Thank you golunvolo Success rate is as follows: bursts of 3-5 frames (at 8-12 frames/s); two criteria to discard immediately after the shooting: (1) sharpness (*), (2) framing i.e part of the car is missing; Generally there is 1 or 2 frames OK per series; and 2 on 3 series are OK. In addition, there a esthetic criteria, which makes that I'm left with about 6% of the total number of taken pictures which I consider publishable. This ratio hasn't much changed over time.
(*) For cars I always choose "Group-area AF, which I position in order to square the car-number at the right position in the frame; I make sure that, when tracking the car, the car-number remains in the "square" made by the group-area dots.
@John Advertising is unfortunately the price to pay; some car advertising designers are more or less successful; the ugliest one I saw, was a beautiful Aston Martin V8 Vantage, with a horrible box of Beechdean Farmhouse Dairy Ice Cream painted on the door...
Another problem are the fences; there are very few windows without fences e.g. gap of the pit-lane; the fences are very high (+-4m) and very thick; the ways to "cheat" are maximum aperture and follow the car at low shutter speed; and / or finally admit that these fences exist and make it part of the composition, as in the next picture
NB: I had access on virtually any place except the pit lane during the race, as you need FIA homologated fire clothing - homologation which changes every odd year - and mine is 10 years old....
some other:
