Safe at any speed

The Formula1 season of 2013 begins on March 15 with the final car race on the 17th at 0600 hrs (IST) in Melbourne, Australia. The first two days are devoted to practice and qualifying sessions and the race is on the third day. There are 11 teams, each with two drivers, participating in 19 races in 19 countries including one in New Delhi (October 25-27). They are held on specially-laid tracks with the exception of Monaco, Melbourne, Singapore and Montreal where the race is held on public streets closed to other traffic.

Singapore has the distinction of a night-time race. In two tracks, namely Imola (San Marino, Italy) and Interlagos (Sao Paulo, Brazil) the race is anti-clockwise. This is really tricky as drivers find it difficult to adjust their necks to this condition. In Abu Dhabi, the race starts at 5 pm and continues during the night under floodlights.

Ralph Nader published in 1965 a book entitled Unsafe at any speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile. It dealt comprehensively with the resistance and reluctance of car manufacturers in the US to the introduction of safety features like seat belts.

In the case of F1, where cars race at speeds of up to 350 kmph (220 mph), there was no such activist but several deaths in its history gave a wake-up call from time to time to all the stakeholders to ensure the safety of drivers. The last tragic case was that of the celebrated Ayrton Senna of Brazil, one of the greatest drivers in the modern era of F1. On May 1, 1994, during the San Marino Grand Prix, he crashed into the barrier wall at the Imola circuit and died due to severe injuries to his head.

Since then there have been many crashes on the track but no one has died. This is due to the tightening up of regulations and rules pertaining to the designing of the car and the race. As a result, some aficionados of the sport feel that the race has slowed. TV viewers are often surprised to see the driver walk out of the car after an accident nonchalantly as if nothing happened.

At the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last year, while trying to overtake our own Narain Karthikeyan, Nico Rosberg's Mercedes collided with the latter's HRT Cosworth. He went over the top of Karthikeyan and hurtled into the barriers at high speed. Despite the spectacular nature of the crash both Rosberg and Karthikeyan emerged unscathed and walked carrying on a casual conversation!

I have found the following three features interesting: pit stops, the race on the straight tracks where overtaking is possible and the negotiating skill of the drivers at the chicanes. Chicane is a tight sequence of corners on the track designed to slow down cars to improve safety ahead of very fast corners. Pit is the area for servicing cars during the race like changing the tyres, refuelling, making adjustments to the car parts, etc. A number of people work on the car simultaneously, the whole process being finished in less than six seconds.

Jenson Button's second stop at Hockenheim at the German Grand Prix on July 22 last year, lasted just 2.31 seconds, setting an all-time record. In a race where winning is a matter of one-tenth of a second one can understand the importance of the time spent at the pit.

According to the revised scoring system the first ten positions get the drivers 25, 18, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and 1 points, respectively. The Constructors' title, that is the title for the sponsoring automobile company, is decided by adding the points scored by the two members of the team. At the end of the year the points of all the races are added to determine the championships for the drivers and the constructors. Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull are the defending champions.