Singapore Grand Prix qualifying

In Formula 1 the day before each race is a time trial known as ‘qualifying’. The quickest driver in qualifying starts on pole position, with the others being arranged in order behind him.

Lewis Hamilton beat his fellow Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg by 7-thousandths of a second. Here is a tweet from the Mercedes team:

Yes – after a full lap of the circuit the difference between the two drivers’ times was 0.007 seconds!

The Mercedes team then tweeted this:

That is nice, because it leads to a starter activity. What can we work out?

We can work out the average speed of the drivers.

0.335m ÷ 0.007s gives us the speed in m/s.
Multiplying by 3600 will give us the speed in metres per hour.
Dividing by 1600 turns this into mph.

I get the average speed as 108mph. Not bad for a circuit with lots of twists and turns!