Shadowing Practice: Formula 1, Explained for Rookies - Learn English Speaking with Video

"What will happen over the course of the next 66 laps?" "Max Verstappen is the champion of the world!!!" You’ve been hearing about F1 too, right?

Cool. Let’s talk about it.

"Formula 1 racing..." "into Miami for the first time..." "the hottest ticket in town..." "hooked on Drive to Survive" "Drive to Survive..." "Drive to Survive!" This is a car race at over 200 miles an hour… in cities all over the world….

"Miami Grand Prix!" "Bahrain Grand Prix!" "Here in Monaco..." with insanely famous drivers… "Daniel Riccardo!" "Lewis Hamilton, seven-time world champion...." and hundred-person teams… racing cars so advanced that they’re practically spaceships… … and so expensive that they had to make a RULE that teams couldn't spend more than $140 MILLION DOLLARS.

EACH. And it’s only getting bigger.

Just look at this: This is from a construction camera at one of two new US tracks.

This one's in Miami.

This cost $40 million dollars to build and it hosted nearly a quarter million people over three days.

That’s a Super Bowl-worth of people EVERY DAY!

And one of them was me… "It's the first ever Miami Grand Prix, we're racing in the States...

"and it's lights out and away we go!" "This is the coolest thing I have ever... " I just love F1.

But a lot of people, because of all this hype they're hearing about it right now for the first time and they're feeling a little bit... "I don't understand!" So let’s get into it.

This is “F1, explained for rookies.” What you need to know to keep up with this crazy, expensive sport that everyone's suddenly obsessed with.

"Lewis Hamilton!" "Verstappen..." "He's done!" But it’s also a look at the bigger question here - the HUGE* question - which is: Why do this?

Why pour so much money, so much technological effort into F1 - into entertainment?

The answer is in what we get in return.

This isn’t just a car race.

This is a space program, for the road.

"General growth in interest..." "in Formula 1..." "F1 is becoming much more of a thing here in the States..." "The Monaco Grand Prix!" "The Italian Grand Prix!" "Wins the Bahrain Grand Prix!" If you’re new to F1, you might know its American cousins.

NASCAR has the least family resemblance. Closed cockpits, oval tracks… IndyCar and F1 look more related. They've got the spaghetti-looking tracks, open cockpits… But there’s one really important difference between these two.

And it’s the reason F1 specifically is such a big deal.

In IndyCar, all the cars use the same frame - or “chassis” - the DW-12.

So the competition here is mostly in how you race that car.

But in F1, every team has to design and manufacture their own cars.

And the best part is that they get to IMPROVE the cars between each race!

Or... not, depending on how they do.

So the competition in F1 actually centers around the car itself.

Not just how you race it, but also how you build it - and rebuild it, again and again and again.

This is why I love F1.

It looks like the sport of daredevils - but much more than that, it’s the sport of nerds.

Each team races two cars.

So, two different drivers for the same team.

Each event - or “Grand Prix” - is three days: Practice, Qualifying, Race Day.

I watch the races on tv every time they’re on.

But this was the first time I ever got to see it in person.

"I got to see the car up close!! That was awesome." "Now I am inside the Mercedes garage... !!!" Truly, I’ve never had MORE fun at a sporting event...

and seen less of what was actually going on.

"So right now they're about to do a practice pit..." Here’s how this works: The order of who does the fastest lap on qualifying day becomes the lineup at the starting line on race day.

Passing isn’t easy, so where you start is a big deal.

Depending on where drivers finish, they get different numbers of points.

“NO SOUP FOR YOU!” The drivers’ want to get the most points themselves to win the "Drivers' Championship" But the teams want to get the most points TOTAL, to win the "Constructors' Championship." The two-championship thing makes for funny mismatched incentives sometimes You can hear it on the radio when teams have one strategy, like they want to let drivers pass each other, and drivers get really mad about that...

"If he's quicker, you let him through." "That's very unfair. But ok." But generally, everybody agrees about the big things, which are: Drivers, race your fastest.

Teams, make the best car.

Alright... here's the fun part!

"LEGO is here! Hey, kids, look!" "Here's my driver, hello Lewis Hamilton" Think of an F1 car like an airplane upside down.

Both built to move as quickly through the air as possible, right?

But where a plane’s wings work to lift it up, these car’s wings work to keep it down.

Why? Because winning doesn’t just depend on going fast, it also depends on keeping control.

