F1 Explains: pit crews + 'straights' vs 'straightaways' - with James Hinchliffe + Calum Nicholas

0:06Hello everybody, welcome to F1 Explains. My name is Christian Hewgill. This is the official Formula One podcast which exists to answer your questions on this wonderful sport we find ourselves watching at, well, a lot of our lives. I mean, I do. Anyway, I don't know about other people. this is one of our quick fire episodes you email f1explains at f1.com and we take these episodes to pause and round up all the I guess any other business questions that sit in our inbox that maybe don't merit a whole episode but we can put to an esteemed panel of guests and what a panel of guests we've got an F1 Explains veteran F1 TV expert, presenter and IndyCar race winner James Hinchcliffe James welcome back your first of the season but far from your first F1 Explains exactly right Christian Thank you so much for having me.

0:52Always a pleasure to be on the show. We love having you. And we have a newbie making an F1 Explains debut, let alone a quickfire debut. Former Red Bull mechanic turned broadcaster, F1 TV pundit and author, Callum Nicholas. Callum, welcome to F1 Explains. What a joy to have you here. Thank you. I've had a few debuts lately, but I think this is probably the one I've been most excited about. You're a flirt. I know, you must say that to all of them. You must say that to all of them. Quickfire questions, guys. I mean, I say quickfire. It's not like we get through 30 in an episode. We tend to get through about six.

1:23So we could be done by trading standards. A fairly quick fire special. Shall we get going? Let's do it. The first one is from Will from Chicago. Now, we often say when we have someone like Bernie Collins on, who's a strategist, I wonder what our first question is going to be. We've got a debut mechanic. So I wonder what our first question is going to be. Will from Chicago says, I was wondering if each driver has their own pit crew or is there just one crew for both? Hinch, who shall I throw this to? Do we think for the first one?

1:50James Hinchcliffe:We're talking F1, right? Maybe the guy that's done it. Callum, a lot listening to this podcast will know exactly who you are. For those who maybe aren't aware, give us a brief bit of your background and your former life. Yeah, okay. So, yeah, I'm Callum, Callum Nicholas. I spent 13 years working as a mechanic in the Formula One pit lane. In that time, most of it being with Red Bull Racing, but in that time, you know, I've won two Constructors' Championships, four Drivers' Championships, and Max Verstappen, and seven consecutive DHL pit stop awards. So I do know a little bit about a pit stop. Oh, you know a lot about a pit stop.

2:22So to answer Will's question, does each driver have their own pit crew or is there just one for both? It is ultimately one pit crew for both drivers in the garage. Now, when you see cars in there, they're separated, obviously, one side of the garage to the other. And you have your own car crew that will help build, assemble, maintain the car throughout the weekend. But once we step out into the pit lane, it is one pit crew, one team, one dream. and hence these guys as well they don't just have one job which always I think staggers a lot of people it certainly surprised me these guys do so many different things around an F1 garage over the course of a weekend is that unusual for Formula One is that your experience across the

2:59James Hinchcliffe:different forms of motorsport you've been in no I in IndyCar it's very similar in the sense that everyone that goes over the wall has some other role outside of doing pit stops and so you know all the men and women that have to commit to being, you know, extra fit and do the extra training, the extra practice. It is an extra massive responsibility as well. You're doing that on top of your full-time job of, you know, whether you're a mechanic or a truck driver or tire engineer or whatever it is. The big difference between F1 and IndyCar is in IndyCar, each car does have its own crew. Only seven people go over the wall, so much fewer than what you see in an F1 pit stop.

3:34James Hinchcliffe:And then kind of on the other side of it, the NASCAR side, they've actually gone to dedicated pit crews in a lot of senses. So a lot of times Saturday night, they'll fly in the pit crew. They don't touch the car. They're not mechanics. They are just essentially a lot of them are athletes, whether it's former pro or maybe collegiate athletes that are trained specifically to do the job in a pit stop. Callum, you guys need better agents because you guys are athletes, too. But you guys are all doing so many different jobs across a race weekend. Well, yeah, I mean, I often describe pit stops in Formula One as like the ultimate side hustle.

