Cycling in Saunas, Neck Harnesses and so Many Squats
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- F1 drivers have a training regimen unlike anything else in sports.
- They must find the perfect balance between stamina, strength, and maintaining the right weight.
- Insider spoke with F1 drivers and a trainer about what it takes to be a driver at the pinnacle of the sport.
Training as a Formula One driver is all about striking the perfect balance between competing forces. Drivers need to be strong, but they also need to be light. They need to maintain remarkable endurance, but they also need to have lightning-quick reflexes, hands and feet.
To better understand what it takes to find the right mix to compete at the sport’s highest level, Insider spoke with two current F1 drivers and a longtime trainer about the physical demands required of driving in formula racing’s most prestigious stage.
The preseason is used to get stronger
Preparation for an F1 season begins during the three-month break between the end of one season and the start of the next. While most drivers will take a vacation for a much-needed mental break, it doesn’t leave much time to prepare for the next season.
The off-season is the time when drivers will do a lot of strength training to build the muscles necessary to control a 1,800-pound (800 kg) car going 200+ mph. Patrick Harding, a trainer who has worked with drivers, Olympic athletes, and boxers, has been Alex Albon’s trainer for four years, since his time with Red Bull and now driving for Williams. Harding estimates the pair spend nearly two months preparing for a season.
“We’ll do probably a six-, eight-week block of training before the season begins,” he told Insider. “And at least three or four weeks of that is dedicated to trying to put on some muscle mass. So we do a huge amount of hypertrophy work, and we’ll aim to put two or three kilos at least of muscle mass on Alex before this season.”
McLaren driver Daniel Ricciardo echoed this but also noted that drivers still need cardiovascular work, which means a lot of training.
“In the preseason, where you are really trying to build yourself up, we’ll train, I guess, six days a week,” Ricciardo told Insider. “It’s kind of a session in the morning, session in the evening, and that’ll be a mixture of cardio training, strength training. I would say we need good all-around fitness…. You don’t need to be a triathlete or a bodybuilder, but you need just good all-around strength and conditioning.”
During the season, the focus is about recovery and maintaining strength
The time training during the off-season is so critical because once the season starts, the physical focus turns more toward recovery, with so little time between most races.
“By race one, [Albon will] probably be the heaviest he will be all year, and then that weight slowly dissipates across race weekends,” Harding said. “So we try to build a little bit of a buffer at the start of the season so that his weight doesn’t actually go too low.”
Drivers lose a lot of weight over the course of a race week. According to seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton, he can lose six or seven pounds (3 kg) during practice and qualifying and up to 10 pounds (4.5 kg) in a race.
After race days, Ricciardo will rest and recover on Mondays, maybe do some light cycling on Tuesday, a little bit of core and neck strength on Wednesday, and then Thursday, it is back to the track.
“Through the season, it’s more recovery,” Ricciardo said. “Once you kind of get into the routine of racing, we’re in the car then three days a week, and that keeps us actually in very good condition and, specifically, race condition.”
In an interview with GQ, Hamilton outlined his recovery routine, showing an emphasis on the importance of self-care.
“Recovery has been a real focus for me in the past couple of years,” the 37-year-old Mercedes icon told GQ. “Now, I always make sure the day after a race is a complete day off – I make sure it’s a day to myself for self-care. I do cryotherapy, I might do some pool work, and I make sure I get physio or acupuncture that day or just a steam room.”
Of course, each race is a little different. While biking is a key activity seemingly shared by all drivers between races, sometimes drivers are forced to modify their routines. In preparation for the extreme conditions in Singapore, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz took a bike into the steam room.
George Russell didn’t use a steam room. Instead, he did his bike work in what appeared to be a rain suit.
The all-important neck and butt muscles
The most important muscle group for an F1 driver to keep strong might be his neck muscles. This is due to the G-forces exerted on the body — as high as six times the force of gravity — during turns, braking, and accelerating in their rockets on wheels.
Josh St. Clair of GQ described the neck-strengthening exercises Ricciardo uses.
“Ricciardo favors a neck harness and resistance band for building both strength and endurance. For strength, trainer Michael Italiano has Ricciardo step back with the band taut around the back of his head. Ricciardo then moves his head from side to side for 4 sets of 30 repetitions. For endurance, the band pulls Ricciardo’s head in one direction as he tries to keep his neck stable. This endurance hold imitates the g-forces in cornering.”
GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP via Getty Images
During an interview with Tom Kollmar and Michel Milewski for the German magazine Sport Bild, Haas driver Kevin Magnussen explained how painful it can be if a driver doesn’t strengthen his neck before the season.
After spending seven years in F1, Magnussen lost his seat at Haas following the 2020 season. He spent the 2021 season racing in the North American IMSA series and was set to do so again this year before getting a call on the eve of the F1 season to replace Russian driver Nikita Mazepin.
