Lucia Conconi spent over 20 years in System 1 and high-performance motorsport, most just lately as Head of Car Efficiency at Sauber Motorsport, contributing to a robust interval of competitiveness for the crew. She held senior roles at Renault F1, Mercedes-AMG F1, Brawn GP, and Audi Sport.
The times on a race weekend have at all times began early. Strolling to the paddock at that hour, you discover primarily folks from different groups – generally former colleagues who’ve modified crew gear. Regardless of the competitors, the greetings are at all times heat. For a couple of minutes, earlier than the day tightens, the paddock appears like a well-known place.
In actuality, by the point anybody walks by way of the gate, the race weekend has already been working for days on the manufacturing facility. However because the automobiles hit the monitor, the rhythm sharpens in all places.
What I’ve at all times discovered particular – and what’s maybe least seen from the surface – is how the entire organisation gears up round these few days. Whether or not you might be on the monitor or again at base, you’re feeling the presence of a a lot greater operation behind the 2 automobiles. Programs engineers monitoring deployments by way of the night time. Simulator classes working in parallel with monitor exercise. Knowledge analysts getting ready the bottom for selections that can be made in minutes. Most of those folks won’t ever seem on a broadcast. However with out them, the automobiles don’t run the best way they do.
You are feeling the vitality shift. There’s something unstated that takes maintain throughout a race weekend – a sort of collective focus that reaches by way of the manufacturing facility even to the folks circuitously concerned in race assist. I’ve seen it in the best way unrelated conversations pause, in the best way folks with no operational motive to test the session occasions nonetheless do. The entire place leans in.
When you find yourself a part of that orchestration, you’re feeling the hassle it takes to maintain all the pieces linked and the self-discipline required to make it sooner and smoother every weekend.
Because the automotive evolves, sure races carry additional weight. New elements arrive after months of growth, bringing a quiet focus. Seeing the automotive reply and lap occasions affirm simulations pays again weeks of invisible work.
As soon as the classes start, time is marked by the conferences. Analyses shared, situations evaluated, programmes rehearsed and adjusted. Between classes, engineers keep deep within the knowledge, making selections that can play out within the subsequent hour or the following day. The rhythm is intense, on the monitor and on the manufacturing facility. And when the manufacturing facility is following a race on the opposite facet of the world, the time zones add their very own layer of strain.
One reminiscence stands out, although, and it was one other very early alarm clock, however in some way a lot lighter and completely different. It was early in my System 1 profession, after we introduced the Brawn GP automotive to the primary race of the season in Melbourne. The time distinction meant a brutal alarm for anybody following from Europe – Friday observe fell within the small hours of the morning. However I believe most of us in race assist that yr awakened earlier than our alarms. There was a whole lot of anticipation after the extraordinary winter months. The primary voices on the intercom, the engineers checking in, the session about to go reside – after which it did, and the automotive was quick, and the season that adopted wrote itself into the historical past of the game. I don’t suppose any of us who had been a part of it’s going to neglect that morning.
