When you’re first starting to watch Formula 1, some questions seem obvious to ask: What is DRS? How does Qualifying work? Why are there so many different types of tyres?

You’ll find the answers to these in every F1 explainer on the internet. But there are many, less obvious questions, which will also occur to fans across their Formula 1 journey. The answers to these are often harder to find. Like, who controls the F1 start lights? What do teams do before they get to the track? And how do they get there? Do drivers have a private line to their engineers?

These are the questions we’ll be trying to answer throughout our F1 questions you’ve been afraid to ask series, with the help of the Fifth Driver, our long-time anonymous trackside pundit and analyst. Armed with a wealth of experience and a vast contacts book, they’re able to tackle almost any question we throw at them, whether that means racking their brains or reaching out to phone a friend.

Every race weekend, we’ll ask our fans for their questions on the McLaren App and put these to the Fifth Driver during live commentary. Here are some more of their favourites from the 2025 Formula 1 season so far…

Marc asks: At the start of the race, when it’s ‘lights out and away we go’, is there a person pressing the button or is it pre-programmed?

The start programme stretches back to the pit-lane opening and the cars going out for their reconnaissance laps, with various lights on the start gantry and hooters indicating where we are in the countdown – the last part of which is the race start.

The starter is in a booth above the start line, with a good view of the grid – rather like an air traffic control tower. When the cars have completed the formation lap and are in position, a marshal crosses the track waving a Green Flag. When the starter has this visual confirmation, they turn a key to arm the system, and the red lights come on in sequence. The starter then presses the button to extinguish them and start the race.

Having a human press the button introduces a small random element into the timing – but it also allows the starter to activate one of several abort procedures if they see something that isn’t quite right on the grid.

Kari asks: Are the buttons on the steering wheel the same for both drivers?

The wheels are a little different. They look identical – but in a couple of instances, what a button does on Lando’s wheel may not be what it does on Oscar’s. There are various factors contributing to that, anything from the layout used in junior formulae through to the length of a thumb.

Likewise, they may have their steering wheel displays configured differently to their own preferences, and they’ll certainly have different settings for the toggles on the back of the wheel and the grips on the wheel are made to their individual preferences.

Shane asks: Are morning routines on a race weekend the same wherever we race?

We are creatures of habit, and would like to have the same routine everywhere, but the world doesn’t always comply. The morning routine (it’ll still be called a morning routine even if FP1 is at 19:00 – because some habits are hard to shake) tends to be keyed to the end of the curfew or the covers-off time. When we get to that point, the routine is the same wherever we are – but before that, location definitely has an impact – for all sorts of reasons.

An issue for the team is where we have breakfast. At some races, it’ll be at the hotel, but that’s not always practical, so sometimes it’s at the track. The curfews have wiggle room in them specifically for this, allowing the operational team members into the paddock half an hour before they’re allowed to work on the car (curfews don’t apply to non-operational members of the team, which means the catering team are usually first-in and last-out).

The fitness regime might also be impacted by location. The pit crew will all have an individually-tailored fitness programme, and the team’s physios will have mapped out what gym equipment – if any – is available in each location. If there’s a hotel with a good gym, the programme might have the team lifting or running before coming into work, but if we’re at a location without any of that, it might just be a set of isometric body weight exercises in the room.

Finally, there’s the practicalities of getting to work. At some races, the team can walk into the track – which is the gold standard of convenience – but for others it might be an hour in a minibus. Some of those have a restricted route for F1 staff, but sometimes it's the case, particularly given F1’s current level of popularity, that you’re resigned to a very early hotel leave, preparing to spend hours sitting in traffic.

Charlotte Murray asks: Do the drivers have a separate radio to communicate with their engineers during the race?     

Nope. When the cars are on track, the drivers and their engineers have only the standard radio channel on which to speak. It’s an open transmission, allowing other teams to listen in and FOM to broadcast what is said.

Common practice is for teams to have people at the factory listening in to the radio chatter of other teams, and then passing relevant information up the chain back to the garage – this is why you’ll sometimes hear a Race Engineer telling his driver that another driver is struggling with their brakes, or complaining about tyres.

Across Practice and Qualifying, the standard method is to wait until the car is back in the garage before saying anything they wouldn’t want another team to hear. If you watch the cars being pushed back into the garage, you’ll see one of the first things that happens when it comes to a stop is for a data cable to be plugged into a port on the side of the car. Amongst other things, this umbilical cuts the transmission, and hooks the driver’s radio into the private garage comms.

