The drivers body
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For a while now, I’ve been busy with figuring out, how a driver reacts, how he feels, how his body feels, what’s in his mind… my local F3 driver Sam Dejonghe helped me a bit with saying that he trains his neck every day and that an F1 driver needs to do this also. I also came to know that a ferrari italia has a maximum of 1.6 G’s, which is, yeah right, just NOTHING, ZERO, NADA compared to F1’s maximum of 4-5 G’s. I also came to know that a F1 driver needs to train every free moment they have. And get used to the G’s race per race. Believe me, I didn’t even thought they need to work so hard for this. I kept asking myself how the hell they can get through those g’s so concentrated 44-78 laps long. He answered it. I also know now that an F1 driver doesn’t think about the corners, doesn’t think about how to do the qualy, doesn’t think about anything but overtaking in the race. They clear their minds before they start. They talk about it with the team how they gonna do this, what can happen, and what they can’t afford to happen.
I’m still curious how the body reacts. So can someone tell me? How the body works into an F1 car? How the heart reacts, how much you can breath or what the blood pressure is through the body? How much O2 and CO2 can they get? How much energy do they have after the race? What happens with the addrenaline? And what about the back? Does it hurt? which muscles do they need to train for this and how are they doing it…
as far as having energy after the race, when button won in monaco 2009 he missed parc ferme and ran i think most of the track to get to the podium so that probably shows how fit they are…
as for the rest in not an f1 driver so i dont know
I read that at Dijon in 1981 Gilles was hooked up for a medical experiment and his heart rate never went over 127 before he crashed. During the crash it peaked at 168. A good book for you might be ‘Overdrive’ which looks at what it’s like for an F1 driver to be ‘in the zone’.
ow yeah thnx, I’ll do some research for it if I can order or rent it at some library near my place. 127 is high though. I remembered when I ran, I got a heart rate of 105 or something. Could be the adrenaline of racing. When you crash, your heart beats faster because of the adrenaline and the fear of something bad is happening. So I guess that’s why he had a peak of 168…
Other good books on the topic are “Inside the Mind of a Grand Prix Driver” by Christopher Hilton (which is less to do with the psychology of F1 than it is to do with how competitors in it have felt during various experiences) and the two books Sid Watkins wrote – “Life at the Limit” and “Beyond the Limit”.
To try answering some of your questions, the heart has a lot of work to do during a race. It is common for drivers to spend the whole race in the 150-170 bpm range (except the start, where it’s usually 20-30 bpm higher). That effectively means the body is doing aerobic exercise for 1.5-2 hours, apart from a couple of minutes of anerobic exercise around the start due to high stress.
There are two ways of reducing the high numbers. The first one is to get fit (hence Sam Dejonghe is already doing lots and lots of exercise targetted towards the muscles a driver works the most). So for someone like Mark Webber, you can probably take 20 bpm or so off the average.
The other one is to experience lots of racing scenarios. Rubens Barrichello is a good example of this – he wore a cardiogram in a race in 2004 and it never went above 151. Rubens isn’t necessarily fitter than his rivals but even then he was considerably more experienced than most. This had a particularly noticeable effect on the start – it’s difficult to be stressed about a situation you’ve seen many dozens of times before.
Michael Schumacher, in his prime, combined both of these very well. It got to the point where, by the start of 2003, his heart got a bigger workout doing a series of strenuous runs than it did when he spun in testing the following day…
The G-forces mean breathing in during the faster corners isn’t an option. It’s possible in the slower corners and (obviously) on the straights.
After the race, there’s plenty of energy… …until the adrenaline drops out of the system 5-10 minutes after the drivers have parked due to no longer being needed. This makes the heart rate suddenly go up anything up to 30 bpm to compensate, depending on how big a contrast it produced in that driver, and can sometimes cause collapses as dehydration in particular can make itself known at that point (to clarify, the drivers are usually a bit dehydrated at the end of the race – a lack of adrenaline doesn’t cause that, it stops the emergency “carry on regardless” signal).
The back can hurt. A lot. Depending on exactly what era of car is being discussed (anything before the mid-1980s is particularly prone to this), the lack of suspension travel in a F1 car combined with its low level of padding in the lower back area makes every bump amplified far in excess of the amount felt in a road car, or even an arrive-and-drive kart.
Nice to know, thank you for explaining it Alianora. I have a table in here which lets me know of where they could be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Exercise_zones.png and I udnerstand it now. Quiet impressive. This actually means that this is nothing compared to when I’m running. My BPM was atleast not above the 125 bpm, or is this impossible? I also have found a movieclip of glock and trulli training together. It was somewhere in 2004. Glock said at that time that they need to run and do excersices consistantly with a rate of 150-160, is that true?
