ON
TRACK WITH RICK PEARSON - ISSUE 27
By
Rick Pearson
Welcome to the tenth of this year's columns. For the next couple of weeks, we are going to do something a little bit different for 'On Track'. I have written a pair of articles, based on a lecture I gave at the Cranfield Institute of Technology describing the relationship between a driver and his engineer. But in the interests of free speech and the right to reply, we have invited Rob Friend, my own long-suffering engineer, to contribute a response each week from his point of view! Could be interesting...
THE DRIVER'S VIEW. Obviously there are some current examples of great driver/engineer relationships, famously Michael Schumacher and Ross Brawn, Jacques Villeneuve and Jock Clear and even Tom Cruise and the old guy (Robert Duval) who told him he had "a special matched set" of tyres on his NASCAR in Days of Thunder! For someone like myself, racing in a series that doesn't require pit stops and doesn't allow pit-to-car radios, once the light goes green the race engineers job is limited to waving a pit board at his driver each time he passes.
This doesn't mean that the race engineer has an easy life: When the jobs for the race weekend are broken down, the allocation of tasks is driver: go as quickly as possible; race engineer: do everything else! This ranges all the way from making sure the car is at the track with the right tyres on rims and full of fuel before the race to approaching the girls in the nightclub afterwards!
The race engineer's weekend starts in the days leading up to the meeting with the race preparation of the cars in the days before departure. Every nut and bolt on the cars will need to be checked and tightened, the braking system will need to be checked over and consumables such as pads and discs replaced. Plus any damage from the previous round will need to be repaired (or bodged, depending on the budget!)
The cars and as many tools, wheels and spares as the truck can hold will then need to be loaded up and trekked across great tracts of the UK or Europe at 50mph! Upon arrival at the circuit, no matter what time of the night it is the awning has to be erected and the cars unloaded. This is a multi-man, multi-hour task but since the race team sleep in the truck, there is nowhere for them to sleep if the cars are still in it!
The first day of the meeting will usually be devoted to testing and when the driver breezes in from his luxury hotel (or in my case, the part of the race truck with carpet on the floor!), the car needs to be washed, warmed up and ready to go. The basic settings will have been chosen at the race prep session but may now need to be softened off if the track looks damp or the driver looks as if his reactions might be a little slow! A softer car is a bit more forgiving and the race engineer might choose to play his driver in carefully if he's not been in the car for a while. The tyres that are likely to be needed during the day will have to be acquired and fitted to rims and beacons set-up to ensure the telemetry is going to function.
If the circuit is unknown to the driver or team, it will need to be walked around to discuss lines and condition of the track, its kerbs and particularly apexes. Often done upon arrival (so as to avoid having to help set-up the awning), before the light fades. (After which, at a BTCC meeting, you stand a fair chance of being run-over by Yvan Muller on his pushbike, flat out in the dark). So by the time the cars venture out on the track, the race engineer has had a pretty tough time of it.
Testing is where the engineer makes the major contribution to the race weekend. If you can get to run in mixed conditions, the driver and engineer will need to find set-ups for everything the track can throw at them, with the engineer watching the times posted by the other drivers and then working out the point where running on slicks is quicker than running on wets and ensuring that there is a set-up in the book for all scenarios. The engineer will have a predetermined idea of the developments he wants to try and will need to fight the perennial battle with the driver to persuade him that although yes, it's going very quickly and yes, he can understand that the driver is enjoying being top of the timesheets and seeing P1 each time he hurtles past the pits, unless he keeps trying new things, the opposition might find a better set-up and by then his tyres will be shot and comparisons will be worthless!
The engineer will also need to make his first big mental call of the race meeting. Do you put your driver out on new tyres at some stage of the day and try and post a really quick time to scare the opposition or do you stay on old rubber and try and keep your true pace hidden? Or, if you will be changing tyres during qualifying, the handling of the car on two hot tyres and two cold ones might feel very strange and the driver might benefit from experiencing this to get use to it beforehand.
Next week I'll look at what the race engineer has to go through to ensure that his driver gets the best from the car and doesn't arrive on the grid a gibbering wreck. But before that it is worth relaying a story about testing I heard told by an Italian ex-F1 driver, just so that my race engineer knows he doesn't have it that tough:
There were two Italian brothers (who will remain nameless as I've forgotten it!) that were running together as a family team in Formula 3 many years ago and had gone to their local circuit testing. Mid-way through the afternoon session, they have the track to themselves despite it being one of the F1 facilities with which Italy is blessed and as one of the cars is sat in the pits being repaired, the other car is heard spluttering out on the far side of the circuit before going silent.