4:06Yeah. Because it's not our number one job. You know, for me and my time in the pit lane, especially with Red Bull, I was the senior power unit assembly technician. That was my main role was building and maintaining all of our engines over the course of the season. But actually, the reason that I wanted to work in Formula One was to go and do pit stops. That's fascinating. Right, let's stay on the subject. Raylan from Washington, D.C. British listeners, not Rylan. Raylan says, hello. So I listen to the show a lot and I was wondering why the pit crew does not stand in the pit lane ready for a pit stop the whole entire race instead of sitting down in the garage.

4:42It's a long race. It's a long race. That's basically, you know, that's pretty much all that is to it. You know, you don't want to be stood out there, especially, you know, imagine places like, for example, Qatar, where, you know, it's 30 odd degrees and you're wearing a fireproof suit. You don't want to be stood out there all day. So, yeah, we need to take a break and we get a nice early warning of when a pit stop's coming up. But Raylan from DC is a harsh taskmaster. So if he were running a team, you'd be out there, my friends, getting wet or getting hot. I wouldn't be out there for long before I found another team.

5:12Raylan? Raylan's team might be ill-staffed. Don't employ Callum, Raylan. He's not interested. To be fair, that's not bad advice for anyone. on that note and by the way i should say um we've got lots of new listeners to f1 explains this year so if you are new to us and you missed this scroll back on this feed to earlier in the year around about the time of the miami grand prix because last season we were embedded within the has team during a race and a massive part of that show was learning about what the pit crew do during a race so that's on this feed scroll back to listen but only do that once you finish listening to this episode because it's going to be absolute podcasting gold so staying with us um Callum you've just mentioned that you get advance notice but we all know sometimes in Formula One that advance notice we're talking seconds rather than minutes what happens when you get the call okay so in an ideal world you want to let your pit crew know that you're thinking about boxing about a lap ahead of time so they need to be able to mentally physically prepare themselves get ready you don't want to give too much away because your competitors are looking in the front of your garage doors and you don't necessarily want them to know that you're going to box but for the crew to need to know at least a lap ahead of time is really helpful but then when it comes down to it and the car's about to enter the pit lane entry we get essentially a 15 second call so we will get a radio call that will give us 15 seconds to get out there and in position because in 15 seconds time there's going to be a car sat in that box and one of the many things i learned in that episode that i didn't know before was the formation of the seats in the garage so we often see the cutaways during the TV coverage if you guys sat on seats that is a particular formation that you are putting in order to be able to run into the pit lane in the best possible way so you're not tripping over each other.

6:56Absolutely. We've got a seating plan. There's like a nice little diagram with everyone's names. Yeah, a little bit like that. But no one's bringing you any cake or champagne unfortunately. All you get is some tyres. Although in the Haas episode they did bring them cookies at one point in the race. Did you get that at Red Bull? I'm going to go and have a word with them later. You need to. Because there's only so much Red Bull you can drink. Although what I will say is that the energy station crew, they do make some pretty incredible homemade ice lollies, which in the hot place is really nice. I've seen them give those out, but I've never had one.

7:23Now, this next question, I need a bit of pre-explaining. One thing, guys, you're going to need to know for this question is that me and F1 TV commentator, your friend and colleague, Alex Jakes, are deeply sad men. And because of that, stay with me, because of that...

7:39James Hinchcliffe:No, I was already there. I'm well aware, yeah. You knew this. We all know this. And you won't mind me saying, In a recent episode of F1 Explains, we got excited over the reference of a niche flag. The black flag with an orange disc, which is shown to drivers. Callum looks confused. Callum, do you know? It's fine if you don't. I know. You just explained to everyone else. You don't know. I don't have to worry about flags, do I? That's true. That's true. That is a driver's job. That is the flag shown to drivers with damaged cars. Actually, you should know because they need to pitch for a repair. Yeah, it's a mechanical black flag.

8:15James Hinchcliffe:It is a mechanical black flag, yeah. We call it the meatball flag back home. This is it. Oh, sorry, did I pre-empt the question? No, brilliant. Let's start again. Eric from the USA has got in touch and says, I've done some track days here in the US, and it's where we call it the meatball flag. Is that not a universal term? Well, clearly, Hinch, I don't think you can answer this question because you immediately said the meatball flag, so you know it is the meatball flag. Callum, you haven't heard of it in the first place. This is the first time I've heard of this flag. You're of no use to us. Anybody know what that flag's called?

