You might have seen snatches of team engineering debriefs on Drive to Survive but for the most part their contents remain hidden, even to Formula 1’s access-all-areas docu-series. Why? Because here the innermost secrets of car performance – and how to extract it – are revealed. Now, exclusively, GP Racing peers behind the veil…
WORDS ALEX KALINAUCKAS PICTURES
OH TO BE A FLY ON A WALL IN
a setting as secretive as the Formula 1 paddock. Right now, perched behind a table in the computer-filled room constructed above the two Haas team trucks that form the race-weekend tyre store, GP Racing is finding out.
First practice for the British Grand Prix has just finished. Every F1 team is now holding the same meeting. One of 10 per weekend which are critical to the outcome of each race and their seasons overall.
The debrief. Racing engineering heaven. Or hell if things haven’t gone to plan for Haas and team principal Guenther Steiner decides he needs to interject an expletive or 10. Otherwise, here it is Ayao Komatsu’s show.
Haas’s director of engineering sits at the head of the table in front of us alongside Steiner. Lining the table’s left side from their viewpoint are Mark Slade – formerly race engineer to Kimi Räikkonen at McLaren and Lotus – and Kevin Magnussen. On the opposite side is Gary Gannon and Nico Hülkenberg. Gannon guided Romain Grosjean and Mick Schumacher at Haas, while Hülkenberg was engineered by Slade when they both worked at Renault. Three more engineers line the table’s long sides, with two tyre technicians opposite Komatsu and Steiner at the far end and, behind them, a TV screen displaying the pit garage CCTV feed.
We’re just behind, trying to blend into the background, praying we don’t have to sneeze…
“OK, Nico, please,” says Komatsu.
And we’re away, Hülkenberg explaining exactly how his VF-23 has been performing around each of Silverstone’s 18 turns. We’ve had a preview of his feelings having listened in to Haas’s radio chatter from its pitbox during FP1 (see sidebar). But this is another level of detail.
Hülkenberg is specific on every corner – explaining how the wind, as ever blustering across Silverstone’s former airfield setting, is impacting the car and his feeling through each steering wheel stab. There’s work to do, as Hülkenberg reckons “the whole car just doesn’t feel in a happy place”.
As Magnussen pores over his laptop – each driver and engineer can see all their timing data and car telemetry traces, helping to pinp