And that requires a firm grip on the ground.

Take a look at the shape of this car.

Now watch how air moves across it… See how some goes above the wing, and some squeezes the long way underneath it?

This creates a situation where there's higher pressure above and lower pressure below sucking the car toward the ground.

That's actually happening all over the car, not just on the wings.

We could talk for hours about the design features on this thing, how they shape and use the air Some pull air in through the car to cool it down… You can actually see, there's a hole there...

I think they're trying to imply that on my Lego model...

Some actually let the driver release air - lessening that downward pressure and allowing them to go faster in order to pass, kind of like a Mario boost.

You can actually hear this in a race. Listen for “DRS” here...

"Charles Leclerc is going to have DRS to try to fight it back!" Taken together, an F1 car is just a SYMPHONY of aerodynamics.

I got to see them up close and personal when I was in Miami...

"We're going there!" I ABSOLUTELY did not keep my cool.

"I'm trying to be cool, but it's a real scene here!" You can see teams perfecting these cars over the years, understanding the need for wings and adding them, changing the shape, pushing our understanding of aerodynamics, to shave off just fractions of a second.

Hundreds, sometimes thousands of people work on this, all for ONE TEAM.

So um… how much does this COST?

F1 teams don’t really want to share the details here, so there’s a LOT of speculation.

But they're also companies, and some of them have to file their financials somewhere.

So, with a little bit of research into various European countries’ reporting requirements...

Hold on! Dun-dun-na-nah! Here they are.

Annual reports for every F1 team I could find.

Which is actually 8 out of 10, so I’m feeling pretty good about it!

"That's pretty good..." As a fan, this is kind of cool.

Like, look this is Toto Wolff’s signature… What I learned from all this is that running an F1 team costs anywhere from 95 million to 425 million dollars.

"Oo that's a lot of money" But the year after these were filed, F1 instituted a new rule saying the all teams will only be allowed to spend $140 million dollars.

So these reports are going to look a lot different for this next coming year.

"Oh good!" Still a lot. No matter what, F1 teams spend a TON of money.

So... what do they make?

These reports show F1 teams make… approximately… nothing.

They run surprisingly close to break even.

Red Bull, for example, made 230 million in revenue, 229 million in costs...

And they ended up with approximately 1.2 million in profit.

This is in pounds, so that’s about 1.5 million dollars.

These aren’t the wildly profitable enterprises I was imagining.

So, why do they do it?

Well, take a look at this: This is the Ferrari annual report.

“Our brand image depends in part on the success of our Formula 1 racing team… the racing team is a key component of our marketing strategy.” It’s advertising.

"Advertising! Advertising..." They use F1 to sell other stuff, whether that's luxury sports cars or a sports drink.

"Red Bull gives you wings!" I mean, as entertainment, F1 is INCREDIBLE.

But a lot of people do feel that it's somewhat… wasteful.

"How much does a Formula 1 car cost?" "$400 million!" "Is it worth all that money?" This is bigger than F1.

It’s kind of crazy to think about how much work we as a species put into entertaining ourselves.

But I think what makes F1 feel particularly acute for some people is the technology element here.

All this engineering work and all of this energy being spent on 20 fossil fuel reliant cars makes people wonder sometimes if that energy might be better spent elsewhere.

"Like literally anywhere else." But F1 is more than just entertainment.

It’s better thought of actually as one giant experiment.

F1 pushes everything to the extreme.

What do you need to create to compete at this level, to keep control at these speeds to keep the driver safe in these conditions?

The idea is that the technology they build ends up trickling down to all of us non-race car drivers.

My question was: Is this actually true, or does it just sound good?

I wanted to find examples of specific car parts that were developed for F1, and then ended up in my car.

But the more research I did, the more complicated it got.

100

People often talk about paddle shifters, for example… but those were actually developed decades before F1.

101

F1 teams just made them better.

102

Same for active suspension, anti-lock brakes, traction control.

103

What I found was that F1 was less “trickle-down” and more flywheel.

104

F1 combines technologies that might already exist and pushes them to an extreme, making them better in the process and then inspiring better tech for all of us.

105

For example, take “thermal efficiency”.

106

The percentage of the energy from combustion that actually makes the car GO, as opposed to being lost as heat.

107

Most combustion road cars have a thermal efficiency between 20 - 30%.

108

Which means only a third of the energy actually makes the car go!

