© Getty ImagesBulls' Guide To: Race StartEveryone knows what happens when the red lights go out… but what happens before? Read on…
Max Waits To Be Released In The Garage© Thomas Butler/Getty Images
If you were to design the golden hour before the start of a grand prix, with the intention of providing maximum stress and distraction to a driver, you’d… make it pretty much how it is now.
Tiger Woods doesn’t have to pose for selfies on the first tee at Augusta; Serena Williams doesn’t do her knock-up at Wimbledon with 200 spectators – some at their first tennis match – wandering around Centre Court; Usain Bolt isn’t getting his feet comfortable in the blocks with someone shoving a microphone in his face. The F1 grid is a bearpit in comparison – but in the middle of that, there’s a team of mechanics working through a checklist and a driver trying to get into the right headspace before launching himself at 300km/h into a corner that’s going to make or break his race.
Watch it enough times on TV and it starts to look normal – but it’s not, it’s bizarre. And there’s a lot more to it than pre-race razzamatazz. The race start is a delicate procedural step. Get this wrong and the rest of the afternoon won’t go well. And, like most things in F1, it begins before anyone outside really notices.
Max Verstappen In The Garage© Getty Images
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An hour before the formation lap begins, the gates in the pit lane open and garage crews are allowed out onto the grid. They’ll be taking equipment with them: generators; grid trolleys full of kit; tyres. Anything they might need before the start of the race. At some point, the team will also check their radios, making sure everything’s working – because it isn’t always the case.
Meanwhile, in the garage, car mechanics will be going through their final preparation. They work through the checklist a lot earlier than they would for the other sessions, because effectively the session begins when the car leaves the garage, and it does that around 40 minutes before the race begins.
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Access to the track from the pit exit is controlled by a traffic light. The light turns green 40 minutes before the start of the race (30 minutes at the start of this season but now back up to 40) signalling that the track is open. For the drivers and the team, the next part of the start procedure is more than simply travelling from A to B. The reconnaissance lap – or, more commonly, laps – are the final chance to practice with the car.
Carried out on a set of tyres not intended for use during the race – but often a set comparable to those that will be used in the race – the reconnaissance lap may look perfunctory but isn’t. Conditions shortly before the start of the race may be very different to those experienced on Friday and Saturday – and the recon laps are the only chance the driver has to experience them before hammering down to turn one for real. They are therefore encouraged to push hard and find out as much about the car and the conditions as they can.
Max Takes The Curb© Getty Images
If the driver wishes to do more than one lap-to-grid, they have to cruise through the pit lane at the end of each lap, because the start-finish straight is filled with crews, guests, TV cameras, a safety car and quite possibly a marching band. Several drivers find this procedure rather more daunting than racing: There’s a stream of people and matériel crossing the pit lane, some of whom may have never been in a pit lane before. It can be… fraught.
With 30 minutes to go, the pit lane closes. Anyone not on track at this point will not be allowed out until the race begins. Attention therefore turns to the grid itself.
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Once the car arrives at the back of the grid, the crew lift it up onto skates and push it to its grid slot (because it’s really not a safe place to be driving an F1 car) and the driver jumps out. His next official engagement is 17 minutes before the start, when he will take part in F1’s anti-racism messaging, and then stand at the front of the grid for the national anthem of the host nation. He might want to spend the intervening minutes keeping cool in the garage or attending to some other important personal business – but before that he’ll have a chat with his race engineer.
Mechanics Push Max On The Grid© Getty Images
From the first time a wheel turned in Q1 on Saturday, the car has been in parc ferme conditions, so there isn’t anything to be done with the mechanical set-up except adjust the front wing – but based on the discussion between the driver and his race engineer, there’s plenty of other things that can be changed, from the pressure in the tyres (very unlikely – they’re going to be at the Pirelli minimums) to the electronic set-up of the car with changes to the differential, or engine braking maps.
There may be less grip after rain, or more grip after the morning’s F3, F2 and Porsche races, the wind may have changed direction, it may be hotter or colder than the previous day – all of which will suggest a slight tweak to the set-up parameters. The driver will have spent his recon laps trying out various settings, and now it’s the time to pick the most appropriate ones for the race start.
