My journey with Formula 1

 My obsession for the "pinnacle of motorsport" came from a YouTube video. It was nothing special, only a David Guetta song, the song in question is called Dangerous. I remember thinking how cool the cars looked, I remember thinking they were CGI.

A few years later however when I was 10 scrolling through YouTube to find a video to occupy myself with, I stumbled across a Formula 1 video. It was the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix and the race highlights were thrilling enough to capture my interest in the sport. I specifically remember seeing Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari on track with 3 tyres on the track and 1 resting on his rear sidepod. 

This led to me spending about 2 hours of watching F1 highlights of the 2017 season. I became a Ferrari fan and for the next 3 years I watched Ferrari self destruct over the course of the season to lose to Mercedes and Hamilton over and over again until 2020. I stopped watching F1 because of how dominant Mercedes was in 2020, the car they produced made corners straights. The W11 was a different beast all together and it  made the sport so boring I stopped watching it.

In these 3 years of being continuously disappointed by Ferraris poor strategy, driver errors and unreliability I endeavoured on a journey to finding a more detailed perspective in F1. How does the sport look from the drivers view. I read books by drivers like Jenson button, Kimi Raikkonen and Michael Schumacher. The books weren't great, although I did get an insight into each drivers personality and their driving style (to an extent).

Button - Has a smooth driving style launching the car into the corner with the intention of coming out of the corner with the greatest possible speed, his style was precision over speed. I know I just said his intention was to come out the corner with the greatest speed, but when talking about precision it is all about going into the corner at the right speed at the right angle in order to create the greatest exit speed. The most interesting part about Button's book was his partnership with Lewis Hamilton at McLaren, where Lewis had a completely different driving style to Button, yet came out with the same and in most cases came out faster. Button also went into the details of drivers meetings, much more than the other drivers I mentioned, demonstrating the relationship that the drivers have with their race engineer or the process of making the drivers seat. If you want to read a book by an F1 driver on how its really like to be a driver in F1 then I recommend his book Jenson Button life to the limit.

Raikkonen - Has a similar style to Button, only that everything is faster. He will turn into the corner as early as humanly possible in order to get out of the corner with the greatest speed. His style is most comparable to rally drivers if anything. His high energy approach is more like a rally driver and wares down the tyres and the engine down much quicker than other driving styles. It is important to note that he spent 2 years driving rally cars before coming back to F1, where he was so fast he made a team go bankrupt (lotus team 2013). His book was more to do about his family and personal life compared to Buttons book. Raikkonen's book is still good however, it really gives off his "couldn't care less" attitude on the paddock.

Schumacher - Has a very direct driving style, he goes into the corner at speed before slowing down to the walking pace equivalent to an F1 car before accelerating the car as fast as possible out of the corner. Schumacher was able to adopt this style by having a light front end heavy car allowing him to launch the car deep into the corner and rotate it quickly. Schumacher's book isn't the best read and it can get depressing at times as a large majority of the book spoke about his accident when he went skiing. The book however is a deep insight into how he thought, he would book the closest hotel to the track so he could be first among the drivers to set up his car and prepare for the race. However the highlight of the book for me was his wife's perspective on what type of person he is, she described him as a positive dedicated person who always gave advice no matter the situation was.

After reading these books I wanted to become a driver, inly problem was that I didn't think I would fit in the car. You see I got into F1 when I was 10 and over the next 3 years I spent most of my time playing F1 games and got into the top 1% in certain events in the online F1 games. Then COVID 19 came and I stopped watching F1 as it got really boring in 2020 as I mentioned previously. Lewis Hamilton and the W11 where too much, 1 second difference in qualifying time every race weekend.

However when we came back to school in 2022 I git back into F1, mainly due to my physics lessons having more to do with F1 as most of the F1 car is just physics. This comeback to F1 sparked my dream to be a driver, but I was too tall. Standing at 6'3 at 14 and the tallest driver being 6'2 (and crap) with the rest being around 5'10 and shorter I had to move my ambitions if I wanted to be in F1.

Here I am writing a blogpost in bed in 2024 about my journey and to be honest although this hasn't been a very educational blogpost I feel this suits my blog title. The blog is called Deyan's wild adventures and this post is quite suitable for once as rather than being educational and talking about physics it is rather one long adventure I have gone on over the years.