Speaker 1: Tony. Michael, I was thinking for this episode, let's go
Speaker 1: with Plan D but reverse points three and four, skip
Speaker 1: over five, finishing with two.
Speaker 2: How does that sound? Please stop talking.
Speaker 1: Break from My Heart Podcast one on one Studios and
Speaker 1: Sports Illustrated Studios.
Speaker 2: This is choosing sides.
Speaker 3: One.
Speaker 4: Wow Wow, talk to me goose.
Speaker 3: Blake, welcome, give us a little bit of insight of
Speaker 3: your career journey, who you are and what you do today.
Speaker 4: My name is Blake Kinsey, former F one performance engineer
Speaker 4: turned content creator White Size Chop.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: So Michael Tony.
Speaker 3: Today, with the help from our amazing expert Blake Kinsey,
Speaker 3: I will put forward to you that the absolute best
Speaker 3: kind of F one fan you can be is a
Speaker 3: game strategist. That racing strategy is the most fascinating thing
Speaker 3: that I think you can imagine, And it's just the
Speaker 3: right prism for you to approach you F one fandom.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I believe you and I trust you, but
Speaker 1: you can't control what's in my heart.
Speaker 3: Well we'll say about that.
Speaker 4: Oh, if you want to watch a Formula one race
Speaker 4: and understand what's going on, you have two options. You
Speaker 4: can watch the race lap by lap and observe what's
Speaker 4: happening and say it wasn't that great. But one of
Speaker 4: the best things about Formula one is the suspense, and
Speaker 4: a lot of people get a lot of satisfaction of
Speaker 4: having an understanding of how the game can unfold and
Speaker 4: the variables, and they want to know what's going to
Speaker 4: happen next because they're probably watching it with their friend
Speaker 4: and it's like, watch out for Carlos, here's he needs
Speaker 4: to stop soon for a new times And without that
Speaker 4: kind of context, you kind of sitting there thinking what's
Speaker 4: going to happen next. I think Formula one very much
Speaker 4: has elements of chess, especially when you consider strategy. You
Speaker 4: know you can have a plan and if somebody does
Speaker 4: a different move and you do not react to that move,
Speaker 4: you can end up at a disadvantage and it forces
Speaker 4: your hand and it can put you in a difficult spot.
Speaker 4: You know that you may not have all the information
Speaker 4: you need to make that decision. But do you make
Speaker 4: a pit stop to cover that car or do you
Speaker 4: stay out and stick to plan A? Which one pays off?
Speaker 1: I keep hearing all this talk about race strategy, Plan A,
Speaker 1: Plan B, Plan C is an F one A race
Speaker 1: start here, finish here doesn't seem very complicated to me.
Speaker 3: So yes, if one is a race, start here, finish here,
Speaker 3: But there's so much that happens in between that formation
Speaker 3: lap and that checkered flag, which is the flag that
Speaker 3: gets waived when they cross the finish line. It's also
Speaker 3: so much more than just the driver. So during F
Speaker 3: one weekends you will hear the commentators or on checks,
Speaker 3: but it's like myself say things like, oh, probably going
Speaker 3: to be expecting our one or two stop strategy, or
Speaker 3: we've taken the data from the previous race last year
Speaker 3: and we've got a better understanding of where we're going.
Speaker 3: You're gonna hear a lot of that. And the strategies
Speaker 3: are very much tied to things like tire compound choices,
Speaker 3: the different racetracks, the weather forecast, and we all dedicate
Speaker 3: a whole episode and dive deeper into the tires.
Speaker 1: Please, I can't wait. That episode is where the rubber
Speaker 1: meets the road.
Speaker 3: Out moving swiftly on. There's also things during the race
Speaker 3: weekend that you can't foresee for so there's these unforseeable
Speaker 3: things like did we have a crash, do we have
Speaker 3: a safety cart, do we have a virtual safety cart.
Speaker 3: Is the weather completely different than what we expected? You'll
Speaker 3: see during the free practice sessions or quality. Maybe it's
Speaker 3: you know, sunshine and hot weather, and then for the
Speaker 3: race on Sunday it's your rain and cloudy and gloomy.
Speaker 3: Teams could also have a bad pit stop strategy. Something
Speaker 3: in the wheel gun could have blocked in and they
Speaker 3: don't have a two or three second pit stop, but
Speaker 3: they have a four, five, six, seven picks up again
Speaker 3: which flrows everything out the window.
Speaker 2: Ricardo is sat there waiting. Did he make the call,
Speaker 2: did the team make the call? Whoever made the call?
Speaker 2: The tires weren't ready.
Speaker 3: So there's a myriad of things that come into play.
Speaker 3: The other thing to note is that the head of
Speaker 3: the team strategy and their whole team are sometimes planning months,
Speaker 3: if not sometimes actually years in advance in terms of
Speaker 3: what this race is going to look like. They know.
Speaker 3: The idea for the strategy team is that when they
Speaker 3: land on a Wednesday or Thursday for the race, they
Speaker 3: know what their strategy is or what their strategy options
Speaker 3: are going to be.
