lights out! race start!

[leeseokmin]

as a disclaimer, i haven't been actively into formula 1 since 2018. yes this is because danric left redbull. yes i am getting back into it because danric is having a significantly better season this year. yes i know you may not know who danric is. i'll get to that. at the core of it though, my weekends growing up were very much centered around watching formula one and then later at night, the english premier league. it's been 13 years of on-off liking f1 for me, and since tl is experiencing a collective renaissance, here is my primer to f1! it's very casual and heavily biased, but i hope you learn something from it and i'll try my best to answer any questions you have in comments

the mechanics

• teams and drivers
  • as of this season, there are 10 teams with 2 drivers each competing in f1. however, FIA regulations go up to 26 cars, which means the max number of teams allowed to participate is actually 13.
  • commentary: the naming conventions of teams comes from the idea that a team is comprised of it's chassis (car body) and engine constructor. therefore, mercedes is a team in which both chassis and body are the work (or to be more accurate, intellectual property) and red bull racing honda is an example of red bull constructing the chassis and honda supplying the engine
  • below is an overview of the teams & their drivers for the 2020 season, ordered as their current standing in the world constructors

  teams	drivers
  mercedes	lewis hamilton & valtteri bottas
  red bull racing honda	max verstappen & alex albon
  racing point bwt mercedes	sergio perez & lance stroll
  mclaren renault	carlos sainz & lando norris
  renault	daniel ricciardo & esteban ocon
  ferrari	sebastian vettel & charles leclerc
  alphatauri honda	pierre gasly & daniil kvyat
  alfa romeo racing ferrari	kimi raikkonen & antonio giovinazzi
  haas ferrari	kevin magnussen & romain grosjean
  williams mercedes	george russell & nicholas latifi

• every season consists of a fixed number of grand prixs, with the 2020 season having 17. this weekend (27-29) is the bahrain "twilight" grand prix and it's the 15th race of the season
• the race format itself involves a free practice session on friday, more free practice & qualifying on saturday and race day on sunday
  
  • free practices are just a way for drivers to re-familiarize themselves with the track and to check out tyre performance, different tyres + management yields different results
  • qualifying can be best explained divided into 3 knock-out stages: Q1, Q2 and Q3.
    • Q1
      • drivers are given 18 minutes to clock in their fastest lap times
      • from there, the 5 slowest cars are eliminated and occupy starting positions 16-20 [this season has 20 drivers]
    • Q2
      • after a short interval, drivers are given 15 minutes to clock their fastest lap times.
      • again, the 5 slowest are eliminated and occupy starting positions 11-15 on the grid
    • Q3
      • the remaining drivers are given 12 minutes to fill the starting positions 1-10
      • the fastest driver occupies the "pole position"/P1/first place.
    • commentary: the time limit for a qualifying sector means that drivers can do continous laps on a circuit, it isn't fixed to one single lap to determine your position per qualifying sector, all that matters is your fastest time. if someone says danric is on p6, what this means is that he's starting the grand prix race on sunday at 6th position. in order to podium, he has to make his way up to p3.
  • race day is pretty self-explanatory, drivers compete with each other to complete a predetermined number of laps in order to earn racing points are only awarded to those in first to tenth position
• the racing points system
  • the top 10 drivers of each race are awarded points which go to world drivers championship and the world constructors championship at the end of the season. the point breakdown is below
    • 10 - 1pt
    • 9 - 2pts
    • 8 - 4pts
    • 6 - 8pts
    • 5 - 10pts
    • 4 - 12pts
    • 3 - 15pts
    • 2 - 18pts
    • 1 - 25pts
  • the world drivers championship is a purely individual award and relies on you consistently ranking in top 10, and lets be honest, in the top 3 particularly, in order to be in the running
  • the world constructors championship, on the other hand, is a team effort, which requires both drivers of a team to finish in top 10 for the team to win
    • for example, max verstappen & alex albon are teammates in the red bull racing team. if max finishes 2nd(18pts) and alex finishes 4th(12pts), a combined total of 30pts go to red bull racing for the constructors.
  • commentary: this is where the idea of f1 being a simultaneous individual and team sport comes in. there are times where you rely on your teammate to either protect your position from the back or open up your position in the front. this is also where the sexiest f1 rivalries come from [nico rosberg/lewis hamilton], besides rivalries created by nationalities/ex-teammate dynamics
• here is a really great technical intro post for beginners, written for the 2019 season so not all the drivers are the same, but the technical aspects, afaik, stand. it also covers some stuff i mentioned in greater detail
• here is an intro to f1 slang which isn't super comprehensive but covers the basics of what you'll hear in race commentary 
• last article that explains the trackside of things. it from a mercedes point of view, and different teams arrange their pitwalls differently, but it gives you an idea of what's happening besides the drivers, and the contributions of the team to both individual and team wins

current season overview

• as it stands, mercedes won the constructors championship for the seventh consecutive year (while i believe broke a world record?). i have mixed feelings about it mostly because i genuinely do love hamilton as a driver and person, but i really don't care for mercedes as a team. the last time i did was probably the rosberg-hamilton roster that made interteam rivalry sxc as fuck.
• hamilton won the world championship as well this season 
• idk what else to say. MY BABY (DANRIC) HAD TWO PODIUMS THIS SEASON! WE'RE POPPING BOTTLES!!!

