F1 Terms You’ve Always Wanted To Know – Part 2

Last week we kicked off Part 1 of our fan-powered glossary, and the response was huge. Hundreds more of you sent in questions, proving there’s plenty of appetite to make sense of F1’s favourite phrases.

So, we’re back for Part 2, and this time we’re covering everything from chicanes to charging batteries

If you'd like to submit a term, you can do at the bottom of the article. Here’s what you asked us to explain this week:

The term “pole position” is reserved for the driver who secures P1 on the grid after Qualifying or Sprint Qualifying. But why “pole”? Well, its origin can be traced back to the late 1800s, in horse racing, where the inside starting spot – closest to the pole that marked the track boundary – was considered the best place to begin. Motorsport borrowed the term, and it’s stuck ever since.

In F1, “delta” simply means the difference in time between two things. A driver might be told to stick to a “Safety Car delta,” which is the enforced minimum pace they’re allowed to run under those conditions. A “tyre delta” refers to the performance gap between different compounds – for example, Soft tyres might be around a second per lap quicker than Mediums.

When you hear drivers or engineers talking about the “battery,” they’re referring to their car’s Energy Store (ES) – the part of the Energy Recovery System (ERS) that holds harvested energy. When a driver deploys the battery, it releases that stored power for a boost worth up to 160 horsepower, while recharging is when the car is harvesting energy and topping it back up. And for absolute clarity, the Duracell battery you see on top of our car is not the battery Alex and Carlos are using...

A chicane is a tight sequence of corners, typically a left-right or right-left, designed to slow cars down. They often create overtaking opportunities, and add a bit of technical challenge. Famous examples include Rettifilo and Ascari at Monza, Vale at Silverstone, or the Swimming Pool complex in Monaco.

If a driver locks their brakes, the tyre will slide along the track instead of rotating – this creates a flat spot. The friction has ground one patch of the tyre flat, which can then cause vibrations for the rest of the stint. Sometimes it’s just annoying for a lap or so, other times it’s so bad the team will be forced into an unscheduled stop.

Two of the most common handling terms in motorsport, but don’t let us explain it. Hear from Alex Albon himself in a recent edition of ‘Up to Speed’ below…

A topic of discussion after the recent Hungarian GP. “Moving under braking” means a driver changes their line while they’re already hitting the brakes. It’s controversial because it can be dangerous – the car behind who is challenging for position is also braking, and a late move from the car in front can cause a collision.