Speaker 1: I have some thoughts, yeah, but my first question is
Speaker 1: you said the head of strategy does that mean there's
Speaker 1: multiple people devoted to the game strategy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Formula one teams have several strategists. There is
Speaker 4: a person who is responsible for, you know, taking all
Speaker 4: the information you have, you know, assistant strategists that are
Speaker 4: looking at a specific car or looking at specific competitor's
Speaker 4: car in relation to you, and they're helping that person
Speaker 4: gather all the information they need. You're also taking information
Speaker 4: that the drivers talking to the race engineer. The race
Speaker 4: engineer is asking the driver about can these tires do
Speaker 4: five more laps? Because despite all the data in the world,
Speaker 4: we do not have particularly good metrics to say, hey,
Speaker 4: can these tires do five more laps? You literally have
Speaker 4: to ask the human behind the wheel, and all that
Speaker 4: information gets fed into the strategist and they will make
Speaker 4: a call. Very often with most teams, the team principle,
Speaker 4: especially for when there's a decision which could have a
Speaker 4: negative impact on the other car. You present those concisely
Speaker 4: to the team principle on the pitwall and they say yes,
Speaker 4: go ahead or no, I don't want that as an outcome.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: The idea of the ability to predict what happens in
Speaker 4: Formula One in a race in terms of a strategy
Speaker 4: is absolutely down to very high levels of uncertainty. The
Speaker 4: thing that you do not know, particularly with any certainty,
Speaker 4: is how the tires will behave during the race.
Speaker 3: How can you possibly drive this car with the tire
Speaker 3: in that condition?
Speaker 2: And if you're on the roads and a policeman sor
Speaker 2: pull you over.
Speaker 4: To get really geeky, you talk about something called a
Speaker 4: open air simulation where you basically take your expectations of
Speaker 4: the lap times that the tire is likely to do
Speaker 4: as a function of its age, and you run through
Speaker 4: a bunch of simulations like what if we stop on
Speaker 4: this lap, but if we stop on lip lap?
Speaker 2: What if you fit this tire?
Speaker 4: You run a bunch of simulations and you say, what
Speaker 4: is the fastest way to the end of this race?
Speaker 4: And that kind of tells you a good starting point.
Speaker 3: One of the strategists once said, we're looking at one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand versions of permutations possible. We can't gain all
Speaker 3: of them, but we've got based on our experience and
Speaker 3: our knowledge, we've got a pretty good idea of what
Speaker 3: are those top ten, top fifty permutations that we should
Speaker 3: be spending energy and time on.
Speaker 1: I guess they just want to feel like they're not
Speaker 1: surprised exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so when they're looking by the way, I mean,
Speaker 3: this feels important to say, but kind of makes sense
Speaker 3: when they're looking at all of this state and they're
Speaker 3: not sat there anymore crunching it pen a piece of paper.
Speaker 3: But then they're using all of these incredible simulators to
Speaker 3: simulate all the different options available at them. But that
Speaker 3: also leads to why we have so many tech partners
Speaker 3: in Formula one, the likes of Cognizant and Salesforce and
Speaker 3: you name it, because they help these teams aggregate all
Speaker 3: of that data. So I think that's also why we
Speaker 3: have more data analysts in Formula one today than we
Speaker 3: used to back in the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can only imagine eighty years ago.
Speaker 3: That wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: That wasn't the case. There was probably much more of
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. Here's the keys, go as fast
Speaker 1: as you can.
Speaker 3: You know I'm going to say this, but you bring
Speaker 3: up a phenomenal test, which is I was once asked
Speaker 3: where does the driver put the key once they get
Speaker 3: into the car. And the fun fact is fact, even
Speaker 3: though it sounds logical, I don't think I've ever heard
Speaker 3: anyone actually tell me this Formula one doesn't have a key,
Speaker 3: because it takes four or five people to actually kickstart
Speaker 3: a Formula one, in turn the car, and to turn
Speaker 3: it on.
Speaker 1: I didn't assume the car was turned on with some
Speaker 1: or in back of munich. Or you couldn't even have
Speaker 1: like a lucky rabbit's foot on your keychain because it'd
Speaker 1: be too much weight.
Speaker 3: Too much way that you do have drivers that stick
Speaker 3: a picture of their wives or okay, the Virgin Mary.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'd want to be looking at
Speaker 1: my wife at two hundred and twenty miles an hour,
Speaker 1: I might it might be better to look at the
Speaker 1: Virgin Mary.
Speaker 2: Time.
Speaker 4: You've gathered some data about your car. You understand what
Speaker 4: you think is likely to happen with the hard, medium
Speaker 4: and soft compound if you fit them during the race,
Speaker 4: and you've made some predictions about how they'll behave. But
Speaker 4: there's a range to those characteristics. You've also, in preparation
Speaker 4: of your strategy, made assumptions of how your competitors will
Speaker 4: behave in the race in terms of their tires, and
Speaker 4: then add the uncertainty that you have about your own car.
Speaker 4: Couple that with the uncertainty of your competitor's car, and
Speaker 4: then you predict that you go into the race by
Speaker 4: lap five. Very often your entire stre agive plan is
Speaker 4: blown out of the window, and then it becomes about
Speaker 4: operational prowess reading stuff that's outside of the data, reading
Speaker 4: the context, or most accurately or most correctly extrapolating from
Speaker 4: the data set that you have that's been completely destroyed
Speaker 4: that you thought is correct, it's now completely wrong. The
Speaker 4: ability to make observations about stuff that's happening on a
Speaker 4: sector bi sector basis, not a lap by lap basis.