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While the driver is sequestered with his engineers, the car on the grid is back in the hands of its crew, who – unless the driver has, say, destroyed the front end of the car on the recon laps – go through their checklist for ensuring the car is in race-ready condition. The pattern is so familiar it’s almost done by rote – which is why there is a checklist – though this year, in an effort to ensure everyone can get off the grid without jostling for space at the choke-points, some of the timings have changed – this is almost stranger than the complete absence of media and VIPs. Almost.
The critical jobs are timed to specific moments, with the process masterminded from the pit wall by Sporting Director Jonathan Wheatley via the radio. The car was prepped before it left the garage but there are many jobs to do before the formation lap. One of the big tasks is cooling the car after its laps-to-grid – except the parts that need to be heated. When the car stops at the back of the grid, the crew will fit all the fans they can to start bringing the temperatures down. Getting the car cold allows the driver – among other things – to do burnouts on his way to the race start without overheating the engine. This is why everyone tends to leave the garage as early as possible: it provides maximum cooling time.
Team On The Pit Wall© Thomas Butler
The crew will also do fire-ups on the grid, which pour heat back into the system. This works to get fluids flowing – but is also vital to check telemetry and ensure everything is working. They’ll also be heating the front wheel hubs. While the rear tyres can be warmed with burnouts, the fronts can’t, so the brake callipers are red hot so that, when the wheels are fitted, the heat leaches into the tyres.
Before the closed races of 2020, it was always easy to spot someone on their first grid walk. They’re the ones who leap into the air each time an engine is fired up. While not quite up to the standards of the screaming V12s and V10s of old, F1’s 1.6l hybrids are still louder than Zak Starkey drumming for The Who. The seasoned campaigner of the Red Bull Racing crew barely notice. They have Tensator barriers up around the cars, and what’s outside of the barriers simply ceases to exist.
Front end mechanic Ole Schack has been on the grid for longer than the team has existed. For him, working in the middle of that maelstrom was as natural as breathing.
“From the outside it may look like the car is buried beneath hundreds of people, but it really isn’t. With the Tensator barriers up, they’re nowhere near the car – which lets everyone enjoy a wonderful moment on the grid but equally let’s us get on with what we need to do. The half-hour goes by really quickly and I really don’t see who’s on the grid unless I watch the race the next day. It doesn’t really affect me – it’s outside the bubble.”
Drivers Stand For The National Anthem© Getty Images
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After the anthem, things begin to move a little faster. The team may perform a final fire-up and the travel tyres will come off the car. In a normal season, the 10-minute hooter is the signal for marketing and hospitality to clear their charges off the grid, leaving behind orderly clumps of mechanics and officials, and a driver about to get into the car. That hasn’t always been as straightforward as it sounds.
“We would like to have him in the car ten minutes before the start,” says Ole. “That shouldn’t be a problem because the anthem is supposed to be a minute – but sometimes it’s two minutes, and perhaps it starts a minute late. Suddenly everyone is looking at the clock. It can be tight, particularly if the driver wants to nip back to the garage for a comfort break – or simply stops for a chat on his way from the start line to the car!”
Once at the car, the driver has to get into his helmet and HANS (head and neck safety) device, and receive last minute instructions from a race engineer, perhaps concerning conditions and anything that wasn’t covered a few minutes earlier – or is sufficiently important to warrant covering again. After this it’s down to the crew to get the driver buckled down, comfortable and ready to go. Having worked with David Coulthard, Sebastian Vettel and Daniil Kvyat, Ole Schack now looks after Max’s belts.
“That’s the main task on the grid for me,’ says Ole. “I’ll put Max in whenever he’s ready; normally between ten and eight minutes from the start. It’s a set piece: strap him in, get him comfortable; connect the drinks bottle and the radio, fit the headrest. Everything is done exactly the same way at every race. We’ve seen races ruined recently for something as simple as a headrest not fitted correctly – which is why we never rush.”
Most days in the garage or on TV you’ll see Ole and Max engaged in animated conversation – but there’s no small talk on the grid. “I never talk the driver unless they want to talk to me,” says Ole. “Sometimes there’s a bit of a glint in the eye and they want a chat – but this is their time, not mine, and they have to get into their zone. A caddy wouldn’t talk to a golfer when he’s lining up a championship-winning putt. It’s the same thing.”
