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.