The FORMULA ahead of the ONE
An important note before reading this blog : I ain’t undergone any competitive exams like GRE and IELTS etc etc. So don’t expect Peter English from me. Am using layman terms to write my blog ;).Please bear with me incase…!!!
It has been months since I posted my first blog. Was the reason for that is am being so busy with my other activities ? No way..!!! sheer laziness. that’s me ;) .. The now living homo-sapien Gautham is an absolute lazy guy I ve been in my whole life.. ok I’ll stop fooling around and come into the topic.. so what to blog after a long time.. hmmm lets see.. what sport do I love the most in my life? Morethan anything I love Formula one. Today a strange thought crossed my mind.. How did I start liking formula one..? so I sat back and started turning my clock backwaaaaaaaaards .. the very first glimpse that came to my mind was that I was a 9 year old boy sitting in front(literally) of the TV browsing through channels.. Suddenly I came to a stop where some weird cars were racing.. Saw it for a couple of minutes, lost interest and switched over to some funny cartoon channel as all the kids would do ;).. I completely forgot about that for a couple of years.
When I was in my 7th standard, once again I happened to come across an F1 race being broadcast on tv. But this time my brother and uncle were sitting with me and they started discussing about F1. I couldn’t understand the heads n tails of it.. I ve never seen two guys discussing a sport so fiercely other than cricket at that time.. It amazed me and poured a lot of interest into me about F1.. So I started watching the races then on and starting collecting some information about it.. Earlier this sport was pretty confusing to understand though you can say its just racing.. But then on I started getting into F1 slowly and steadily as I started watching each and every race.. When you view the race for the first time you may think that its damn boring but if you understand it completely you’ll never stop watching it.. Its that addictive.. Unfortunately, at that time I had no one to discuss this sport with, as each and every Indian around me was a die hard fan of cricket, I started feeling a bit lonely.. But that was not for long.. During my 8th standard I guess I discussed this sport with few of my friends and they started watching F1 ..wallah… got company ;) the break n lunch hours of school were filled with discussions of different topics ,the main being F1, thanks to my friends(actually 2 of them became so close after starting F1 discussions ;).. From then on the interest grew rapidly and guess what, till now I had watched less cricket matches than the F1 races..
A few interesting facts about F1 to kindle ur interest
The cars used in F1 championships are quite different from usual cars. Just go through these interesting facts on these cars and you will know how different both the versions are.
- Approximate 80,000 components come together to make an F1 car. The cars have to be assembled with cent per cent accuracy. If it were assembled 99.9% correctly, it would go on the track with 80 components wrongly placed.
- F1 car engines complete their life in about two hours of racing. Just compare this with normal engines which go on serving us faithfully for decent 20 years.
- When an F1 driver puts brakes on his car he experiences huge retardation or deceleration. It could be compared to a regular car driving through a brick wall at the speed of 300kmph.
- An F1 engine usually revs up to 18000 rpm. This means that the piston travels up and down 300 times a second. Road car engines rev up to 6000 rpm at max.
- The brake discs in an F1 car have to withstand the operating temperature of approximately 1000 degrees Centigrade. They are made of carbon fibre which is much harder than steel and has a higher melting point.
- The cars have more than a kilometer of cable linked to about 100 sensors and actuators which monitor and control the car.
- An F1 car can accelerate from 0 to 160 kph and decelerate back to 0 in just four seconds.
- An F1 car weighs around 550 kg.
- Gear cogs or ratios are replaced after each race for they have to resist high degrees of stress.
- Gear levers are located on the back of the wheel. The clutch levers are located below the gear paddles.
- Most racing cars have their tyres filled with nitrogen. The reason being nitrogen has a more consistent pressure compared to normal air.
- Road car tyres can last 60 000 to 100 000 km. On the other hand, racing tyres are designed to last only 90 to 120 km.
- The tyres lose weight during the race. In a GP each tyre loses about 0.5kg in weight due to wear.
- The cars can be refueled at 12 liters per second. The rig used would take just 4 seconds to fill the tank of an average road car.
- Pit stop crews take only 3 seconds to refuel and change tyres
P.S : Couldn’t think of a suitable topic ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One (for more details ;-) )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One (for more details ;-) )
Posted by Gautham
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10:25 AM
4 comments:
\F1/
It is apt that you have come up with F1 ;) I can still remember those days when we three would be discussing stuff related to F1 much to the annoyance of others :P
Infact, after quite a while, "car-race-is-boring" turned into "two-stop-strategy" and "Intermediate tyres" soon enough :P
I miss those wonderful days Siddhu... Though we are now at the level of discussing race updates over sms ;)
Educate me too sometime gau.. sounds interesting...
Sure Aishu.. anytime ;)
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