P1 with Matt and Tommy - How To Run an F1 Team | Ep2 – BWT Alpine F1 Team personnel

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

This episode is brought to you in partnership with Amazon Music.Have you ever wondered what goes into running a successful F1 team? We have! So, a few days before this year's Silverstone GP, we spent a few days with the BWT Alpine F1 team to find out!Today, we head to Alpine's state-of-the-art Enstone factory to meet two men at the heart of the operation: Engineering Manager, Seb Sheppard and Race Team Factory Support Manager, Paul Seaby. The guys discuss the logistical challenges they have to overcome in their respective positions, how they design and support the cars across a 24-race calendar and just how vital the team's collective spirit and open collaboration are to success on the track. If you want to hear an exclusive Q&A segment where we asked Seb and Paul your questions, you can find it at the end of this episode over on Amazon Music. Click here to listen now! P1 Live is heading to North America this Fall and tickets are now on sale! Click here to get your tickets, which are already close to selling out!Sign up to our Patreon here! You'll get access to bonus episodes, our classic race series, every P1 episode ad-free and access to our Discord server where you can chat with other F1 fans!Follow us on socials! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube and TikTok. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everybody and welcome back to the P1 podcast. Today we're bringing you the second of our episodes we recorded with the BWT Alpine F1 team brought to you in partnership with Amazon Music. Now, we all see what happens on the track as the drivers battle it out on the world's best racetracks, but have you ever wondered about what goes into running a successful F1 team behind the scenes? We did, so we sat down with two men at the heart of the Alpine operation to find out more. Seb Shepard and Paul Seabby work at Alpine's Awesome Factory in Enstone, England. So we headed over there a few days before the British Grand Prix for a chat about their work and the challenges they've faced throughout their long careers in motorsport.

First up, you'll hear from engineering manager Seb Shepard, who spoke to us about how they go about designing different versions of the car for upcoming seasons, what it's like working as part of a collaborative team that loves the sport, and how that team spirit is vital to everything they're. do. We also asked Paul and Seb some of your questions. If you want to hear our Q&A section with the guys and to see if we asked a question you submitted, then head on over to Amazon Music. Just search for P1 with Matt and Tommy and Amazon Music and you can listen to the extended version of today's episode over there. Better yet, you can listen ad free with your prime membership. Right, here's

Alpine Engineering Manager, Seb Shepard. We are here with Seb Shepard, the engineering manager at Alpine. Thanks so much for coming on to the P1 podcast. How are you? Absolute pleasure to be here. What a setting. The backdrop's quite beautiful, isn't it? This is quite spectacular. When you walk in here every morning, has the back of your neck always stand up. When you think about the history, what surrounds you, the cars that you see, the people who work with, amazing. Now the drivers obviously get a lot of attention, but we're here to get more of an understanding of the people behind the scenes, hence why we've got you on. We're going to start with the first question, which is how hard is it to organise the team from a logistical

standpoint, whether that's travel, equipment, transport, time changes, whatever it might be. How hard is that to keep on top of? Well, in my side of the things, we're engineering, so we're mainly factory-based. So there's over 150 engineers here, and we work together with lots of other departments in the factory. So we're mainly based here. We do send people to the races, to the track, and so on, so the travel department does a very good job of doing that. And generally, you tell them where you want to go, who you want to send, and they'll organize it for you.

They're very slick like that. We also have to travel quite a lot to vary where we do the engines, and we have to keep quite a good logistical link with them all the time, because the link between the engine and the car is obviously very important. But apart from that, you know, it's mainly trying to keep everybody here working together, all coordinated, all on the same line, all the same, working the same priorities, understanding what's going on around them, around the departments, around the different sections up and down, up and downstream. So, for example, we'll be doing the engineering, we have to understand what's going on in aerodynamics, what's coming down the track to us. It's, for example, a new front wing or a new rear wing or tweaks to one or another. how fast we need to get them to the track, working together with their manufacturing, trying to make sure that we get those upgrades in as good and a reliable way to the track as possible.

So there's a lot of different departments working together to plan, to organise, lots of meetings, lots of, generally we try to stay away from email, we try and talk to each other. So you would have seen early on in your travels that we have a very open office. and the whole idea of that is that the idea is that there's no sort of silos of offices where you know this is my office or nothing like that everybody's sitting together you can all get up and go and sit in any one of the desk because it's you can plug in any way you want so you can go and sit down with a person that you actually have to work with rather than have to communicate via you know instant messaging or email or so on so what does an f1 team do in the mid-season break

Yeah, well, it's quite nice because in my past experience, I've been outside of F1 before. Generally, you know, some people in the office, some people are off on leave. So you come back to your desk, and there's hundreds of emails. In F1, because of the regulations, and because they've taken into account the fact that people need an off time, everybody has to literally take those two weeks off. So when you finish on the first day of the shutdown, until the last day when you come back, It feels almost as if you've gone off on a weekend. So there's not hundreds of emails waiting for you

and all these things that are really going to sort of stress you out, but you actually have proper time off. That sounds like the dream. That sounds great. It is other than the fact that maybe it's in the most expensive part of the year to travel, but it's, so it's, you know, it compensates. And you don't get, like, itchy fingers and stuff of like, oh, I want to do this, want to do that.

Well, I'm sure, you know, when you do, but the thing is that you know that you're not allowed to. So the FIA law says that you're not allowed to. Therefore, nobody's going to contact you. And if somebody emails you, there's a little out of office thing that says, by FIA regulations, I shall get back to you after the shutdown and so on. So it's quite nice because you actually get a proper break. The families, I think, they really appreciate it.

