What is f1 drs

General news Rumors. Video player. Column How have calendar changes affected the championship battle? Thursday 14 October Tsunoda had a "good chat" with Red Bull about incident in Mexico Today, From next season on, all drivers will be given free tyre choice for race Today, Hamilton says constructors' championship more important: 'Don't think about me' Today, 8. Verstappen on incidents with Hamilton: 'Has nothing to do with sprint race' Today, Perez hopes for good qualifying: 'Then we can be strong on Sunday' Today, 1.

Verstappen has nerves better than Hamilton: 'He is calm' Today, 2. Ricciardo least fan of Verstappen? Brundle expects Verstappen to be strong, but: 'Points needed on Sunday too' Today, 2. The DRS is an overtaking aid, but drivers can only use it in designated DRS zones that are set before the start of a race weekend.

Most tracks have one DRS zone, although some have two. The DRS can only be used once a driver has closed to within a second of the car ahead at a specified 'detection point' on the circuit. The DRS was introduced in to make overtaking easier, and while some see it as an essential weapon in a driver's arsenal, others believe it makes racing artificial.

The pit window is one of F1's stranger terms, as it involves a certain amount of guesswork about when a driver will make a pit stop based on the expected lifespan of the tyre compound on the car. Pirelli usually estimates how far it thinks its tyres can go, and teams factor this information into their qualifying and race strategies.

Meanwhile, broadcasters can use the information to predict when a driver will stop. So when the pit window is 'open' it means a driver is expected to make a pit stop soon, although it doesn't account for how good a driver is as looking after the tyres or various other factors. When a driver is told to 'box, box', they're being instructed to make a pitstop.

This is because 'box' sounds more distinct than 'pit' over the team radio, so there's less chance of confusion leading to an error.

The word itself refers to the painted box outside a team's garage where pit stops take place, although some argue that it hails from 'boxenstopp', which is German for 'pit stop'.

Blistering can happen when a tyre gets too hot. This can cause the rubber to soften and break apart more easily, leading to a loss of grip and performance. Blistering can affect the whole surface area of a tyre, or sometimes just a thin strip that looks like an unbroken line when seen from the on-board camera. Drivers want to avoid blistering because it lowers the amount of grip a tyre can produce, and once a blister appears it can be almost impossible to get rid of.

That in turn means that drivers have to slow down even more to avoid making the blisters worse. In the past, blisters have led to complete tyre failures, which are particularly dangerous at high speed. F1 cars have a brake on each wheel, but drivers can choose how much braking force is applied to the fronts and rears depending on the needs of any given corner. They do this by operating the controls on their steering wheel, often making several adjustments per lap.

It's usually referred to in terms of moving the brake balance or bias forwards or backwards. Perfecting the brake balance is key to getting an F1 car to slow down and corner. If you apply too much bias to the front the car will struggle to turn, but adding too much to the rear could result in a spin. Drivers have to manage this challenge throughout each race, making adjustments for changing levels of grip and the reduced weight of the car as it burns off fuel.

Not all F1 tyres are the same: Pirelli supplies five different compounds of tyre picking three for each grand prix as well as an intermediate tyre for damp conditions and a wet tyre for when it's raining.

The compounds contain different mixes of rubber, polymer, sulphur and various other ingredients. Generally speaking, the softer a compound is the faster it will be over a single lap, but the less durable it will be too. Degradation refers to the reduction of grip caused by a tyre getting too hot. If you hear drivers talk of not getting their tyres 'in the window', they mean they haven't been able to drive the car in such a way that the compound stays in its ideal operating temperature where maximum grip is delivered.

Degradation or sometimes deg is not to be confused with wear, which is the process of the tyre tread thinning over time due to friction in the track surface. Double stacking is when a team pits both of its cars on the same lap, with one following the other into the pit lane. Ideally the second car will be far enough behind that it pulls into the pit box just as the first car is leaving, and each pit crew is heavily drilled for such a scenario. Teams usually double stack their cars in response to a safety car, although there are other situations that cause them.

Double stacking is notoriously tricky: a botched double stack cost Mercedes victory at the Sakhir Grand Prix after a late call confused the team's pit crew. Downforce is the aerodynamic effect that pushes F1 cars towards the ground when they move forwards. The higher a car's downforce, the more grip it will have in corners, the more traction it will have and the easier it will be to generate heat in the tyres.

