FORMULA 1 LOGO
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Formula One, abbreviated to F1, is the highest class of
auto racing defined by the
Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), motor sport's world governing body. The "formula" in the name is a set of rules which all participants and cars must meet. The F1 world championship season consists of a series of races, known as
Grands Prix, held usually on purpose-built
circuits, and in a few cases on closed city streets. The results of each race are combined to determine two annual
World Championships, one for
drivers and one for
constructors.
It is a massive television event, with millions of people watching each race in 200 countries. The cars race at high speeds, often greater than 320 km/h (200 mph) and are capable of pulling up to 6
g in some corners. The performance of the cars is highly dependent on
electronics,
aerodynamics,
suspension and
tyres. The formula has seen many evolutions and changes through the history of the sport.
Europe is Formula One's traditional centre and remains its leading market. However, Grands Prix are held all over the world and, with new races in
Bahrain,
China,
Malaysia,
Turkey and the
United States since
1999, its scope continues to expand with
India being added to the schedule starting in 2010. Of the 17 races in 2007, nine are outside Europe. As the world's most expensive
sport, its economic effect is significant, and its financial and political battles are widely observed. Its high profile and popularity makes it an obvious merchandising environment, which leads to very high investments from sponsors, translating into extremely high budgets for the
constructor teams. In recent years several teams have gone bankrupt or been bought out by other companies.
The sport is regulated by the FIA. Formula One's commercial rights are vested in the
Formula One Group.
Inaugural season 1950
Drivers 22
Teams 11
Engine suppliers 6
Constructors' champion F
errariRACING AND STRATEGY
A Formula One Grand Prix event spans an entire weekend, beginning with two
free practice sessions on Friday (except in Monaco, where Friday practices are moved to Thursday), and one free practice on Saturday.
Third drivers are allowed to run on Fridays, but only two cars may be used per team, requiring a race driver to give up their seat. After these practice sessions, a qualifying session is held.
The format of this qualifying session has been through several iterations since
2003. Attempts were made to reinvigorate interest in the qualifying session by using a "one-shot" system in which each driver would take turns on an empty track to set their one and only time.
For the 2006 season a knockout qualifying system was introduced, which has continued unchanged for the 2007 season. The FIA revised the 2006 procedures starting with Round 11, the 2006
French Grand Prix. In the first phase, all 22 cars are permitted on the track for a 15-minute qualification session. Only their fastest time will count and drivers may complete as many laps as they wish. In the original format, the clocks were stopped immediately at the end of the session, which meant that drivers on a timed lap did not have their time registered once the 15 minutes were up. From Round 11, any car running a timed lap at the time of the chequered flag is entitled to complete the lap. The slowest six cars can take no further part in qualifying, these cars will make up the last six grid positions in the order of their times.
The times for the sixteen remaining cars are reset for the next 15-minute session. In the original format, the clocks were stopped immediately at the end of the session. From Round 11, cars running timed laps at the chequered flag are allowed to complete the lap. The slowest six cars will make up the grid in positions 11 to 16 in the order of their times.
The times for the ten remaining cars will be reset for the next session. The shootout session lasted 20 minutes under the original regulations, changed to 15 minutes from Round 11. For the final period, the cars will be arranged on the grid in positions one to ten in the order of their times. In the first two 15-minute sessions, cars may run any fuel load and drivers knocked out after those sessions may refuel ahead of the race. However, the top-ten drivers must begin the final 15-minute session with the fuel load on which they plan to start the race. They will be weighed before they leave the pits. Whatever fuel they use in the 15 minutes may be replaced at the end of the session provided that the laps they complete are all within 110% of their best session time; outlaps (a lap that started in the pitlane) and inlaps (a lap that ended in the pitlane) are permitted to be no more than 120% of the driver's best session time. Any fuel for a lap outside of the 110% time will not be replaced. As with the first two 15 minute sessions, if a driver starts a timed lap before the chequered flag falls for the 15 minute session, their time will count even if they cross the finish line after the session has ended.
The race begins with a warm-up formation lap, after which the cars assemble on the starting grid in the order they qualified. If a driver stalls before the parade lap, and the rest of the field passes him, then he must start from the back of the grid. As long as he moves off and at least one car is behind him, he can retake his original position. A racer may also elect to start from pit-lane if he has any last minute problems with the car. If they choose to do this, they must wait for all cars to pass pit-lane before they may begin the race.
