Bulls, Stars and Horses: The Climax
In the last post (click here), we talked about the practice sessions. While important, they are usually not the most exciting part of the F1 weekend. What viewers and fans most look forward to are 2 key events — Qualifying on Saturday, the Race on Sunday. So, without further ado, let’s start discussing them!
Qualifying
To understand the Saturday qualifying better, we can compare it to something not related to the sport at all — Kaun Banega Crorepati (or “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” in the west). On the show, before any participant has a shot at winning the grand prize, they have to eliminate other competitors. A round called “Fastest Finger First” (The first person to answer the preliminary question gets to have a shot at the prize) takes place for this. Qualifying is more or less the same thing.
It is the session of the F1 weekend which decides where the cars start for the race on Sunday. This starting position is critical since the higher you start, the less overtaking you will have to do. The best place to start is clearly in front of everyone, in the first position, or as its called in F1, on “Pole”. The mantra is simple — be the fastest person in qualifying, be on Pole.
There is another added element of difficulty here — consistency
Qualifying takes place in 3 stages (shown below). A driver needs to be consistently fast across all three stages in order to have a chance at Pole.
Importance of Strategy
The first important strategic decision for the race takes place during qualifying, more precisely, Q2 (second stage of qualifying). Drivers who go clear to Q3, or the final pole shootout, are mandated to start the race on the tyres they use in Q2. So, let’s see how strategy comes into play here from two vantage points:
1) Top Performing Teams — Top teams are often comfortably fast enough to go through to Q3. So, they sometimes go for what is called the “Alternate Strategy”. Basically, they use the slower, but more durable harder tyre (more on tyres in a post soon, click here to more for now) to qualify. This puts them on a different strategy to their competitors, giving more durability at the start of the race, and the chance to switch to faster tyres later in the race. They will, therefore, be faster towards the end, when the cars are lighter due to lower fuel load.
2) Lower and Mid Performing Teams — These teams make use of the free tyre choice option on offer to positions outside the top 10. They sacrifice a chance at the pole, because realistically they can never compete against the top teams, to have free tyre choice during the race. With some of the competitors making it into Q3, this gives them an element of advantage over them, since those who make into Q3 are stuck with the tyre they run in Q2.
Race
This is the day that matters for the racers — the climax of the F1 weekend. The day when drivers and teams come together, vying for the points on offer. The race has a standing start, with the cars starting on the “Grid”. They begin in staggered rows of 2 cars each.
The actual start is preceded by a formation lap. This is a chance for the drivers to warm up the tyres and brakes, which have a temperature-sensitive operating window. It also gives the teams a chance to do a system check on the cars. No overtaking is allowed on the formation lap, with the cars coming back to their grid spots after this lap ends.
Once all the cars are back on the grid, you’ll often hear the words every fan waits to hear — “Its lights out, and here we go!”. This is the indication of the start of the race. 5 red lights light up one after another. There is a brief pause (duration of which is varies every time) before they all switch off simultaneously. This indicates the start of the race. It’s a test of the drivers’ reaction speeds since having the perfect start gives you just that added advantage over others in front of you.
Another thing of note is the distance and duration of the race. You will observe that the number of laps varies from race to race. This is because each circuit has a different length. The number of laps is meant to simulate a total distance of about 300–310 km. So, Number of Laps x Circuit length = 300–310 km. The race lasts until the first of the following two things happen:
1) All the laps and the entire race distance is run
2) The race lasts for 2 hours
The latter rarely takes place, but can happen in an accident-prone or rain-hit race.
This is just a sneak peek into what goes in a race. I’ll spend time on covering the various elements of a race — pitstops, tyre strategies, weather effects, tyres, car performance, etc. — in future posts. Next, for a slight change of speed and to get away from the technical stuff, I’ll focus on India’s impact on the sport. So stay tuned for all the articles in the pipeline…
