The 2025 Formula One (F1) World Championship season is just around the corner. At this moment, 10 teams and 20 drivers are diligently preparing to battle one another, in locations all around the world. The season kicks off in Australia, where the F1 teams and their respective drivers will debut their 2025 competitive edge, unveil their hard work through the offseason, and begin capturing points toward the Constructors’ and Drivers’ Championships. With so much on the line, F1 teams and their drivers are always seeking incremental gains, as race outcomes can be determined by tenths of a second. Given this, the F1 teams and their drivers feel the immense pressure to be the fastest, trying to shave time in any way possible. As the cars themselves are heavily regulated, attention and pressure turn to the next controllable – the driver.

But what can a F1 driver do to shave time?

The start of an F1 race begins with what is termed “lights out” – the point where a bank of sequentially appearing red lights is fully extinguished, permitting the F1 drivers to accelerate off the grid via throttle application. “Lights out” is the critical part of the race that heavily influences how the rest of the race plays out. As the McLaren F1 team puts it, “The start of a Formula 1 race is pivotal. Get it right and there are places to be gained. Get it wrong and it can be very much the opposite: places can be lost in the blink of an eye, strategic options can be wiped away in a heartbeat and, worse still, your race can be over before you even get to Turn One.”[1]

Image: www.formula1.com

Getting “lights out” right is heavily dependent on the driver’s reaction time. As the McLaren F1 team explains, “Getting an F1 car off the line at the start of a race requires complex coordination between a driver’s vision – watching the lights; feel – hands on the steering wheel and clutch paddle, as well as feet releasing the brake and applying the throttle in a controlled manner…”.1 Given this highly coordinated and complex task, you might be surprised to find out that, on average, F1 drivers begin accelerating off the grid in as little as 200 milliseconds (ms) after the lights go out.[2]

Those of us who work within the Human Factors world refer to this extremely small amount of time as perception response time (or “PRT”) which is the time interval between a stimulus (e.g., lights extinguishing) up to and including the onset of a response (e.g., throttle and clutch activation). F1 drivers’ PRTs are exceptionally impressive when compared to the average population of drivers. To provide perspective, humans completing a very simple stimulus response task (i.e., pressing the space bar when a light appears/a beep sounds) involving a small physical movement have been found to take on average ~284ms to respond to an auditory stimulus and ~331ms to a visual stimulus.[3] Comparing these averages to the average of 200ms obtained by F1 drivers, who are completing a much more complex and coordinated visual, cognitive, and motor task, highlights how impressive these F1 drivers’ reaction times are.

Why are F1 drivers so fast?

F1 drivers typically have superior motor abilities – specifically, they have faster reaction times, faster speed of limb motion, and excellent manual dexterity, which are all essential for the sport of F1. On top of having superior abilities, F1 drivers are constantly honing their racing craft. They practice in simulators and participate in off-track training regimes that include exercises aimed at improving their visual and physical perceptual motor skills, further enhancing their already fast reaction times.

Additionally, on race day, F1 drivers get primed for the race, including performing warm-up exercises to get their motor control synapses firing. This routine, combined with proper sleep and nutrition, optimizes an F1 driver’s reaction time performance.

So, if you are not one of the 20 F1 drivers on the grid, the next time that you get behind the wheel of your car, can you realistically expect yourself to react in 200 milliseconds to any driving situation you may encounter?

The short answer is no. Everyday drivers are not elite F1 athletes. Everyday drivers do not typically conduct warm-up exercises before getting behind the wheel nor do they spend endless hours practicing their driving route to and from work in their spare time. Additionally, context matters. Research has shown that a driver’s PRT will change based on the situation the driver encounters. Factors such as a driver’s expectations and the decision-making complexity of the situation influence a driver’s PRT.

So, what are the everyday implications?

Compared to the average driver, an F1 driver demonstrates remarkable and impressive reaction times at the start of a race. However, it would be unfair and inaccurate to hold everyday drivers to such a high standard when assessing their opportunity to avoid a collision because as stated earlier, context matters. Choosing a context-relevant PRT is crucial to such an evaluation, and no single number applies in all situations. In fact, Human Factors experts are concerned with what a “typically attentive” driver would do in response to an emergency hazard. To do this, we use a range (“population percentiles”) of PRTs that captures the majority of a population. When reviewing research investigating PRTs of everyday drivers in real world situations, it becomes evident that their PRTs vary across context and are longer than 200 milliseconds.

Nonetheless, while an everyday driver may never obtain the reaction time of an F1 driver, there are certain things we, as drivers can all do to improve our reaction time. These include:

•             Ensuring proper sleep and nutrition;

•             Not driving under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol;

•             Taking proper rest breaks over longer drives; and

•             Being attentive to potential hazards (i.e., ‘driving defensively’).

There is no doubt that F1 drivers have highly impressive reaction times – if not the fastest in the world – which may even seem superhuman. However, their supreme reaction times can be attributed to a combination of natural ability, intense training, and dedication to their sport. As for the rest of us, when we travel the roads as everyday drivers, it is impractical for us to 1) expect ourselves to react as fast as F1 drivers and 2) be held to such an unrealistic standard. However, by doing what we can to improve our reaction time when faced with a road hazard, we are doing our part to keep Canada’s roads safe.

[1] McLaren. (2020, September 24). Lights out and away we go? How Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris improve their reaction times. https://www.mclaren.com/racing/team/carlos-sainz-lando-norris-reaction-time/

[2] Browning-Brant, C. (2024, March 2). Rapid decisions, driver skills and intricate procedures – Why race starts are so critical in F1. Formula1.com: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/rapid-decisions-driver-skills-and-intricate-procedures-why-race-starts-are.3uziERC5iPE5EYOPRmerXU

[3] Shelton, J. and Kumar, G.P. (2010). Comparison between auditory and visual simple reaction times. Neuroscience & Medicine, 2010, 1, 30-32 doi:10.4236/nm.2010.11004 Published Online September 2010 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/nm)