Covering a Formula 1 weekend has a cadence to it.

The week starts properly on Thursday, where you can get access to the Media Center.

From there, everything gets increasingly serious.

Thursday

The only set thing on the schedule was a workshop followed by a track tour.

The workshop was critical for someone such as myself, covering a Formula 1 race as media for the first time. If I knew anything from decades of following Formula 1, there are rules and regulations for everything and I wasn’t looking to break any of them.

At the workshop, which was held in the press conference room, I found out I was able to take photos of everything I had access to (no videos) and would be able to attend the formal press conferences. I also found out that from where we were sitting, there was no actual way to see the cars running.

Which makes sense. If you’re covering the race as a journalist, you can’t actually tell what’s going on from watching a car zip by at a million miles an hour. We are seated in an air conditioned room with monitors showing the race and timing data, which is optimal for producing content.

The highlight of Thursday was the track tour. We were driven around the track and stopped at various points where we were told about asphalt compounds and the nature of the circuit.

The only thing that really takes you out of the moment and makes you realize where you are is the presence of the Turnpike hovering ominously at certain corners.

When we returned to the Paddock, I was free to walk through it and took some photos, while the team crews moved in equipment.

Friday

The highlight of Friday for media is the driver press conferences. All drivers are required to participate. I walked into the Press Conference Room (this is the only place the entire weekend where masks are required), and took a seat a few rows from the front.

I was mostly able to take photos, but there were a few obstructions.

I wrote extensively on the press conference experience earlier this week.

When I exited the press conference 2 hours later, life had changed. Fans had arrived in the Paddock, and the calmness that characterized all of Thursday and Friday Morning was gone.

From this:

To this:

And then the racing started. 2 practice sessions, driver interviews, and crowds characterized the rest of the day.

Saturday

This is where things get serious. Security was tighter, with qualifying happening.

It was at this point that I realized how exhausting reporting on Formula 1 is. When I cover the Canes, there is usually one macro-event, the game itself. For a Formula 1 weekend, each session is a micro-event, culminating with the macro-event of the race on Sunday. It’s very different.

On Saturday, we get to speak to the team representatives, which is generally the Team Boss. But not all of them. In this case, it was 6 of the 10, in two 30-minute press conferences.

Leaving that press conference, I was not surprised by the crowd of fans this time. Becoming a veteran of this whole F1 Journalist Game.

Qualifying in the Media Centre is something you have to experience to see. It’s a group of journalists seated at tables in rows, watching TV, essentially. But also not really watching. Because everyone is working, pulling out nuggets from the session to incorporate into whatever they’re writing.

Fortunately, I don’t write “game summaries” with enforced deadlines, so I have a little more freedom.

And while media is definitely neutral, there are national rooting interests. The Spanish reporters want Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz to do well, for example. (As a side note, in Friday’s driver’s briefing, both Spanish drivers, as Madridistas, were asked questions about Real Madrid’s remontada against Manchester City. #HalaMadridYNadaMas).

When qualifying ends, there are choices to be made. The Top 3 drivers will hold a formal press conference in the press room, while all the drivers (including the Top 3) will eventually make their way through the Interview Pen.

I chose the Press Conference Room. I had seen that room (or a version of it) on TV so many times over the year, and the idea of sitting in a room with Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz, and Max Verstappen was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

With that said, I was in the minority. The Press Conference Room is largely empty. So did everyone else go to the Interview Pen?

No. Most stay in the Media Centre. With the Press Conference Room feed being played through speakers and into the Media Centre, the ideal place to write about the press conference is actually the Media Centre. Journalists working.

The highlight of my “journalist” day was definitely meeting with Mario Isola, the Director of Motorsports of Pirelli. He was running late, but that afforded me the opportunity to sit in Pirelli’s hospitality area and wait.

Several of the people working for Pirelli apologized to me for the lateness, and one employee tried to “corrupt” (his words) me with food and drink. We discussed the heat (not the basketball team), and he said it reminded him of Budapest.

Mario Isola was great.

But a side effect of the interview running late is I was able to see the F1 Paddock, empty, at night.

That moment of solitude, alone, in a Formula 1 Paddock at night, was the highlight of the entire weekend for me.