Speaker 4: Look at how other people are having how is how
Speaker 4: is the other team behaving on the medium tire because
Speaker 4: they've been on it for two laps and that might
Speaker 4: be the right tire to be on right now. Did
Speaker 4: you observe that and did you make that note that
Speaker 4: it's you know, the medium tire is actually you know what,
Speaker 4: it's a lot better than we thought it was before
Speaker 4: the race. The strategy is now changed in a complete
Speaker 4: different dimension. You also have other variables, like what happens
Speaker 4: when the safety car comes out. Teams at every point
Speaker 4: they let's say you've got your original plan and you've
Speaker 4: had a little bit of change, the tires are behaving differently,
Speaker 4: so you've adjusted your plan. You've also got to say,
Speaker 4: I've made all these adjustments, but now what happens if
Speaker 4: we have a safety car in two laps? What do
Speaker 4: we do? Don't you don't wait for the safety car
Speaker 4: to happen and make the decision. You also have to say,
Speaker 4: if it's a safety car, what are we doing in
Speaker 4: the next five laps, and continually update that as your
Speaker 4: strategy plan evolves, because those are the kind of things
Speaker 4: like you know, when there's a safety car, your pit
Speaker 4: stop loses you left time, but you might give up
Speaker 4: track position, and do you take that or not? Can
Speaker 4: you can you go to the end from that stop?
Speaker 4: Do you have to make two stops if you stop here?
Speaker 4: It's all of it is hinged on uncertainty, and it's
Speaker 4: reacting to that. Strategy is fascinating completely, and it's the
Speaker 4: fascinating bit which makes the sport enjoyable is the chaos
Speaker 4: that you have in the strategy.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna also rephrase game strategy as overthinking. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like, are they giving room for the athlete
Speaker 1: to drive the car and feel.
Speaker 2: It you know what.
Speaker 3: That's actually one of my favorite things about the sport
Speaker 3: is at what point do you stop strategizing and planning
Speaker 3: and do you just race or do you figure out
Speaker 3: like this is what we have, like go for it?
Speaker 3: And at what point also do you trust the driver
Speaker 3: versus what's happening. So you'll see people on the.
Speaker 2: Pit will say, is any one else report in rain?
Speaker 3: We're expecting rain, and the driver's like, there's rain coming
Speaker 3: down on my helmet and my visor. What you're talking about,
Speaker 3: we're expecting rain, the rain is happening, sounds like it's
Speaker 3: just you and supporting the rain.
Speaker 2: I suspect it might be the sweat.
Speaker 3: And that is a trust that gets built over time
Speaker 3: before between the race engineer and the actual driver. The
Speaker 3: other component of that that the race engineer knows is
Speaker 3: is this a rookie driver or is this a driver
Speaker 3: been driving for ten to fifteen years. The reality is
Speaker 3: if it's a driver that's been driving for ten fifteen years,
Speaker 3: you trust their gut instinct and what they're telling you
Speaker 3: from what they're seeing. But that's also part of the communication.
Speaker 3: So to your point, actually, the race engineer is the
Speaker 3: only person really that talks to the driver, and the
Speaker 3: driver knows who is giving him that information. But behind
Speaker 3: the race engineer there's a myriad and a myriad of people. Sure,
Speaker 3: one important thing that's actually also somewhat tied to the
Speaker 3: cost cap is you can't bring the entire team to
Speaker 3: the race weekend, so you generally have those five six
Speaker 3: people on the pitwall. Then in the garage you've got
Speaker 3: a bunch more engineers who are data analysts and strategists
Speaker 3: and looking at what the data that they're getting on
Speaker 3: their computers. But then there's a lot of people back
Speaker 3: at what they call quote unquote which sounds really fancy,
Speaker 3: mission control. Most of those teams are back in the
Speaker 3: UK and they look at all the info that's gathered
Speaker 3: and then they send that back to the people on
Speaker 3: track or on the pitwall. But here's also the interesting
Speaker 3: thing is you both need the people who are removed
Speaker 3: from the race and the people on the pitwall and
Speaker 3: the driver because you want the people who are removed
Speaker 3: from everything that are able to take a step back
Speaker 3: and go wait, wait, hold on a minute. We have
Speaker 3: experience with this racetrack, we have experience with this web forecast.
Speaker 3: This is what it's teaching us. Then you've got the
Speaker 3: people at the track and go no, no, circumstances have changed,
Speaker 3: and then you've got the actual driver. There's a benefit
Speaker 3: to having those people remote, Tony.
Speaker 1: I'm getting a message in my earpiece here from mission control.
Speaker 1: They want us to pause for some advertisements.
Speaker 3: Roger that we'll be.
Speaker 2: Right back.
Speaker 3: And back from our break and diving right into the
Speaker 3: strategy episode.
Speaker 1: I'm just not as much. I don't I'm not buying
Speaker 1: in as much to game strategy. It's not that you're
Speaker 1: not doing a good job convincing someone. It's just the
Speaker 1: athlete brain in me is saying you've got to just
Speaker 1: let these drivers react and race and do what they
Speaker 1: do best.
Speaker 3: But you've just said the magical word, which is react.
Speaker 3: So to your point, that driver is not alone on
Speaker 3: the track. They're there with nineteen other racers, and so
Speaker 3: they're not just reacting to the plan and what they
Speaker 3: think is going to be the best race strategy, but
Speaker 3: they're also having to look at what the other hey
Speaker 3: their teammates, is going to do, but also what the
Speaker 3: other drivers. So it's also about understanding the strategies of
Speaker 3: the nine other teams, something that I had never realized
Speaker 3: there are people who sold job or a big chunk
Speaker 3: of their job is listening to all of the other
Speaker 3: team radios.
Speaker 1: That'd be fun, that's fine, but you also know that
Speaker 1: someone's listening to your radio.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all the teams can hear all the driver's radio
Speaker 4: while they're on the circuit, you know, if they're talking
Speaker 4: about some specific you know, set up stuff in the garage.
Speaker 4: Once their cars are plugged into the umbilical we call them,
Speaker 4: which transfers all the data. You can't hear the intercom then,
Speaker 4: but when the drivers are on the track, you can
Speaker 4: hear everything, and you will often hear other teams talking
Speaker 4: in code.
