No other type of sport places as much stress on the body of an athlete as Formula 1. When braking down from high speeds and going into fast corners, forces of up to 5 g have been measured – this is equivalent to five times the body’s own weight. This means that a head weighing six kilograms and a helmet weighing 1.5 kilograms together weigh five times as much, albeit for a brief period – and the neck muscles have to withstand 37.5 kilograms. But the torment does not stop there: the legs are highly taxed too. At the race in Monza, for example, full braking takes place 212 times – and each one has a force expenditure of 80 kilograms. Steering is not child’s play either: without power steering, on high-speed tracks such as Spa and Suzuka where the front and rear wings produce maximum downforce, it takes 40 kilograms just to turn the wheels. Then there’s the gear shifting: on average there are 2,600 gear shifts per Grand Prix; in Monaco, with its many corners, this figure rises to 3,100 times.

Drivers have to achieve top performance under the most extreme conditions. Lashed securely into the seat with the six-point harness, it is difficult to breathe when the heart rate reaches its peak rate of around 190 beats per minute. Especially when in hot-weather races, maximum temperatures of 60 degrees Celsius are measured under the overalls. In other words, every Grand Prix is tough work and this is what differentiates it from all other types of extreme sport. “Even the fittest of long-distance runners,” according to Erwin Göllner, recently fitness trainer for Jacques Villeneuve, “would not be able to last the 60 laps at Monza.” The fitness required for such top performance is something the drivers work up in the body-building room or out in nature. Inside, for example, they go through running exercises on the treadmill or they undergo training on specific equipment on which they can simulate the loads in the cockpit; outside, jogging and cycling are the preferred activities. Drivers know only too well that alongside factors such as tyres, engine and aerodynamics, it is their own fitness that is decisive for their performance out on the track.

Fitness has to be worked at; training is an all-year-round process. The majority of drivers always commence their preparations for an upcoming season at the start of November, only two to three weeks after the last race in the previous season. Ralf Schumacher, for example, trains in winter four to five times per week with stints of four to five hours; during the season itself, three to four training units, each lasting from two to three hours, are customary. Training regularly serves to keep the drivers’ fitness at the right level, even between the seasons, and therefore they do not have to start right back at the beginning when it is time to prepare for the new season. Fitness also helps the drivers with their self-confidence. Those who are really fit generally demonstrate it during the last third of the race when concentration and response start to wane. In view of the physical loads and the increasingly complicated electronics in a Formula 1 cockpit, physical and mental fitness are inseparable. And they are trained together. One fitness trainer makes his protégé solve maths problems while on the ergometer – a form of qualifying race for those little grey cells.

In a hot-weather race such as the Bahrain Grand Prix, drivers may lose between three to four litres of fluid – and approximately four percent of their bodyweight. Therefore they have to drink a lot to compensate. Each driver’s fitness trainer makes up special energy drinks using water, various minerals, salts and vitamins. Each one swears that his is the best recipe – naturally it is top secret. In one matter they all agree, however: the water bottle in the car is really a contingency reserve only – it is much more important to drink lots before the race starts. “If you don’t drink enough and then drive off with only 80 percent,” says Daniel Dobringer, “you cannot make up for it during the race. And that’s when your performance will start to drop off.”