109

F1 cars can’t refuel during a race, so there’s a very strong incentive for them to be efficient.

110

They’re at about 50% now, thanks to new hybrid engines, gains that have been dragging the rest of the car industry forward.

111

Or, data collection.

112

Sensors on F1 cars collect HUGE amounts of information and feed it back to the driver and the team.

113

They didn’t invent a lot of these systems, but they use them in ways that they've never been used before.

114

And that’s getting more and more important, as we move potentially toward self-driving cars.

115

This is the real promise of F1, and it all stems from that original requirement to build their own cars.

116

Basically: “We’ll do all this research and development, we'll create new technologies and also combine all of the cutting-edge tech, and we'll push it to it's limits and develop it further and you don’t even need to pay for it!

117

We’ll race these things against other groups of engineers doing exactly the same thing in this crazy, ‘round the world sport that lots of people really love that is actually at the end of the day the biggest most expensive group project science competition of all time.

118

People debate whether or not we should spend money on lots of our efforts to learn - and yet they consistently push forward both the tech we actually use and our understanding of the world around us.

119

In this case, it also makes some money and it’s fun to watch.

120

I think once you see the promise of F1, it allows you to think differently about lots of things.

121

We need people working far beyond the edge, pulling forward the limits of what we can do.

122

The question now is: What do we need to learn next?

123

If F1 pushes forward car innovation… and the future of cars is electric… does F1 need to get more electric too?

124

And if F1 doesn’t go more electric, does it get farther and farther from its original promise over time?

125

Less applicable to the technology we use, more a novelty “oh, let’s go watch the cars that use GAS!” I don’t know.

126

Now you’re up to speed.

127

You can watch a race, you can enjoy it with your friends, and you can also speculate, like the rest of us, where it's all going to go.

128

I’ll be watching with you.

129

And I’ll be rooting for my favorite team.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Formula 1, Explained for Rookies”. This video has 129 sentences and 2156 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:46. The speaker talks at a natural 169 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 86% 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
depend verb	/dɪˈpɛnd/	To be contingent or conditioned; to have something as a necessary condition
aerodynamics noun		The science of the dynamics of bodies moving relative to gases, especially the interaction of moving objects with the atmosphere.
trickle verb	/ˈtɹɪkəl/	to pour a liquid in a very thin stream, or so that drops fall continuously.
combustion noun	/kəmˈbʌs.t͡ʃən/	The act or process of burning.
cockpit noun	/ˈkɑkˌpɪt/	A well, usually near the stern, where the helm is located.
incentive noun	/ɪnˈsɛntɪv/	Something that motivates, rouses, or encourages.
thermal adjective	/ˈθɜːməl/	Pertaining to heat or temperature.
combine verb	/kəmˈbaɪn/	To bring (two or more things or activities) together; to unite.
qualify verb	/ˈkwɑ.lɪ.faɪ/	To describe or characterize something by listing its qualities.
daredevil noun	/ˈdɛədɛvəl/	A person who engages in very risky behavior, especially one who is motivated by a craving for excitement or attention.
financials noun		Financial statements.
flywheel noun		A rotating mass used to maintain the speed of a machine within certain limits while the machine receives or releases energy at a varying rate, or as a form of…
insanely adverb	/ɪnˈseɪnli/	In an insane manner; not sanely.
lessen verb	/ˈlɛsən/	To make less; to diminish; to reduce.
mismatch noun	/ˈmɪs.mæt͡ʃ/	Something that does not match; something dissimilar, inappropriate or unsuitable.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
push forward verb	To continue to act or do something, especially with a lot of effort
end up verb	To bring to a conclusion.
keep up with verb	To manage to remain beside or just behind someone or something that is moving away from one.

Grammar in this video

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

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	You've been hearing · have been dragging
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	were filed · being spent · were developed

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 36 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, don't, we'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: thermal /ˈθɜːməl/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: traction /ˈtɹæk.ʃən/, shave /ˈʃeɪ̯v/, fraction /ˈfɹæk.ʃən/, speculation /ˌspɛk.jəˈleɪ.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: speculation /ˌspɛk.jəˈleɪ.ʃən/, technological /ˌtɛk.nəˈlɑ.dʒɪ.kəl/, surprisingly /səˈpɹaɪzɪŋli/, applicable /əˈplɪk.ə.bəl/, practically /ˈpɹæk.tɪ.k(ə.)li/

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 depend, aerodynamics, trickle.

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 →

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?