Speaker 2: Brabo Zito seven on bliss, Brabo Zito seven on.
Speaker 4: We're on Plan A, we're on Plan F.
Speaker 2: It's too late for Plan G. Take this work.
Speaker 4: And sometimes you have to ask the driver very directly.
Speaker 4: You know, there's no prescripted ways to ask how's this?
Speaker 4: And you say, how's this tire behaving?
Speaker 2: Would you like to have a new medium to go
Speaker 2: through the traffic or prefer new heart question?
Speaker 4: And the driver has to say, this tire is destroyed.
Speaker 4: It's five laps old. The front right tire is gone.
Speaker 4: You can't hide that from your competitors.
Speaker 1: Come on, there's got to be some disinformation being thrown around.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you can have a little bit of disinformation in
Speaker 4: terms of pitstop dummy calls.
Speaker 3: So you know how when they come out for the
Speaker 3: pit stops, everyone's already in place and there's about twenty
Speaker 3: and it's a fair amount of people. It's twenty people
Speaker 3: get ready to do a pit stop. But sometimes you
Speaker 3: will hear on the radio saying stay put, stay puts,
Speaker 3: don't move, don't move. The idea for that is they're
Speaker 3: not giving any warning that they're about to send their
Speaker 3: driver into box, right, so they're asking the rest of
Speaker 3: the team in the garage to not look like they're
Speaker 3: getting ready, and so that's part of it. I just
Speaker 3: think it's so fun. Same with the drivers, they'll say
Speaker 3: hold it, hold it, hold it, and at the last
Speaker 3: minute the box box box.
Speaker 2: Box, I stay okay, just got it.
Speaker 4: There's a little bit of that, But honestly, teams struggle
Speaker 4: sometimes to tell the truth and get everything right. They're
Speaker 4: not gonna play too many games and risk that going wrong.
Speaker 4: And like, oh, we were just joking. I thought we
Speaker 4: talked about that in the.
Speaker 2: Meeting, I was at the entry man in trouble.
Speaker 4: Big risk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it would be really fun to hear
Speaker 1: the communication between an NFL football coach and the quarterback.
Speaker 1: And that's what this feels like. Yes and f One
Speaker 1: one of my favorite parts of the whole thing, besides
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what S, M and H meant
Speaker 1: thanks to all the was the was the radio communication
Speaker 1: and now I am a communication major important to me
Speaker 1: and it's very important that people in my life are
Speaker 1: good communicators, not just emotional communicators, actual words.
Speaker 3: What do you want?
Speaker 1: Clarity? And that is so important at this level because
Speaker 1: you're going twohundred miles.
Speaker 3: An hour to the point here where you don't just
Speaker 3: it's not with your intonation that you guess that it's
Speaker 3: a question, but they actually fell out.
Speaker 2: You do five more laps question question.
Speaker 1: I love that. The other thing that's interesting military.
Speaker 4: Teams have spent time with experts that are from military
Speaker 4: backgrounds focusing on communication protocols and loops, so that you know,
Speaker 4: the idea being say the most information you can and
Speaker 4: the fewest words with no ambiguity in your message.
Speaker 2: So boks, now books box, Now, how's the ballots?
Speaker 4: How's the ballots, how's the balance, every touch you know,
Speaker 4: and then the engineer knows what to do with that.
Speaker 2: Okays?
Speaker 4: Did the wealth of information and context you get from
Speaker 4: that is very clear. So that's that's going back to
Speaker 4: the point of you know, the driver and engineer speaking
Speaker 4: a language. And that's not only that, that's clear communication
Speaker 4: between the driver and engineer. To add a little bit
Speaker 4: more context to that, when when let's say, my old
Speaker 4: job was performance engineer, and my job was to feed
Speaker 4: the race engineer with very specific information about the driver's
Speaker 4: performance and the car's performance. The race engineer also needs
Speaker 4: to talk to the strategist, He needs to talk to
Speaker 4: the control systems engineer, the tire technician who's preparing the tires.
Speaker 4: So if I'm going to tell my race engineerage, I
Speaker 4: don't have two minutes to tell a message that's a
Speaker 4: lap and a half. I'm going to tell him whatever
Speaker 4: message I need to tell him in less than five seconds.
Speaker 4: Questions have to be clear, Statements have to be clear.
Speaker 4: The brakes are on fire, stop the car now is
Speaker 4: a very clear message. You know that. Those are the
Speaker 4: kind of things. So the breake calipers are over the
Speaker 4: critical threshold. We have to do something now, you know,
Speaker 4: that's a that's a that's a very critical message that
Speaker 4: you need to be clear and concise intonation clarity.
Speaker 3: Well, if you're Ferrari, you actually say question.
Speaker 2: Can you do ten more laps with your set question?
Speaker 4: You know, here's here's a good thing. Talking about communication,
Speaker 4: Ferrari get a lot of abuse for when you hear
Speaker 4: the race engineer apply to the driver, the driver will
Speaker 4: ask the race engineer question, I.
Speaker 2: Think the fuck?
Speaker 4: You know. The race engineer says.
Speaker 2: Good, check out, okay, copy that we are taking it.
Speaker 4: And people have made a meme about that. But that
Speaker 4: is a spectacular message. That message says I've heard you,
Speaker 4: I've understood the question, and I'm asking the people who
Speaker 4: are experts at that thing to look into that thing
Speaker 4: for you on it. You know, because if you ignore
Speaker 4: the driver, the drivers driving around one hundred percent flat
Speaker 4: out steam coming out of the ears, did engine you
Speaker 4: hear me?
Speaker 2: Was my message? Clear?