It had been about 18 months since Magnussen had adequately trained for driving an F1 car. Specifically, he missed out on preparing his neck to withstand the extreme G-forces.
“I did that year without cockpit training,” Magnussen said. “The pressure in the car is so great that the body only gets used to the forces while driving. When I learned a week before the opening race in Bahrain that I would race, I had to immediately start with fitness sessions … After the first two races, I was hardly able to hold my head up.”
This video shows some of the neck training F1 drivers must go through.
Below the neck, muscle mass is more important in the lower parts of the body.
Ricciardo’s trainer, Michael Italiano, further explained some of the off-season exercises he puts the driver through for Men’s Health. While there is an emphasis on the shoulders and forearms (for steering the car), there is a heavy emphasis on the core and the posterior chain (back, glutes, and hamstrings).
Hamilton says he must adjust his body to be lean instead of bulky, and the weights he does are designed to keep the center of his mass as low as possible.
“You have to have really good core stability,” Hamilton told Graham Norton in 2019. “You can’t be big and bulky. If I was super-muscly [in my shoulders], my weight would be too high [vertically]. So, I do lots of squats for my butt.”
Clive Mason – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images
Cardio work is needed for a surprising reason
The G-forces experienced by drivers, especially in corners and while braking and accelerating, don’t just impact the muscles in the neck and the muscles used to control the car. They also have a significant impact on breathing.
In a recent look behind the scenes, AlphaTauri driver Pierre Gasly explained how much the G-forces impact a driver’s ability to breathe. It is similar to a swimmer who spends a large portion of their race with their face underwater.
“Breathing is obviously very important,” Gasly said. “We spend, let’s say, 70% of the lap not breathing, in apnea. So that’s what makes it really challenging and really physical for us because we obviously have the G-forces, but we also can’t breathe in the car because the G-forces are so high when you brake, when you go through a corner, when you accelerate. You can’t breathe because you have too many forces on your body [pointing to his chest].”
Gasly and teammate Yuki Tsunoda use endurance exercises and cardio work, such as running on a treadmill, to train the heart and lungs to be more efficient during the moments they can breathe during a race.
YouTube/AlphaTauri
Making weight is a battle aiming at a very specific target
The weight of the F1 driver is a constant struggle between opposing forces, while trying to aim for the perfect number.
While drivers must be strong, the teams also want the cars to be as light as possible. However, there is a limit to how light they are allowed to be.
F1 recently changed the minimum weight for drivers to 80 kg (176 pounds), including what they wear. The gear and equipment on the driver during a race weigh approximately seven kilos (15 pounds). That means the driver’s actual minimum weight is 73 kilos (161 pounds).
Sportinfoto/DeFodi Images via Getty Images
Carrying extra weight slows the car down, so teams want their drivers as light as possible. That means the drivers are pushed to land at or below the 161-pound minimum (if they go under, ballasts are added to the cockpit to reach the minimum).
A single kilogram can mean a huge difference in races where teams constantly look to shave tenths-of-a-second off times.
“Ten kilos of fuel in the car costs three-tenths of a second every circuit, per lap,” Hamilton told Norton. “So if I’m one kilo overweight, I can lose up to two seconds in the race distance. So my weight is very important.”
With that comes precision. Harding explained that Albon’s in-season weight consistently hovers between 72.5 and 73.5 kilos (160-162 pounds), depending primarily on his hydration level.
“Most of my concerns are when his weight drops below that 72.5 because then I know we’re losing muscle mass,” Harding said. “He’s losing muscle glycogen. He’s probably not fueled enough, and he’s maybe not hydrated enough.”
Paul Cross ATPImages/Getty Images
During races, drivers can burn as many as 1,000 calories per hour. So, often, in the thick of the season, drivers are more concerned with keeping the weight on, even for a taller driver like Albon.
“Our biggest issue [during the season], believe it or not, is keeping weight on Alex,” Harding told Insider.
While the drivers need to have strength, they also need to be lean to fit into the tiny cockpits. This is especially tough for taller drivers like Albon, who is 6-foot-2.
“These cars are built to be as compact as possible. The cars are designed not for 6-foot-2 athletes,” Albon told Insider. “They’re designed for 5-foot-7, 5-foot-8 preferably. [Those drivers] fit much better in the car right now. [Taller drivers are] kind of arched over. Your knees are touching the top of the car. Your hands are in the way of your feet.
“So, it’s all tricky. You get put in a position that’s, to be honest, very uncomfortable.”
Interestingly, the one sport where the training might be most comparable to F1 is boxing, where the competitors have to have the right mix of endurance and explosiveness as well as strength and maintaining a specific weight. It is a sport where Harding also trains athletes.
“Boxing is another sport where they need to exist across the really broad spectrum of physical performance to be successful,” Harding said. “F1 is up there in terms of that level of fitness that is required to be successful.”