A F1 car is made up of 80,000 components. If it were assembled 99.9% correctly, it would still start the race with 80 things wrong!
When a F1 driver hits the brakes on his car he experiences retardation or deceleration comparable to a regular car driving through a brick wall at 300 km/h
A F1 car can go from 0 to 160 km/h AND back to 0 in 4 seconds
A F1 car's engine lasts only for about 6 hours of racing mostly before blowing up. On the other hand we expect our engines to last us for a decent 20 years on an average and they quite faithfully do - that's the extent to which the engines are pushed to perform.
An average F1 driver looses about 4 kg of weight after just one race due to the prolonged exposure to high G forces and temperatures for little over 1 hour 45 minutes.
At 550 kg, a F1 car is less than the weight of the original Mini.
As an idea of just how important aerodynamic design and added down force can be, small planes can take off at slower speeds than F1 cars travel on the track.
Without aerodynamic down force, high-performance racing cars have sufficient power to produce wheel spin and loss of control at 160 km/h. They usually race at over 300 km/h.
In a street course race like the Monaco Grand Prix, the down force provides enough suction to lift manhole covers. Before the race all of the manhole covers on the streets have to be welded down to prevent this from happening!
The refuelers used in F1 can supply 12 litres of fuel per second. This means it would take just 4 seconds to fill the tank of an average 50 litre family car. They use the same refuelling rigs used on US military helicopters today.
Top F1 pit crews can refuel and change tyres in around 3 seconds.
During the race, the tyres lose weight! Each tyre loses about 0.5 kg in weight due to wear.
Normal tyres last 60,000 - 100,000 km. Racing tyres are designed to last 90 - 120 km.
A dry-weather F1 tyre reaches peak operating performance (best grip) when tread temperature is between 900 degrees C and 1,200 C. (Water boils at 100C)
At top speed, F1 tyres rotate 50 times a second.
(Thanks to Cliff for sending this in)
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