Speaker 4: So we're checking and usually you know, the mean misses
Speaker 4: out when they come back know everything's fine, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: and then the car catches on fire. No no, no.
Speaker 3: Sounds like race engineers would make phenomenal husbands. I've heard you.
Speaker 3: I'm actioning your request. I'll be right back.
Speaker 4: I'm choosing to ignore you now.
Speaker 3: At least you know what's happening.
Speaker 1: I would assume drivers are not encouraged to text to
Speaker 1: text and drive.
Speaker 3: Not expected to check your emails during the race.
Speaker 1: I've said a lot of emails while driving. I hate
Speaker 1: I hate to know.
Speaker 5: We had another thing. We hope our listeners will not
Speaker 5: take an example of from Michael.
Speaker 3: The thing that I love about all of this is
Speaker 3: most people's first language is in English.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Everyone just speaks bad English and everything gets lost in
Speaker 3: communication and translation. And it's kind of wild that these
Speaker 3: drivers are expected to make decisions on communication that the
Speaker 3: beat of a second.
Speaker 1: Do they all agree to use English just because it's
Speaker 1: the most universal, or do they have to?
Speaker 3: They have to Two reasons for that. One is broadcast rights,
Speaker 3: so that everyone who tunes in can actually get it
Speaker 3: in this what they call the default language.
Speaker 1: Which is English.
Speaker 3: I believe the two accepted most widely accepted languages across
Speaker 3: the paddock is actually English, French and Italian a lot
Speaker 3: because of Ferrari.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: But as we discussed, hasantoness Andomobile is actually a French federation,
Speaker 3: So French is a big you know, a big, big
Speaker 3: language throughout the paddock.
Speaker 1: As well, even like communication. Yeah, this human component is
Speaker 1: so important in this sport. Yes, that's pretty cool. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. You know in the sport I come
Speaker 1: from tennis. The coach they're now allowed to coach. That's
Speaker 1: a new and they're kind of just they're kind of
Speaker 1: going like move forward, you know, they do the thing
Speaker 1: with their hand or it's like back up. But it's
Speaker 1: like it's like Caveman communicating. You listen to an F
Speaker 1: one race and it's like they have secret codes they've
Speaker 1: met on what plan this means? You know, it's at
Speaker 1: such a heightened level. I think if we were all
Speaker 1: honest with ourselves, we would admit that when we drive
Speaker 1: our cars and talk on the phone, we're bad at both.
Speaker 1: I'm bad on the phone and I'm bad driving or
Speaker 1: I'm worse, like it's made me worse. Maybe not a
Speaker 1: bad driver on the phone, but I'm not as a tune.
Speaker 1: And these drivers are driving competitive professionally for money two
Speaker 1: hundred miles an hour and having a very direct, quick
Speaker 1: conversation with somebody.
Speaker 4: It's a skill. The ability to drive a racing car
Speaker 4: at two hundred plus miles an hour, you know, insane
Speaker 4: cornering and breaking forces on the body, feeling what's happening.
Speaker 4: They're physically exerting themselves in there, perceiving what the car
Speaker 4: is doing and how the car is behaving, and then
Speaker 4: they're thinking of something else that the engineer asked them
Speaker 4: about a corner ago, replying to that while still continually
Speaker 4: processing all that information as they're going around the track.
Speaker 4: And we refer to that as bandwidth or CPU. That
Speaker 4: a driver has. A driver that's able to drive quickly,
Speaker 4: perceive what the car is doing, be able to tell
Speaker 4: an engineer what the car is doing if they're asked,
Speaker 4: and then also engage in a conversation about something else
Speaker 4: is happening. Drivers that have a high bandwidth or high
Speaker 4: big CPU, they can do all of that. Some drivers
Speaker 4: might struggle a little bit at first. For example, I
Speaker 4: talked to Liam Lawson the other day about his first
Speaker 4: time driving the Alpha TOWERI and he told me that
Speaker 4: he spent the entire time between when he knew that
Speaker 4: he was going to drive the Alpha Tower car until
Speaker 4: he got into the car talking to the engineers about
Speaker 4: the switches and settings, an operation of the steering wheel
Speaker 4: in the car.
Speaker 3: Can you learn that? Is that a skill that you
Speaker 3: can acquire? You don't, or you do? You come to
Speaker 3: the table with that skill.
Speaker 4: I think you learn it once you get really good
Speaker 4: at the driving the car fast bit, your CPU load
Speaker 4: reduces and then you have more capacity to take on
Speaker 4: board other things. But we've even seen max or staping
Speaker 4: at times. Don't tell me lat of times. Leave me alone.
Speaker 4: I need to get to the end.
Speaker 2: Please stop talking about it. The breaking.
Speaker 3: This is why I can't wait. And this is cheeky,
Speaker 3: but this is why I can't wait for us to
Speaker 3: have actually more women on the grid because they're phenomenal
Speaker 3: at multitasking, and so I'm just like, if men are
Speaker 3: capable of doing that, just you wait until the women
Speaker 3: who are so used to multitasking come there and who
Speaker 3: have great communication skills.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to add a little communication dig there,
Speaker 1: but that's something we'll say for a season three.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you said like one stop, two stops. That's referring
Speaker 1: to pit stops, correct, And why is that such a
Speaker 1: big difference because the pit stops I've seen a Formula
Speaker 1: one are under two seconds.
Speaker 3: So there's two ways to look at the pit stop.
Speaker 3: There's the pit stop which is the changing of the wheels.
Speaker 3: Nowadays we don't refuel and we don't change anything else
Speaker 3: unless there's a crash and you need to change the
Speaker 3: wing as well.
