Watch a grand prix on television for long enough and you’ll surely hear a race engineer on the team radio, the soothing yin to their driver’s often abrupt and emotional yang. But what do they do for the rest of the weekend? Gary Gannon, race engineer for Nico Hülkenberg at Haas, reveals all
WORDS OLEG KARPOV PICTURES MARK SUTTON
A RACE WEEKEND WITH…
You know the drill: the ‘team radio’ banner pops up on screen and, a second or two later, amid crackles and the aural backdrop of engine blare, a driver’s voice emerges – generally raised in a tone of tetchy complaint, sometimes at an outright screaming pitch. The voice that responds is usually altogether more measured, both in tone and content, delivering the likes of “copy” or “understood” (or indeed some other variant of “just shut up and drive the car”) in the manner of an airline pilot informing the cabin crew to take their seats for landing.
This is the voice of the race engineer. Yet they are not just there to act as a verbal punchbag for those occasions when the tyre strategy hasn’t worked out. The race engineer is the first point of contact for any driver, since it’s their job to ‘run’ the car with them, trying to turn the stream of thoughts of their closest colleagues into a decent setup that can help both achieve a better result.
They’re the ones who have an overview of what’s happening with the car throughout the weekend, from the time it’s fired up on Thursday until it crosses the line on Sunday. It’s their job to know the strengths and weaknesses not only of their cars, but also their drivers, in order to get the best out of that combination.
That’s why it’s often said the relationship with the race engineer is vital for the drivers.
Gary Gannon’s weekend at Imola was always going to be challenging for a number of reasons. The fact that his driver, Nico Hülkenberg, had never raced there was one of them – but the pair was also tasked with carrying out an important test during practice to help the team assess its new aero package.
Here’s how it panned out...
THURSDAY
08.45
Engineering meetings
“There’s no running on Thursday, but it’s still a very busy day in terms of setting up for the weekend. After arriving and a quick breakfast, I usually go straight into an array of meetings with different groups, starting with IT to check that all the systems are working, then electronics: since we had a lot of
