extra speed in qualifying:

For extra speed in qualifying, take advantage of the "qualifying engine" option provided in the garage menu. Selecting a high RPM redline will give more speed and acceleration at the expense of reliability. Be sure to switch back before the race.

Keep your brakes:

Keep your brakes applied on the start line until the red lights go out. The car has a bad habit of rolling forward on some circuits and bringing a false start violation down on you.

extraordinarily powerful brakes:

F1 cars have extraordinarily powerful brakes and this is accurately modeled in F1RS. You can brake much deeper for most corners than you might think, so practice, practice, practice.

faster computer cars:

Hitch a ride with one of the faster computer cars (Schumacher and Alesi are always good bets) by hitting the Page Up or Page Down key and then by closely studying their driving techniques. Valuable gearing setups and braking points can be learned this way.

The best method:

The best method of improving the problem of poor frame rate at the start of races (when the screen is crowded with other cars) on a lower-end machine is to reduce the number of competitors. Halving the number of competitors from 21 to 11 can increase the fps on a P133 by a huge margin. (Switching off the replay is also effective.)

holding on to pole:

If you're holding on to pole position by a narrow margin, you can be a real poor sport about it and go park your car out on the middle of the track. You won't be towed away and the computer-driven cars will lift off their throttles enough to cost them half a second per lap as they maneuver around you