Professional car racing is fast gaining recognition throughout the world and while there are many kinds of racing, Formula One overtakes all the competition.
Every season, top drivers compete in the World Drivers Championship that offers a title to a driver and a team. And it is more than just a game, or a race.
F1 racing is serious business that can take millions of dollars to finance even a single team.
There are high-stakes, high-prices for a high standard that is laid onto every aspect of not just the machines, but the drivers as well.
The money is likely to be recouped by ticket sales, racing memorabilia and advertising, as the sports cars are mostly sponsored by advertisers. And what is it that is so alluring about it? It is all those fast, classy cars? The roaring and humming of engines?
For one, it is the race car itself. These machines are magnificent pieces of machinery, that almost transcend what machines should be.
Formula 1 has rules and regulations, that demand precise conditions on how a car is designed, constructed and how it would eventually perform, and the cars still manage to be a treat for anyone with a lust for speed, design and engineering.
The standard F1 racing car has a single seat, an engine behind the driver, aerodynamic features such as the wings; and everything from the nut bolt, the GPS tracker to the helmet is precisely chosen. And of course, there is the open cockpit design.
All these technical components make F1 a playground for engineering, and then there are the races. Overtaking is a thrill in Formula One racing that goes beyond what people would do on streets.
In F1, a driver decides during a race to take chances to overtake another driver, such as, at the start or in the first corner, and each choice is a calculation. And the skill of the driver is tested.
There is a lot of skill required in each maneuver that is utilised to gain pole position, and cornering may be one of the most necessary to master.
In simple, cornering requires knowing how to handle a turn without much traction. To do that, a driver must know how to brake, press the gas and take a controlled turn.
And a driver must also know the conditions of the track, and how each turn needs to be studied, and how one would have to speed around either a closed-circuit track or a closed-off street track.
Then there are certain aspects of driving that a driver must avoid, such as oversteering. When drivers oversteer, they turn the wheel to a point where the tail end of the car makes the whole car to lose grip of the surface.
And along with oversteering, there is understeering. A driver must not understeer, which is to reduce speed to gain traction, which wouldn’t work as a driver has a race to win, and can’t do that without knowing the right speed.