While a Formula One driver may be the star athlete behind the wheel, it is the cutting-edge technology and the skilled engineers deploying it that complete the rest of the team.
F1 races are often decided by tenths of seconds, and technological advancements can make or break a team’s time on the circuit.
“Formula One is all about performance, and it’s performance which drives success on the racetrack. So, we as engineers have always focused on how can we get the quickest car, and to achieve that requires a very innovative approach,” said Ben Waterhouse, head of performance engineering for Oracle Red Bull Racing.
According to Waterhouse, the four main ingredients contributing to a high performing car are its chassis, the power unit, the tires and the driver.
“Without all four of them operating at a very high level, it’s very difficult to have real success,” Waterhouse added.
The F1 winter break is the period between the end of the season and the start of pre-season testing, but it is hardly a “break” for the team’s engineers.
“There’s different approaches to designing a Formula One car. Either you take the base of what was your previous year’s car, and you carry that over, or you’re going for a complete conceptual change to unlock more performance. In both cases, there’s still a lot of work that goes into physically building the car in the winter season,” said Dan Keyworth, director of business technology for McLaren Racing.
James Vowles, team principal for Williams Racing, said he spends about 30% of his time on technology.
“What I’m doing is creating technologies and infrastructure that allow us not to produce a good car in ’24 but allow us to produce a good car in 2026, ’27, ’28. It sounds so far away in our world, but it’s really important to set that right timeline out. What we’re fixing can’t be fixed overnight,” Vowles said.
Watch the video above for an in-depth look at the technology that fuels F1 success, featuring interviews with Formula One Group CEO Stefano Domenicali, McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, Williams Racing Team Principal James Vowles, Scuderia Ferrari HP Team Principal Fréd Vasseur and more.