8:45Anybody? Anybody here? It's been mentioned on the pod before. I raced carts. Yes. I never once heard it called the meatball flag. But you knew the flag? Knew the flag. Yeah, okay. It was just... That means your cart wasn't put together very well. Yes. Poor dad. Sorry, dad, if you're listening. Same. Getting slated. He won't mind. I was of no help. Yes. It was just given the less catchy title of the black flag with an orange disc. However, Eric from the US has questioned the answer is fundamentally no, it's not. But we thought we'd run with this. So welcome to a new feature that we're going to creatively title.

9:21Are things the same in North America as they are in Europe? With James Hinchcliffe. It's a working title. Hinch. Yes. We would call in Europe a straight. The definition of that, if you're new to Formula One or life, is a bit of track with no corners. In North America, what is it called? It's called the straightaway. Which is brilliant. Yeah. And completely unnecessary.

9:47James Hinchcliffe:Why is it called the straightaway? I don't know. It's just... And, you know, the only reason I know this is because I was doing, I forget what year it was, we were in Mexico. I was doing a trackside hit for F1 TV, and I referred to the very long front straightaway and got absolutely roasted on Twitter by people. And I was like, what? So now I'm not, I won't lie to you. If you listen to my IndyCar commentary now, I call it the straight because in North America, you still know it. When you say the straight, the front straight, the back straight, they know what you're talking about. Oh, so no one in the US gives you grief for calling it the straight?

10:21No. Okay.

10:23James Hinchcliffe:It's interchangeable, straight or straight away in the US. So to just never trip over it when I'm on this side, I now exclusively call it the straight because it works both places. I prefer straight away. It sort of makes it feel quite game show. Sounds quite immediate. It does, doesn't it? But ironically, the longer it is, the longer it takes, it's less immediate. I don't know. I'm having a nice time. Right, next one is the link between the team, the engineer, and the mechanics is the race engineer. Hinch, race engineer. Do you know what our deep research, i.e. producer Chris, He believes that the race engineer is called in North America.

11:02I think I know where you're going with this. Go on.

11:04James Hinchcliffe:Yeah, I feel like you're wanting me to say strategist. No. Crew chief. Crew chief. Crew chief is a very NASCAR term. It's a NASCAR term, is it? So, yes, essentially the race engineer, the responsibilities, roughly speaking, of what you would call a race engineer in either IndyCar or F1 is what you would call the crew chief in NASCAR. A crew chief in IndyCar is kind of more like a car chief. Like a chief mechanic. Yeah. Next time we get Laura Muller on the podcast, she's become F1 Explained sort of resident race engineer, largely because she's hilarious. She's also very insightful and very good at her job.

11:38Yes. She won't mind me saying that. I'm going to put to her that she could become crew chief. She'd love that. She really would. The team principal means the boss in North America. Boss?

11:52James Hinchcliffe:This isn't Chris's best. It's not bad. Team owner? Team manager? Team manager is what Chris has been. Yeah, we don't use principle. We use team manager. Team manager, right. And finally, the time when the teams aren't allowed to work on their cars or even the location where teams aren't allowed to work on their cars, we call Park Fermi. Again, North America has definitely got it better. Hinch? We don't usually have that. You're allowed to work on your car a lot. If it were to be locked away. Impound. He's nailed it. Wow. I've never heard that. That's a very NASCAR term. So fundamentally, this feature is North America and NASCAR.

12:30James Hinchcliffe:Yeah, well, North America, yeah, it's North America, right? That's where it is, yeah. But we do occasionally actually use that in IndyCar. We don't have a lot of situations where the cars are impounded, so it took me a second to realize what you were talking about. But yes, impound is very much a term, which is the same as Parc Fermé. That's interesting in itself. Parc Fermé is a real, it was even a thing when, again, when I was racing karting, Parc Fermé is a thing. It's a mechanic's dream. Yeah, I bet it is. engineer's nightmare mechanic strength yeah the longer you can spend in part ferme the better yeah there's nothing else you can do um that's interesting in itself that that is that less of a thing in north american racing yeah it really is it really is um and i've had this conversation with i remember i had a really good chat with james vals about it because i as a driver and actually as a fan i i didn't love part for my rules because in qualifying i want the car to be set up for qualifying to go as fast as absolutely possible where now you have to sort to make some compromises on the qualifying setup to be good in the race.

