I got this from a well established F1 site, so if its wrong or out of date, don't blame me...
An F1 car is made up of 80,000 components, if it were assembled 99.9% correctly, it would still start the race with 80 things wrong!
Formula 1 cars have over a kilometre of cable, linked to about 100 sensors and actuators which monitor and control many parts of the car.
An F1 car can go from 0 to 160 kph and back to 0 in 4 seconds.
At 550kg a F1 car is less than half the weight of a Mini.
In an F1 engine revving at 18000 rpm, the piston will travel up and down 300 times a second.
Maximum piston acceleration is approximately 7000G (humans pass out at 7-8G).
Drivers haven't had to resort to pressure suits like fighter pilots because they only experience high G's for very short periods of time.
If a connecting rod let go of its piston at maximum engine speed, the piston would have enough energy to travel vertically over 100 m.
If a water hose were to blow off, the complete cooling system would empty in just over a second.
Gear cogs or ratios are used only for one race, and are replaced regularly to prevent failure, as they are subjected to very high degrees of stress.
The fit in the cockpit is so tight that the steering wheel must be removed for the driver to get in or out of the car. A small latch behind the wheel releases it from the column. Levers or paddles for changing gear are located on the back of the wheel. So no gearstick! The clutch levers are also on the steering wheel, located below the gear paddles.
To give you an idea of just how important aerodynamic design and added downforce can be, small planes can take off at slower speeds than race cars travel on the track.
Without aerodynamic downforce, high-performance racing cars have sufficient power to produce wheel spin and loss of control at 160 kph. They usually race at over 300 kph.
The amount of aerodynamic downforce produced by the front and rear wings and the car underbody is amazing. Once the car is travelling over 160 kph, an F1 car can generate enough downforce to equal it's own weight. That means it could actually hold itself to the ceiling of a tunnel and drive upside down! In a street course race, the downforce provides enough suction to lift manhole covers. Before the race all of the manhole covers on the streets have to be welded down to prevent this from happening!
If you've ever changed a tyre, you know that you have to jack the car up off the ground to be able to replace the wheel. And it takes ages. F1 cars have integrated pneumatic jacks in the chassis (rather than the manual jacks normal cars have) - two in the front and one in the rear. By connecting a pressurised nitrogen hose to a port located behind the driver, the pit crew can jack the whole car up in less than a second when the car stops in the pit.
The refuelers used in F1 can supply 12 litres of fuel per second. This means it would take just 4 seconds to fill the tank of an average 50 litre family car.
Top F1 pit crews can refuel and change tyres in around 3 seconds.
Race car tyres don't have air in them like normal car tyres. Most racing tyres have nitrogen in the tyres because nitrogen has a more consistent pressure compared to normal air. Air typically contains varying amounts of water vapour in it, which affects its expansion and contraction as a function of temperature, making the tyre pressure unpredictable.
During the race the tyres lose weight! Each tyre loses about 0.5 kg in weight due to wear.
At ~ 350 mm wide, F1 tyres are much wider than normal tyres (~185 mm wide).
Normal tyres last 60 000 - 100 000 km. Racing tyres are designed to last 90 - 120 km.
A dry-weather F1 tyre reaches peak operating performance (best grip) when tread temperature is between 90°C and 120°C. At top speed, F1 tyres rotate 50 times a second, or 3000 rpm
