Bald tyres on purpose
Road TIRES have grooves cut into them and racing SLICKS have none at all, which sounds backwards until you know what tread is actually for. It is not grip — it is drainage. The grooves give water somewhere to escape so the rubber can still touch the road in the wet. On a dry track those channels are wasted space, so a slick puts every last centimetre of rubber in contact with the surface.
Racing rubber is also deliberately soft and sticky, so it grips hard and wears out within an hour or two. That is why a car on slicks has to come in for different tyres the moment it starts raining.
They also only work when hot. A racing tyre grips properly at around 100 degrees Celsius, so teams warm them in heated blankets before fitting them, and drivers weave from side to side on the lap before the start to scrub more heat into the rubber. A cold tyre on the first corner is one of the commonest ways to end a race early.
Enough downforce to drive upside down
A WING on an aeroplane lifts it into the air. Turn the same shape upside down and it presses a car into the track instead, which is the job of the rear WING, the front SPOILER and the shaped DIFFUSER under the floor. A modern Formula 1 car produces more downforce than its own weight at somewhere around 200 kilometres an hour — the origin of the old claim that it could drive along a tunnel ceiling. Nobody has tried it, mainly because getting up to speed on the ceiling first is a problem.
The effect is invisible and enormous. A car that takes a corner at 250 kilometres an hour with its aerodynamics intact becomes almost undriveable the moment a front WING breaks.
Built around the driver
Drivers now climb out of crashes that used to kill people, because the safety equipment has been rethought from scratch. A single-seater's CHASSIS is a carbon-fibre tub the DRIVER sits inside; rally and touring cars use a steel ROLLCAGE welded into the shell. Since 2018, open cars have also carried the halo, a titanium hoop over the COCKPIT strong enough to hold up a double-decker bus.
It earned its keep almost immediately. When Romain Grosjean's car speared through a barrier and burst into flames in 2020, the halo pushed the barrier apart around his head, and he climbed out of the fire with burnt hands.
Nothing on it is there by accident
Every part of a RACECAR is a trade-off with something else. More WING means grip through the corners and less speed down the straight. A bigger TURBO means more power and more heat to get rid of. A lighter CHASSIS is quicker but harder to make strong. Teams redesign BODYWORK between races and argue over grams.
Even the paint counts. A team's LIVERY often goes on as a wrap or the thinnest coat possible, because a full paint job can add a couple of kilograms — which matters when the gap between first and second is a tenth of a second. For the racing itself, the circuits, flags and pit stops, our motorsport puzzle has it covered.