Shadowing Practice: Formula 1 Beginner's Guide - The Basics - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Welcome to the complete beginner's guide to Formula 1, which I've compressed down into different videos.

This video is all about the basics, so let's get started.

Formula 1 is the pinnacle of motorsport, where drivers and teams compete for top honours across a long and grueling season.

Currently, there are 10 teams competing in Formula 1, but that number can increase.

Each team has two drivers, and while these two drivers earn points for the team in the race to be the Constructors' Champion,

they are also competing against each other and all the other drivers for the real glory, the Drivers' Championship.

F1 has strict regulations put in place by the governing body, the FIA.

These regulations tell each team exactly what they can and can't do when it comes to designing their cars.

But what's important is that each car is different.

Sure, some cars may look similar in areas and the overall shapes might be similar, but each team has to design their own car with their

own team of professionals working behind the scenes to get the most out of each part.

The current season of Formula 1 has 23 races, but this number can go up and down.

New races are added and other tracks are removed from the calendar when contracts expire.

Race locations range from Britain, Japan, Bahrain and F1 is even racing in Las Vegas this year.

Each race weekend has multiple race sessions.

Friday has two one-hour practice sessions.

These two hours are for the drivers to get up to speed with the track

and make any changes they need to to the car.

Then on Saturday, you have the third and final practice session, which is done a couple of hours before qualifying, which takes place later that day.

During the practice sessions, drivers can change anything they want on the car, providing, of course, it's legal.

They can change suspension, tyre angles, front wings, rear wings but once you go out for qualifying, you enter Park Fermi.

And that means the parts that are on your car are the ones you will take into qualifying and the race.

You're only able to change a few small things including wing angles.

Qualifying is split into three parts, Q1, Q2 and Q3.

Q1 lasts for 18 minutes and the slowest five drivers are knocked out of qualifying

and they will start 16th to 20th based on their fastest lap times.

Then Q2 takes the 15 fastest drivers from Q1 and after 15 minutes another five drivers are eliminated

again with their starting positions based on their fastest time from the session.

Q3 is then a top 10 shootout between the fastest 10

drivers to form the top 10 of the grid for the main event which is the race on Sunday afternoon.

Every race has a different amount of laps depending on the

track's distance with the minimum distance required to be 305 kilometers except for Monaco which gets a pass to run less.

Every driver can choose what tyre they start the race with with three to choose from.

I'll explain tyres in more detail in a minute, so don't worry.

The tyres are labelled as soft, medium and hard.

Soft tyres have a red stripe, medium's a yellow stripe and the hard tyres have a white stripe.

The softer the tyre, the fastest lap time it will be able to produce, offering up the most grip.

But the reality is, they won't last as long.

The hard tyres are the opposite.

Less initial grip and therefore slower lap times, but they will last a lot longer.

During the race, every driver must use two different tyre compounds.

This means that if you start the race on the soft tyre, you have to switch to either the medium or the hard during the race.

You can stop as many times as you want though and switch to different compounds.

The only rule is that you have to use at least two.

The only exception to this rule being if the race starts or becomes a wet race.

Speaking of wet tyres, there are two of those.

The Intermediate is the most versatile wet weather tyre, used for wet weather but with limited standing water.

They have a green stripe.

Then the blue mag full wet tires are used for heavy rain with a lot of standing water.

Although more often than not if there's heavy rain the cars don't tend to run anyway

so these tires don't get used all that often.

Pirelli have six tire compounds that they use for Formula One.

These are C0, C1, C2, C3, C4 and C5.

C0 is the hardest tire so like I said before these offer less ultimate grip but they offer more durability.

C5 is the softest tyre available so it will give the best performance, but it's not going to last very long.

Before races, Pirelli choose which three of the available six tyres they want to bring to a race weekend.

They do this based on the characteristics of the track and even how abrasive the circuit is.

These three chosen tyres then fit into the category of soft, medium and hard depending on where they fit in the scale, so it's easier to follow during the the race weekend.

Just one final point on tyres.

Drivers do not have an infinite pool of tyres they can use over the course of a weekend.

Pirelli provide 13 sets of tyres to each driver to use throughout the sessions.

In 2023 the allocation of tyres for every competitor is 8 sets of soft tyres, 3 sets of mediums and 2 hards.

As well as that every driver does get 4 sets of intermediate tyres

and 3 sets of full wets should it be rainy conditions.

After every practice session a driver must return two sets of tyres to Pirelli.

So by the time qualifying begins, a driver will have just seven sets of tyres to make it from Q1 until the chequered flag.

Teams have to be very clever with how they use their tyres to get the most out of both practice

and qualifying without running out of tyres.

If you make it into Q3 as well, every driver has to hand back one final set of tyres, whereas if you don't make it into Q3, you don't have to hand back that final set.

