When you put your hand out the window driving down a highway going sixty miles per hour, you will find your hand wanting to fly backward at a great force. Now multiply that by three, you are now traveling over 180 miles per hour in an open-wheeled car with a helmet as a windshield, and you are mere inches away from the pavement. Instead of slowing down at an average speed to stop before a stoplight without spilling your coffee, a formula one driver has to wait until the last second to push the brake pedal as hard as they physically can, all while enduring several G forces that would make the average person faint. 

         As said by Ernest Hemmingway, “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games,” motor racing has been around since the first combustion engine was put in a car, but modern-day race cars are some of the most advanced pieces of machinery a person can get their hands on, with one sole purpose, go as fast as possible around a track (“Ernest Heminway”). If you look at a car from 1950, they would be “Front-engined, rear-wheel-drive, 1.5-litre supercharged in-line eight cylinder, 709kg, 350bhp” (Stuart). While a modern car from 2020 is “Rear-engined, rear-wheel-drive, 1.6-litre V6 turbo hybrid, 746kg, 1,000+bhp” (Stuart). Modern cars are made from the most advanced materials on the market and have an immense amount of time being researched and developed. Modern F1 teams have had budgets of over 650 million dollars per season. This sounds like a lot of money, but when each titanium bolt on the car can cost over a hundred dollars apiece, and the power plant alone can set the team back millions of dollars, it all adds up. 

         F1 has many rules and regulations; there are ten teams, each with two cars and two main drivers. They all try to finish first across the line on race day; how might they do this?  Each race week, there is a primary qualifying day where each team gets full use of the track without others getting in their way to try and get the fastest lap possible. Whoever gets the fastest lap or “pole position” will get to start at the front of the line on the day of the actual race, giving them an advantage over the others. Unlike most racing, in F1, refueling was banned in 2010, and due to regulations, the cars are only allowed to carry a certain amount of weight. Depending on the track, the teams will estimate the amount of fuel used and put as little in the car as possible to save weight (Stuart). While the teams cannot refuel the car, they can change the tires, which is one of the most essential parts of winning a race. The teams each have seven different types of tires, two of which are designed to be used in the rain, and the other five vary in level of rubber hardness. The teams will decide what their tire strategy will be; the softest rubber compound is the fastest tire but not lasting as long as a harder tire that will have less grip. When it is time to change the tires, the pit crew has to do so as fast as possible and get the car back out on track. There are 20 people on a pit crew, and each has their job; when all are in sync with each other, they can change all four tires on the car in less than two seconds (Engle).

         Formula one is the peak of motor racing, and to become one of the 20 racers to get behind the wheel of one, you must be at the peak of your game with years of experience, talent, and physical strength. The teams have some of the best mechanics and masterminds for deciding how they can win the race. There is no other fan base quite like racing cars because there is nothing like seeing multiple cars inches from each other going over 200 miles per hour and fighting for the lead.