The slightly embarrassed engineer realises that the car has probably run out of fuel and keen to make up for his mistake grabs a fuel can and sets off at a trot towards the back of the circuit. Ten minutes later the car arrives back at the pits and the driver climbs out, removes his helmet and gloves and then suddenly turns a little pale. He jumps in his road car and sets off up the pitlane and back out onto the circuit.
What transpires is that, pleased to see that his engineer had jogged all the way out to the far side of the circuit, the driver had suggested that to save his legs (for the engineer was no spring chicken), he should perch himself on the sidepod of the car and hang onto the rollcage while the driver coasted back to the pits. unfortunately, he'd forgotten he was there and come back at full speed. They found the old guy face down in the gravel trap, still clutching the fuel can and O.K. (if a little grazed).
Next week, the race weekend! Rick.
THE ENGINEER FIGHTS BACK. Hi, my name is Robert Friend, otherwise known as Rick's race engineer at Mark Fish Motorsport. Over the next few weeks, I'll be writing a few columns to coincide with Rick's musings as he looks at the crucial relationship between the driver and his engineer.
I have to say that before agreeing to put pen to paper, I read quite a few of Rick's columns. I was pleased to see that I've made a few guest appearances along the way, so I hope that I can give my side of the story in just as an informative manner. On the other hand, I also want to show you how I see Rick from the other side of the pit wall (you're in trouble now Rick!).
I've been with Mark Fish Motorsport for four years and in that time I've completed two seasons of the Super Coupe Cup - which regular readers will know from Rick's tales of mayhem in the Renault 5 Turbo- and two seasons in the TOCA supports, first with the Ford Credit Fiesta Challenge and most recently with the new- for-2000 Elf Clio Renaultsport UK Cup. As I'm writing an article and not an autobiography, I'll get started on what I believe is one of the most important days of the race weekend for the team and driver; the official test day.
Renault limit testing to official runs during the season so that they keep costs down and ensure that we all get the same amount of track time. Testing is obviously a very busy day for the team and I usually have a list of several things that I want to do and try on the car. Most of the time, we do manage to work through them all but there are occasions when Rick simply will not play the game and no matter what I do, he'll carry on flying happily past the pitwall, ignoring the IN board I'm shaking at him.
When he does behave, the first and most important job is to get the car set up for qualifying. We'll try different camber angles and tracking to get the tyres working to their optimum and get the car handling to Rick's liking. Sometimes, I think Rick says he likes the car the way it is just so he can get back onto the circuit and start going selectively blind to my IN signals on his pit board. He denies it of course..
Another test day job is to work out fuel consumption per lap. This is extremely important because different circuits use different amounts of fuel per lap depending on their individual characteristics. Thruxton for instance, is very quick so Rick'll use more full throttle there than he would for somewhere like the Brands Hatch Indy Circuit, which is quite a bit slower on average per lap and significantly shorter. It's important to get the fuel consumption right in testing because you don't want to hamper the driver by having him carry too much fuel- and therefore more weight than necessary- during qualifying and the race.
Rick's fondness for Renault Danishes and Bacon sandwiches also means he carries a bit more weight than some of the younger drivers anyway. He denies it of course. He once told me that our top-of-the-range electronic scales were out of calibration because they said he was heavier than the not quite so top-of-the-range set he has at home! Put like that, testing probably doesn't sound like that much hard work, but if you add a mixed bag of wet and dry weather, constant shifts between wets and slicks and repairs to the car if your driver falls off the circuit at any point during the day, then time flies.
Rick's quite good when it comes to keeping it on the black stuff during testing, but a particular Brands Hatch test springs to mind because he did seem to be having a particularly bad time of it. About mid-morning, he hit the tyre barrier and had to have the car towed back to the garage. I spent the rest of that session and half of the next putting it back together again so he could get back out onto the circuit and get a few more laps in. Because he had locked up while coming off the circuit, he'd flat spotted both front tyres. So, I fitted two new slicks and told him to take it easy for the first few laps so they could warm up and start to work with the car.
Rick listened to the advice, got in the car, drove up the pitlane and completed half of his out lap before hitting the barrier again and burying the car in the gravel trap. The two new slicks were destroyed. When the marshalls finished digging the car out and delivered it back to me in the garage, I could tell by the glazed look in Rick's eyes through his helmet that we were all about to witness a proper bout of toy throwing and dummy spitting. Being the sensible sort, I stayed out of his way and quietly re- built the car for the second time. After I'd done removing a good portion of the gravel trap from around the garage, he went out, went fastest of the day and then won the weekends race.
Not bad eh!
If Rick's still talking to me next week, we'll move onto qualifying! Rob.