Rob Smedley explains what makes a good race engineer in Formula 1—while also criticizing the decision-making ability of some team strategists
Rob Smedley has criticized some modern race engineers for the time it takes them to relay important information to the drivers. In a conversation with former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer and host Jake Humphrey on the High Performance Racing podcast, the experienced engineer provided insight into the intense dynamics between the pit wall and the cockpit.
“What makes a great race engineer? It’s someone who understands the driver and can always optimize his position,” said Smedley. “Whether in qualifying or in the race, in my opinion, a good race engineer should have a very good understanding of aerodynamics. You should have a very good understanding of tires. You should have a very good understanding of the mechanical systems on the car and know how to optimize all these things to make the car fast.”
“But you also have to understand what makes the driver tick. Not just his driving style, but also that person’s psychology. They’re athletes, right? So you can’t just say, ‘This is the best way to optimize the car according to the simulation. This is what we’re going to do.’ Because the person behind the wheel might say, ‘Yeah, but that doesn’t suit me. I don’t like that. It gives me too much understeer or too much oversteer.’
What doesn’t make a race engineer
“Whatever it is. So you have to constantly be in the driver’s head. And for me, you also have to translate. The drivers aren’t engineers. They aren’t trained that way. Most drivers have learned the vocabulary of race cars through experience. And each of them interprets the car’s behavior in a slightly different way. It’s the race engineer’s job to translate that back to the team.”
When asked what makes a “terrible” race engineer, Smedley added: “I think there are good engineers in Formula 1 today, but I think there are also some pretty terrible ones. I think indecisiveness makes you terrible, as does not being on top of things and not understanding the basic principles—those elements I just mentioned, like tire science, tire dynamics, vehicle dynamics, aerodynamics.“
”You have to understand them. I’m not saying you have to be as good as an aerodynamicist or the best tire experts in the pit lane, but you have to be able to have a conversation with them. You have to understand 80 percent of what they understand. I think if you don’t, you’re fighting a losing battle.”
Decisions take too long
Smedley also criticized race engineers who “take forever to give an answer,” calling this “unacceptable.” “They [the drivers] are in a situation. They don’t understand it. They need help. For them, it’s like they’re driving this car that’s hard to drive and hard to understand,” he added.
“They are the ones stuck in the middle of all this. They need help. They’ll come on the radio and shout, ‘Help me!’ So, I understand that, and then it’s up to the team, especially the race engineer, to get that situation under control.”
“So a good race engineer will get this situation under control very, very quickly. And that brings us back to what I was discussing: How well do you understand the car? How well do you understand the car’s electronic systems, the car’s aerodynamics, the car’s vehicle dynamics? Because you should be able to have 80 percent of the answer ready immediately. And if you can’t do that, you’re not a very good race engineer. ‘I’m just waiting for someone right now.’“
”I’m in Miami on the other side of the world, waiting for someone in Brackley or Silverstone or Maranello—a 22-year-old graduate—to give me a number I need. I’m sorry, but if you’re the race engineer, you have to be much, much better than that. You have to keep all these people on their toes, not the other way around. And that’s the part that drives me crazy when a driver asks a question and it takes forever for the answer to come. That’s unacceptable.”
