Azerbaijan Grand Prix Countdown: 10 Facts About Formula 1

Only two days remain before the third Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix kicks off in Azerbaijan’s capital city, Baku. Here are 10 facts you probably did not know about Formula One:

1. As of 2018, the late driver from Argentina, Juan Manuel Fangio is considered the oldest racer to win the Formula One race. He was 46 when he ranked first at the 1957 FIA Formula One World Championship. Meanwhile, the oldest driver to start a race was Louis Chiron from Monaco – he was 55 years old when joined the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix.
2. The world’s longest race ever took place in Nürburgring, Germany during the 1954 German Grand Prix. It took 3 hours and 45 minutes to determine the winner – Juan Manuel Fangio. The shortest Grand Prix took place in 1991 in Australia, when the race was stopped because of the rain. Brazilian Ayrton Senna, who won the race managed to overcome 14 circles or 53 kilometers in 24.5 minutes.
3. Each F1 team travels around the world with the luggage, while the weight of each luggage reaches an average of 28 tons, which is the same weight of two blue whales. Along with F1 cars, engines, and any other components, this luggage includes several large trucks with the components that are used to assemble garages and motorhomes – a type of self-propelled recreational vehicle, which offers living accommodation combined with a vehicle engine.
4. The British team known as Williams Martini Racing and its driver, Finland’s Valtteri Bottas, set an all-time record at the 2016 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, clocking in at a top speed of 378 kph on the Baku City Circuit. The previous Formula One record was set in 2004, in the Italian city of Monza, as the BMW driver Antonio Pizzonia recorded top speed in a F1 race at the time, 369.9 kph.
5. Williams F1 team’s constructors have also won an annual award after setting nine consecutive fastest pit stops, with the fastest pit stop thus far set at 1.92 seconds at the 2016 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
6. While women are allowed to compete in F1, only five women joined the races, and only two of them could qualify for the finals. Maria Teresa De Filippis was the first female driver to compete in Formula 1, when she joined the Belgian Grand Prix in 1958. Lella Lombardi from Italy has become the first woman to score points; following the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix she scored 0.5 points after finishing sixth. The 1976 British Grand Prix has become the first F1 race with more than one woman entered.
7. The Baku City Circuit is considered the fastest street circuit in the world with a top speed close to more than 300 kph. With a length slightly over six kilometers, it is also the second longest circuit on the 2018 F1 calendar behind the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. The toughest point in course is its narrowest, measuring 7.6 meters wide. The configuration of the Baku track features twenty turns, while eight of them are 90-degree turns.
8. Located in the Italian city of Pescara, the circuit of the same name is the longest F1 track of all times. With a length of 25.579 kilometers, the Pescara circuit three-and-a-half times the size of the longest track on the calendar today, Spa-Francorchamps. The shortest circuit by lap distance to host F1 race is the Circuit de Monaco, with the length of 3.1 kilometers.
9. The 2018 FIA Formula One World Championship includes 21 Grand Prix, with three of them – Australian, Bahraini and Chinese already wrapped up in previous months.
10. Halo, a titanium structure that sits above the car’s cockpit to protect the driver’s head from flying debris, is the technical innovation of this year’s F1 Championship. The device will be mandatory on all cars this season.