Sunday

Ironically, Sunday is where there is the least to do for a journalist.

At the Miami Grand Prix, there were 2 support races, one for the W Series and for the Porsche Sprint Challenge.

Outside of that, there is a lot of pomp, for fans.

There are sponsored events, a driver parade, a grid presentation. Fans have plenty of time to access fan zones and enjoy the day.

For me, it was a lot of waiting around for the race to start. Some journalists get grid access. Needless to say, I’m not one of those.

Finally, at 3:15, the national anthem. Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.

The race itself felt similar to qualifying in the Media Centre, everyone working away.

After it ended, I went down the Press Conference Room. I knew most journalists wouldn’t make that choice, but I wanted to be there, as my last official act this weekend.

Press conference over, I retrieved my gear from the Media Centre, and said good bye to the Formula 1 circus.

Not good bye to Hard Rock Stadium, of course. I’ll be seeing her in September. The Canes play Bethune-Cookman in 118 days. That won’t quite have the fanfare of a Formula 1 weekend.

But it’s home. Ain’t no place like it.

Vishnu Parasuraman is a contributor for @FiveReasonsSports. He covers the Miami Hurricanes  for Sixth Ring Canes and Formula 1 for Hitting the Apex. You can follow him on twitter @vrp2003

Formula 1 is widely considered the highest form of Motorsport.

This is due to the extreme engineering, the financial outlay, and the caliber of drives.

But how often do you think about the tires?

And yes, I’m aware in Formula 1, they tend to adopt the British spelling of “tyres,” but I’m proudly American, so you’re getting “tires” here.

Formula 1 has a long, complicated history with tires.

And the task presented to Formula 1’s current tire supplier, Pirelli, is not as simple as building the “best” tire.

Tire Wars, Madness, and Farce

Over the history of Formula 1, there have been 8 tire manufacturers, and as many as 6 at one time in 1954 and 1958.

The last 2 decades have seen 3 tire manufacturers: Bridgestone, Michelin, and current tire manufacturer Pirelli.

Bridgestone ended 2 years as the sole supplier in 2001, and a Tire War ensued. With teams competing for every fraction of a second, choosing one tire manufacturer over the other could provide a remarkable competitive advantage, or disadvantage.

And without cost caps, Formula 1 exploded. Ferrari partnered with Bridgestone (via unlimited testing) to hone the tires exactly to their specification. Michelin opted for a faster, but less durable tire. Most teams opted for Michelin believing that Bridgestone tires really only worked best on Ferraris.

The United States Grand Prix in 2005 all but ended the Tire War. Michelin’s lack of durability, as well as the strange asphalt, meant that the tires were deemed unsafe for running. When the FIA and Michelin could not agree on a way to run their cars, the Michelin runners did the formation lap and pulled into the pits. The FIA’s relationship with Michelin was forever strained, and Michelin exited the sport a year later.

So if Michelin “lost” the Tire War, did Bridgestone win? Not exactly.

With the reintroduction of tire changes in 2006, there were two tire compounds: (1) the harder “prime” tire and (2) the softer “option” tire. The option tire was faster, but would ostensibly wear out quickly.

The issue is that the “option” tires were too good, often being so durable that outside of the forced pit stop (the 2 compound rule existed back then), it would be faster to run the entire race on “option” tires. Bridgestone (and Michelin prior to leaving the sport) had been tasked with building less durable tires, but were struggling to do so.

The Canadian Grand Prix That Changed Everything

The 2010 Canadian Grand Prix changed the way modern Formula 1 is designed. This great video from Autosport is worth a watch, and I will not plagiarize it here.

But as far as tires are concerned, they wore out at a much higher rate than normal, and teams had to adjust on the fly with complicated strategies.

Which made the racing better. Much better.

It was a Eureka moment for Formula 1 of sorts, accelerating the journey to tire manufactured tire inconsistency.

