F1 Explains: Race Engineers - with Haas F1 Team's Laura Müller

0:02While out on track, Formula One drivers hear just one voice.

0:09Unless Toto Wolff has got excited and gone on the radio to speak to his drivers, or a team principal is congratulating them on a win, usually the only person to speak to a driver while they're in the cockpit is their race engineer. It's one of the trickiest jobs in the sport, so you really need your wits about you. But now in this new era of Formula One, has it become even more challenging? Welcome to F1 Explains.

0:45Yes, this is F1 Explains and my name is Christian Hugill talking to you as live as a podcast will ever be and direct from the Formula One paddock. And as we say, we're talking about race engineers this week. And who better to talk to than Esteban Ocon's race engineer, Laura Muller, who made her debut on this podcast last year. And if we were giving out prizes for biggest impact on debut, I think Laura would be right up there. Our listeners absolutely loved her. You emailed us to tell us so. So, of course, we had to get her back on. I'm always very intrigued by the role of the race engineer. It fascinates me.

1:24And as someone that struggles to multitask, I think it might be one of the things I'd be least good at in Formula One. I mean, to be honest, I don't think there's anything I'd be good at in Formula One. They're all extremely clever people. Some would say I'm not particularly good at this. But Laura's job is absolutely fascinating. So we're going to talk to her a little bit about the role in general and how different is it in this new era of Formula One. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to welcome back to F1 Explains, Laura Muller.

1:57laura muller welcome back to f1 explains what a joy to have you back thank you the last time you were on this podcast i seem to remember you making yourself laugh quite a lot which i really enjoyed can we expect any more of the same uh yeah it's it's like that every day is that true yes i look forward to that greatly it was a joyous experience for all concerned i'm worried now just just know where you've got permission to make yourself laugh at any given opportunity. We are explaining the role of the race engineer. We're also looking into what's different in this new era of Formula One. Just firstly, and briefly, start us from way back when.

2:36What made you want to become a race engineer? How did you get into all of this? The favourite story of everybody. So I used to be a Michael Schumacher fan when I was growing up, which made me want to be in Formula One. and then as I was you know getting into motorsports and and all of these things I at some point realized oh race engineer seems like a pretty cool job so I kind of angled myself towards that and then somehow I achieved it. And here you are somehow by being really good at what you do is it a job I'm always fascinated by this in Formula One is it a job you can enjoy because there's so much pressure in all areas but can you say no I really enjoy it or is it just too much pressure you just sort of have to get through it do you do any like um exercise like uh endurance exercising cycling or running or something i sometimes run but i've currently got an injured achilles oh okay sorry sorry to tell you that uh i go to the gym that's about it i'm not a talented sports do you enjoy that while you're doing it or are you just happy afterwards of what you've achieved that in that session excellent question i don't know how you've got onto interviewing me but I'm happy with it.

3:43I think I enjoy the gym a little bit, but no, when it's like a long run, you just want to get through it, don't you? Yeah, so being a race engineer, a lot of times it's just like, it's quite hard to go through the actual thing, but then afterwards you're kind of chuffed with what you've achieved because you get the results in qualifying in the race. So the build-up to it, you know, I enjoy the job, but it's not like joyous. I get what you mean. The joy comes when you've got something out of it. Yeah, no, I get that. And when you've had that great result, when Estaban's got in the points or you've made up positions from qualifying into the race, I guess that's the feeling you're sort of craving.

4:18Yeah. And you can be happy with what you've done. Like, you know, sometimes you come out of a race weekend and it was terrible, but you're happy with what you've done. Like you've done everything towards what you wanted to. No, sure. Sure. That makes sense. That makes sense. Right. Our listeners have been sending you some questions. Would you like to answer them? Yes, I'm so excited for that. Okay, that's good. And our first one is from Lou in Germany. Lou says, hi, F1 Explains team. I'm so excited you've got Laura on. Get this right. I'm a Laura fan first and a Haas fan second. Lou from Germany is loving you, Laura Muller.

4:52Anyway, here's my question for her. We've heard the drivers talk about getting used to the new regs, but how is it for race engineers? Thank you so much. I can't wait for the podcast. Lots of love and good Lord. and Liebe Gruße from Germany. Well done. I think I might have had some help, particularly from producer Chris's pronunciation guides. What does that mean, please? Like happy greetings or with love. That's nice. Thanks, Luke from Germany. You can come on again. Anyway, yes, Luke's question. Laura, we should answer the question, shouldn't we? What are these new regs like for race engineers?