Making Things Nice And Tight© Getty Images
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Another hooter sounds with five minutes to go. The wheels have to be on the car by this point and the majority of the crew have to begin moving off the grid. In any other season, this part of the protocol happens at three minutes – but with a limited number of access points from the grid to the pit lane, the extra minutes this year allows everyone to keep their distance. They’re taking with them the grid trolleys, fans, coolers heaters and bungs.
Sitting on the grid with its eight allowed crew members, the car is beginning to return to ambient temperatures. The driver will have checked the radio is working by this point, and may now receive information regarding the tyres everyone is starting the race with. On a dry day, that’s only relevant for the ten cars that didn’t make Q3. In changeable conditions, it can be a lot more interesting. It’s food for thought at the track but has the AT&T Operations Room back in Milton Keynes turned up to 11.
OneMinuteBeforeFormationLap:Fire-up
With a minute to go the engine is fired-up. The blankets that have been left on the car until the last possible instant are now removed, and, with 30 seconds to go, the crew move off the grid. With 15 seconds to go, they have to have their feet behind the white lines marking the edge of the track. One toe over that line and the driver will be receiving a penalty. If everything has gone smoothly, the cars then move off in formation. Technically, this is the start of the race.
Max Heads Out On Track In Sochi© Vladimir Rys
Assuming the grid gets away, the formation lap is now the first moment of quiet on the radio for about a hour. Until a few years ago, the drivers were barraged with requests from their race engineers on the formation lap, telling them to warm the brakes, cool the engine, learn various gears, and issuing instructions for clutch preparation. That sort of coaching is banned now – meaning it has to be drilled into the driver beforehand. Of necessity, it has become less complex – but the core values remain.
Early in the formation lap the driver will attempt to ‘learn’ the gears – priming the seamless shift system by staying in each gear for a certain length of time with a given amount of torque. Meanwhile, they’ll also have to do the tricky juggling act of warming the brakes and tyres, while cooling the engine – the traditional method of which is low revs in high gears, plus some heavy braking and weaving.
The critical part of the formation lap happens after the final corner when drivers do a bite-point find to assist with their clutch control and a sequence of burnouts, to get heat into the rear tyres – the number of which will depend on the type of tyre, the track temperatures and also the grid position: anyone starting on the front row is going to do more burnouts than a driver on the back row, because they’re going to be sitting on the grid with the tyres cooling, waiting for the grid to form behind them. They’ll use a burnout mode to protect the engine, and need to remember to switch over to a launch mode before the start.
At this point, all eyes are on the drivers – but the crew haven’t got the kettle on just yet. With the chance of a first lap incident ever-present, those that were still on the grid are now sprinting back to the garages. That’s easy or hard depending where the car was on the grid, where the gaps are in the fence, how long the pit lane is, and how long it takes to do a formation lap.
From the front of the grid in Barcelona, it’s a gentle jog: from the back of the grid at Interlagos, it’s a lung-bursting uphill sprint in full kit. While senior management were very impressed with the speed with which Max’s car was repaired in Hungary, they were even more impressed that, just a few minutes later the crew was poised, ready and not too out-of-breath to do a two-second pit stop.
Cars Line Up On The Grid In Spain© Getty Images
While the driver deals with all of the car’s demands, he also has to prepare himself. Some drivers want to raise their heartbeat and get the adrenaline flowing. Others are looking for that calm centre. Visualisation is a big ticket item in the modern era. The clutch is controlled by a finger paddle behind the steering wheel, and the driver will have agreed in which gear he’ll launch (sometimes first, sometimes second – depending on the age and type of tyre and the predicted grip from his specific grid slot) and the percentage of throttle he’ll apply in the initial launch phase.
The run down to the first corner looks like a melee – but there’s method in the madness. Everyone will have watched previous races at that particular circuit and know which lines they would like to take from a variety of different positions. They’ll also know much risk is appropriate: it’s worth gambling at Monaco where the first approach to Sainte Devote may be the only overtaking opportunity of the race; it isn’t at Spa, where there’s ample opportunity to regain a place ceded at La Source on the long pull up the Kemmel Straight.
If the driver is thinking of anything at all, this is what tends to occupy the mind as he looks up at the gantry. If he’s towards the front of the grid, his engineers can tell him when the last car is approaching the grid, steeling him for the moment when the lights go out. By the time that happens, the driver has done as much preparation as he can. It’s now about extracting that performance from the car – and also from himself.
