How to Be an F1 Driver

by Jenson Button

  The whole process gives you a lot to do. You’ll be changing as you’re coming into the corner, and, at the same time, you’re hammering on the brake and hitting the throttle, with most of the downshift taking place when you’re still braking, and at the same time trying to balance the car when you shift that last gear. You’re doing all of this at 200 miles an hour, remember. And if you’re testing or qualifying then you’re also trying to take note of how the car feels, so that you can relay it to the team afterwards.

  A lot of people can’t get their heads round this, but it’s one of the reasons why a race is so much easier – or, I should say, less mentally taxing – than qualifying and even practice. It’s because feedback’s not an issue. You don’t have to worry about what you’re going to tell the team so you have more headspace to focus on your driving.

  Either way, there are a lot of mental gymnastics involved, which is why it cracks me up when people say, ‘Oh we should bring back stick gear shifts.’ Yeah, right.

  Go to the other extreme, and in 2001 all the teams had automatic gearboxes. It was all worked out on a computer and engineered so that it would shift down to certain gears on certain corners, but giving you, the driver, the leeway to override and change gear yourself if you fancied it for whatever reason. It was a bit weird to drive but I didn’t mind it because you still had ultimate control. Still, they got rid of it.

  One last point. The gear shift is on the paddles, of course, and you can design how skinny you want it to be, how far away from the steering wheel, how thick it should be, do all of that. It’s great. You make it personal.

  3. THE ANATOMY OF BRAKING

  If, at high speed in a road car, you brake as hard as you can, you still won’t slow down as much as you will just by lifting off in a Formula One car. Forget touching the brakes. Just lifting off. And that’s all down to engine braking and our old friend down-force. Just lifting off you pull 1.5G. Hit the brakes as well and you’re going up to 5G.

  My left foot

  And you’ll be doing it with your left foot. Right foot is throttle, left foot is brake. And for me my left leg works just fine as a braking leg, which if you’re a road car user might sound weird. I’m just used to it, because in F1, it’s always been left-foot braking. I can’t get enough power with my right foot either, because it’s just not used to putting that much power through the pedals, it’s only done the throttle pedal before.

  Conversely, a brake pedal on a road car is a lot more sensitive. They’re not carbon brakes, so when you touch a road car pedal, you don’t have to brake very hard. Like if I were to do it with my left foot, I’d brake too hard, I’d be through the windscreen. Whereas, my left leg in a race car can control and modulate a lot of power well. Even though you need to use a lot of power on the left leg I have so much feeling with it. I can’t get the feedback I want from a road car.

  In the zone

  People say, ‘Can you compare an F1 to a road car?’ No, you can’t, it’s completely different. Gears, steering, acceleration, balance, behaviour, everything. And of all those areas, the one that’s most pronounced is braking. Most people don’t understand why the brake pedal in a racing car is so hard. People get into F1 cars, reach turn one and go straight on because they didn’t realise they had to hit it so hard. It’s a very different feeling to your road car.

  The first stab of the brake is the most important, because that’s when you have the most downforce at the highest speed and thus when you get the most braking force and pull the highest G. So that first hit is massively important in slowing the car down. If you arrive in the braking zone and you push it gently you won’t be taking advantage of the downforce and you won’t be stopping at the rate you need. Fine for a warm-up lap, perhaps, but not in a racing scenario.

  Now, normally, if the tyres are up to temperature and you hit the brakes hard you won’t lock up. But if the tyres are not in their working range – so they’re a bit old or not at the correct temperature – then you’ll lock up. It’s what happens when you hit the brakes and the pads grab the disk. The front tyre locks and they smoke. That’s just carbon brakes for you, really. They’re very grabby until they’re up to temperature. And it’ll happen if the brakes are too cold, or if the car hits the ground as you brake because you’re running the wrong ride height or the tyre pressure is too low. You’ll hit the brakes, the front will hit the ground, you lock up, you’ve lost time, you’ve probably damaged the tyre and run wide. You messed up.

  Brake dance

  So, you’ve got to hit it hard and then after the initial hit, you back off. You shouldn’t ever hit the brake and then come off and then go back on, because if you’re doing that it means you’ve misjudged the entrance to the corner and you don’t want to do that because that’s BAD.

  The perfect scenario is to hit the brake hard, come off the brake gradually, then turn in and go back on the throttle. If it’s a hairpin and you’ve done it right, you should be able to just hammer the brake, turn and then gradually apply the throttle, but mainly you’re constantly judging your footwork. Like during a race, when the tyres are getting old, you’ll be prone to a bit of oversteer on entry, so you’ll be using the brakes to balance the car all the way to the apex, then turn and exit.

  Things go south if you brake too late. Normally, as I say, you have the first hit on the brakes and then slowly come off the brakes. But if you’ve braked too late, you hit the brakes and not only are you on the pedal for longer but you have to turn in while you’re braking, and at that point you’ve got problems, because when you brake in a straight line, the whole surface of the tyre is on the ground and everything’s fine. But when you turn and brake, there’s camber, which means there’s less of the tyre actually touching the road, and if you brake hard and turn in, you’re likely to lose grip, lock up the inside unweighted front, damage the tyre and go straight on.