5:26I think they're quite similar, difficult or interesting as for the drivers because, you know, we have, we used to have an engine. we used to have a k but now like the proportions have completely changed so you need to focus just before you go on you say you used to have a k what does that so this is how deep i'm into this thing okay so you have an mguk which is a electrical motor motor generator unit kinetic yes so you've got that so we've used to have that we still have it it's just it's increasing priority because obviously it has to deliver more of your horsepowers so you know now you just have to focus yourself away from your engine power more to your kinetic power um and yeah it's just you know your focus changes a bit you're still trying to make the fastest car now of course with the limitations of where you're recharging where you're charging and all this stuff so you just you've just added another limitation or option to how you set up your car and how much of that new stuff falls on you and how much of it falls on the driver because for those new to f1 we should remind our listeners that the race engineer is the only person the driver can hear when they're out on track should hear all being well um so i'd say a lot falls on the driver as well because they have to kind of understand how to work with this new regulations you know where to deploy more all this stuff they they have to kind of organically understand what loses them time and what doesn't because like a lot of times now it's not about how fast you can exit a corner but how efficient and all these kind of things so they definitely need to have a feel for it but yeah we we spend a lot of time like you know ploying strategies and just thinking oh what about if we add a little bit more here and there so like i do spend much more time now thinking about energy than i did last year and how's that been to get used to uh you know you just need to find more hours in the day it's perfectly fine well if you just got up two hours earlier now is that it yeah we'll go to bed two hours later we were told that qualifying was also going to be a more intense experience for driver for race engineer particularly with making sure the battery's charged before the hot lap how's qualifying been so it has been quite difficult because at some tracks you really have to to get the moment right where you we call it launch so where you go on full throttle just because of you know the deployment regulations you don't want to deploy any energy before you actually need it so the driver had to literally like find a part on track where he knows now i have to go full throttle but now with the new ranks they've changed out so that kind of happens automatically so they don't have to worry about that so much so that was like the intense bit of qualifying up until now sure um but yeah it's also like now you know you have to follow quite a detailed plan on where to you know go on full throttle where to you know do partial and all this kind of stuff and then the driver does like one single thing that's slightly different and oh you lose like half a second there's a lot of pressure on them did you and Esteban have to have a conversation at any point that goes right this is how we're going to tackle these new regs or was that several conversations how did you approach it from a communication perspective between the two of you I think we're still approaching it it's still an ongoing process it's like because everything keeps changing so you know you you kind of have to discuss all the time how much do we talk about it you know because you also don't in the race for example you don't want to tell everybody else what you're going to do and all these things so it's it's still kind of ongoing to find out how to talk about this the best way because you also have to wait until they've you know caught up with how what they would organically do and then how much you talk to them but i mean i've i'm sure you've noticed there's so much more talking now during the race to the drivers it's insane so by the end of the race with the greatest of respect is esther about a bit fed up of your voice now oh i am too it's just like okay laura yes try at seven okay do this okay i get it excellent right our next question is a voice note Hi, my name is Kylie.

9:36I'm listening from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. I'm a long time listener of the pod, but a first time question asker. I've just been listening to the latest episode with Bernie Collins and she mentioned car setup. And it made me wonder, what does she mean by car setup? And what's involved in setting up the cars? Laura has just said, I don't know if that was caught on mic, but what are they setting up? Laura just said, the car. Thank you very much, Laura Muller. Join us next week. We have to do it every time I come on this. We have to do one of those jokes. I think I do. Thank you, Kylie from Australia.

10:15I wonder if it's the Kylie Minogue. Kylie from Australia. That I've just told a really mean joke. If it is, well, regardless, we apologise for the joke. You weren't offensive. It's absolutely fine. Talk to us about car setup and where your role as a race engineer comes into it. What are you guys discussing between you? What is there to set up? So the setup of the car broadly means the suspension setup of the car, the ride heights, the downforce, all these kind of things. So everything you can kind of see that's attached to the chassis. So, you know, the boat in the middle, that's what you can set up.

10:50So, yeah, there's a lot to do. I mean, this year we obviously have a lot less downforce. the whole aero is a bit less complicated at least for us don't know if it's the same for everybody i'm sure it is i'm sure it is um so we talk a lot more about like suspension stuff and all these things but um you you decide like how to how to balance your your aero loads how to balance your mechanical uh loads and stuff i don't know how deep you want me to go into it but basically Basically, normally, the lower the car is, the better it is for aero performance. The lower to the floor. Yes. This year, less so, but that definitely used to be the case.

11:31And then you also have to balance out your tyre degradation with, you know, one lap performance, all these kind of things. So you need to think a lot, not what's best right now, but also what's best for the race and all these things. So there's a lot of little screws to turn. because to talk more broadly about the role of the race engineer we hear a lot in the race as we said earlier you're the the point of contact for the driver but a lot of it is taking what the driver said feeding it back to the team right and that that must have a big impact on car setup that must be a really important part of the job especially during the session because you obviously have data so you look at squiggly lines you see what's happening on the car does this align with the driver comments but if you have a very short turnaround in session you just sometimes have to just listen to what the driver says like if they say oh i can't turn the car you just need to do something for that sure you don't you don't have five minutes to be like oh yeah in turn seven i can definitely see that it's got to be quick yeah so yeah yeah you rely on you know their feeling because they're also driving the car so you just react up on that and that reaction comes i mean i get suggestions but in the end i i have to decide what to do yeah of course of course and for those newer to Formula One, not being able to turn the car.

12:43Doesn't help, does it? No, no, it's usually slow. Yeah, it's not good. Famously, lots of corners on Formula One circuits. Next question is from Caroline from Wisconsin. We're recording this episode in Miami, as we've mentioned, and the sun's now so bright, I'm struggling to read the question. So bear with me. Caroline from Wisconsin. My question, I look like a nana. It's a shame this is a podcast because I look like a nana squinting at a television. My question is about pit strategy. Thank you, Laura's sheltering the sun from me. Specifically around safety cars. During the Japanese Grand Prix, Kimi Antonelli mentioned on the radio that he got lucky with the safety car because of when Oscar pitted.

13:17But I don't fully understand what he meant. Could you explain the strategy and frustration around pit timing during safety cars? When and why would a driver choose to pit or not pit when the safety car is deployed? Thanks so much. I love the show and all the insight you share. That's a lovely email. Thank you very much, Caroline. Laura, why is the safety car both friend and foe for you guys during the race? Should have asked that to Bernie. unfortunately bernie was on a couple of weeks ago so yeah we miss it but you can answer that as good as bernie collins that's that's uh the my favorite question um what you don't want to do when the safety car comes out is to have pitted the lap before that's that's the biggest problem yes which usually we somehow manage to do that especially when it's our car that then crashes and yeah it's not ideal yeah that wasn't great but basically so under a safety car the time loss for a pit stop decreases by around about 10 seconds so you know if everybody is pitted already and you can then pit you gain 10 seconds on everybody and that's quite simply because under a safety car everybody goes slower everybody goes slower so if you can dive in the pits and get your pit stop out the way you're going to save time because the rest of the field is going slower yes and as the race engineer when that sort of thing happens how much do you have to be on your game?

14:36Because I'm guessing you might be about to receive a lot of information because you're the only one talking to the driver, but you must have a lot of people talking to you at that point about what to say to Esteban if there's been a safety car, for example. So during a safety car, you have a lot of time to talk to the driver, which is nice and terrible at the same time, because you try to just pump all the information into him that you can, which means I get a lot of information. Yeah, of course. But a lot of it is just like, you know, where are we in the race what's you know what's to gain you know who's pitted what we're thinking how the tires are holding up this kind of stuff but um for me like as soon as a safety car comes out my first call is to the strategy guys to be like do we pit now or not if we haven't just pitted or i say well that's great yes or you shout at them yeah or just into the void yeah bernie said this actually bernie said to us on the podcast that sometimes it's a bit like yes i'm not a miracle worker guys I can't help that we've just pitted.

15:32It's like, that's not my fault. Yeah, sometimes you just open the channel and you just scream the F word really loud. And that just, it's not directed at anyone. It's just outside of you. It's just nice to get it out, I imagine. And you'll be surprised to know, Laura, that us watching at home, that gets edited out. We don't hear that so much. I hope not. No, there are broadcast regulations. There really are. Lovely question. Thank you very much, Caroline.

16:03the next one is from lucy in north carolina which i shall now attempt to read again lucy says given how secretive formula one teams are what criteria is used to judge which car will be the fastest early in the season where does that information come from and how much of those predictions is data driven versus informed guesswork obviously before you even go get there there's not much data there's just you know talk you know of course then you've got toto saying oh yeah we're really struggling and then you know that's on motorsport.com and then everybody's like oh yeah mark's really behind even though he probably just said that so far this season mercedes haven't been struggling famously they're doing all right but it's basically before the season started everybody was like oh yeah i think ferrari's doing really well oh no i think mark's really ahead that's just gossip really but then like after the first race you can obviously see who has stuff a bit more under control.