The Race Engineer will tell the driver he’s now on a private channel, and they can have a chat – though private is relative, the conversation is available to most people wearing a headset in the garage, the race base, and back at the MTC in Mission Control.

If the Race Engineer wants to pass information to his driver while the car is on track, but doesn’t want anyone outside the team to understand, they have to use code. For example, when referring to strategy, they’ll talk about Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, and so on, and will reference target laps: “Can you make it to the target lap?” “How about target +5,” and so on.

Of course, everyone knows their comms are being listened to, so it’s not unknown for Race Engineers and drivers to discuss entirely fictitious plans. When that happens, the Race Engineers are hoping that the driver – who has a lot on his mind in the car – has remembered the pre-arranged code words and knows it’s all fake.

Poppy asks: Do drivers wear the same helmet all weekend?

There isn’t really a standard answer to this one. Most weekends, the drivers will have three helmets with them. As you can imagine, it gets pretty grotty in there across a session, and so as soon as the driver gets out of the car, the lid he’s been wearing goes on the helmet drier to dry the liner.

There’s plenty of time between the sessions to have it ready to go again, so in theory, the driver might just wear the one helmet all weekend. That said, the team will want the driver to wear each one in practice to make sure the radio is working, that the microphone is in the correct position, and so on.

Each one will usually be set up for different conditions. At some races, you'll have a different configuration of ventilation bungs, at others you’ll have different visors fitted for sunny/overcast or day/night. So, they’ll likely wear them all across the weekend, even if it’s just to test each one.

@mareeunearthed asks: What’s happening to the car when sparks are flying out the back?

The sparks flying out of the back of the car come from the titanium skid blocks fitted underneath, impacting the surface. You get sparks when the track is bumpy, or towards the end of a straight, where high speeds and downforce hammer the car down into the surface. Walk around a circuit and you’ll see tell-tale scorch marks on the asphalt where the impacts are heaviest.

What’s happening to the car when this happens? There’s nothing particularly detrimental for the car in bottoming out in this way, as the skids are tough – though it's often a precursor to something more damaging. It will, however, make the car difficult to control for the driver, and too much grounding runs the risk of excessive wear, which could result in the car being disqualified when measured at the end of the race.

It’s notable that recent disqualifications for excessive skid wear have come at Sprint events. It’s something teams will address during practice, playing around with ride-height and stiffnesses – but of course during a Sprint event, there’s just the one practice session, and fewer opportunities to experiment.

Narelle asks: Why do engineers tell their drivers to ‘start pushing’? Wouldn’t they already be going flat out?

In a few circumstances, the race situation is best served by the drivers holding back a little bit until told otherwise.

The first one is at the start of a stint. At most tracks, and in a lot of strategy scenarios, the harder compound tyres tend to respond well to a gentle introduction, getting them up to temperature over a couple of laps, rather than pushing straight out of the pit lane.

It’s sometimes a luxury that the driver can’t afford – if they’re emerging from the pit lane into a battle, for example – but it might be the case that backing off two-or-three tenths in the first couple of laps out of the pit lane is worth two-or-three tenths over each of the following 20 – or, alternatively, simply extends the practical life of the tyre by a useful number of laps.

The team will be monitoring the temperature of the tyres, and when they hit the number the team are looking for, that’s when the driver can push.

There are also circumstances in which it makes sense to back-off a couple of tenths across a whole stint. The preference in F1 is generally to minimise the number of pit stops, and thus teams will frequently try to eke-out tyre life if it gets them to a point where they can make one stop fewer.

The maths on this tends to be reasonably straightforward. If backing off a second per lap costs a driver 15s over a 15-lap stint, but keeps the tyres in a good temperature window that gets the car into position to do one stop instead of two at a track where the pit loss is 20 seconds, then that’s what’s going to happen. In this scenario, the drivers often get let off the leash towards the end of the stint and push for a lap (or several laps) to ensure they take the most out of the tyres before they’re discarded.

There’s plenty of other short-term scenarios around the ends of this as well: lifting off the throttle (lift and coast) to save fuel or to bring the tyres temperature back under control. Or, they might be facing a situation where pushing hard is going to protect them from an undercut.

So while it might be exciting if a driver were to push flat-out from lights to flag, it is rarely the quickest way to complete a Grand Prix – it would also be exhausting for the drivers.