© Vladimir RysBulls’ Guide To: Driver Fitness And NutritionWith races now set to come thick and fast, drivers won’t have much time to work on their physical fitness, so now is the time we find out who worked hard over the winter and who didn’t…
Typethephrase‘AreF1drivers…’intoapopularsearchengineandautocompletewilladdtheword‘athletes’asitsfirst-choiceresponse.Itis,frankly,asurprisingthingtoreadbutperhapsanaturalquestionforthosewithonlyacursoryinterestinasportthatis,itmustbeacknowledged,performedwhileseated.
Anyone who’s ever stumbled away from a go-kart session drenched in sweat will understand how racing has an intense physical element to it – but for those who never have, the amount of physical effort required to drive any sort of racing car will come as a surprise.
The short answer to that most searched question is, yes, F1 drivers are most definitely athletes. Driving an F1 car is a strenuous physical activity. Consider something like braking: the driver has to apply around 140kg of pressure to the pedal for the Rivazza corner at Imola. The cars will go through that corner 63 times in the grand prix, which means they’ll be doing the equivalent of lifting around nine tonnes on the leg press machine for Rivazza – and there are seven other braking points around the track. Brembo estimate the driver has to apply a total load approaching 60 tonnes during the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
This, of course, is just one of the areas of exertion. Core strength, grip, neck muscles are all working overtime in a cockpit with very little suspension travel, bouncing over kerbs and regularly submitting the driver to 5-6G loading. It’s also a very hot environment in which to work. In humid conditions the driver can lose a significant fraction of body weight during a race (similar to what an elite marathon runner experiences) but even racing in cooler climates, the driver is still wearing fireproof overalls, seated millimetres away from red-hot power unit components. You have to be fit to cope with that.
But how fit is fit enough? Opinions on this vary. Some drivers take their fitness levels to extremes. The likes of Mark Webber and Jenson Button were comfortable enough in their fitness to share training sessions with Olympians; others would argue that it’s not like playing five sets at Wimbledon, and there’s a point beyond which it's wasted effort.
Brad Scanes is Max Verstappen’s physio and fitness coach. Before Formula 1, he worked in a number of other sports and is in a position to judge the relative requirements. “I think the needle is certainly shifting,” says Brad. “You look at football, or basketball, you need to be an athlete first, before a footballer, you need to be an athlete first, before a basketball player. I don't think Formula One will ever swing fully that way – because the ability to drive will always be the key thing – but people are recognising the importance of fitness that little bit more. If your competitors are doing it, and getting benefits from it, you need to be doing it as well.”
Fatigue doesn’t always manifest itself with a driver struggling to remain upright on the podium or collapsing by the side of the car in parc fermé. Sometimes the signs are more cryptic: the unforced late-race single-car error, or the ill-judged line of attack or defence. It doesn’t happen so much now – because drivers tend to be very, very fit but for a racing driver, physical fitness – or lack thereof – often affects mental acuity. It is in the final stages of a grand prix, when exhaustion is most likely to play a part, that the least-fit drivers, while not necessarily driving slower, may lose the ability to maintain focus.
“Being ultra-ultra-fit isn’t going to improve your performance in the car – but not being fit to a level is going to cause you to drop off in the car,” says Brad. “You’re having to press 20 or so buttons on the steering wheel while talking, listening to commands and driving at 300km/h attempting an overtake. Being a triathlete isn’t going to make you better at doing that – but if it’s lap 70 of a 72-lap race and you’re feeling a bit fatigued – that’s where you’re going to lose it mentally. Your cognitive processing is going to drop-off and you’re maybe going to take that extra risk you shouldn’t have taken.”
Each era of Formula One dictates drivers of a certain shape and stature. The big, heavy cars of the early 1950s, favoured big, heavy men, but these gave way to slighter figures when F1 went to more nimble rear-engine cars in the 1960s.
Brawn came back in the 1980s, where strong arms and massive upper-body strength (with optional mirrored-shades and medallions) were required to wrestle the hugely powerful turbo cars around a qualifying lap. Drivers became smaller again with the ultra-lightweight V10 cars during the refuelling era of the 1990s and 2000s, and thin to the point of gauntness when KERS was introduced and suddenly teams were struggling to make the minimum weights. With every extra kilo costing grid positions, drivers became extremely diet-conscious, and indulged in practices such as racing without a full drinks bottle. This wasn’t particularly healthy for the taller drivers and, in an effort to level the playing field, F1 now mandates a minimum weight for driver and seat of 80kg.
This allows the drivers a little bit more latitude in their fitness regimes – but not a great deal – particularly for the taller guys. Similar to marathon runners and mountain-climbing cyclists, F1 drivers face the conundrum of reaching peak physical fitness without piling on the muscle. Muscle is heavy and, as such, too much is problematic and thus, the good fitness regime tends to spread the load around.