16:56It's not really who has the best, the fastest car per se, but who's got the most control of the regulations and all this kind of stuff. You get a better idea. But every time you've got like an upgrade package from somebody coming, you don't know. They could just be two tens faster all of a sudden and you never know until you get the little sheet that from the FIA that says, this car has added this little winglet or something like that. But also sometimes a car could look quick and qualifying and then not have the race pace. Sometimes you just don't know until the green, well, there aren't green lights in Formula One, are there famously?

17:28The lights just go out. How long have I been covering the sport for now? Lights out and away we go. Lights out and away we go. It doesn't say green lights. It doesn't say green lights. Croft, he'd be furious with me. Wouldn't he? Absolutely furious. Until the lights go out or they turn green or they light up, whatever they do nowadays, you just don't know until the race starts sometimes, do you? Good news for you, Laura. We've got another Laura Muller fan. Basma from London sent us capital letters. You've just done a little jig there, which I enjoyed. saying, I'm Laura Muller's biggest fan. And Basma says, you're an inspiration to girls around the globe.

17:58Thank you to your contributions to this wonderful chaotic sports. Would you like to address your adoring public directly? It's really cute. Isn't it cute? I like the wonderful chaotic sports thing as well. Yeah, yeah. I think she got that very right. Weird and wonderful. Weird and wonderful. She's also asked a question. She's not just... Okay, she's not just telling me how great I am. That's really unfortunate. which listen for i'm all for her saying how great you are but for a question-based podcast it helps that she sent in a question thank you basma basma says how long did it take you to move up the ranks in formula one how many positions did you have before your current one of race engineer and what were they also do you have any she's laughing before the question which is always a good sign also do you have any general advice for young girls aspiring to have a career in the competitive world of f1 let's do that in two parts firstly and you started laughing at this how many positions did you have before this one?

18:48Just because I was looking at Jess. So. Why was Jess from Housemaking Laugh? Because she obviously knows my story at this place. Ah, okay. So how many positions did I have? I had three. Two of them were basically the same, but they just called it differently. Sure. Oh, there's a lot of that in F1. People love a creative job title, don't they? Yeah, head of nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hello, I'm head of nothing. Pleased to meet you. I've heard stranger. I really have. but yeah i basically started as a simulator performance engineer but you know i wanted to be a performance engineer on the car so i just worked towards that so um then i became a performance engineer at some point um much later than i was already doing the job which is also something completely normal in formula one and just briefly explain the difference we've done this on the podcast before but between performance engineer and race engineer okay so this depends on the team as well sure so the the race engineer obviously i think in most teams is the person who talks to the driver that's the like the main main difference the performance engineer works towards the race engineer gives options does all these things but in some teams they're more setup based and in other teams they're more tools based so we're talking about differential setup and brakes and all these kind of things sure so in our team they're a lot more setup based because we have an additional controls engineer which is another position that works in like my very close team and we've also had tom stallard on the podcast before who is currently oscar piastri's race engineer but has previously been a performance engineer and he was saying to us a lot of his time as a performance engineer was working with the drivers just one example you know we've seen on the data uh lando for example might be braking a bit later here so you can do that a little bit working almost like a driver coach in some ways with some of the teams and then the second part the question and presumably before i do that you went from performance engineer to then race engineer yes yeah i did it's actually quite funny because sometimes like my performance engineer asked me something and then i forwarded him an email from like two years ago and i was still like a simulator engineer and he's like this is weird and then the second part uh of the lovely question that we had from basma um was what advice you'd give to young girls who aspire to have a career in formula one that always is a very difficult question because every every person's path is very different and every goal is different of course yes so it very much depends on what you want to do some areas are more difficult than others but um also like a lot of people think you have to like immediately like direct yourself into engineering into motorsport all these kind of things but like you know a lot of paths lead to Rome so for me yes you should probably study mechanical engineering if you want to do something in F1 but you can do aerospace engineering you can also do material sciences because there's a lot of tire people who need to be an expert in that so there's a lot of paths to go to different roles and then for for strategy roles a lot of people are just mathematicians because that's its probability so um yeah you just look what you're actually interested in then you study that and then yeah depending which country you're in you should just do some low level motorsport stuff like you know formula four all these kind of things and you just how to get a job there you go to the track as a fan and then you just like go to the teams and you're like oh hey do you have a data engineer or something like that and then you just like offer your services it's really good advice because it's not the case in formula one for obvious mainly security reasons but there are motorsport series where you can walk through the paddock as a fan quite happily and you can do that it's really good advice uh laura you've got to go in just a second just finally we've got time for one more voice note hi christian my name is sean de Merce from Nashville, Tennessee.