A light system above the track then signals the start of the race. Races are a little over 305
kilometres (190
miles) long and are limited to two hours, though in practice they usually last about ninety minutes. Throughout the race, drivers may make one or more
pit stops in order to refuel and change tyres. For 2007 with Michelin leaving the sport, teams are supplied with tyres solely from Bridgestone. Bridgestone have developed four tyre compounds of which they then select two for the teams to use at a given race event. Drivers must use both tyre compounds during a race which is hoped will bring more excitement to the sport. The softer of the available compounds for the weekend's tyres can be seen with a white ring around one of the grooves on the tyre itself.
The FIA awards points to the top eight drivers and their respective teams of a grand prix on a 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis (the race winner receives ten points, the first runner-up eight, and so on). Other points systems have been in operation over the years. The winner of the two annual championships are the driver and the team who have accumulated the most points at the end of the season. If any drivers and/or teams have the exact amount of points and are both competing for the driver and/or team championships, the driver and/or team who has won more Grand Prix races during the course of the season is declared the winner.
DRIVERS AND CONSTRUCTION
Since
1984 Formula One teams have been required to build the chassis in which they compete, and consequently the terms "team" and "constructor" are more or less interchangeable. This requirement distinguishes the sport from series such as
IndyCar Series,
Champ Car World Series, and
NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series, which allow teams to purchase chassis, and "
spec series" such as
GP2, which require all cars be kept to an identical specification. In its early years, Formula One teams sometimes also built their engines, though this became less common with the increased involvement of major car manufacturers such as
BMW,
Mercedes-Benz, Renault,
Toyota, and Honda, whose large budgets rendered privately built engines less competitive (and redundant).
In the 2007 season, for the first time since the 1984 rule, two teams used chassis built by other teams.
Super Aguri started the season using a modified Honda Racing's RA106 chassis (used by Honda on the 2006 season), while
Toro Rosso used a modified Red Bull Racing RB3 chassis (same as the one used by
Red Bull on the 2007 season). Such a decision did not come as a surprise because of spiraling costs and the fact that Super Aguri is partially owned by Honda and Toro Rosso is owned by Red Bull. Formula One team
Spyker has raised a complaint against this decision, and other teams such as McLaren and Ferrari have officially confirmed to support the campaign. The 2006 season could have been the last one where the terms "team" and "constructor" were truly interchangeable, although the FIA has not made a final decision about this issue and it will be most likely resolve with arbitration proceedings through the 2007 season.
Early manufacturer involvement came in the form of a "factory team" (that is, one owned and staffed by a major car company), such as those of
Alfa Romeo, Ferrari (
Fiat) or Renault. Companies such as
Climax,
Repco,
Cosworth,
Hart,
Judd and
Supertec, which had no direct team affiliation, often sold engines to teams who could not afford to manufacture them. As the manufacturers' deep pockets and engineering ability took over, almost all engines are now produced by major manufacturers.
After having virtually disappeared by the early 1980s, factory teams made a comeback in the 1990s and 2000s, and now form half the grid with Toyota, Ferrari (Fiat), Honda, Renault and BMW either setting up their own teams or buying out existing ones.
Mercedes-Benz (DaimlerChrysler) owns 40% of the McLaren team and manufactures the team's engines. Commercial engine supplier Cosworth exited the sport at the end of 2006. Thus all the teams will run on factory supplied engines from 2007.
The sport's
1950 debut season saw eighteen teams compete, but due to high costs many dropped out quickly. In fact, such was the scarcity of competitive cars for much of the first decade of Formula One that
Formula Two cars were admitted to fill the grids. Ferrari is the only still-active team which competed in 1950, and as of 2006 eleven teams remain on the grid, each fielding two cars. Although teams rarely disclose information about their budgets, it is estimated that they range from US$66 million to US$400 million each.
Entering a new team in the Formula One World Championship requires a £25 million (about US$47 million) up-front payment to the FIA, which is then repaid to the team over the course of the season. As a consequence, constructors desiring to enter Formula One often prefer to buy an existing team:
B.A.R.'s purchase of
Tyrrell and
Midland's purchase of
Jordan allowed both of these teams to sidestep the large deposit and have the benefit that the team already had, such as TV revenue.