I saw a video of nico rosberg explaining what he does in a fitness. That neckmachine looks horrible. I can’t understand how the hell they can resist so much torture while concentrating on the rest of the field and on the track. The human body can be fragile. Especially the neck. It’s a good thing they train it. Problem is, can a human body take on more then this (except for body builders offcourse)? And that counts for the whole body, not only the neck and the arms…
Yeah that makes sense. A human heart normally beats faster in stressy situations. So I see your point in that.
Ah so they do have to hold in their breaths too when their in high speed corners? I thought only a driver of the 24 hours of Le Mans needs to do that to prevent crushing their loungs. I saw it in this movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SWNcv52g8g . Offcourse Le Mans is verry much diffrent from F1. It’s just that he let me know that Le Mans is difficulter then F1 so I thought, maybe F1 drivers don’t need to hold their breaths. If so then it’s insane. I would stare openmouthed at my screen if it’s true. I can imagine how hard it is. This means holding your breath throughout the whole eau rouge while taking on the G-forces AND steer all at the same time…
Don’t they have enough drinks onboard to drink enough to rehydrate? And can an F1 driver fall down because of the low bpm/collapse?
I knew it that the back could hurt. The clip of martin brundle explaining g-forces and some other elements on the body shows that you need to steer with your whole body because you’re still in prone a bit…
It’s interesting to talk about this. So thanks for the info guys!
As Zadak once said…
I think fighter planes pull more G when cornering than in F1, so they wear special suits that squeeze more blood to the top half of the body, otherwise they would pass out. That said though, the way an F1 car corners is very violent and way more sudden than a plane.
Top fuel dragsters pull HUGE G forces off the line and the whole distance so I’d imagine those drivers would have to hold their breath the entire race (all of 5 seconds).
Another area of the driver’s body that we haven’t mentioned is the eyes. In singapore for the first time you could see the eyes of the drivers clearly, (because it was darker, clearer visors) I think Lewis blinked 3 – 5 times a lap.
Just thought I would toss in what I could.
127 heart rate doesnt seem bad really. I personally thought it would be much higher but I guess it all depends on his size and such things like that.
@Zadak: The suit explaines alot and makes sense. I think so too that they would pass out otherwise. However, the blood goes more to the upper body then anything else. What about the leggs? Leggs are important too. Is it just enough blood that runs through the leggs to accelarate and brake? It would also make sense that the they make something lose after a race which then allows the blood to get back to the leggs to stand. I think you might fall otherwise. Is it therefore that they don’t put on the upperclothing before qualy or racing?
So dragracers breath in and hold their breath then? I guess the G-forces are big enough for an F1 car to hold their breaths preventing their longs croshed onto their sideribs…
And that’s right, totally forgot about the eyes. I think there is more liquid going to the eyes then anything else in the body. An eye is something sensitive. So if it dries out, then you have difficulties keeping it open. So it’s normal that they blink sometimes. I think when you blink, new liquid refreshes the eye. The visor keeps the air outside. However, air is something thin, so I’d imagine that the air is still comming inside the helmet. On top of this, they sweat. When a body sweats, water is comming out of the cells and they dry out. You can see that when someone stops drinking. So liquid is important for each cell and so it’s essential for life. I learned that from school. 10% less liquid gives you thirst, 20% liquid, the body begins to dry out and with 50% less liquid, you’ll die. I remember myself playing hockey with a hockeyhelmet on and it dried out my eyes a bit. Right after my hockeytraining I drank half of a bottle of water + an energy drink.
F1 drivers don’t wear fighter-plane suits, but G-forces are one of the things the FIA keeps an eye on for safety reasons. Indycars had to cancel an oval race in 2001 because the G-Forces produced at full speed were so large at Turn 2 that drivers were blacking out.
Helmets have air vents in the front, so there should be an air exchange of sorts happening at all times. If it’s really hot, drivers occasionally pull the visor up (especially in the pit lane) to keep a bit cooler and give any sweat on their foreheads a chance to evaporate.
As for water, the May 2006 edition of F1 Racing had a few statistics related to the subject. A driver weighing 70 kilos doing the Malaysian Grand Prix, if at F1 levels of fitness and assuming their bottle works, can expect to lose 8.5% in fluids. At 12% below the ideal fluid level, drivers start getting blurred vision, which plays havoc with co-ordination. The point at which concentration drops away is significantly below that percentage; I’m not sure what the exact percentage is but I’ve heard numbers below 5% before.
I remember Brundle saying on TV, become an f1 driver and you go deaf and get a bad back, but it’s great.
Ow ok, well I don’t know, I’m not an expert in how an F1 driver needs to feel and what he wears and what he does. What’s the maximum G before they pass out? above 5?
Yeah that’s right I forgot that there can be cool air and hot air. Thing is, can the forehead/eyes/face dry out with hot air? With cool air, it shouldn’t dry out though.
yeah you can be below 5% BUT, you’ll get thirsty at that moment. 10-20% mark is dangerous for an F1 driver. So they’ll eventually drink much more with a hot race then with a cool race. How much litres can there be filled in a bottle? can they exchange bottles in the pits?
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