The key to a fast F1 car is to create downforce without also developing drag, which is the aerodynamic resistance acting against the forward momentum of the car. These harvest electrical energy over the course of a lap, giving drivers a power boost that can be used to attack or defend during a grand prix. The ERS can generate an extra hp for around half a minute per lap. The electricity produced is kept in the Energy Store ES ; usually a battery made up of lithium-ion cells. If a driver locks up a tyre when braking, it can sometimes cause the contact patch of the compound to become flat instead of round.

This reduces grip and can also cause severe vibrations that make an F1 car more difficult to handle. In some cases the vibrations are so extreme that the front wing can be shaken clean off, as happened to Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari at the Bahrain Grand Prix in The entire F1 field completes a slow formation lap or warm-up lap ahead of every grand prix, and before every race restart that follows a red flag stoppage.

This gives engineers and mechanics time to clear the grid, and also allows drivers to warm up the tyres and brakes so they're not unsafe for what is the most dangerous part of the race.

Graining occurs when chunks of rubber break off from a car's tyres, but instead of being thrown to the side of the track the loose material then sticks to the tyre itself. This makes the surface of the tyre uneven and reduces the amount of grip it can produce. It's possible for a tyre to quickly recover from graining if the driver makes changes to their driving style. The halo is the carbonfibre frame that surrounds the cockpit of every F1 car. It's a mandatory, standardised component that's designed to protect a driver's head from flying debris and impacts from other cars.

The halo was introduced in , four years after the incident which killed Marussia driver and Ferrari protege Jules Bianchi. Although the halo would not have saved the Frenchman's life, it has been credited with vital interventions since, most notably protecting Charles Leclerc at the Belgian Grand Prix in and helping Romain Grosjean survive a mph crash at the Bahrain Grand Prix in A driver's headrest is made from an energy-absorbing foam, and is designed to absorb impact forces in the event of a crash.

The headrest slots into the top of the cockpit like a jigsaw puzzle piece. A lock-up is when a driver brakes so hard that one or more wheels starts to under-rotate, or stops rotating altogether. This often leads to a puff of white smoke from the tyres, and can result in flat spots that force a driver to pit for fresh rubber. When tyres wear over the course of a grand prix, rubber is thrown off the cars and accumulates on the sides of the track.

These chunks are called 'marbles', and drivers do their best to avoid them during the race. This is because they have the effect of making parts of the track slippery, but they also cause the same problems as graining. However, after a race has finished you'll often see drivers deliberately drive over the marbles to pick up the discarded rubber: this adds weight and makes it less likely that a car will be disqualified for being underweight when it is weighed after the race.

It takes heat energy that would otherwise be lost from the car's turbocharger and converts it into electricity, which can then be used to boost performance during the grand prix. It harvests energy lost during braking and turns it into electricity, which is then sent to the Energy Store ES to be redeployed later on.

Oversteer occurs when a car turns into a corner, only for the rear end to try and continue in a straight line. The systems on a Formula 1 car work in essentially the same way.

Hydraulic tubes, rods and actuators. But whilst on an Airbus A or even a modern UAV or fighter jet there is a huge amount of space to work in, on a grand prix car the opposite is true. It is essentially an adjustable rear wing which can be used to facilitate overtaking. Under the rules for , the driver of a following car can adjust the flap of his rear wing under certain circumstances. The flap is lifted up at the front and pivots about a point at the trailing edge of the wing, so that in the event of a failure, the flap will drop down into the default, high-downforce position.

Since the timing loops will be sited after corners, drivers will only be able to deploy the active rear wing as a car goes down a particular nominated straight, in Melbourne for example this was the starting straight. Here we compare the Drag Reduction System in open position left and closed right. The results of the study appear on the graph below. That means immediately coming out of a corner, any advantage from drag reduction is not really there.

Purnell is convinced that the active rear wing even raises the prospect of overtaking at tight circuits like Hungaroring and Monaco. Maybe the flap movement could be extended from four degrees to 10 degrees for tracks like Monaco and Hungary — then you might well get overtaking. DRS is unlike last years front wing adjustment in that it does not give a number of position settings, its either on or off.