There is also no refueling in F1 anymore, so cars start the race with the required amount of fuel they need to complete the race.

At the end of the race drivers score points for finishing in the top 10 with 25 points for first,

18th for second, 15th for third all the way down to 1.4 tenth.

You also gain a bonus point for the fastest lap during a race.

Sprint race weekends are also a new addition to Formula One

which does complicate things a bit because the format for those are a little bit different.

There will be six sprint race weekends in 2023.

In this format, there's only one practice session on the Friday and qualifying takes place that evening.

There is then only one practice session on Saturday before a sprint race takes place later

that day with the grid set by the qualifying from Friday.

The sprint race is exactly that, a much shorter race taking place over 100 kilometers.

But the finishing positions in the sprint race will then set the grid for the feature race

which takes place on Sunday as normal, meaning drivers need to be ever more cautious with their moves.

Just to confuse things further, at one or more of the upcoming sprint races, the FAA is testing a new sprint weekend format.

This would see FP2 scrapped on the Saturday in favour of a second qualifying.

The idea is you would have qualifying on the Friday for the main weekend's race on Sunday, and then on Saturday FP2 would be replaced by a sprint race qualifying,

So two qualifiers for the two different races.

It's unclear right now though if they're going to stick with this going forward.

Points are also awarded differently than a main race.

The winner of the sprint race gets eight points with second place getting seventh, third, sixth, etc. All the way down to one point for eighth place.

And there we have the basics of Formula One.

In the next video we're going to look at the cars themselves all the way down to the engines that power them.

I hope you enjoyed this video and if you did leave a like

and subscribe and I'll see you next time you

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🏎️ Talking about Formula 1 in English 🏁 Intermediate English Listening Practice B1/B2 Level 3/4

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Formula 1 Beginner's Guide - The Basics”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: race, tyre, driver, qualifying, sprint. This video has 93 sentences and 1432 words to shadow. The speech runs for 7:15. The speaker talks fast, about 197 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
tyre noun	/taɪə(ɹ)/	The ring-shaped protective covering around a wheel which is usually made of rubber or plastic composite and is either pneumatic or solid.
qualify verb	/ˈkwɑ.lɪ.faɪ/	To describe or characterize something by listing its qualities.
sprint noun	/spɹɪnt/	A short race at top speed.
stripe noun	/stɹaɪp/	A long region of a single colour in a repeating pattern of similar regions.
tire verb	/ˈtaɪ̯ɚ/	To become sleepy or weary.
grip noun	/ˈɡɹɪp/	A hold or way of holding, particularly with the hand.
grid noun	/ɡɹɪd/	A rectangular array of squares or rectangles of equal size, such as in a crossword puzzle.
compound noun	/ˈkɑmpaʊnd/	Anything made by combining several things.
intermediate adjective	/ɪn.tə(ɹ)ˈmi.di.ət/	Being between two extremes, or in the middle of a range.
depend verb	/dɪˈpɛnd/	To be contingent or conditioned; to have something as a necessary condition
abrasive adjective	/əˈbɹeɪ.sɪv/	Producing abrasion; rough enough to wear away the outer surface.
checkered adjective		Divided into a grid of squares of alternating colours or shades, or into light and dark patches.
complicate verb	/ˈkɑmplɪkeɪt/	To make complex; to modify so as to make something intricate or difficult.
compress verb	/ˈkɑmpɹɛs/	To make smaller; to press or squeeze together, or to make something occupy a smaller space or volume.
durability noun	/dəɹəˈbɪləti/	The ability to last a long time by virtue of the power to resist stress or force.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
hand back verb	To return (something) to where it came from.
get up to verb	To do something, especially something that is forbidden or improper.
go up verb	To move upwards.
going forward adverb	In the immediate future and beyond.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are added · is split · are knocked
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	session, which is · event which is
Superlatives the -est / the most … — the top or bottom of a group	the slowest · their fastest · the fastest
Future with “will” will + verb — a decision, promise or prediction	will take · will start · I'll explain

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 13 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'll, can't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: tenth /tɛnθ/, eighth /eɪtθ/, seventh /ˈsɛvənθ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shootout /ˈʃuːtaʊt/, allocation /ˌæl.əˈkeɪ.ʃən/, cautious /ˈkɔːʃəs/, suspension /səˈspɛnʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: intermediate /ɪn.tə(ɹ)ˈmi.di.ət/, durability /dəɹəˈbɪləti/, qualifier /ˈkwɑ.lɪ.faɪ.ɚ/, allocation /ˌæl.əˈkeɪ.ʃən/, competitor /kəmˈpɛt.ɪ.tɚ/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like tyre, qualify, sprint.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Formula 1 Beginner's Guide - The Basics - Learn English Speaking with Video

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