Seven things you've asked Google about Formula One, answered by TG

Is F1 expensive?

Really depends to what you’re comparing it. Compared to, say, launching a manned mission to Mars, no, Formula One’s really quite affordable. Compared to literally anything but launching a manned mission to Mars... yes, Formula One is horribly expensive.

Is Formula One a sport?

Really does depend on how we’re defining ‘sport’ here. Some will claim that a sport’s only a sport if it involves a ball: clearly an absurd definition, as that would exclude such bona fide sports as darts, speed whittling and badger baiting.

The Cambridge Dictionary, however, defines sport as an “activity needing physical effort and skill, that is played or done according to rules”. Well, F1 definitely requires physical effort. You don’t get a neck that girthy without putting in the hard yards with those big stretchy bands.

Rules? F1 loves them. In fact, if more rules means more sporty, then F1’s surely the sportiest sport of all.

How do F1 drivers get paid?

Frequently and lavishly.

How do Formula One drivers pee?

Weirdly popular, this question. And the answer is: the same way the rest of us pee. Apart from Max Verstappen, who’s got a special high-pressure ‘drainage valve’ installed just under his right armpit, to allow for rapid and efficient urea extraction during pitstops.

How do I become a Formula One driver? 

Two main routes. Route one: have a father who was an F1 driver, thus blessing you with a) whip-crack reactions, b) an unusually girthy neck, and, most importantly, c) all the cash and connections you need to make it to the top.

Route two: have a father who wasn’t an F1 driver, but was instead a business tycoon and thus has a disgustingly vast amount of cash, and some long standing emotional hang-up he’s chosen to resolve by coercing his beloved offspring into a 220mph carbon-fibre grenade. Happy daddy issues!

Are F1 drivers better than NASCAR drivers?

Yes.

What’s the point in Formula One?

Fair question. Because, when you boil it down, F1 is just a bunch of men driving very fast for two hours, at the finish of which they end up precisely where they started, only to discover that Max Verstappen did it better.

So the point in F1, surely, is to function as a neat metaphor for life itself: a brief stint scurrying around this mortal coil, at the finish of which you’ll end up precisely as you started (a scatter of inert atoms, drifting in the icy vastness of space), only to discover that Max Verstappen did it better.