The complex beauty of Formula 1 Pics and words from the Formula 1's paddock

To enter the Renault team's box in the Montmelò - the Formula 1 circuit of Catalunya - you must cross a narrow corridor, with about fifty professional headphones on the wall. From the first steps, you start to smell the perfume of the paddock: a mix of rubber and oil that pervades the nostrils. In the beginning, it is not pleasant but it takes only five minutes to get used to it. A Formula 1 team's garage is much smaller than it is reasonable to imagine: there is only room for two cars, a cluster of monitors in the middle, columns of tires stacked in an orderly manner and a fortnight between mechanics and staff that hovers in a frenetic but orderly in the box. Incomprehensible graphs populate the monitors' screens with triangular shapes similar to those of stock market shares.

These are the pre-season days of the test of the 2018 Formula 1, which start off next weekend in Australia. The tests are one of the most important moments of the season because the teams try to collect and analyze the greatest amount of data: it is a very complicated process, involving highly qualified people and cutting-edge technology and many attributes to this detachment with the reality the loss of popularity of Formula 1 in recent years. nss sports was invited by Le Coq Sportif inside the box of the Renault team to let us explain how a Formula 1 is created and what is the work of a team in 2018: instead of being scared by the technological complexity, we left fascinated.

This is the hidden circus, but there’s also an invisible one: factories. If you consider that about 1000 people are involved in the work on the framework and the engine of a single-seater (not counting the external companies), it seems wrong not to involve them in the Formula 1 family. From the cad designers to the workers on the work-lines, everyone deserves his own acknowledgment for a show that is made by an half-afternoon-long race. Formula 1 is a very complicated universe, that goes from the engineering vanguard to the most unthinkable logistic, we must not be scared but enjoy its charm.