ability. It is essentially the sum of a driver’s overall racing ability, including their race pace, tyre and fuel management, and overtaking ability.
In Formula 1, winning races and finishing on the podium is not the only thing celebrated. The 10th position is the last position in Formula 1 to score points. It adds to the championship standings, even if it’s a single point. Scoring a point means that the driver and the car are both capable of competing for points. Competing for points means that the teams realise the gap between them and those competing for wins and podiums. Teams can bridge the gap by developing their car to extract more performance.
In the 2021 Formula 1 season, teams had to adhere to a budget cap of 145 million dollars. The FIA introduced the budget cap to make the playing field equal and ensure that teams don’t make a considerable gain in performance through in-season car development. The budget cap ensures that there could be more drivers and teams fighting for wins and podiums in the future.
This sport has had eight hundred fifty-three drivers from 1950 to 2021. Only a hundred-eleven of these eight hundred fifty-three drivers are Race Winners, and thirty-four are Driver World Champions. If we were to talk in percentages, in these 72 years of open-wheel racing motorsport, the Race Winners are only 13.01%, and Driver World Champions are only 3.98%. Such is the level of Formula 1.
This sport might be about having the best overall car and even the best overall team, but the drivers who bring their passion, dedication, consistency and love for this sport make it an absolute delight to watch. Championships aside, in every era of Formula 1, drivers have won viewers’ hearts with the skill and personality they bring to the sport. This is one of the main reasons viewers become fans, and fans become supporters of drivers and teams as if they’re a contributing part of the sport.
The way these drivers perfect every practice, qualifying, and race is genuinely inspirational. To be at the level of this competition and the way they approach it with such elegance makes me, as a viewer, bring the same level of responsibility in every sector of my life. Formula 1 is truly an exceptional sport!
All the data visualisations in this article are from an Interactive Dashboard I made using Tableau and can be found in the link below.
This article was my attempt as a budding Data Analyst to help new viewers understand the sport via Data visualisations and through the art of storytelling. I hope this article was helpful!
