#95–Luke Bennett, M.D.: Emotional, cognitive, & physical demands that make Formula 1 a special sport

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  F1 drivers resist 5–6 G with their necks

  In the fastest constant-radius corners, a driver's roughly four-kilo head plus helmet effectively weighs five or six times as much. Attia says the most he has felt in a race car is about 2 G. Bennett, who rode as a passenger in a two-seater F1 car in Mexico, says he couldn't have managed five or six laps. He likens a race to two hours of intense CrossFit with five-to-ten-second breaks, while someone tries to push you off your equipment.

• 02

  The cognitive load is as extreme as the physical load

  While hitting millimetre-perfect apexes, drivers take engineering instructions over the radio ('solve maths equations') in front of 200–300 million viewers, sometimes without a contract for next season. Cockpits sit so high that drivers can barely see the tops of their tyres or the ends of the front wing, yet they race wheel to wheel. That's why Bennett has sympathy for mistakes like the near-collisions at Monza that fans criticised.

• 03

  A weight rule ended a culture of starving drivers

  Drivers used to be told to lose as much weight as possible, which led to overtraining, undereating and disordered eating that worried Bennett. After he raised it with the FIA and technical leader Charlie Whiting, the sport set an 80-kilo minimum for driver plus helmet, suit and seat, with ballast added below that. Drivers can now carry a kilo or more of extra muscle, and nutrition is 'not the daily misery it used to be'.

• 04

  Singapore is the toughest race physically

  Bennett calls it a street circuit with more corners than any other (about 23–25 ninety-degree turns) in tropical heat and humidity. Drivers often lose three to four kilos, and on a race like Singapore may carry a 1.2–1.5-litre drink bottle, about twice the usual amount.

• 05

  Drivers are getting younger

  Damon Hill was about 30 in his rookie year. Today a 30-year-old couldn't break into the sport. Max Verstappen arrived just after turning 17, followed by teenagers like Lance Stroll and Esteban Ocon. Bennett credits a cultural shift once it was shown to be possible, gaming and simulators, and cars that demand less raw muscle than the brutal V10 era.

• 06

  Safety rests on asking why drivers die, not why they crash

  Attia recalls Max Mosley saying after Ayrton Senna's death that at the limit of human and mechanical capability crashes will happen, but nobody should die in them. Bennett, initially skeptical of the halo cockpit protection device, counts at least four incidents in F1 and F2 where it prevented a serious head impact. The seven-kilo titanium halo must withstand a load of roughly 10–12 tonnes, about a bus parked on top of it.

• 07

  The sport is still dangerous

  In the 1960s and 70s, many drivers didn't live to retire; Jochen Rindt is the only posthumous world champion. Bennett notes that side-on impacts with a stationary car remain a major vulnerability, as shown by Anthoine Hubert's death in Formula 2 at Spa after being hit at more than 200 km/h (about 170 mph).

• 08

  Women face a pipeline problem, not an F1 ceiling

  Only two or three women have raced in F1; one scored half a point in the 1970s. Bennett thinks a woman can absolutely succeed in F1, but the grassroots pipeline is tiny and the junior categories are physically harsh. They also put women up against teenage males whose risk-taking, and as Attia jokes, underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, can be a competitive advantage. He sees the all-female W Series, which his team supports, as a good first step toward finding the outliers.

• 09

  Hintsa's model pairs every driver with a coach

  Hintsa Performance, where Bennett is medical and sports performance director, looks after about 14 drivers with at least one in every team. A performance coach, usually a sports scientist, travels to every race and trains with the driver in between, covering physical preparation, nutrition and sleep. Bennett calls the medical services 'the glue' that cements those relationships.