Each car is assigned a number. The previous season's World Drivers' Champion is designated number 1, with his teammate given number 2. Numbers are then assigned according to each team's position in the previous season's World Constructors' Championship. There have been exceptions to this rule, such as in 1993 and 1994, when the current World Drivers' Champion (
Nigel Mansell and
Alain Prost, respectively) was no longer competing in Formula One. In this case the drivers for the team of the previous year's champion are given numbers 0 (
Damon Hill, on both occasions) and 2 (Prost himself and
Ayrton Senna - replaced after his death by
David Coulthard and occasionally
Nigel Mansell - respectively). The number
13 has not been used since
1974, before which it was occasionally assigned at the discretion of individual race organizers. Before
1996, only the world championship winning driver and his team generally swapped numbers with the previous champion – the remainder held their numbers from prior years, as they had been originally set at the start of the 1974 season. For many years, for example, Ferrari held numbers 27 & 28, regardless of their finishing position in the world championship. As privateer teams quickly folded in the early 1990s, numbers were frequently shuffled around, until the current system was adopted in 1996.
Michael Schumacher holds the record for having won the most Drivers' Championships (seven) and Ferrari holds the record for having won the most Constructors' Championships (fifteen).
Jochen Rindt became the only posthumous World Champion after a fatal accident at the 1970 Italian Grand Prix.
Feeder series
For the most part, F1 drivers come up through the traditional European single seater series' -
Karting,
Formula Ford,
Formula Renault,
Formula 3, and finally
GP2. The GP2 series is two years old and both champions have gone on to race in F1. Before GP2 existed,
Formula 3000 was the last major "stepping stone" into F1, counting among its alumni
Juan-Pablo Montoya and
Jean Alesi. However, drivers do not have to have raced in GP2/F3000.
British F3 has long been considered one of the best places to spot F1 talent, with
David Coulthard,
Ayrton Senna and
Rubens Barrichello having raced there. Again though, it is possible to be picked earlier, as was the case with
Kimi Räikkönen, who went straight from Formula Renault to an F1 drive.
The
Champ Car World Series has also contributed to the Formula One grid, with
Juan-Pablo Montoya,
Alex Zanardi,
Cristiano da Matta and
Sebastian Bourdais (starting in 2008) migrating to F1 from Champ Car.
Other drivers have taken different paths to F1 -
Jacques Villeneuve came through two of the American single-seater series immediately before F1;
Damon Hill raced motorbikes, and Michael Schumacher raced in
sports cars (albeit after climbing through the junior single seater ranks). However, to race, the driver must hold an
FIA Super Licence - assuring that the driver has the requisite skills, and will not therefore be a danger to others. (Some drivers haven't had the licence when first assigned to a F1 team)
Beyond F1
Most F1 drivers retire before their mid-30s, however, many keep racing in disciplines that are less physically demanding. The
DTM is popular category, and some F1 drivers "crossed the pond" to race in America -
Nigel Mansell and
Emerson Fittipaldi duelled for the
1993 IndyCar title, while
Juan Pablo Montoya and
Jacques Villeneuve have moved to
NASCAR. Some drivers have gone to
A1GP; and some, such as
Gerhard Berger and
Alain Prost returned to F1 as team owners. In 2005 though, a new series appeared,
Grand Prix Masters, pitting retired grand prix drivers against each other, with the requirement that the drivers be over 40 and have been retired at least two years.
Grands Prix
Cars wind through the
infield section of the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway at the
2003 United States Grand Prix.
The number of Grands Prix held in a season has varied over the years. Only seven races comprised the inaugural 1950 world championship season; over the years the calendar has almost tripled in size. Though the number of races had stayed at sixteen or seventeen since the 1980s, it reached nineteen in 2005.
Six of the original seven races took place in
Europe; the only non-European race that counted towards the World Championship in 1950 was the
Indianapolis 500, which, due to lack of participation by F1 teams, since it required cars with different specifications from the other races, was later replaced by the
United States Grand Prix. The F1 championship gradually expanded to other non-European countries as well. Argentina hosted the first
South American grand prix in
1953, and
Morocco hosted the first
African World Championship race in 1958.
