Multiply 300 by 14 and then again by 65: the answer you get (by a process that is not strictly mathematical, due to the inconsistency of the variables) is the quantity of movement generated by Formula 1® over the course of its history. In the 65 completed seasons since 1950, the year of the first FIA Formula One World Championships, with an average of 14 races each year (around twenty nowadays, but in the 1950s there were less than ten) spread over an ever increasing territory, the quantity of movement produced so far by Grand Prix races is considerable. Then multiply that by the first figure, those 300 kilometres per hour that distinguish F1®, and the end result starts to look sexy.
Because movement, in Formula 1®, is not just about the corners of the circuit. It’s also about the world that follows the Grand Prix races, spending 10 months of the year crossing a series of different time zones and gradually inventing the lifestyles that are now inextricably linked to F1®. Historians of the milieu remember when drivers travelled alongside mechanics, sometimes enduring the cold of cargo or military flights, attached to the fuselage by cables. Then came the five-star hotels and (sometimes) motorhomes parked behind the paddock, all depending on the personalities of individual drivers and their families, and the glamour and fashions of the time.
