© Vladimir RysBulls’ Guide To: F1 TerminologyEver wanted to know what engineers are saying or commentators are chatting about during a race weekend. Well we have you covered with our latest guide…
Bulls Line Up In The Pit Lane© Vladimir Rys
The engineering profession loves jargon and nowhere do engineers love engineering more than in Formula One. In a bit of a departure from our usual Bulls’ Guide, here’s a short explainer for some of the classics, and a few of the more popular terms being slung about in 2020. To make it even easier for you we’ve listed them in alphabetical order…
When the driver talks about ‘balance’, he’s not referring to how the car performs on the scales (though that does come into it). Balance is the front and rear axles working in harmony. If the front has more grip than the rear, the car will oversteer; if the rear has more grip than the front, the car will understeer. The balance can be adjusted by swapping out various aerodynamic parts, suspension components and ballast – but will change over the course of the race as tyres are changed and wear unevenly. This can be mitigated at pit stops by adjusting the angle of the front wing.
When a tyre overheats, the chemical compounds beneath the surface tread can gasify and cause blisters to form. As these burst and pit the surface of the tyre, the tyre loses grip and the car begins to suffer vibration to the point where things start breaking or the driver finds the car impossible to control.
The pit box is a defined area outside the garage where mechanics work on the car during a pit stop. ‘Pit’ isn’t a particularly distinctive word over the radio, so drivers and race engineers use the term ‘box’ instead when they are discussing a pit stop or returning to the garage – eg ‘box now’, ‘box to overtake’, ‘box box box’ and ‘boxing’. This may step from the German word for pit stop (boxenstopp). Then again, it might not.
Max Comes In For A Pit Stop© Vladimir Rys
Superficially, brake ducts are just there to channel air to the brake surfaces to keep them cool. In reality, brake ducts are also used to guide airflow downstream of the front wheels. The less air flow required for cooling, the most available for aerodynamics – which is why we sometimes see miscalculations and teams having overheating issues with their brakes.
Not what happens to the team after 12 races in 15 weeks (although, yes) but the act of spinning up the rear wheels. The driver will use this when approaching the grid to generate temperature in the rear tyres – but also to lay a nice, thick coating of rubber on the surface of the pit box, which cannot otherwise be made more grippy.
The angle at which a car’s wheel is mounted, relative to the vertical axis. F1 cars have their front wheels canted inwards slight at the top (negative camber) so that, when cornering, the tyre under load has the maximum contact patch in touch with the surface.
F1 has tyres supplied by Pirelli. There are five slick tyre compounds in Pirelli’s range, labelled C1 through C5. Three compounds are selected by Pirelli for each race. The lower the number, the harder the tyre. Softer tyres offer more grip – but last for fewer laps.
A Worn Medium Compound Pirelli Tyre© Vladimir Rys
The aerodynamics of an F1 car become less effective when the car runs into the turbulent wake of another car. It loses the ability to deliver maximum performance and becomes unstable. The car works best when it is the only one on a particular sector of track, running in clean – or clear – air.
In practice, and qualifying, it is common to see cars doing ‘cool-down’ laps. This is a slow lap – sometimes half a minute off racing pace – that allows the temperature of the tyres to drop, getting them back into condition to perform another ‘push’ lap.
‘Delta’ the Greek letter and abbreviation of διαφορά (to differ) is used in mathematics to refer to the change in any changeable quantity. In F1 that’s usually a tyre delta – different performance between two types of tyre – or pace delta, different performance between two laps. During a safety car or virtual safety car there is a minimum lap time in which the lap must be completed; during a qualifying in-lap, there is a maximum lap time. Hence phrases like: ‘follow the dash delta,’ ‘delta must be negative’, ‘delta must be positive’.
Each tyre compound has a temperature window in which it provides the most grip. Once the tyre temperature passes beyond the upper limit of this window, grip steadily declines as the tyre gets hotter. This is degradation, or ‘deg’. It is not the same as ‘tyre wear’, though ‘wear’ can lead to deg.
A Pirelli Soft Compound Tyre© Getty Images
The opposite of ‘clean air’, referring to driving in the turbulent – ie ‘dirty’ wake of the car in front.
End-of-Straight. Drivers and engineers talk about ‘Speed at EOS’. This is the maximum velocity the car reaches before beginning to turn in or brake. The less drag on the car, the higher the EOS speed.
When the driver locks a wheel by braking too harshly, this results in the tyre dragging across the track losing its uniform circumference and developing a flat area. This creates vibration which, at best, can make life uncomfortable for a driver, and at worse can create juddering violent enough to destroy the suspension.
It’s often called paint but in reality it’s a light oil, mixed with a fluorescent powered that’s sprayed onto the car as a quick – but effectively – aerodynamic test. It’s very runny and creates patterns on the bodywork when the car drives around. The oil evaporates, leaving the pigment, which is photographed when the car returns to the pit lane.
Max And His Race Engineer© Getty Images
Staying out on track when other cars pit, in the hope of gaining a strategic advantage, either through traffic, weather, safety cars or simply by being able to drive faster in clean air. The opposite of an undercut.