Asia (
Japan in 1976) and
Oceania (
Australia in 1985) followed. The current seventeen races are spread over the continents of Europe, Asia, Australia, North America, and South America.
Traditionally, each nation has hosted a single grand prix that carries the name of the country. If a single country hosts multiple grands prix in a year, they receive different names. For example, until 2007 two Grands Prix took place in
Germany, one of which was known as the
European Grand Prix.
The Grands Prix, some of which have a history that predates the Formula One World Championship, are not always held on the same circuit every year. The
British Grand Prix, for example, though held every year since 1950, alternated between
Brands Hatch and
Silverstone from 1963 to 1986. The only other race to have been included in every season is the
Italian Grand Prix. The World Championship event has taken place exclusively at
Monza with just one exception: in
1980, it was held at
Imola, host to the
San Marino Grand Prix until 2006.
One of the newest races on the Grand Prix calendar, held in
Bahrain, represents Formula One's first foray into the Middle East with a high tech purpose-built desert track. The
Bahrain Grand Prix, along with other new races in
China and
Turkey, present new opportunities for the growth and evolution of the Formula One Grand Prix franchise whilst new facilities also raise the bar for other Formula One racing venues around the world.
CIRCUIT
A typical circuit usually features a stretch of straight road on which the starting grid is situated. The
pit lane, where the drivers stop for fuel and tyres during the race, and where the teams work on the cars before the race, is normally located next to the starting grid. The layout of the rest of the circuit varies widely, although in most cases the circuit runs in a clockwise direction. Those few circuits that run anticlockwise (and therefore have predominantly left handed corners) can cause drivers neck problems due to the enormous lateral forces generated by F1 cars pulling their heads in the opposite direction to normal.
Most of the circuits currently in use are specially constructed for competition. The current street circuits are the
Circuit de Monaco, and
Melbourne, although races in other urban locations come and go (
Las Vegas and
Detroit, for example) and proposals for such races are often discussed – most recently
London and
Beirut. Several other circuits are also completely or partially laid out on public roads, such as
Spa-Francorchamps. The glamour and history of the Monaco race are the primary reasons why the circuit is still in use, since it is thought not to meet the strict safety requirements imposed on other tracks. Three-time World champion
Nelson Piquet famously described racing in Monaco as "like riding a bicycle around your living room."
Circuit design to protect the safety of drivers is becoming increasingly sophisticated, as exemplified by the new
Bahrain International Circuit, added in 2004 and designed – like most of F1's new circuits – by
Hermann Tilke. Several of the new circuits in F1, especially those designed by Tilke, have been criticized as lacking the "flow" of such classics as Spa-Francorchamps and Imola. His redesign of the
Hockenheim circuit in Germany for example, while providing more capacity for grandstands and eliminating extremely long and dangerous straights, has been frowned upon by many who argue that part of the character of the Hockenheim circuits were the long and blinding straights into dark forest sections. These newer circuits, however, are generally agreed to meet the safety standards of modern Formula One better than the older ones.
The most recent addition to the F1 calendar is
Istanbul Park in Turkey, which first staged an F1 race in
2005. The next confirmed additions will be street races in
Valencia and
Singapore (the latter set to be the host of the first night race in F1 history) in
2008 and a race in Abu Dhabi in
2009. India is another prospective destination that is often discussed in board meetings, but a few attempts in the last couple of years to select a location within the country have not worked out.
The Cost of Formula One
Estimated budget split of an F1 team based on the
2006 season
In March 2007
F1 Racing published its annual estimates of spending by Formula One teams. The total spending of all 11 teams in 2006 was estimated at $2.9 billion. This was broken down as follows;
Toyota $418.5 million,
Ferrari $406.5m,
McLaren $402m,
Honda $380.5m,
BMW Sauber $355m,
Renault $324m,
Red Bull $252m,
Williams $195.5m,
Midland F1/Spyker-MF1 $120m,
Toro Rosso $75m, and
Super Aguri $57 million.
Costs vary greatly from team to team; in 2006 teams such as Honda, Toyota, McLaren-Mercedes and Ferrari are estimated to have spent approximately $200 million on engines, Renault spent approximately $125 million and Cosworth's 2006 V8 was developed for $15 million. In contrast to the 2006 season on which these figures are based, the 2007 sporting regulations ban all performance related engine development.
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