13:26James Hinchcliffe:And so, you know, as a fan, I wanted the fastest possible lap time. He explained all the logistical reasons and all the, you know, curfew and the extra hours that would add. And a lot of it is because of man-woman power, it is to get people to rest and stuff. So yeah, absolutely. One area that's worked really well in Formula One is we now reopened Park Fermat in between sprint races and qualifying for main race. And that's meant that sometimes we can watch a sprint and we think we know the direction of the weekend's going to go, but it can be changed. Lovely. Again, mechanics preferred it the old way.

13:55Oh, I bet you did. Part of me from the beginning all the way through Sunday. I bet you did. Listen, we're going to go for a break now, but we're not topping that. Do come back after the break. I'd love to say it'll be even better, but it won't. That was a wonderful feature that I thoroughly enjoyed, but still, we'll be back in a second on F1 Explains.

14:20welcome back to F1 Explains our quick fire special with James Hinchcliffe and Callum Nicholas here in the F1 paddock we are now going to go to Australia for our next question Lachlan from Canberra in Australia Lachlan starts his email with hello my name is Lachlan from Canberra in Australia makes sense doesn't it? arguably I didn't need to read both of those out but we are where we are I love the show and thanks for the wonderful array of awesome people you get on the show to answer questions you're very welcome got two here my question relates to the pit stop cruise okay you know when we're throwing this one in don't you here we go it seems as though mechanics on both sides of the garage are required to fill all the positions needed to execute a fast pit stop what happens if you have the mechanics on one side of the garage frantically working on a damaged car to get it back on track as fast as they can but the other team needs to come in for a pit stop what happens then i've never thought of this lovely question okay now in my 13 years in the paddock i can probably only think of one example where it would actually be a problem and that was many many years ago with daniel ricardo when we got him out he started the race but had a problem so we pulled him in on lap one and we were trying to fix it now realistically if you have one car that has a problem and has to come back to the garage you are just going to park it because it's not like endurance racing where you can make up the time potentially in another time in the race so what tends to happen is we just put one of the cars back in the garage push it over to the side and everybody stays focused on the pit stops for the other car that makes perfect sense and I guess Hinch in Formula One it tends to be very rare as Callum says that a problem means you are going to be in the garage for a minute two minutes three minutes because then they've done many laps and it's almost you're not going to get any points it's pointless going back out there unless you're looking to test I guess.

16:06James Hinchcliffe:Which we do see teams do occasionally right especially early in the season extra especially during the beginning of a new rule set I mean we've seen that a couple times already I think days that didn't start well for certain teams they still got their drivers back out there plodding along 10 laps off the pace, maybe until 10 laps to go, they'd finally pull them in. But when there's something to learn, engineers can never have enough track time, right? So if they have an opportunity to learn something, there's no reason to not go back out if you can. I did actually think of one other example that we had with Checo a couple of years ago in Japan, whereby we knew we had a penalty to serve.

16:38So at the time we were like, well, if we can get this car back out on the circuit and serve this penalty, even though we're going to box it anyway, but if you serve the penalty this week, it means we weren't going to take a grid penalty the following week. Excellent. Yes, I remember it well. Yeah, I do.

16:51James Hinchcliffe:I've seen McLaren do that in the last couple of years as well. That does happen. Yeah. Lovely example. Our next question is from Kesley, who is in Chicago and has recently started watching F1. Kesley, you're very welcome. And Kesley says, listening to the podcast has been super helpful. We are glad to serve. Kesley. Kesley says, my question is about teams switching tires during free practice. I noticed that the Mercedes team would put wet tyres on the car before wheeling the driver into the garage. Is that a normal occurrence? And if so, why does it happen? Kesley, I've been watching Formula One since the late 90s.

17:24I've never noticed that before. Outstanding spot. So basically, this is a logistics thing. When you're coming in, you want to try and use every opportunity you can in practice to get some pit stop practice in for the crew. Now, what you don't want to have to do is take off one of your good race sets of tires you don't have to take it off heat just to do a pit stop practice so a lot of the teams will use their wet sets especially if you're a race where you know you're not likely to use them anyway they'll use those just to do those pit stop practices that's all it is brilliant makes sense i'd never know these teams have thought of everything they really have haven't they i mean you do see some race weekends where there is a nought percent chance of rain you can guarantee that's the race that i've not bought my waterproof boots and jacket and it will inevitably rain yeah absolutely I mean the Canadian Grand Prix I will never trust any weather forecast nor should you no there was an episode of F1 Explains from back in the day where Lawrence Barreto was being pelted by hailstones but gallantly continuing to answer the question which I really enjoyed the next listener who has sent us a question to F1 Explains at F1.com says that if his question gets asked he'll do a happy little dance so Jason in Australia get dancing good news Hinch give Jason some tips I should explain that reference for those that don't know.