essential media

• races themselves. there's no adrenaline rush like watching a race whether real time or recorded, because they're so fun even if f1 has a very predictable result. sometimes the unpredictable happens (like valtteri p14 in last week's race) but mostly listening to the commentators helps you familiarize yourself with the race aspects
• drive to survive, the netflix docuseries, is pretty good if you're just getting into f1. it's... unnecessarily dramatic at times and takes a very single lens to complex dynamics but i do love it & the insight it gives into f1 on and offtrack. be warned that this focuses on the 2018-2019 team roster & driver lineups though, so not all drivers/team rosters are the same on the current season
• f1: beyond the grid is a podcast that the f1 themselves put out. there's an interesting mix of things in here where they interview current drivers, former drivers, team principals, etc. it's really good content to consume while doing mindless tasks, and super engaging
• beyond victory with nico rosberg is hosted by former world champion and mercedes driver... nico rosberg! i especially love the bits on youtube and whenever he does post-race interviews!
• THE MCLAREN RACING YOUTUBE CHANNEL IS A JOY! anything involving the twitch quartet (albon, russell, leclerc, norris) is always engaging and fun but sainz and norris have a dynamic that play off each other very well. i think this will only improve next year when danric joins mclaren alongside norris
• on that note, the redbull racing youtube channel is just as fun! alex albon is cudie and deserve of the world, i think. max dupid as fuck. also all the best content comes from 2018 max-danric but i never said that
• rush (2013), the formula 1 movie inspired by nikki lauda & james hunt. i'm not sure what the serious stance on the movie is but as a casual f1 watcher i think it maintained the line between autobiographical and dramaticized adrenaline
• same goes for senna, which i haven't personally watched, but my brother reccomends
• this is personal bias: danric's youtube channel. as we all know i love him, the media loves him, he's the very picture of a media baby cancer placement man, there's no such meta like a fucking cancer meeting up with gang of youths

personal thoughts

• i only care for my #BELOVED_OF_THE_WORLD_DANIEL_RICCIARDO and i wish this were a joke. i really only do care about him. danric is an excellent driver, but he needs a good car for it, which is why he was at his best in red bull. renault's car is much better this season than it was last season and he's podium-ing again because of it, which makes me excited for where he'll go with mclaren next year. imo he's very. hmm. he's definitely a driver who could win a world championship, but under specific circumstances, which is why he only wins podiums most of the time. he is an excellent driver though, especially with his signature inside overtakes, watching him drive is like a perfectly executed choreography.
• drivers i generally like to watch besides danric: alex albon, sergio perez, esteban ocon, carlos sainz, charles leclerc, max verstappen *grudginly* lewis hamilton
• watching f1 is very... it's simultaneously boring and fun to me. boring in the sense that race results are often predictable, which is why i tune out the top 3 of a race if both mercedes' are in the top 3 in order to focus on 4-10, which is where it's exciting. f1's best racing happens outside their top 3, some drivers i particularly LOVE watching here are ofc danric, leclerc and sainz. the f1 midfield teams put up the best races imo because their desire for a position is so much stronger and therefore they're more dedicated in following through with risky maneuvres. unless you're rookie max verstappen, our fave reckless libra 
• the rivalries in f1 are exquisite. they exist within the team and across teams and sometimes, the most delicate rivalries are within teams. case in point dannymax. are you best friends off the track and flipflop between loving and hating each other on track while you are in the same team?
  • i think lav said it best in swell the rout, despite it being a seokhao fic: Minghao had a feeling that Seokmin had begun to suspect what Minghao had known for almost an entire year prior—that Red Bull Racing was building its future around their newest racer Minghao Xu, and their former star Seokmin Lee was now only a figure in yesterday's dreams.in this case minghao is max and seokmin is danny but because of the nature of f1 drivers spending an upwards of a decade in f1, there's a real spiderweb of relationship dynamics that occur off cam
• i love f1 because despite the inevitable, every driver races to win. you don't become lewis hamilton from racing for five years, you become lewis hamilton for racing as long as you love racing, which is what so many of these drivers do 
• you could, in some ways, bleak boyband bingo formula 1 (alexander albon/carlos sainz/max verstappen i'm looking at you) because so many of them have so much to win/lose that it's overwhelming, all-consuming 

with all that said, let's cross our fingers for a danric p3 finish! please let my gross boy do a shoeey <3
 

Comments

[westfall]

THIS IS EVERYTHING DIA!!! omg i think this is really comprehensive and accessible ‪(☆__☆)‬ i love the brief explanation of race weekends with points/etc!! and you know that i am dannymaxist to the.... MAX (sry)<3 also dead @ my surprise cameo ehehe tfw seokhao is also dannymax..... everything comes around.

ALSO!! "you could, in some ways, bleak boyband bingo formula 1 (alexander albon/carlos sainz/max verstappen i'm looking at you)" pls elaborate i'm listening...