Small strips of rubber (grains) peel away from the tread but instead of being flung wide to create marbles, they adhere to the tread, making it uneven and reducing grip until they’re worn away. Unlike degradation and wear, graining is a condition from which tyres often recover.
A Gurney Flap – or just Gurney – is a right-angled lap attached to the trailing edge of a rear (usually) wing, creating more downforce without the drag profile of a steeper wing. They’re relatively easy to add and easy to remove. They’re named after F1 driver and team owner Dan Gurney, their inventor.
Head and Neck Support. The device that fits over the shoulders and connects to the helmet to prevent basal skull fractures from excessive head and neck movement in a collision. Mandatory in F1.
Max's Helmet Ready For Racing© Getty Images
A check-lap, usually when the car has been freshly rebuilt, in which baseline measurements are taken, and after which the mechanics inspect the car for any damage.
The green-banded Intermediate tyres are used in the tricky conditions of light rain or a track beginning to dry after a heavy downpour. The Inters can shift 30l of water per second at 300km/h. They can’t cope with standing water but on a damp track they’re faster than the full wet tyre, and offer more grip than a slick.
Motor-Generator Unit – Heat. The energy recovery device that takes energy out of the exhaust flow to spin a turbine, which either supports the turbo by supplying power to the compressor to eradicate turbo-lag, or generates energy to be fed directly back into the MGU-K or stored in the Energy Store.
Motor-Generator Unit – Kinetic. Recovers energy that would otherwise be lost during braking. Works as a motor to feed power into the driveline or a generator to store energy in the battery. Similar to the device used on hybrid road cars.
Max Files In Free Practice© Getty Images
When the rear tyres provide more power than the front can cope with, the car tends to ‘oversteer’. This makes the tyres slip and try to push the opposite way to the direction the car is turning, causing the rear to swing out wide and slide or spin the car around.
ParcFerme/ParcFermeConditions
Physically, Parc Ferme is a fenced-off area where the cars are embargoed for scrutineering and the crew are not allowed to work on them – except to perform certain prescribed tasks under strict supervision of the scrutineers. In the wider sense, Parc Ferme conditions are those in which, even if the cars are back in the team’s possession, they are not allowed to make alterations to the specification or set-up. In F1, cars are placed in Parc Ferme conditions the moment they leave the garage for their first lap in qualifying until the point at which they are released by the scrutineers after the race.
Raising the rear ride-height of the car in relation to the front ride height, creating more volume under the floor to make the floor and the diffuser work more effectively. The steeper the rake, the more volume available – but also the more difficult to control the airflow and the more likely the chance of grounding the underside of the nose or the tea-tray.
During Friday practice, teams often fit arrays of pitot tubes around their bodywork to provide differential pressure measurements. In certain alignments, they look like the head of a garden rake. But not usually.
Sparks Fly On The RB16© Vladimir Rys
Cover-all name for any tyre designed to work on a dry track. They’re called slicks because they don’t have a tread pattern. This allows them to present the maximum surface area to the road, without deformation. Getting heat into the tyres generates mechanical grip by making them stick to the road surface.
The angle at which wheels are mounted in relation to straight line travel. A little bit of toe-out helps the car go around a corner faster; a little bit of toe-in gives it more stability in a straight line. Either will cause more friction and wear along one edge than having the wheels dead-straight – but sometimes that extra heat can be useful too.
Sitting in the slipstream of the car in front, while problematic through corners, is useful on the straights. Using this tow allows a car to accelerate faster and reach a higher EOS speed, because it encounters less air resistance. At some tracks – Spa or Monza, for example, you may see team mates travelling in tandem to make deliberate, orchestrated use of a tow. At other times, drivers simply attempt to latch onto the back of a fast car and hitch a ride. In qualifying, when no-one wants to offer the tow to rivals, you sometimes see farcical situations where no-one managed to get over the start line in time.
Each car is allocated 13 sets of dry weather tyres per race, plus four sets of Inters and three sets of Wets. In most years, Pirelli allocates three of those sets: two that must be saved for the race, and a Soft tyre that can’t be used before Q3. This year Pirelli are choosing all 13 sets: so far its two hards, three mediums and eight softs. Two sets per session have to be handed back to Pirelli, leaving each car with seven sets for qualifying and the race. Usually – but not always – this will be five sets of soft tyres, one medium set and one hard set.
Time For Mediums© Getty Images
Pitting to overtake. A following car pits before the one it’s chasing. It puts on new tyres and uses them to lap faster than the car in front, hoping to be ahead when that car emerges later from its pit stop.
When the rear axle provides more grip than the front axle, the car tends to drift out wide in a corner, pushed along by the rear wheels. It’s common for drivers to want a car with a reliable measure of understeer.
Tyre wear is the process by which friction from the track surface causes the tyre tread to abrade. Eventually, it will wear away completely, exposing the structural layer underneath but usually the tyre is changed before that, having functionally lost all useful grip because of degradation. Excessive wear can lead to higher deg because there’s physically less material to dissipate the heat.
Pirelli’s full wet tyre is designed to be used in a downpour. It can shift 85l of water per second at 300km/h. It’s 10mm wider than the slick tyre and designed to resist aquaplaning. It should last a whole race – but doesn't last very long if the track isn’t being constantly soaked.
