When watching a Formula 1 event, you may come across terms and vocabulary that you have not heard of before.
Because the sport is so incredibly technical, so too can be the messages that are said, either by the broadcasting teams or the competitors.
Here are five terms that you may have come across, but do not know the meaning of.
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Safety Car Window
During the races, teams and drivers will discuss strategy. It is an important aspect of the event, given the closeness between different teams and drivers, as well as the difficulty in overtaking.
Hence, you may hear radio messages regarding the 'pit window', which can refer to the period of time in which a driver is set to make a pit stop, or the gap that a driver has to pit into and stay ahead of their direct rival.
If another driver is 'inside' their pit window, that means that they cannot pit and come out ahead of that driver. If they are 'outside' or are 'safe', they can make a pit stop and resume their advantage.
A safety car window is a little different. Because under such conditions, the drivers are lapping the track at a slower pace and they lose less time by making a pit stop under the safety car than what they would under a green flag.
This means that if another driver in inside one's safety car window, that driver would re-emerge behind another driver if they were to pit and the chaser was not.
But if another driver was outside one's safety car window, it clears the path for pit stops to be made and the advantage to still be in-tact.
Box opposite to...
If a driver is told 'box box', they are being told to pit. But if a driver is being told to 'box opposite to....' somebody else then they are told to pit if their rival has not and vice versa.
The reason why teams often tell their drivers this is that it is more unlikely for a driver to gain a position on their leading rival if they follow them into the pit lane.
This is because, with overtaking difficult, you want as much of a disparity in tyre performance as you can get, to ensure that an overtake is as likely as possible. Following another driver on tyres that are the same age as yours will be unlikely in triggering an overtake.
Hence, the trailing driver either performs the undercut, or the overcut. Both of which were outlined in a previous explainer article.
Pick-Up
When Formula 1 cars park up in parc ferme, after a race, their tyres look very different to when they are racing.
What the drivers try and do is drive off of the racing line and pick up discarded rubber onto their tyres which had initially worked their way from the compounds during the race.
The reason for this is down to weight. Each car must meet a minimum regulated weight limit, for which the teams try to work to as closely as they can.
The lighter the car, the quicker it should go. So teams will do anything to get just on top of the limit. Thus, getting drivers to 'pick up' discarded rubber, on their in-laps, allows for the car to get on the right side of the regulations.
If not, drivers face disqualification, like George Russell at last year's Belgian Grand Prix.
'On the nose'
When a car is described as being this, it means that the front axle of the car is very sensitive to steering input.
Formula 1 cars are generally designed to do this, because a car generally becomes quicker when the balance is more biased towards a more powerful front end.
But drivers will caution that the balance and grip of the car is too biased towards the front axle. This means that there is not enough grip with the rear of the car and that the rear tyres will degrade quickly.
A more evenly-balanced car will not yield as much peak grip, but it will become more consistent across a longer stint.
Lift and Coast
When a driver is told this, it means that there is a limitation with a specific aspect of the car, which threatens their chance of seeing the chequered flag or even being disqualified.
More commonly, drivers will be light on fuel, due to the already-mentioned weight reasons. Therefore, they will come off the throttle earlier on the straight to save fuel, known as 'lift and coast'.
But other components may need to be subject to similar care. As an example, the current configurations of the cars mean that their floors are exposed to enormous wear, if they are too close to the ground.
In anticipation of this drivers are told to back off through fast corners, where the floors of their cars are edged closest to the surface of the track and risk wearing the planks of their floors out, to illegal thickness.
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