(engines buzzing)
- It's the most prestigious racing series
in the entire world.
It's the pinnacle of speed, power, and skill.
The most advanced cars on the planet,
driven by the most skilled racers, period.
The drivers are going 100 miles an hour,
faster than planes taking off.
It's the worlds top manufacturers
fighting on the most glamorous circuits
to see who can build the best race car in the galaxy.
This is everything you need to know
to get up to speed on Formula 1.
(retro arcade music)
In the early 1900's rich guys were racing
their fancy jalopies from town to town around Europe
in a hastily organized contest called Grand Prix.
It was like that part of The Great Gatsby
when they go racing and Leonardo DiCaprio (bleep).
Anyway, World War II happens, blah, blah, blah,
you can't race anymore but it didn't take long
for people to start racing after the war ended.
In 1947, the Federation Internationale de L'Automobile,
or FIA, was founded.
The FIA immediately created a bunch of racing series
centered around Grand Prix style racing
with the top tier called Formula A,
which quickly turned into Formula 1.
The only rule was that the engines couldn't
be bigger than 2.5 liters
and they had to be naturally aspirated,
besides that, the sky was the limit.
(eagle squawking)
These new engines and rules brought new teams
to compete with the old, while the old-timey
Gatsby Race teams, generally had old-timey drivers,
newcomers like, Lancia and Mercedes,
had to get drivers of their own.
Both companies set out to hire the best available.
Lancia hired an Italian, Alberto Ascari,
and Mercedes hired Argentinean-born, Juan Manuel Fangio.
These guys were insane.
Tearing down back country roads wearing nothing
but a leather helmet and a crazed grin.
They didn't even have seatbelts.
Fangio and Mercedes were a dominant pair,
having won the 1954 and 1955 seasons back-to-back,
but after a horrific accident involving
one of its cars at Le Mans, killing 83 spectators,
Mercedes decided to abandon Motorsport altogether.
Almost simultaneously with Mercedes departure,
crashes would also force Lancia out
and sadly, take the life of Ascari.
Lancia sold all of their Formula 1 equipment
and development to Ferrari,
and just washed their hands of the entire sport.
Ferrari would take the development from Lancia,
and hire the now jobless Fangio,
who would win the 1956 championship.
He then left Ferrari for Maserati,
and won another championship.
In 1957, he decided to retire from racing
when he was kidnapped by Fidel Castro.
Pretty wild, wild stuff.
Google it, it happened.
In 1959, the Cooper racing team made an innovation
that would change racing and cars forever.
The team moved the engine from in front of the driver,
to behind his little butt.
This totally changed how the car drove
and made it way better.
By 1961, every team was using
a mid-engine layout in their cars,
and they still do today.
At the start of the 1967 season,
British team Lotus would introduce
the Ford Cosworth DFV 3.0 liter V8 to the world.
It powered the now legendary Lotus 49.
Lotus had exclusive rights to the engine for one year,
but it was so good, every (bleep) team wanted it,
and it would go on to power almost
every Formula 1 car for the next decade.
Ferrari being Ferrari, didn't wanna use
somebody else's engine, so they built their own.
Figuring more is more, they tried
to combat the V8 with a flat-12.
Not only did these things sound amazing,
they also made a ton of power.
(car engines roaring)
With almost everybody using one of these two engines,
smaller teams started using any technological innovation
that they could sneak past the rules.
Soon, some insanely experimental cars
were hitting the grid, including four wheel drive racers,
cars with six wheels, and even a car with a fan
to suck it to the road through corners.
Jessica.
The 70's were a perfect balance
of rock star attitude, and technical innovation.
And no two drivers of this period embodied
that yin and yang better than Niki Lauda and James Hunt.
Lauda was a reserved and meticulous Austrian,
who drove for Ferrari, and Hunt was a rowdy Playboy type,
much like myself,
(laughing)
who drove for McLaren.
Off the track these two respected each other,
but on it, there might never be a fiercer rivalry.
Their story is so good that a few years ago,
they made a big old Hollywood movie about it,
it's called Rush.
Also check out the sequel, Rush More.
- I like your nurses uniform, Guy.
- These are OR scrubs.
- Oh, are they?
- In 1977, Lotus introduced
an evolving ground effect aerodynamic kit,
which not only increased down force, but also reduced drag.
The Lotus didn't rely on wings pushing the car down,
but shaped the bottom of their car
like an upside-down airfoil.
This essentially made the entire car a wing
with none of the drag.
Whatever 70's stuff they were smoking, I want some.
I'm just kidding, pot sucked in the 70's, ask your grandma.
Oh my Lord, please don't use that language in front of me.
All good things must come to an end
and the Cosworth engine could not last forever.
In 1978, Renault introduced forced induction to the sport.
While every team for the past decade
had used a naturally aspirated, 3.0 liter engine.
The rules also allowed an engine
half the size with forced induction.
Up until '78, teams had figured that
with the technology available at the time,
any competitive turbocharged engine would be too laggy,
and any supercharged engine would be too inefficient.
Renault had recently used turbos at La Mans,
and decided to roll the dice and see what
a little boost could do for Formula 1,
and it turns out, a little boost goes a long way.
(Dark Helmet screaming)
The aging DFF could only muster about 500 horsepower
in its most developed form,
but Renault's turbo motor was matching that power
on its very first outing.
Soon, after a bit of development,
Renault was making 700 horsepower,
and the rest of the constructors began to take notice.