Bridgestone exited the sport after 2010, citing high costs. Formula 1 was looking for a new manufacturer to usher in this new era as they tried to transition from Tire War to Tire Wear

Pirelli – The Impossible Task and Amazing Results

A tire is first and foremost a safety device. It’s easy to lose focus on that, but with the rate a Formula 1 car is traveling, and the tires being the only thing that contacts the ground (with the exception being Red Bull, when they have a flexi-wing. That’s a deep cut for you F1 veterans), if they are unsafe in any way, the cars can’t run. Michelin proved this in the 2005 US Grand Prix.

But Pirelli’s task was not to produce the best quality, most durable, safest, or even fastest tire. It was to produce several different tires with different wear rates and pace, and get them in an optimal zone so that it could conceivably make sense to use any tire, depending on the strategy you go for.

Fans of modern Formula 1 probably won’t remember how challenging it was for Pirelli to get to this point. Early in the Pirelli Era, the tire rate was so rapid that being on the wrong tire could turn a driver into sitting duck. That can still happen today, but it’s mostly a result of strategy screw up.

As Pirelli developed their tires, they kept getting closer to the zone. But rules around tires were changing. Now, Pirelli had to select which compounds to take to the race, with C1 being the hardest and C5 being the softest.

When I spoke to Pirelli Director of Motorsport Mario Isola, he talked about the challenges Pirelli is able to overcome. With every circuit being a different asphalt, with different weather, and with Pirelli only allowed to have one tire range for the entire season, they are tasked with designing a tire that can run everywhere. Not optimized anywhere, but capable everywhere, while still acquiescing to the desire that the tires wear exactly the right amount.

Coming into a new race like this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, there is no data for the track. Instead, Pirelli works with the gravel manufacturer to obtain samples and test the tires against it.

This year also added new, larger tires, which Pirelli has had to adjust to.

The remarkable thing is that incidents like the 2020 British Grand Prix with tire de-laminations are incredibly rare. The only discussion you’ll hear of the tires this weekend is around strategy and how to optimize pit stops versus pace versus tire wear.

And the reason for that is because Pirelli is successful in their task. More than a decade on from their re-entry into the sport (Pirelli was one of the original tire manufacturers at Formula 1’s inception), they have achieved the right balance of safety/durability, with wear, to allow teams to have pit stop variance and wide pit windows for optimal stops.

This race day, when you marvel at the amazing cars, and the skill of the drivers, take a moment to look at the cars’ shoes. They are second to none in modernity and engineering.

Vishnu Parasuraman is a contributor for @FiveReasonsSports. He covers the Miami Hurricanes  for Sixth Ring Canes and Formula 1 for Hitting the Apex. You can follow him on twitter @vrp2003

A common driver cliche is that “they don’t award points on Saturday.”

Qualifying is great, putting yourself in a position to win the the race on Sunday. But without converting that position into a strong race finish, the ultimate goal of maximizing points during the weekend is not achieved.

(As an aside, with the new sprint race format which is being utilized at 3 races this year after being piloted at 3 races last year, it turns out they do award points on Saturday).

Formula 1 is about Math, Science, and Guts

Despite the high financial barrier to entry making it largely inaccessible to the masses, one of the allures of Formula 1 to a wide swath of fans is that there is something for everyone.

Formula 1 sits at the nexus of Math, Science, and the ever-fallible human existence. When we talk about analytics in other sports, what we’re talking about is basic, childhood arithmetic, compared to the effort put in by Formula 1.

Every eventuality has been played out and gamed out, the results simulated. The simulations (and car simulators) are so complicated that veteran driver Valtteri Bottas noted that because Alfa Romeo only relatively recently built a simulator, they are several stages behind Mercedes, Bottas’ former team, in simulator development.

But Formula 1 remains an inexact science.

An exercise in probability. Each micro-decision a team and driver makes throughout the course of a race alters that probability ever so slightly, and cumulatively alters it greatly as each of the 10 teams and 20 drivers are constantly making those decisions.

After all that data, all that information, all those simulations, you end up with a probability that eventually translates into the expected finish in the race.

This is meant to mitigate the chance of risk, given that is all accounted for in the probabilistic determinations.

So after the engineers have designed the car to within a millimeter of specifications to elicit the maximum lap time, and the mathematicians have figured out the optimal strategy built around race pace simulations, tire degradation simulations, and the expected behavior of opponents (among many other factors), an interesting thing happens.