Speaker 1: So it we're just because they're not allowed to refuel.
Speaker 3: Right, not allowed to refuel. That was banned and brought
Speaker 3: back then band the gap mostly for safety reasons. Just
Speaker 3: we had some actually yos for staff and Max with
Speaker 3: Stappen's father got into a terrible pit stop crash refueling
Speaker 3: moment which wasn't pretty.
Speaker 1: Flash Oh my goodness me, Well now, just let's keep calm.
Speaker 5: Didn't stop him from sending his son.
Speaker 1: Didn't wait, So you're racing on the same tank of
Speaker 1: gas the whole time.
Speaker 3: Yes, And you bring up another point, which is when
Speaker 3: we're thinking about the permutations of the strategy, you need
Speaker 3: to account for the car in fact, where the car
Speaker 3: gets light and light. So that's crazy, which is why,
Speaker 3: by the way, if you've ever looked when they do
Speaker 3: their times during quality or free practice, sess they're doing
Speaker 3: it on a much lighter tank because they're only using
Speaker 3: what they need for that quality session, which means also
Speaker 3: that the car is lighter, which means they can go
Speaker 3: a little bit faster.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've looked at these cars. I don't see
Speaker 1: how they could fit enough gas to go three hundred
Speaker 1: kilometers at that at that highest speed.
Speaker 3: It's interesting and I'm we will need experts to help
Speaker 3: us on this.
Speaker 2: Finally.
Speaker 1: Nice to have an expert around.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Fuel strategy was one of my old jobs when I
Speaker 4: was a performance engineer at the track. So my job
Speaker 4: was to say how much fuel do we need to
Speaker 4: put in the car? Are we going to have to
Speaker 4: save fuel during this race and communicate that clearly with
Speaker 4: the engineering drivers say, hey, we filled the tanks and
Speaker 4: you're going to have to lift and coasts at the
Speaker 4: end of every straight for the start of the race
Speaker 4: to save fuel, you know, and that's a really important thing.
Speaker 4: Lifting and coasting is a very efficient way to save
Speaker 4: fuel without losing lap time. And that's your goal. Go
Speaker 4: as least slow as possible, right, So you know that
Speaker 4: is fine, and then you say, right, well, we're saving
Speaker 4: fe fue following this car. You know, we're not going
Speaker 4: as quickly as we thought, We're not burning as much fuel.
Speaker 4: How does that impact our fuel strategy? Okay, do we
Speaker 4: you know what, We're going to not have to save
Speaker 4: fuel later in the race as a result of following
Speaker 4: this car or something else has happened. Or let's say again,
Speaker 4: going back to the slow car. Let's say that you're
Speaker 4: five years ago in your car at the back of
Speaker 4: the field. You're not going to do the entire race distance.
Speaker 4: You might finish a lap down so you can take
Speaker 4: literally one whole lapse worth of fuel out.
Speaker 2: Of the car.
Speaker 4: Do you do that or not? Because if there's a
Speaker 4: safety car, you might be back on the lead lap,
Speaker 4: but you will have saved fuel under the safety car,
Speaker 4: so there's all sorts of kuld it would have should
Speaker 4: us in the very rarely I think in modern Formula
Speaker 4: one can you be a hero by being aggressive on
Speaker 4: fuel because there is no refueling.
Speaker 3: You also need to ensure that you finished a race
Speaker 3: with at least one litter of fuel in your tank
Speaker 3: so that the FIA that bring back the FIA can
Speaker 3: test to ensure that they're using the right kind of
Speaker 3: fuel that they will allow you to use. If you
Speaker 3: do not finish the race and you don't still have
Speaker 3: a liter of fuel your race is done for.
Speaker 5: Right, lots of pickup on the way, lots of pickup
Speaker 5: slow on the way in safe you safe?
Speaker 1: That's very cool. Yeah, insane planning to have it be
Speaker 1: that way.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Going back to the pit stops though, yes, two aspects
Speaker 3: to know about the pit stops. You've got the actual
Speaker 3: pit stop changing of the tires, which that is generally
Speaker 3: sub two seconds, that's what they aim for. I think
Speaker 3: the fastest here was one point eight second.
Speaker 1: Change all four wheels in one point eight seconds. Can
Speaker 1: we stop for a second just to appreciate that.
Speaker 5: Why don't we actually stop for one point eight seconds?
Speaker 5: So ready and we're done.
Speaker 1: Boom.
Speaker 3: Then you've got the actual pit stop time, which is
Speaker 3: going into the pit lane driving slower because you have
Speaker 3: to obviously load in coming out, and that's round fifteen
Speaker 3: to twenty seconds. So there's two ways of looking at
Speaker 3: So when you think about a one pit stop or
Speaker 3: two pit stop, it also depends on which tie you've
Speaker 3: got on. You have to change your tires at once
Speaker 3: and do soft compound or hard compound or medium compound.
Speaker 3: And there's a whole conversation that we will have about
Speaker 3: that in the tire episode or to do it, but
Speaker 3: you basically map out that on a soft tire they
Speaker 3: will last less long, but you will go faster than
Speaker 3: on a hard compound tire. And so this is some
Speaker 3: part of the game theoryus, do we do soft tires
Speaker 3: where we can faster, but we're definitely gonna have to
Speaker 3: do two pit stops to then change them on to
Speaker 3: something else, Or do we start with hard tires where
Speaker 3: they're going to last a lot longer, but we're gonna
Speaker 3: go not as fast. And so you're trying to game
Speaker 3: also what everyone else is doing, which is why when
Speaker 3: you watch a race you will see next every name
Speaker 3: if they've got a h or if they've got an
Speaker 3: s an M to tell you what tires they are.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, yeah, it's a lot.