18:38Hinch, by all means, you may. Hinch has been on Dancing with the Stars. I have. And did very well, didn't you? We gave it a good run. We gave it a good run. For a guy that sits for a living, that was, yeah, not bad. Absolutely. Jason, get dancing. Jason says, is the cost cap equal for every team, or is it based on where you finished the year before? Hinch.

18:59James Hinchcliffe:The cost cap, to my knowledge, is the same for every team. uh what's different in the constructor standings are things like the prize money higher up you are the more you get uh where and then the the flip side of that is things like wind tunnel time and cfd time uh the lower you are in the championship the more you get but um but no otherwise it's uh even across the board just remind us what cfd is uh computational fluid dynamics obviously which is essentially obviously which is essentially just um like a computer modeled wind tunnel run You know, it's basically a computer simulation program where you can put a digital model of the car, a digital model of new aero bits, and without actually building a component and taking it to the wind tunnel, get a sense of what you think will be the best for the car.

19:47James Hinchcliffe:So you spend a lot of time doing that. It takes a lot of time, a lot of energy, so a lot of money can go into it. So the teams are actually restricted in how many CFD runs, essentially, they can do. But the lower you are in the Constructors' Championship, the more freedom they give you to do more runs. And the cost cap is equal for every team, but it's gone up from 135 million US dollars plus inflation in 2025 to 215 million dollars in 2026. And Callum, as it's your first time on the podcast, if you could explain inflation for us and how it impacts global economies. I'm joking, of course. I'm joking.

20:20I mean, I could.

20:22James Hinchcliffe:Important to know that the part of the reason it went up was it includes a lot more than it did. So it's not just like, here's like 80 million more dollars to play with. It's because a lot of things that were excluded from the cost cap are now being included in it. And this is why he anchors F1 TV broadcast, because I make rubbish jokes and he adds actual F1 information. Lovely work from Hinch as ever. Kat says, I often see scrutineers in the garage during sessions. Is there a scrutineer in every garage for every session or do they randomly come and go? What sorts of things are they looking out for?

20:54Callum, you must have seen a scrutineer or two in your time. I do. In fact, I feel like some of them, when we go from place to place around the world, I feel like I know them. A lot of them are volunteers, so they'll end up in the same pit lanes year on year. But yes, every car will have a scrutineer assigned to it. They will be in the garage floating around, keeping an eye on stuff. And they'll see you working and then you'll see them write down what you're doing. And you're like, I'm not doing anything wrong. Why are you writing it down? But they're just there to keep track of what's going on in the garage because the more they know about the way you operate the car, the easier it gets for them to understand what they know you're allowed to do, what you're not allowed to do.

21:29And then if obviously if they have to report back to the FIA and stewards, then they're in a better place to do it.

21:33James Hinchcliffe:What are some of the kind of smoking guns they'd be looking for? Like what's a pretty obvious one that you couldn't quote unquote get away with? Not that you would try to, but there's a lot of intricacies in an F1 car and the technical regulation. So if a person, if a scrutiny is standing in the garage, what are they really keeping an eye on? Okay, so, you know, for the first two practice sessions all the way up to the start of qualifying, you're pretty much allowed to do anything. So for those sessions, those scrutinies are there to just sort of keep a record of the things you're doing. And they will still write down what you're doing.

22:01Like if they see you doing a roll bar change or a suspension change, they just like to keep track of this stuff. In terms of like the red flags, once you're in qualifying, I think the biggest one is making any sort of adjustment to your suspension geometry. Cooling without the FIA declaring that there'd been a change in weather conditions. You can't then change any cooling panels. um there are what's what's quite interesting is that you end up with quite a good relationship with scrutinators because they need to understand things that they're not necessarily that like will fully understand so they they become quite friendly um but even they're looking for things like fia seals there are loads of things on the car that are sealed by the fia um and they have like a little temp you know a sticker that you can't remove that will have a number on it and they keep track of those make sure you've got the same bodywork panels on the same cooling panels and that nobody's breaking any of those seals.