Magnificent Magical Mumbai

Ever since Michael Schumacher has quit, I’ve not been following the Formula One religiously, but my favorite team still remains “Ferrari”.

I just came across some interesting facts about Formula One. F1 lovers are going to love this.

• An F1 car is made up of 80,000 components, if it were assembled 99.9% correctly, it would still start the race with 80 things wrong!
• Formula 1 cars have over a kilometre of cable, linked to about 100 sensors and actuators which monitor and control many parts of the car.
• An F1 car can go from 0 to 160 kph AND back to 0 in FOUR seconds
• F1 car engines last only for about 2 hours of racing mostly before blowing up on the other hand we expect our engines to last us for a decent 20yrs
• When an F1 driver hits the brakes on his car he experiences retardation or deceleration comparable to a regular car driving through a BRICK wall at 300kmph
• An average F1 driver looses about 4kgs of weight after just one race
• At 550kg a F1 car is less than half the weight of a Mini
• In an F1 car the engine typically revs upto 18000 rpm,(the piston travelling up and down 300 times a second!!) wheres cars like the palio, maruti 800,indica rev only upto 6000 rpm at max. Thats 3 times slower.
• The fit in the cockpit is so tight that the steering wheel must be removed for the driver to get in or out of the car
• Once the car is travelling over 160 kph, an F1 car can generate enough downforce to equal it’s own weight. That means it could actually hold itself to the CEILING of a tunnel and drive UPSIDE down!
• In a street course race like the monaco grand prix, the downforce provides enough suction to lift manhole covers. Before the race all of the manhole covers on the streets have to be welded down to prevent this from happening
• The refuelers used in F1 can supply 12 litres of fuel per second. This means it would take just 4 seconds to fill the tank of an average 50 litre family car.
• Normal tyres last 60 000 – 100 000 km. Racing tyres are designed to last 90 – 120 km