Speaker 3: It a lot.
Speaker 1: I do wonder there's so many more people personnel staff
Speaker 1: than the driver. Yeah, but the driver actually has in
Speaker 1: this case his hands on the wheel. Is the driver
Speaker 1: just a pawn in this game? I mean, clearly, these
Speaker 1: are super ego athletes who believe they should be at
Speaker 1: the helm of a rocket ship. Ye, so you got
Speaker 1: to let them do their thing. But basically you're saying
Speaker 1: the game strategist is like, hey, do this turn left here?
Speaker 1: You're pitting here. So if F one is a chess game,
Speaker 1: then these drivers are just the pawns. Is that what
Speaker 1: you're saying, No, I let me just check in with
Speaker 1: the game strategists and I'll do whatever they tell me.
Speaker 4: That is a great, great question, because at the end
Speaker 4: of the day, the driver can say I would like
Speaker 4: to do forty laps on this soft tire. It's like, hey, buddy,
Speaker 4: we've looked at your teammates or your competitors. They're doing
Speaker 4: fifteen laps on that tire. You could do sixteen. If
Speaker 4: you do twenty laps on this tire, you're going to
Speaker 4: lose four positions done. You know that those are the
Speaker 4: kind of conversations and through time you build up poor
Speaker 4: between the driver and engineer. And at the same time,
Speaker 4: also the drivers have a reasonable understanding of expectations and
Speaker 4: then leave it to the engineers to help refine those
Speaker 4: expectations as they learn more during a race or during
Speaker 4: a season. But yeah, the drivers for sure have ultimately
Speaker 4: say and very many times you will do things that
Speaker 4: don't make sense because the data says this isn't possible.
Speaker 4: The driver says, no, don't worry, I can definitely do
Speaker 4: five more laps. You trust the driver on those situations
Speaker 4: very often, but they don't know everything.
Speaker 3: I actually don't know of any other sport where the
Speaker 3: main athlete celebrates the rest of their team as much
Speaker 3: as they do. In Formula One, you will often hear
Speaker 3: even Max wist happened that gets a lot of hate.
Speaker 3: More or less every race, at the end of every race,
Speaker 3: will say.
Speaker 2: What an unbelievable today. That was so enjoyable to drive.
Speaker 3: Thank you to the team. That was a great pull,
Speaker 3: that was phenomenal, strategy, strategy, well executed.
Speaker 2: I think up really proud. That was unbelievable.
Speaker 3: And he's not the only one. Lewis Hamilton is the same.
Speaker 3: Charle Leclair carlor signs. They all generally, when they have
Speaker 3: a really good race, you will hear them say phenomenally
Speaker 3: well executed, that was the great call. Or when it's bad,
Speaker 3: they'll say, hey, we need to rewhoop and we talk,
Speaker 3: you know, and talk about this. This wasn't good. I
Speaker 3: think it's one of those that we can't. You can
Speaker 3: build the fastest car in the world if you don't
Speaker 3: have the right driver. Great you've got a fastest car
Speaker 3: that's not going anywhere. You can have the best strategists
Speaker 3: in the world that can play out the whole thing.
Speaker 3: But if the race engineer isn't taking the right decision
Speaker 3: and communicating that to the driver in the right time,
Speaker 3: and the drivers and executing, then what's the point? And
Speaker 3: I think it's that connection between all of those pieces
Speaker 3: that just makes this sports so as big Tag, even
Speaker 3: the logistical team are Formula one if the car parts
Speaker 3: are not arriving on time. Fun fact, all teams can
Speaker 3: only start unloading all of their cargoes and opening everything
Speaker 3: once everyone has received their cargo. So if there's a
Speaker 3: team that's delayed, everyone is delayed, which again I like,
Speaker 3: it's like you know, and they'll talk about.
Speaker 1: It, you forgot to pack the steering wheel. Shit, the
Speaker 1: whole race.
Speaker 3: Is canceled and you will Actually, I know this is
Speaker 3: not the strategist and this is more the engineers, but
Speaker 3: the engineers and the mechanics will often talk about the
Speaker 3: camaraderie amongst the teams. They're like, on the track, we
Speaker 3: take it all out on the track. We are not friends,
Speaker 3: we are folks. We are enemies. One of us is winning.
Speaker 3: Everyone else is not winning. But if you miss a
Speaker 3: hammer or a screw driver or component, yeah we're going
Speaker 3: to help you because if we were in that situation.
Speaker 3: So there's a camaraderie there amongst the teams, and I
Speaker 3: think you can see that on the team as well.
Speaker 1: Starting to feel like a huge team sport.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, that's so perfect. And it is a
Speaker 4: team sport. And it goes back to the first part
Speaker 4: of the conversation we had. You have the driver, you
Speaker 4: have the car, and you have the team. Operationally, all
Speaker 4: three of those things have to be in harmony. Otherwise,
Speaker 4: the best driver in the world, with the best car
Speaker 4: in the world on the worst strategy will not win.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what else isn't going to win a
Speaker 1: podcast with no funding.
Speaker 3: Yes, let's break restponsors and we'll be right back. And
Speaker 3: we're back.
Speaker 1: So this seems obvious, but game strategy is about decisions
Speaker 1: made during the race.
Speaker 4: No, yeah, there's there's there's a whole like, yeah, that's
Speaker 4: really good because when we talk about strategy, we're talking
Speaker 4: about stuff in isolation. But you have other strategic considerations.
Speaker 4: For example, teams are limited by the number of power
Speaker 4: units or you know the engine and electrical systems together.
