Formula 1 is the pinnacle of motorsport in all aspects as the best talents of engineering and athleticism collaborate to deliver the best performance. Non-enthusiasts may find Formula 1 nothing else than driving in a closed loop repetitively, but the efforts and details behind the scene link the racing itself to human life. Factors contributing to success on track strikingly mirror the widely known life experiences. Formula 1 is not just an entertainment and a sport but a simulation of the real world.
Whether teamwork is relevant in an F1 race is perhaps the biggest myth as the drivers seem to only drive for themselves. Even FIA once forbade the team order, which is an instruction by the team to swap positions between two teammates. The answer to this is more than clear now: Formula is a teamwork-oriented sport, and the team order is part of team collaboration between teammates.
If a driver is running in a better lap time than his teammate but happens to drop behind, a position swap is needed to avoid wasting time from being held behind the slower teammate. The slower teammate may not be fast enough to catch up with the other teams but can help secure the team result by defending the other cars behind. Fernando Alonso did a great job in the 2021 Hungarian Gran Prix to hold Lewis Hamilton behind and secure the win for Esteban Ocon. Teamwork is needed in the pitlane and the factory as different functions work together to achieve the best machinery, strategy, and pitstops.
If a team works well together to attain great cars and great drivers, the win is still not guaranteed. Of course, bad luck might hit and ruin all the effort, but on-time decision-making and race strategy are the cornerstones of success. The 2022 Hungarian Gran Prix shows a good example of bad strategy and the lack of dynamic decision adjustment. Charles Leclerc was in the lead of the race, but a pitstop with hard tires fitted to his car under wet weather ruined the chance and dropped him out to the podium. Max Verstappen from Red Bull won that race from P10 thanks to consecutive successful strategic undercuts.
The undercut and overcut are the strategic pitstop decision attempting to gain track positions. Undercuts refer to earlier pitstops than that of the opponents and overcuts refer to the later ones. Both could work depending on the track characteristics and situation. Monaco is a track where overcuts often work, and undercuts often work at Circuit Paul Ricard for example. Overcuts and undercuts, however, cannot make a slow car competitive against the top runners right away. A slow car would still be lagging behind even with all the strategies thrown at it.
The effect of such strategies implies that continuous hard work does not always yield the best result. If a pause or a disruption is needed in a business or career planning, strategic scheduling can possibly boost the final result without extra input. Yet a team or an individual has to be competitive in the first place to obtain the best possible result. A good paraphrase of this is that mortgages do not make a poor man rich immediately. Success requires hard work behind the scene and decisive calls right on the spot.
Motorsport requires both great machines and great athletes. A good driver with a non-competitive car would still be outperformed. Fernando Alonso's stint with McLaren between 2014 and 2018 was disastrous as McLaren and Honda failed to produce a good car. No one would ever doubt Alonso’s pure talent, but he still cannot deliver good results with the McLaren cars at the time. Those catastrophic years for McLaren, Honda, and Alonso can be summarized by the famous “GP2 engine” radio. This elaborates that Formula 1 requires strong teamwork — between the two drivers, between drivers and engineers, and between constructors and engine suppliers.
Being a driver requires heavy investment both physically and financially, but with all the junior race experiences and hard work success is still not ensured. Some may just have a higher talent to drive faster than others, and this is not reproducible. Practice makes perfect but fails to beat talent.
Car performance is a hard limit on the track, and even great drivers cannot make a slow car strikingly faster. Picking the right car to race is thus crucial to the final result. If a slow car is doomed to be overtaken by a fast rival, often the slow car would yield without much defending. Close-up dog fight harms the tires, so if a slow car defends for too many laps, it might end up behind even slower cars. That is why when the “Big 3” — Red Bull, Mercedes, and Ferrari — attempt to overtake the rest of the teams, the slower cars just simply move aside. Choosing the right battle and not tangling up with unnecessary competition is the way to maximize personal outcomes, and losing something to the top players is not a shame at all.