“It’s not just one-way training for these guys,” says Brad. “They have to do cardio-vascular work; high intensity work because of the heart-rate spikes they get at lights-out and when overtaking, and be strong in a number of different areas. The cardio-vascular side of things tends to be long, slow steady-state stuff ¬– running or on the bike – it helps with weight, but it also builds endurance.”
The F1 season – particularly the modern F1 season – crams a lot in. So much, in fact, that drivers rarely have time to do much in the way of serious physical fitness work. This isn’t a huge handicap, because driving the car is an excellent way to keep them in shape – but without a chance to improve while the season is in progress, the real work has to be done over the winter.
“Pre-season is when we get most of our work done,” confirms Brad. “Once the race schedule starts, we fall into more of a maintenance phase. When we’re on back-to-back races we’re not going to want to train hard in between because the driver needs to recover, reset and prepare for the next race. In pre-season, however, we can do six or seven weeks with six sessions a week, normally a couple of double days, a couple of single days and a day off.
“Lockdown, purely from the perspective of Max’s fitness regime, has been quite useful. It’s reduced the amount of travel, and the number of media and marketing commitments, enabling us to get in a really good block of pre-season training, that we haven’t had previously, enabling us to arrive at the start of the season with Max in the best shape he’s ever been in – and it’s exciting to see what he can do with that on track.”
This ‘maintenance phase’ doesn’t mean training stops – far from it – it’s just dialled back to accommodate other demands on the drivers’ time, such as travel, appearances and racing – but there is more to fitness than exercise alone. A good dietary and hydration regimen is a vital tool in the modern sport for ensuring drivers can perform at their best during a race weekend.
Today, there isn’t a one-size-fits all for F1 drivers. Their different backgrounds and physiques, plus the demands of travel would make that untenable but there are certain traits across the field. And while the driver will frequently eat with the rest of the team in the motorhome, it’s often the case that they’ll be eating something prepared specifically for them by the chef, based on their pre-planned menu for the weekend. These tend to feature plenty of fish (much of it oily) and poultry for protein (but not much red meat), carbs in the form of vegetables, quinoa and brown rice, a full load from the salad bar and plenty of nuts, oats and other forms of fibre.
Beyond the demands of pure nutritional value, the dietary regime has to also include a little bit of flexibility. “We can adjust it,” says Brad. “If we’re struggling a little with weight, or with jet-lag after a long trip, or need to recover, we might use something [in the diet] to pick ourselves up a little bit, and get the energy back on point. It varies through the race season.”
The other side of the coin is hydration. You rarely see a driver on a race weekend without a drinks bottle in hand, steadily taking on board fluid – particularly at the races in more humid climates. “The drivers can lose, in some races, up to 2.5l of fluid, which can equate to 3kg of body mass,” agrees Brad. “It is a lot and it will negatively affect performance which is why, during a race weekend, we will preload with fluid and electrolytes. After that, the driver can have a 1.5l drink in the car – that’s water mixed with electrolytes and maybe a carbohydrate mix.”
Max Has His Drinks Bottle To Hand© Getty Images
In the history of F1, no driver has ever been complimentary about the taste of the onboard drink but what really tends to dismay them are the hot, humid races where as they approach the grid the drink has already reaching the temperature recommended for a nice hot cup of tea. It’s these races, however, where the drink is most important – because the drivers struggle to cool themselves by sweating, because the sweat can’t evaporate, and thus, they sweat more. It’s these races – Singapore standing out on the current calendar as the most brutal – where fitness really tells, and thus, the training regime makes special concessions to having the best preparation possible.
“We’ll try to train in a hot climate prior to a hot race, starting roughly about three weeks beforehand” says Brad. “In the South of France, that means [for Singapore, in September] is heading out at midday and doing our running then. It’s the best way to prepare for the heat in the car.”
It isn’t of course, as good as going to Singapore three weeks early, but that isn’t any more feasible than it is to spend October training at 2,250m in preparation for the Mexican Grand Prix. In this regard – and unlike other athletes preparing for a major event – the drivers simply have to accept they can’t fully acclimatise, rely on their background level of fitness and take comfort from knowing their peers are in the same position. Those with the best regimen are likely to suffer the least.
Sweating After The Session© Getty Images
It all sounds really quite brutal – but in this as in all things there has to be balance. A constant shuttle between paddock and gym wouldn’t be particularly beneficial to either the drivers physical or mental fitness. The body takes a fearful pummelling in the cockpit of an F1 car, and time away from it all is also part of a successful fitness regime. “It’s important to get good recovery and good rest and get some form of normality in life as well,” agrees Brad. “A 23-race season, you spend a lot of time away from home, a lot of time travelling and doing that work. After a race, a few beers and a couple of days off is never a bad thing!”
