An extreme sport that awakens the human instinct to run!
Everything you need to know about F1 from Kim Nam-ho, the first Korean F1 engineer.

F1 is not just a car race.
It is a stage that tests human limits with the sophisticated technology of engineers and the artistic sense of drivers.
After a breathless tense race, the signal drops, fireworks explode, and the race cars race down the rails.
The cheers of hundreds of thousands of spectators shake the air.

In contrast to this hot scene, F1 is sometimes considered a cold sport.
The height and length of the body are governed by all sorts of regulations that are basic and difficult to understand even for those who are not experts.
Every year, all teams compete fiercely and research to create more powerful race cars while adhering to strict rules.

『F1』, Korea's best F1 guidebook, examines Formula One from a technological and humanistic perspective.
Chapter 1 dissects the structure of a race car and explores its design principles.
Chapter 2 explains the tires, suspension, and brake systems used in real-world racing and shows how to improve the performance of a race car.
Chapter 3 discusses the reasons for the absence of Korean drivers, whether F1 will change in the electric vehicle era, and the potential of K-drivers and K-teams, sharing stories surrounding F1.

The author of this book, Dr. Nam-ho Kim, is famous as the first Korean F1 engineer.
He is a key figure in providing vivid information in Korea, where it is difficult to access news about motorsports.
This book contains everything that F1 fans and anyone who loves cars have been curious about.

If, one day in the distant future, an alien UFO crashes in a city, and humanity discovers in that aircraft an amazingly efficient aerodynamic design idea that it has never thought of before, and if F1 survives until then, the design of F1 race cars will undoubtedly take the shape of that aircraft.
It doesn't matter whether the design is pretty or not.
In F1, 'speed' is an absolute virtue that must be achieved at all costs, and the only justification for stopping it is 'uncertain safety'.
--- pp.44-45 from "Formula"

When the amount of information coming in at the same time becomes too much to process, the driver's concentration becomes divided.
In the 2012 season, he said to the race engineer who was talking nonsense on the team radio (the radio communication between the race engineer and the driver), “Leave me alone.
I know what I am doing! (Leave me alone.
The anger of an F1 driver who snapped, “I’ll take care of it!” may have been the brain’s instinctive defense mechanism to maintain concentration.
--- p.139 From "Switch Control"

In F1, you can't just let the air pass by and pass over your car.
'Polluting the upper waters and making the lower waters unusable' is a natural aerodynamic goal in F1.
The airflow that brushes my car immediately hits the car behind me.
In motorsports, air with uneven flow (turbulent) and severe vortices is called 'dirty air'.
A car traveling through dirty air is less aerodynamically efficient than one traveling through clean air.
--- p.221 From “Air Resistance”

Does the design of an F1 race car necessarily have to be flat and prone? Yes.
Even if you use a passenger car chassis, wouldn't you be able to create a race car on par with a Porsche GT by adding a monster engine and tuning the suspension? That's ridiculous.
The belief among some car tuners that 'making the suspension as stiff as possible and tuning it this way or that way will prevent weight transfer and improve handling' is a superstition.
It's true that suspension tuning improves handling, but not because it reduces weight transfer.
--- p.286 From “Load Shift”

If you were the boss of a racing team, you would never entrust a race car that was created with a huge amount of development cost and the hard work of many people into the hands of an incompetent driver.
However, when it comes to professional drivers competing in the same class, the difference in skill is not so decisive as to far outweigh the difference in mechanical performance between racing cars.
The most important factor in determining victory or defeat in a competition between drivers with similar experience and skills is the difference in performance of the racing car.
--- p.344 From "Insight"

If you search for phrases like 'F1 helmet cam' on YouTube or any search bar, you can see the track as seen by the driver.
Contrary to the idea that the game would be played in an open and unobstructed view, the feeling of being blocked by the vehicle body and feeling stuffy cannot be hidden.
This feeling is even more dramatic when cornering, as F1 drivers can only see the corner's edge in the distance as they enter the corner.
The average person has no way of knowing which line is the shortest, which is the gentlest, or which is the fastest.
--- p.460-461 From "Race Line"

While the global automobile market is not friendly to Korean cars, our competitors, European and Japanese automakers, have already entered F1.
Some of these automakers' F1 programs are still ongoing.
On the other hand, Korean automakers were not active in international motorsports until 2014, with only occasional sponsorships and participation in a few rally competitions.
The Korean automaker's short motorsports history may be a significant piece of evidence explaining the gap between Hyundai-Kia and Mercedes.
--- p.495 From "K-Team"

Even if it's not as grandiose as the "social benefits of motorsports," if I had to pick a "virtue of F1," I'd say it's the "spirit of experimentation" that doesn't criticize or discourage new attempts.
As the current season's racecar updates draw to a close and available resources and research personnel shift to developing the next season's racecars, F1 teams shift into brainstorming mode around July and August.
During this period, anyone on the team, regardless of role within the organization, can propose novel ideas that could improve the race performance.

--- p.551 From "The Trickle-Down Effect"