While the turbocharged 80's of Formula 1
only lasted for a few short years,
there is no denying that they dominated.
The insane power to rate ratios meant
that drivers achieved speeds and times
previously only dreamed of,
cementing their names in the history books.
Drivers like Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell,
Alain Prost, all made their names racing
these turbocharged beasts against each other.
FIA introduced a new set of rules in 1987.
They stabilized power numbers,
reigned in development costs, and increased
the naturally aspirated engine size to 3.5 liters.
When the turbo engines power numbers still ranked supreme,
FIA outright banned the use of turbochargers in 1989.
Luckily, for Formula 1 teams,
the increase of displacement, combined
with improvements in engine technology,
meant that many of these new NA motors were,
essentially, as fast as their turbocharged predecessors,
although power could no longer be turned up for qualifying.
- Turn up, ooh, eh.
- With these new engines, drivers like Aryton Senna,
and Alain Prost, continued to set blistering lap times.
Further technological development,
such as active suspension, semi-auto gearboxes,
and traction control, not only made these times even faster,
but seemed to make the sport safe
to a degree only dreamed about in the past.
By 1994, F1 had gone almost an entire decade
without a death.
While there had still been injuries in that time,
no one had died and the sport had a sense
of invulnerability about it.
This was crushed in a spectacular and horrifying way,
when at the 1994 San Marino Gran Prix,
three drivers were involved in terrible crashes,
two of which were fatal.
The most dramatic of these crashes,
and the one with the longest lasting impact,
was that of the legendary driver, Ayrton Senna,
who, at the time of his death, was a triple world champion
and arguably the best F1 driver of all time.
His death would prompt a number of rule changes
all aimed at slowing down the cars.
The most notable changes were the reduction
of engine size back to 3.0 liters,
and the addition of a wooden plank
on the underside of the car. (bell dings)
When the car is forced down by aerodynamic forces,
the plank wears away as it rubs against the ground.
They measure it at the end of the race,
and if it's worn down too low,
then that car's aerodynamics are illegal.
This practice continues to this day.
Now that means that these million dollar race cars,
made of carbon fiber with more fins than a lion fish,
capable of driving upside down in a tunnel,
they all have a piece of wood strapped to the bottom.
Following the tragic 1994 season,
the Formula 1 grid was left scrambling
as they tried to conform to the FIA's flurry of new rules.
Over the next 10 years, improvement
became the name of the game, rather than innovation.
The new 3.0 liter requirement lent itself
to a V10 engine layout, balancing power
and fuel consumption.
Out of this scramble, new names would appear,
and Michael Schumacher won his first championship in 1994.
This guy won so much that people started getting bored.
It seemed like the German national anthem
was Formula 1's theme song.
For instance, in 2004 Schumacher
took first in 13 out of 18 races,
and he got second, twice.
Are you (bleeps) kidding me?
Dude didn't podium three times.
I bet he partied so hard that year. (laughs)
This earned him his seventh world championship.
Finally breaking Fangio's record that lasted 47 years,
but it was becoming too expensive
for the smaller teams to compete in the sport.
So in 2006, the FIA mandated the switch
to cheaper, smaller V8's, which also sounded sick.
(engines buzzing)
And the cost-cutting came just in time,
because in 2008 a global market recession
hit F1 like a wrecking ball.
♪ I came in like a wrecking ball ♪
- Strangely, many smaller teams
were able to weather the storm.
While almost every major manufacturer
such as, Jaguar, and BMW, were forced to leave the series.
This is due to the fact that
while racing was the life blood
of many of these small teams,
that wasn't the case for big manufacturers.
Following the slow bounce back of the global economy,
Formula 1 would once again initiate rule changes.
Beginning in 2014, Formula 1 again looked
to turbocharging as FIA had mandated
that all cars must run a 1.6 liter,
V6, hybrid, turbocharged engine,
which could not use more than
100 kilograms of fuel in an hour.
These engines produced a consistent 600 horsepower,
but could boost their output at certain times
using an onboard system called KERS,
which recovers energy, otherwise wasted under breaking.
When boosted, these engines could make
750 horsepower, just like their predecessors,
and it is these engines which are on the grid
for this 2018 season.
So what's new for this year?
Drivers are now protected by a halo,
a bar that shields their heads
from large pieces of debris, like tires,
in the event of a crash.
Some people say the halo takes away
from the open cockpit nature of F1.
These people are turds.
- Howdy ho.
- Lewis Hamilton is the current champ driving for Mercedes.
Ferrari's close behind, though,
with Red Bull right behind them,
if they can figure their car out.
F1 has such a long and rich history
that there's no way that we can talk
about everything in one episode.
Formula 1 has always been the pinnacle of Motorsport.
It's inspired generations of rivalries
and brought generations of people together.
It's given us heroes, and it's taken them away.
There really is nothing like it.
This is everything you need to know
to get up to speed on Formula 1.
Hit that subscribe button, the more subs we get,
the more cool stuff we can do with you guys.
The season started last weekend.
What do you guys think?
Who's gonna do it?
Follow me on Instagram at James Pumphrey.
Follow Donut on Instagram at Donut Media.
Fernando Alonso, will he make a comeback this year?
Nolan thinks so, check out this episode of Wheelhouse.
You like race cars?
How about race cars for the street?
Check out this episode of The Bestest.
I love you.