22:32I'm a relatively new listener to the podcast after getting into F1 over the last year. My question is, why do the race engineers tell the drivers to box instead of telling them to pit? Thank you. Laura, I think this is one of the most frequently asked questions that I've asked of race engineers over the years. So why box instead of pit? I think it's just because it's just more obvious on the radio because pit, you know, you can misinterpreted but like boxes is very obvious just one specific thing yeah absolutely and pit is a smaller word even though it's not a smaller word to box but it's a smaller sound which they could think it's that you're saying hits and they're like who front or behind and also apparently it gets confused for radio static and things like that whereas box is clearer is the is the uh theory anyway i should have talked to our ridel guy before this Laura what's the frequency of pits the frequency of pits compared to box here we're going very geeky but listen if there's any place to do it it's on a Formula 1 podcast isn't it yeah maybe the next question of somebody could be more deep into the frequency that is a challenge for our listeners if you think you can go even deeper geekiness than that email f1explained at f1.com Laura thanks for coming back on it's so much fun to talk to you our listeners as we've said there are certain names that we say in previous episodes to say coming up and all of a sudden the inbox lights up and your name is definitely one of those our listeners really do like you so thank you for coming on the podcast and explaining the role of the race engineer and how it's changed in this new era of formula one laura thank you thank you it sounds like we're like middle ages now or something from the roman empire i really like laura muller i think you could probably tell in that interview, which was just absolute brilliant chaos.

24:25I said to producer Jamie after we'd finished recording, and I stand by this, the reason I love speaking to Laura is because when I'm interviewing her, I feel like I've barely got control of the interview and the podcast. I'm sort of, I think they call it flying by the seat of your pants broadcasting. And that's what it feels like interviewing Laura Muller. You don't fully know where she's going to go or what she's just going to laugh at. Because last time we spoke a lot about her laughing at herself. I think she's just one of life's gigglers. And it's lovely. Listen, Formula One's a very serious sport, but we all should appreciate the total madness of it and not be afraid to have a good laugh.

25:00And that is what Laura does. And she's got a wonderful working relationship with Esteban Ocon, who last year on this podcast said to us that Laura is the hardest working person Esteban has ever come across at motorsport. And that is high praise indeed from Esteban Ocon, who said hello to me at the Miami Grand Prix last weekend. Lovely man. I was sat editing, sat editing away in the stadium section. and he tapped me on the shoulder and said hello. Friend of the podcast, Esteban Ochen. I think if he's tapping me on the shoulder and saying hello, I'm officially classing him as friend of the podcast.

25:27Fair, producer Jamie? I think that's absolutely spot on, yeah. It's nice that someone says hello to you, isn't it? It is. It's a rare occurrence. Yeah, exactly. Esteban was the only person I spoke to other than you one weekend. Lucky us, eh? Other than Laura, of course, as you've just heard. In all seriousness, thank you so much to Haas, who are great supporters of this podcast, and to Laura. Coming soon on F1 Explains. we're going to be tackling one of the topics that you've emailed us most about in our years of doing this podcast this is the start of season four now yes and we've never got around to it until now we're going to be talking about the role of the media and press officers in formula one with a legend of the position sophie argh who used to be at williams and used to be at mclaren so that's coming soon and i'm also very excited that also coming soon to the podcast to explain how to rise effectively through the motorsport ladder to get to Formula One.

26:19And the various routes you can take is Juan Pablo Montoya. And as an early 2000s baby of Formula One, someone that grew up loving the sport in the 2000s, speaking to Juan Pablo is exciting for me. So coming soon, I'll fanboy Juan Pablo Montoya on the podcast. That'll be fun. Of course, now racing is back, you can get previews and reviews with F1 Nation with Tom Clarkson and the gang right here on this feed. And we've got F1 Beyond the Grid for fascinating stories from fascinating people from in and around the Formula One world. We, of course, here on F1 Explains, have new episodes every Friday.

26:52So please don't forget to hit follow, like or subscribe to get a little handy notification whenever we pop up with a new episode. And until then, we shall speak to you next week. From all of us on F1 Explains, from the F1 paddock, bye for now.