  It’s different with different types of tyres: Michelin, you can brake and turn in a little bit more, Bridgestone, you can’t. You’ve got to wait until you’ve done the braking and then turn in. So you really need to understand the tyres that you’re on as well.

  Brake wait

  It’s crucial to get your braking right, because it sets up the whole corner. You need to be brave on the brakes and have confidence in the car. You need to have confidence in yourself. You need to be able to read the circuit and car and take a gamble on a complicated set of factors that include your own skills, your fearlessness or lack of it, and you wait, wait, wait, and then – bosh – hammer the brake. And you do all of that in a fraction of a second.

  Ideally, of course, you want to brake as late as you can, but the penalties are different. If you brake too early then you lose lap time, but that’s preferable to braking too late, when you’re probably going to drive off the circuit (see above). It’s always a fine line between being brave enough or being too brave.

  When a driver’s trying to find the perfect spot to brake, they’ll always work up to it through practice. The problem is that in practice you’ll think you’ve found your perfect braking point, but by the time you get to qualifying two hours later, it’s murder getting back in the zone to find it again.

  Knit one, turn one

  Your first braking point is the most important to get right for the whole lap. So, assuming everything’s in working order and that your tyres are warmed up, you get to turn one, you’ve done the wait, wait, wait thing, you hammer the brakes and – yes – you’ve braked at the right point, you get the weight transfer, you turn in, feel that front grip, get to the apex, get back on the throttle and hey presto you’ve taken the corner perfectly, and that’s your turn one, take a bow.

  But if they threw that same corner at you five times, it’s never going to be exactly the same five times over, because you’re doing 200 miles an hour. You might think you’re braking at the same point, but you’ll always be a metre out, give or take.

  In short, it’s very, very tricky. And that first braking point is
really what makes a lap – certainly a qualifying lap, because if you get that right, you’re in a good place. Mentally, you’re sorted, you know that the car is working as you want it to, and you approach turn two knowing that the car will do what you expect it to do: the tyre pressures are right, the brakes are at the temperature you need them to be, and the ride height is correct. Everything is working tickety-boo. And so, in theory, yes, everything should go smoothly after turn one. In theory.

  This, of course, is a psychological trick as much as a genuine racing phenomenon, but it’s true. After all, let’s look at what happens in the other scenario: you get to turn one, brake too late and go wide, you’ve lost two-tenths of a second – at best, probably more than that – as a result of which then you start overdriving, because it’s, like, Right, I lost time, I need to drive harder than I was going to.

  Which is impossible. You’re never going to catch up time because why would you have been driving slowly in the first place? But you do it anyway. You overdrive and then you brake too late, you lose grip, lock up and it gets worse. All because you made a dog’s dinner of turn one.

  In short, you need to get turn one right.

  4. THE RACING LINE

  The racing line is the quickest way through a corner, a means of taking the corner that fulfils the following criteria: a.) you’re alive at the end of it; b.) your car is in one piece; and c.) you haven’t lost any time, and may even have gained time over your rival. In other words, it’s the shortest route around the corner and the route that lets you keep your minimum speed as high as possible.

  My first-ever pole lap was Imola, 2004, in my BAR-Honda, and it’s one of my most perfect-ever laps. Go find it on YouTube. I’ll wait. I’ll be talking about the noise it makes in due course, but for the time being watch how I’m using the kerbs, trying to get the most out of the kerb without going on the grass, which is where you start losing time. Watch the racing line, in other words.

  I’m not going to be big-headed about this and say that it’s a glorious symphony of braking, gear change and taking the ideal racing line. I’ll just leave you to come to that conclusion yourself.

  5. THE RULES OF OVERTAKING

  You won’t get very far in F1 if you have no heart for the overtake, which generally speaking will happen in a corner. If you have more power and you have more straight-line speed, you can overtake on the straight, but normally the finish of the move is done under braking and on a corner, which is where all that stuff I was banging on about earlier comes into play.

  Turn one in Abu Dhabi, for example: you could get a good tow on the guy and then as it comes to the braking point, duck out, brake a little bit later and, as long as you place your car up the inside, pretty much the move is done.

  But if you misjudge and he turns in, you’ve got to back out of it, which is tricky, because you’re on the limit: there’s a good chance you’re going to lock up and run wide and maybe push him off the circuit as well. And you won’t win many friends doing that. Then there’s the risk that if you go in too deep and brake too late you’ll go too far and he can get the switch back on and overtake you on the exit. What do you do?

  Rule 1: Know your enemy

  You need the guy you’re overtaking to respect you, because a lot of the time you would dive down the inside, he’d turn in on you and you’d crash. He’ll be hoping that you’re going to back out and you’ll be hoping that he’s going to back out, so you end up crashing.

