The claim
If you were put in a Formula 1 car right now, you would be in trouble before the end of the first corner. That is not an exaggeration. The car asks things of the body that everyday driving, and most other sports, never do.
G-force: your head becomes five times heavier
Under braking, an F1 driver feels more than 6 g. Through fast corners such as Eau Rouge at Spa or the first corner at Suzuka, the sideways load is around 5 g.
In plain terms, the driver's head and helmet suddenly weigh about five times what they normally do, and that happens at every corner for close to two hours. This is why F1 drivers train their necks the way other athletes train their legs. Some hang their head off the edge of a bench and hold 30 to 40 kilograms of load with neck strength alone.
Heat: a two hour race in an oven
Cockpit temperatures can reach about 50 degrees Celsius, and the driver is wearing a fireproof suit that traps the heat. Over a race, a driver can lose up to 3 kilograms of body weight in sweat.
So picture it: you are overheating, your head weighs five times too much, and you still have to brake from around 300 kilometres per hour at exactly the right spot, to within centimetres, lap after lap.
The numbers from the video
- More than 6 g under braking and around 5 g in fast corners.
- Cockpit temperatures of about 50 degrees Celsius.
- Up to 3 kilograms of body weight lost in a single race.
- David Purley survived a deceleration of about 179 g at Silverstone in 1977.
- Robert Kubica's crash in Canada in 2007 measured more than 75 g.
The crashes these cars are built to survive
For comparison, fighter pilots can black out at around 9 g. The cars are built to protect drivers from forces the human body was never meant to take, and the survival stories above are part of why the sport is as safe as it is today.
The car does not drive itself
There is a popular idea online that the driver only turns the wheel and the car does the rest. It is wrong. An F1 car produces so much downforce that, in theory, it could drive upside down in a tunnel at speed. The steering is heavy, the pedal box is so tight there is barely room to move your feet, and nothing about it resembles the light, assisted steering in a road car.
The mental load
While all of that is happening to the body, the driver is also processing radio messages, tyre condition, fuel settings and nineteen other cars, and making decisions in fractions of a second. Drivers describe a qualifying lap as complete tunnel vision: about ninety seconds at maximum heart rate where the result is either a perfect lap or an accident.
Miee's verdict
Formula 1 drivers may be the most complete athletes on the planet. The job needs elite cardiovascular stamina, serious neck and core strength, the decision making of a chess grandmaster and a tolerance for heat most people do not have, all at the same time, for two hours, with real consequences for getting it wrong.
Do you think F1 drivers are underrated athletes, or overpaid people in fast cars? The debate is running in the comments on the video.