Apart from the world championship series, many other non-championship F1 races were also held, but as the costs of conducting these contests got higher, such races were discontinued after Each F1 team can have maximum of four drivers per season. The number of Grand Prix in a season has varied through the years, starting from which had 7 races.
This number kept increasing up to a maximum of 20 GPs a year in Normally there are 19 to 20 GPs in a season now. The F1 season has 19 Grand Prix, out of which 8 have been completed.
Each GP in a season is hosted by a different country and are named after the host country. However, a GP can be held in same or different cities of the host country every year.
The minimum total distance of a Grand Prix race, including all the pre-defined number of laps must be km or miles. This is the standard distance for all races except for the Monaco GP which is km or miles. That is, a total of 20 cars can enter the competition. However, the FIA regulations allow a limit of 26 cars for the championship. The results of all the Grand Prix races in a season are taken together to determine two annual Championship awards.
A Formula One car is an open-wheel, open-cockpit, single-seat racing car for the purpose of being used in Formula One competitions. It is equipped with two wings front and rear plus an engine, which is located behind the driver. Sometimes they are conducted on closed public roads as well. The weight must be not less than kg or lbs, including the driver and tires, but excluding the fuel. Semi-automatic sequential carbon titanium gearboxes are used by F1 cars presently, with 8 forward gears and 1 reverse gear, with rear-wheel drive.
The steering wheel of an F1 car is equipped to perform many functions like changing gears, changing brake pressure, calling the radio, fuel adjustment, and so on. The fuel used by Formula One cars is a tightly controlled mixture of ordinary petrol, and can only contain commercial gasoline compounds rather than alcohol compounds. Formula One cars have been using smooth thread, slick tires since All F1 cars can accelerate from 0 to mph kmph and decelerate back to 0 in under 5 seconds.
F1 cars have reached top speeds of about kmph or mph on an average. However, some cars, without fully complying with F1 standards have attained speed of kmph or more. These numbers are mostly same for all F1 cars but slight variations may be there due to the gears and aerodynamics configuration.
Safety is high priority in motor sports. Formula One has seen many tragedies in its early days with many casualties that included drivers and spectators as cars crashed at high speeds. Engineers researched using latest technology to build safer cars and gear for drivers.
This has certainly reduced the number of incidents over the last decade. These are fire resistant also. Of course, the helmets have to meet FIA standards. The helmet comprises of several layers that undergo severe tests. Normally, the weight of the helmet is around 1.
Interestingly, the helmets of F1 are painted by hand. It is built using carbon fiber material and is attached to the seat belt in the cockpit. It is coupled with elastic straps. It is a multilayered suit that matches specifications of NASA. Nomex is the latest fiber material brand used to build suits for F1 drivers.
The suit undergoes thermal testing; it is fire resistant and lightweight. The suit is worn by the pit crew also. The cars became faster and slicker - Lotus again were the innovators when they introduced ground-effect aerodynamics that provided enormous downforce and greatly increased cornering speeds - by the early s the days of private entries were all but over as the costs of racing rocketed.
Not only that, with the advent of turbocharged cars, speeds and power also raced ahead. Safety remained a concern - Stewart retired on the eve of what would have been his final race following the death of his close friend and team mate Francois Cevert in practice ahead of the US Grand Prix. In Fittipaldi refused to drive in the Spanish Grand Prix which was stopped after 29 laps when a car ploughed into the crowd, killing four spectators.
James Hunt leads the field in heavy rain - he finished third, gaining the points necessary to win the World Championship. He won six of the first nine races in before a horrendous crash at the German Grand Prix left him with burns so severe he was not expected to live.
Almost unbelievably he was back in the cockpit six weeks later and the championship went down to the wire, James Hunt edging out the courageous Lauda in the final race. Lotus again led the way in with the introduction of ground-effects technology using side skirts and underbody design to give the car phenomenal grip, albeit temperamentally and Mario Andretti was supreme as he won six of the 16 races.
But the year was again marred by a tragedy as team-mate Ronnie Peterson was killed at Monza. This marked the beginning of the end for the legendary Lotus team and was their last championship-winning year. In the early s Bernie Ecclestone rearranged the management of Formula One's commercial rights, turning the sport into a billion-dollar global business.
Until Ecclestone, circuit owners controlled many aspects of the sport; he persuaded the teams of their worth and the value of negotiating as a coordinated unit. Matters deteriorated to the extent FOCA boycotted a race and threatened a breakaway tactics that were turned on Ecclestone years later. In return FISA removed its sanction from races.
An uneasy truce came with the Concorde Agreement. In Alan Jones and the Williams team dominated and in Nelson Piquet took the title by one point with victory at the U. S Grand Prix. Two months later, in practice for the German Grand Prix, Pironi was so badly injured that he never raced again. From then on turbos, which first appeared in , came to rule the roost. Piquet won his second title in with Brabham, and Lauda's half-point win in heralded the start of a period of dominance by McLaren in which they won the drivers' title in seven out of eight years with Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna.
The team's zenith came in when they won 15 of the 16 races but for the following season turbos were banned, and the relationship between the two drivers deteriorated rapidly. To combat the phenomenal power of cars, restrictions were brought in and eventually turbochargers were banned altogether in In the s electronic drivers aids began to emerge again Lotus were at the forefront and by the early s semi-automatic gearboxes and traction control were a natural progression.
The battle between new technology and the desire of the FIA to counter accusations that the drivers were increasingly less relevant than the boffins, raged throughout the next two decades. McLaren and Williams continued to rule the roost in the s. In all, McLaren won 16 championships seven constructors', nine drivers' in that period, while Williams matched them with 16 titles of their own nine constructors', seven drivers'.
But the rivalry between Prost and Senna ended in with Prost's retirement and then in Senna died at Imola. His death was a watershed, in that it led to considerable increases in safety standards - no driver has died at the wheel of an F1 car since then. The FIA introduced measures to slow the cars and improve their safety. But purists continued to argue the race was more about the technicians and designers than drivers, and like many other sports, a few teams dominated.
The results of all the Grand Prix races in a season are taken together to determine two annual Championship awards. Formula One - Participating Countries Advertisements.
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