Teams poised for winter plans rethink

Formula 1 teams may need a rethink about the way they launch their new cars next year, after those that gambled on late-updates to their 2011 challengers struggled in early races.

That is the view of Mercedes GP team principal Ross Brawn, who believes that his team may well have been better off spending more time getting to understand how to get the most out of a car, rather than leaving it to the last minute for aerodynamic updates.

Mercedes GP faced a difficult early spell to testing, as it focused on reliability on a basic car package, before introducing its definite update package for the final pre-season test in Barcelona.

However, it took until last weekend's Chinese Grand Prix for it to understand how to extract the most speed from that updated package.

"If you look at it last year, in the last five races we changed nothing with our car but we went faster," explained Brawn. "So there is a lot of time in cars in just understanding what they respond to, and how you set them up.

"Perhaps we will reflect back on our approach over the winter of turning up quite late with what was a definitive car, because perhaps we just did not understand, with so little time, the best ways of getting it to work

"Now we are seeing the best ways of getting it to work. Nothing dramatic has changed, we just have thought about the set-up and thought about the things we should prioritise. And that is what we did in China."

Mercedes GP was not the only one who delayed running its definitive 2011-package until Barcelona - with Ferrari also waiting until then. Before that, McLaren skipped the first test this year with its new car to give itself more development time.

Circuits

A typical circuit usually features a stretch of straight road on which the starting grid is situated. The pit lane where the drivers stop for fuel, tyres, or minor repairs (such as changing the car's nose due to front wing damage) during the race, and where the teams work on the cars before the race, is normally located next to the starting grid. The layout of the rest of the circuit varies widely, although in most cases the circuit runs in a clockwise direction. Those few circuits that run anticlockwise (and therefore have predominantly left-handed corners) can cause drivers neck problems due to the enormous lateral forces generated by F1 cars pulling their heads in the opposite direction to normal.

Most of the circuits currently in use are specially constructed for competition. The current street circuits are monaco, melborne, Valencia and singapor, although races in other urban locations come and go and proposals for such races are often discussed–most recently London and Paris. Several other circuits are also completely or partially laid out on public roads, such as .The glamour and history of the Monaco race are the primary reasons why the circuit is still in use, since it is thought not to meet the strict safety requirements imposed on other tracks. Three-time World champion famously described racing in Monaco as "like riding a bicycle around your living room. Circuit design to protect the safety of drivers is becoming increasingly sophisticated, as exemplified by the new added in 2004 and designed—like most of F1's new circuits—by tilke. Several of the new circuits in F1, especially those designed by Tilke, have been criticised as lacking the "flow" of such classics as Spa-Francorchamps and Imola. His redesign of the Hockenheim circuit in Germany for example, while providing more capacity for grandstands and eliminating extremely long and dangerous straights, has been frowned upon by many who argue that part of the character of the Hockenheim circuits was the long and blinding straights into dark forest sections. These newer circuits, however, are generally agreed to meet the safety standards of modern Formula One better than the older ones.

The most recent additions to the F1 calendar are Valencia, Singapore, abu dhabi and Korea. A Formula One Grand Prix will be held in India for the first time in  Tilke is designing the India circuit while Design Cell, a reputed landscape architectural firm based in India and US are designing the landscape for all the areas. A single race requires hotel rooms to accommodate at least 5000 visitors.

Drivers

Modern drivers are contracted to a team for at least the duration of the season, but it is not uncommon for drivers to be fired or even swapped during the course of a season. Although most drivers earn their seat on ability, commercial considerations also come into play with teams having to satisfy sponsors and suppliers. Most teams also have a spare driver, whom they bring to race weekends, in case of injury or illness to a main driver. All competitors must be in possession of a fia super licence..

Each driver is assigned a number. The previous season's champion is designated number 1, with his team-mate given number 2. Numbers are then assigned in order according to each team's position in the previous season's constructors' championship. The number 13 is not used.

There have been exceptions to this rule, such as in 1993 and 1994, when the current World Drivers' Champion (nigell mansell and Alain Prost, respectively) was no longer competing in Formula One. In this case the drivers for the team of the previous year's champion are given numbers 0 (damaon hill on both occasions) and 2 (Prost himself and Ayrton Senna replaced after his death by david coulthard and occasionally Nigel Mansell–respectively). The number 13 has not been used since1976, before which it was occasionally assigned at the discretion of individual race organisers. Before 1996, only the world championship winning driver and his team generally swapped numbers with the previous champion–the remainder held their numbers from prior years, as they had been originally set at the start of the 1974 season. For many years, for example, Ferrari held numbers 27 and 28, regardless of their finishing position in the world championship.

Jochen rendt is the only posthumous World Champion after his points total was not overhauled despite his fatal accident at the 1970 Italian Grand Prix.

Michael Schumacher holds the record for having won the most Drivers' Championships, with seven.