  But just as you’re trying to understand the driver, you don’t want him to understand you. For example, if you try and make the move at a certain corner and it doesn’t work, then he knows – or at least he thinks he knows – where you’re going to try and overtake him next and he’s going to block you; he’ll come down the straight and if he thinks you’re going to pull out, he’ll just pull out and sit on the inside, so you can’t get up in the inside of him for the corner.

  Rule 2: Remember that there are actual rules, not just these made-up ones

  The rule in a corner is that you’re not allowed to brake and then move when you see someone trying to pass you, and the reason for that is because the guy behind has started braking also, and if he’s trying to overtake you, he’s on the limit of his braking power, so if you move in front of him, he’s just going to drive over the top of you because he has no way of slowing down.

  So that’s banned. In theory. But on the first lap of the race, anything goes. Even though the FIA can see on the data when you’ve braked and penalise you for it afterwards, drivers think they’ll get away with it because there’s so much going on in that mental first lap of the race when everyone’s adrenalin is so high.

  Some will move by mistake, of course, just out of instinct. But all the drivers think and react differently, and there are certain drivers you know will not want to let you pass, even at the risk of crashing. Step forward Kevin Magnussen, who’s known as a tough driver because he pushes the limits. So when you come up behind him to overtake, you want to make sure you’ve got the move done, otherwise you’re going to crash.

  Similar story on the straights, rule-wise. You can’t move twice when someone’s behind you. So, for example, if I try to overtake the guy in front, I’d go to the left and he would move to block me. He’s allowed to do that, but he’s not allowed to move back. It’s just a rule to stop dangerous driving and make the racing better.

  You always get guys who play fast and loose though. Tell you who was a demon on the corners: David Coulthard. He was, like, Right, it’s my corner, I’m going to turn in, so I crashed with him a couple of times. He’s a really tough guy to overtake because he wouldn’t back out unless it was absolutely necessary. He’d just think, Well, if you’re alongside me, you’ve got the corner, but if you’re not, you’re going to have to back out and he’d just turn in. Most of the time you couldn’t back out, because you were on the limit.

  Me, I was different. If the guy was coming up the inside, I’d be wary of him being unable to back out and so I’d give him room. It might not mean he’s going to get the move done, but you won’t turn in completely, you’ll give him space. My thinking was that if I turned in we’d crash, but if I turned in a bit later and gave him room, we wouldn’t crash, and I might still keep the position.

  Rule 3: The inside is your friend

  It’s the shorter way around, of course, and you’ll always try to go to the inside, but if you’ve tried it and failed and they’ve blocked you, you can give it a go on the outside, but more often than not you’ll fail around the outside.

  Often it will look as though the overtake is complete but the car being overtaken resumes its position in front, and that’s because they’ve taken a shorter route through the corner. They’ve also been able to get on the power a bit earlier and they’re more in control because they’re in front, so they can push you off if they feel like it. Plus you’re on the outside. You can’t do anything. That’s why you ideally need to stick to the inside for overtaking.

  Rule 4: DRS is a drag

  DRS is a ‘drag reduction system’ that operates a bit like a turbo boost when activated in certain DRS zones around the circuit. Overtaking with the DRS system has made it less exciting because drivers mostly overtake on the straight now because it’s safer: you can use the DRS and power past.

  If we didn’t have it, we’d have to take more risks, which is the way it should be, I think. When I watch an Indy Car race around a circuit like Austin, it’s great – so many overtaking moves and risky overtaking moves at that, because they don’t have DRS. Overtaking is supposed to be really tough, but when you get a move done – a proper move, not a DRS move, a proper move – it’s so rewarding. It’s like standing on the podium. It’s, like, yes. And if it’s on your teammate it’s even better. So, yes, boo hiss to DRS.

  Rule 5: It’s a shame when you’re overtaken but you’ll get over it

  Sometimes you get caught napping. You’re like, ‘Oh, nuts, I should have seen that coming.’ You thoug
ht he wasn’t going to do it from that far back. Or you thought he was going to wait for the next corner.

  But then it just happens, it comes out of nowhere. In NASCAR and Indy Car, you have a spotter. They’ll communicate to the driver, ‘He’s on your inside, he’s on your inside, he’s coming up, he’s just about to overtake!’ But not in F1. It happens too quickly. It’s, like, bang, done.

  F1 is more exciting, though. It’s because you know it’s so difficult to overtake in F1 without DRS. So when you do make the move, it’s shit hot, and if you make it on someone like Michael Schumacher back in the day, or Fernando Alonso, then it’s really, really cool.

  Still, we hate it, being overtaken. It’s embarrassing. But then you’ve also got to think, I’m racing against the best guys in the world, and if no one’s going to overtake me, it’s going to be a pretty boring race. It’s like a football player saying he’s never going to be tackled. You’ve just got to take it on the chin.

  Even so, it is definitely tough when you get overtaken, especially when they put a really good move on you, like they’ve braked late and they’ve caught you napping, as we say, leaving you wondering why you didn’t cover the line, why you didn’t block, why you gave him the opportunity to overtake.

  That can be a bit embarrassing. Being overtaken from around the outside – as can sometimes happen in Austin – now that is really embarrassing.