Humans get involved. The drivers are human, the people on the pit wall making the decisions are human, the numbers inputted into the simulations required some human thought, and some assumptions.

Humans are fascinating because we are imperfect. And that imperfection is what lays to waste the best laid plans.

One second, you’re cruising your way to an 8th World Drivers Championship, the next second someone has crashed, the Race Director panics, and the title slips away. That’s racing, it’s what makes it simultaneously maddening and fascinating.

You’d Rather Start on Pole

With so much chance involved, how important is qualifying?

Formula 1, as we’ve discussed, is a sport of probability. Each place you finish further up the grid increases your probability of winning. The pole sitter wins roughly 40% of the races.

While that number is low all things being equal (my logical brain keeps telling me that starting in front would give you a greater than 50% chance of winning, but it turns out that this isn’t true), it dwarfs any other position’s probability. Again, it’s all about increasing the expected position of finish, and pole gives you the highest possible.

As you go further back down the grid, the probability of winning drops rapidly. An (admittedly dated) 2000 analysis from Autosport analyzing start position conversions to wins in the mid-90s found that over 95% of winners start in the Top 6.

Probability.

Starting at the front also brings with it mental stress relief. A driver can focus on his race, and is not worried about being held up by an opponent and having that disrupt his strategy. This is provided he maintains the lead at the start, of course. Pole position is only as good as your acceleration off the line. That mental stress relief is increased if two teammates lock out the front row, which is what happened in the Miami Grand Prix’s Saturday Qualifying.

Now you can really strategize, and give some deference to each other, so you don’t crash. This is a huge advantage over having a non-teammate on the front row next to you.

Pole at this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, however, might be a little less important. With the expectation of an incident-laden race throwing off all the calculations. If there is going to be a red flag at some point, if there are going to be multiple safety cars, how and when do you account for that? You can’t really, it’s just hope for the best.

So what do the driver’s think? The top 3 finishers in Saturday’s qualifying were Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), Carlos Sainz (Ferrari), and Max Verstappen (Red Bull).

They all commented on the track issues that should lead to an unpredictable race. Leclerc and Sainz lamented the lack of grip off the racing line, with Sainz calling it “slippery.” Sainz and Verstappen both commented on the lack of time spent doing long runs, with Verstappen in particular saying it’s difficult to drive “not really knowing the limits” after having only done “four or five laps” in Friday’s practice.

But to a man, when discussing the importance of starting position, they universally reinforced that importance. Leclerc said it was “better” to start ahead and in particular with both Ferraris on the front row. Verstappen said he would also “prefer to start ahead.”

Veterans of the probabilistic battles of the past. They know that in racing, in general, and on a new track, specifically, anything can happen. But they also know that in a sport where you’re choosing between low probability scenarios, any advantage gained is worth having. In a sport where millions of dollars are spent trying to find hundredths of a second, the opportunity to increase the probability of your expected finishing position is worth its weight in gold.

Ferrari has the advantage, the odds in their favor.

But they don’t award points on Saturday.

Vishnu Parasuraman is a contributor for @FiveReasonsSports. He covers the Miami Hurricanes  for Sixth Ring Canes and Formula 1 for Hitting the Apex. You can follow him on twitter @vrp2003

McLaren was founded in the 1960s and eponymously named for founder Bruce McLaren, a New Zealander.

But it is an unmistakably a British racing team, with its home in Woking in England.

While Bruce McLaren is the foundational figure in McLaren’s early development (he passed away in an accident at the age of 32), the man who is central to McLaren’s rise as the 2nd most successful team in Formula 1 history (only behind Ferrari) is the Woking-born Ron Dennis.

Dennis took over a struggling McLaren team in September of 1980, and in a year had full control of the team.

Businessman, Engineer, Entrepreneur

Ron Dennis will forever remain the seminal figure in McLaren’s history. Through a series of shrewd business moves, leveraging his hybrid business-engineering background, Dennis built McLaren into a modern, efficient organization.

Everything we associate today with Mercedes applies to McLaren in the 1980s. In a span of 8 years from 1984-1991, McLaren won 7 World Drivers Championships and 6 Constructors Championships. The envy of Formula 1, McLaren boasted the best engines, the best designs, and the best overall car.

