Virtually all racing cars of today have six or seven (forward) gears. F1 cars used to have the latter number of gears for a quite a while, until the hybrid era where they started having eight
But why would they need so many? Wouldn’t seven gears suffice?
In: 11
No answer is completely accurate so far.
F1 cars used to have 7 gears, and each of those gears were changed and tailored to each track they visited.
A team that can pay for a different gear set for each track has a big advantage over one that can’t afford that.
So the rule makers said the gearboxes had to last longer than just that one race, but also you needed one set of gear ratios for the whole season.
To help out with those gear ratios, they allowed 8 rather than 7 to allow a more flexible gear range.
The other comments address why that matters.
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