What is carbon fibre - the backbone of Formula 1 cars

Formula 1

What is carbon fibre - the backbone of Formula 1 cars

Carbon fibre has been in use by F1 teams since the 1980s

Joe Ellis

Sunday 7 May 2023 17:57

For decades, Formula 1 teams have been building almost their entire cars out of a material called carbon fibre.

This not only provides the necessary strength to keep the drivers behind the wheel safe from big impacts but it also weighs very little and therefore becomes vital for performance gain.

With the weight limit now in place in F1, teams need to try and save weight anywhere they can and carbon fibre goes a long way towards doing just that.

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Carbon fibre is often scattered across the road in the event of a crash

What is carbon fibre and how is it made?

In simple terms, carbon fibre is just a fine filament of carbons rods that F1 teams then fuse with a resin to make the composite material.

That material is then used to manufacture almost every new part teams want to bring to their car for upcoming races.

Rolls of carbon fibre are often frozen by teams to prolong their life before being turned into whatever shapes they require when called upon.

Each part requires multiple layers of carbon fibre to be strong enough to withstand the forces generated by an F1 car whether it crashes or not.

Those layers are then vacuumed together before going into a pressure cooker which will then complete the manufacturing process.

Why are F1 cars made of it

Again, it's really quite simple. F1 teams need their cars to be super strong while also being as lightweight as possible.

Right now, there is no material that can do both as well as carbon fibre that is not horrifically expensive to make and things have been this way since the 1980s when McLaren first experimented with it.