And that doesn’t mention the drivers.

Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, and Ayrton Senna all won championships for Dennis’ McLaren.

But, as Christian Horner said today when discussing the Monaco Grand Prix, if you’re not moving forward, you’re being left behind.

And as the 80s ran into the 90s, McLaren struggled to keep pace. Williams and Benetton became the predominant force in Formula 1, powered by Renault, and McLaren’s partnership with Mercedes was off to a slow start.

But by the late 90s, McLaren was back on top. Mika Hakkinen won consecutive WDCs and in 1998, McLaren won the double, also capturing the Constructors championship, which is still their last.

The turn of the century saw the beginning of the end for McLaren, as Ferrari and Michael Schumacher took over the sport.

Desperate, Dennis begin sowing the seeds of his own demise. In the scandal that came to be known as “Spygate” McLaren used illicitly acquired intellectual property from Ferrari to help develop their car and close the gap to the front-runners. In that 2007 season, McLaren was the fastest car, with drivers Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton feuding with each other. The pair also turned state’s evidence against McLaren in exchange for providing evidence that McLaren had cheated to the extent that it provided them a sporting advantage.

McLaren was kicked out of the Formula 1 Constructors Championship (one they were sure to win) and fined a still record for any sport $100 million. Alonso and Hamilton were still able to compete, but feuded on track, cannibalizing each other’s points and handing the title to Kimi Raikonnen.

Worse yet, Mercedes, rather than buy out the remaining shares of McLaren, decided to go it alone. McLaren was now going to compete with the partner that had powered their cars for the past 15 years. Lewis Hamilton won the first of his WDCs with McLaren in 2008, and it was the last time McLaren achieved that level of success.

As Mercedes became the dominant force in Formula 1, McLaren slowly faded into obscurity. Dennis left as CEO in 2009, and save a brief attempt at a comeback in 2014, left the McLaren ecosystem, with all ties formally dissolved in 2017.

Enter the American

For 3 decades, Ron Dennis was the person responsible for McLaren, and his absence left a vacuum,  amidst an outfit struggling with a Honda engine that did not work with the car, and did not work at all.

Before Netflix’s Drive to Survive took the world by storm, Amazon had a series focused just on McLaren, called Grand Prix Driver which looked at drivers Stoffel Vandoorne and Fernando Alonso, and the new executive director. That executive director was named Zak Brown.

One of the shocking things about Brown is how unapologetically American he is. The series captures a fascinating point in McLaren’s history where you could see the partnership with Honda coming off the rails (the series ends with McLaren announcing they would switch to Renault engines). But you also notice Brown’s trademark, American style.

He glad hands, works the room, is effusive, is gregarious, all the things you associate with someone that is an American marketer.

But Brown is a racer at heart. And that comfort that he not only knows this Formula 1 world, but belongs in it, is what gives him the confidence to be himself, assuaging the natural tendency of American’s when confronted with a prim, European environment, to attempt to adopt their mannerisms, to blend in.

In 2018, Brown formally took over as CEO of McLaren.

The British company, run by an American.

In 2021, a McLaren driver (Daniel Ricciardo), powered by a Mercedes engine (McLaren used a combination of Honda and Renault engines from 2015-2020), won a race for the first time since a Mercedes-powered McLaren driven by Jenson Button won the last race of the 2012 season. 9 years in the abyss.

With the sport continuing to expand in the United States, McLaren finds itself uniquely positioned to capitalize on this growth (which Brown credits unreservedly to Netflix) and position itself as an American alternative (with Gene Haas’ eponymously named team being the only American-owned team).

When Toto Wolff described the Miami Grand Prix as “Mega,” Brown responded that it was “Mega Mega.”

Why?

Because “I’m American, we’ve gotta go bigger.”

With the swash-buckling American at the helm, it’s only a matter of time before McLaren goes bigger.

Vishnu Parasuraman is a contributor for @FiveReasonsSports. He covers the Miami Hurricanes  for Sixth Ring Canes and Formula 1 for Hitting the Apex. You can follow him on twitter @vrp2003