Speaker 4: What if you could find half a second lap of performance,
Speaker 4: but you had to fit five more engines. And when
Speaker 4: you fit a certain amount of engines outside of re allocation,
Speaker 4: you start taking grid penalties. So there's definitely times in
Speaker 4: which you're considering that. Even bigger strategies and considering the
Speaker 4: broader scope of the season is developments. For example, which
Speaker 4: car upgrades are you going to bring? Where do you
Speaker 4: want to bring a new car package to a weekend
Speaker 4: when you only get one practice session, or let's say
Speaker 4: the first half of the season is all tracks that
Speaker 4: want a lot of downforce. Are you going to develop
Speaker 4: a wing for your car that's low downforce in the
Speaker 4: first part of the season. Now you're waiting until you
Speaker 4: need that low downforce wing. You don't need your huge
Speaker 4: wing until Monaco and that covers you for Singapore. You
Speaker 4: don't need your super low wing until Spa or Manza,
Speaker 4: which covers you for the other one of those. But yeah,
Speaker 4: So understanding the season as a whole, understanding what's important
Speaker 4: when also influences stuff that's happening at a factory in
Speaker 4: terms of the design and build of these cars. Rather
Speaker 4: than what's happening on the weekend. And that's a whole
Speaker 4: different strategy and a whole different caniforms.
Speaker 1: So not just hey, pitstop and right now. They're also
Speaker 1: looking at overall everything building the team. It's getting the
Speaker 1: right driver.
Speaker 3: Blah blah blah, everythink that's like a data point they
Speaker 3: are looking at and bringing in. Teams are always looking
Speaker 3: to which is what I love, Always looking at the
Speaker 3: next thing. They're like, cook, or we've got we've got
Speaker 3: this car, what does next year's car look like? And
Speaker 3: that's what was interesting by this year is twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: There was the biggest overhaul of changes and the car
Speaker 3: was fundamentally different than anything that we'd seen before. And
Speaker 3: some people, some teams were going to you know, come
Speaker 3: out the door swinging and have a phenomenal teams and
Speaker 3: phenomenal car, and some teams were going to come out
Speaker 3: and go, oh, we missed it, like pretty badly. But
Speaker 3: that's what was exciting about this season in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: three because everyone was able to go back to the
Speaker 3: drawing board and go, Okay, cool, we know what works,
Speaker 3: we know what doesn't. If something did work, let's focus
Speaker 3: on that more but it is always like a forward thinking,
Speaker 3: future thinking sports.
Speaker 1: You know, none of this communication can happen if the
Speaker 1: internet is lousy. Oh yeah, that's is that where that
Speaker 1: fall under the logistic party.
Speaker 3: I see getting the cable set up cables at this
Speaker 3: at these races are insane. They the cable guys and
Speaker 3: then mostly men. But the cable teams arrive on the
Speaker 3: Monday day before like the next day.
Speaker 1: They arrive Monday, but they give you a window and
Speaker 1: they show up between twelve and.
Speaker 3: They show up at seven am and they're laying the cables.
Speaker 5: I wish cable would logistics is everything?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: All this determined? Woulds?
Speaker 3: I'll be the judgment judge. Yeah, if you think the
Speaker 3: cable management system we have got going here is is
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Tricky and the law you wait, yeah, I do find
Speaker 1: it interesting to learn about F one strategy. A lot
Speaker 1: of this is new to me. There's a lot of factors,
Speaker 1: ins and outs that never would have occurred to me.
Speaker 1: And I'm realizing now going forward, maybe we could have
Speaker 1: a new strategy. You just tell me what to do
Speaker 1: and I'll do it. I'll be a good little George
Speaker 1: Russell and I'll go pit whenever you want me to.
Speaker 3: So we're going back to plan A. Then I'm going
Speaker 3: to need communication.
Speaker 1: I'm going to need a yes, back to plan A
Speaker 1: non question, non statement.
Speaker 5: This has been Choosing Sides f one, a production of
Speaker 5: Sports Illustrated Studios, iHeart Podcasts and one oh one Studio Podcasts.
Speaker 5: The show is hosted by Michael Costa and Tony Cowan Brown.
Speaker 5: This episode was edited, scored, and sound designed by senior
Speaker 5: producer Jojai may Thaddle. Scott Stone is the executive producer
Speaker 5: and head of Audio, and Daniel Wexman is Director of
Speaker 5: Podcast Development and Production Manager at one o one Studios.
Speaker 5: At iHeart Podcasts, Sean Titne is our executive producer. And
Speaker 5: a special thank you to Michelle Newman, David Glasser, and
Speaker 5: David Hootkin from one o one Studios. For more shows
Speaker 5: from iHeart Podcasts, go visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
Speaker 5: or wherever you get your podcasts, and whatever you do,
Speaker 5: don't forget to rate us and tell your friends it
Speaker 5: really does mean a lot.
Speaker 3: Next week, on Choosing Sides f one, the Data Analyst,
Speaker 3: we will go into why some Formula one fans like
Speaker 3: watching the race with not one, not two, not three,
Speaker 3: but at least five to ten different screens open simultaneously.
Speaker 1: Wow yep.
Speaker 3: And also why some of the nerdier or shall we say,
Speaker 3: more tech savvy fans are reverting to writing specific code
Speaker 3: to actually help them watch and understand and ultimately enjoy
Speaker 3: the pinnacle of motorsports to its fullest.
Speaker 1: What yep, that's that's too much.
Speaker 3: We've only got one screen like.
Speaker 1: Writing code to enjoy. Okay, we'll get into it, Si
Speaker 1: Moll