The race

The race begins with a warm-up lap, after which the cars assemble on the starting grid in the order they qualified. This lap is often referred to as the formation lap, as the cars lap in formation with no overtaking (although a driver who makes a mistake may regain lost ground provided he has not fallen to the back of the field). The warm-up lap allows drivers to check the condition of the track and their car, gives the tyres a chance to get some heat in them to get some much-needed traction, and gives the pit crews time to clear themselves and their equipment from the grid.

Once all the cars have formed on the grid, a light system above the track indicates the start of the race: five red lights are illuminated at intervals of one second; they are all then extinguished simultaneously after an unspecified time (typically less than 3 seconds) to signal the start of the race. The start procedure may be abandoned if a driver stalls on the grid, signalled by raising his arm. If this happens the procedure restarts: a new formation lap begins with the offending car removed from the grid. The race may also be restarted in the event of a serious accident or dangerous conditions, with the original start voided. The race may be started from behind the Safety Car if officials feel a racing start would be excessively dangerous, such as extremely heavy rainfall. There is no formation lap when races start behind the Safety Car.

Under normal circumstances the winner of the race is the first driver to cross the finish line having completed a set number of laps, which added together should give a distance of approximately 305 km (190 mi) (260 km (160 mi) for. Race officials may end the race early (putting out a red flag) due to unsafe conditions such as extreme rainfall, and it must finish within two hours, although races are only likely to last this long in the case of extreme weather. Drivers may overtake one another for position over the course of the race and are 'Classified' in the order they finished the race. If a leader comes across a back marker (slower car) who has completed fewer laps, the back marker is shown a blue flag  telling him he is obliged to allow the leader to overtake him. The slower car is said to be 'lapped' and, once the leader finishes the race, is classified as finishing the race 'one lap down'. A driver can be lapped numerous times, by any car in front of him. A driver who fails to finish a race, through mechanical problems, accident, or any other reason is said to have retired from the race and is 'Not Classified' in the results. However, if driver has completed more than 90% of the race distance, he will be classified.

When required, the (above, driven by  will lead the field around) the circuit at reduced speed, until race officials deem the race safe to continue.

Throughout the race drivers may make  to change tyres and repair damage (until the 2010 season they could also refuel). Different teams and drivers employ different pit stop strategies in order to maximise their car's potential. Two tyre compounds, with different durability and adhesion characteristics, are available to drivers. Over the course of a race, drivers must use both. One compound will have a performance advantage over the other, and choosing when to use which compound is a key tactical decision to make. The softer of the available tyres are marked with a green stripe on the sidewall to help spectators to understand the strategies. Under wet conditions drivers may switch to one of two specialised wet weather tyres with additional grooves (one "intermediate", for mild wet conditions, such as after recent rain, one "full wet", for racing in or immediately after rain). If rain tyres are used, drivers are no longer obliged to use both types of dry tyres. A driver must make at least one stop to use both tyre compounds; up to three stops are typically made, although further stops may be necessary to fix damage or if weather conditions change.

Qualifying

For much of the sport's history, qualifying sessions differed little from practice sessions; drivers would have one or more entire sessions in which to attempt to set their fastest time, sometimes within a limited number of attempts, with the grid order determined by each driver's best single lap, fastest to slowest. Grids were limited to the fastest 26 cars and drivers had to lap within 107% of the pole sitter's time to qualify for the race; the 107% rule (as it is commonly known) was re-introduced for 2011. Other formats have included Friday pre-qualifying, and sessions in which each driver was allowed only one qualifying lap, run separately in a predetermined order.

The current qualifying system was adopted for the 2006 season. Known as "knock-out" qualifying, it is split into three periods (or rounds). In each period, drivers run qualifying laps to attempt to advance to the next period, running as many laps as they wish, with the slowest drivers being "knocked out" at the end of the period and their grid positions set, based on their best lap times. Cars are eliminated in this manner until 10 cars remain eligible to attempt to qualify for pole position in the third and final period. For each period, all previous times are reset, and only a driver's fastest lap in that period (barring infractions) counts. For all periods, any timed lap started before the chequered flag falls signalling the end of that period may be completed, and will count toward that driver's placement, even if they cross the finish line after the period has ended. In the first two periods, cars may run any tyre compound they wish, and drivers eliminated in these periods are allowed to change their choice of tyres prior to the race. Cars taking part in the final period, however, must start the race with the tyres used during their fastest lap (exactly the same tyres, not just the same compound), barring changes in weather that require usage of wet-weather tyres. With refuelling not allowed during races from 2010, the final session is run with low-fuel configuration and the cars are refuelled after qualifying.

For example, for a 20-car grid, all 20 cars are permitted to take part in the first period. At the end of the period, the slowest five cars are eliminated and take up the last five grid positions (16 to 20). In the second period, the remaining fifteen cars take part, with five more cars eliminated at the end, taking the next five lowest grid positions (11 to 15). In the third and final period, the remaining 10 cars compete for pole position, and fill grid positions 1 through 10.

The knock-out format has received minor updates since its inception, such as adjustments to the number of drivers eliminated in each period as the total number of cars entered has changed (from 20 drivers in 2009 to 24 in 2010)