What happens on a Grand Prix weekend?
Grand Prix weekends happen over the weekend for 3 days from Friday to Sunday. Practices take place on Friday, on Saturday there is another practice as well as Qualifying. The race takes place on Sunday.
Practice sessions
Practice sessions most commonly start on a Friday and end on Saturday mornings. Typically, there can be three practise sessions for each Grand Prix. The practise sessions are designed to allow drivers and teams to get familiar with the track and test out different tyres. This is also an opportunity to analyse the weather and conditions on the track and therefore make a strategy for the race.
Different cars have been designed by individual teams, therefore they have different strengths, for example, Mercedes is better on the straights. Through watching the practices, you can analyse and predict the qualifying positions.
Qualifying
The qualifying session takes place on a Saturday, this session determines the starting positions for the race. Each driver tries to set the fastest lap time to start in pole position (1st position). The qualifying session is broken down into 3 stages (Q1, Q2 and Q3).
In the first round of qualifying (Q1), all 20 cars are on track driving together taking turns to set a lap time. Q1 last 10 minutes, after that time the 5 cars with the slowest time are eliminated from qualifying (they start the race 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th).
The remaining 15 cars then race again to set a new time to go through to the final round of qualifying. The bottom 5 cars are then eliminated. In Q3, the last session there are 10 cars competing for poll position. The pole position is a huge advantage for the driver, especially for tracks in places like Monaco where overtaking is difficult.
Race
The race takes place on Sundays. Any penalties from previous races or qualifying will be applied to the starting line-up on the grid. The cars will do a parade lap and will then line up in starting order. The race then begins, once the race is over the trophies are awarded and the national anthem of the winner is played.