And you come back and you're really quite refreshed. It's quite a different atmosphere when you come back from holiday. Everybody's been able to really relax and down tools. And now they've also put one foot over Christmas, which has the same effect. So you finish just before Christmas and you come back just after a new year. I guess that's even more important now as the races continue to ramp up. And now we have 24 of them to have that time. Because I imagine just before that break, people are almost looking to that two weeks ago.

And we need to get there. We need to get there. Exactly. But at the same time, it focuses people quite a lot on the fact that when you come back from the charge, down you'll be you'll have to hit the ground running as hard as you were before so we'll be working say from for upgrades for after the shutdown or whatever and you'll arrive literally the day back and you'll straight into it with that same with that same pressure to get the work back except that you'll be more refreshed now we're actually sat pretty much well we've got an amazing Formula one car behind us

so let's talk a little bit about the design of the car and talk us through a little bit of the process from start to finish i'm not expecting you to tell us about all of the individual parts that go into it. But how does that process look like, I guess, going into a new season as things change and then obviously with regulations changing as well? I imagine it can maybe differ a little bit from year to year depending on how much things change. Yeah. So it starts, the FIA are the ones who set the regulations and they're always trying to sort of tweak them and change them. And every soft, every few years, they'll do a great big change. In 2026, we've got a new engine regulations that are coming in. And the idea is that all of that is to keep us all along.

on our toes because eventually some teams get a little bit more of an advantage than others. So they're always trying to level the playing field. So the process starts by in their dynamics department. They'll do a lot of computational fluid analysis to try and get the best shape for the car, the best concept for the car together with our engineers, and they'll start looking at the concept for the car for the next year. And what's within the regulations? You look at the regulations, you try and you look at the regulations, you're trying to interpret them,

what's allowed, what's not allowed. Are there any tweaks that you can, are there any loops that you can find? And you eventually come to a concept for the car. And then you start working together altogether to try and make that a reality for the next year's car. And once everything is more or less sorted out and you've, you've remember that, you've got quite a lot of variables coming in. So once the maximum weight, the other one is the boxes of the regulations of where you have to fit things in, like the rear wing or the front wing or different blocks of the car.

certain weight, sorry, we've talked about the weight, the sense of gravity, all these sort of things all come into into play. And once you've had many, many discussions and lots of interactions with different departments, including can we actually manufacture this, how fast can it when manufacture it, how late can we leave some of this detailed design in order to be able to really maximize that time with aerodynamics, to be able to get the best shape possible to the car. And you're always trying to leave it to the last minute, but without sort of, you know, tying yourself up or painting yourself into a corner. And you do that.

And once you finish the design, then it's manufacturing. Normally over the winter period, which are always trying to sort of manufacture things as fast as possible. And then you come to January, February, when you start testing the car complete before you go tested on the track

in readiness for the first race. So you mentioned about how the departments all work together. What is that sort of process like? Is it sometimes a bit of a, pushing and pulling and just trying to make sure we all sort of get into the right agreement which I imagine quite yeah yeah but it's it's quite interesting because it's a it's a very it's a very nice process in that nobody nobody gets upset it's a very quiet environment as such because everybody respects each other everybody knows that

you're a team everybody's very bright and they know that together they'll come up to with a solution and and and Everybody also understands and knows that if you sort of get upset, that doesn't really help because you will find problems along the way, but you'll sit down, you'll work them out, and you'll find the best compromise. And because you're working on the very edge of the physics, of the material properties, of all these technological challenges, you know that you will get a lot of things right, but sometimes it will go wrong.

And it's about trying to get your team around you to be able to spot some of those and help you out and you'll peer check a lot. So you'll have lots of meetings to understand what's good, what's bad. Hey, have we thought about this? Have we thought about that? And the idea is that if you get to the track, and because the track time has been reduced so significantly

to test these things, you have to try and make sure that you get it not only correct but also reliable. Because you can have a fast car, but if it keeps breaking down on track, that's not very good for the points. And one more thing, sorry Tommy, I've got follow-ups after follow-ups. It was just around those other departments that you mentioned.

Have you worked in those other departments? Tell us a little bit about your journey throughout. So my journey and Alpine started five years ago. I actually came from outside of F1 from Aerospace mainly. And it started in my current position. And we've been basically working a lot with all the different departments to try and make sure that we could break down barriers of between the departments. So for example, aerodynamics used to be based in where the wind tunnel is,

which you would have seen in your walk about earlier. But now we brought most of them into that open area behind us. And the whole point of that is to try and make sure that the people who are working in aerodynamics are together are very close to the people who are working in engineering. And they can literally, if they've got a question, and they stand up, talk to their mate, or they're going to have a coffee, or they have lunch together,

they go for a run at lunchtime. And all those kind of interactions, although they sometimes sound a little bit, you know, trivial, they're actually really important because sometimes when you're sitting at your desk and you actually have to walk to the other side of the factory just to ask a question, it's different to, hey, mate, you know, what about this?

Oh, yeah, things get solved so much quicker and that becomes much more of a team player thing. You mentioned about the new regulations and one thing I thought that would be interesting to hear is about, is it a strange time at the moment where essentially you've got people working on this year's car, you've got people working on next year's car, and you've got people working for a new regulation as well. So like how does that work in terms of how everyone's working on almost like a different Formula One car at some point?

Or is it a case of like you wait a certain amount of time before, for going too far down the line in these things? Yeah, it's always a very tricky balance and that's part of the competitive nature of all the teams is how do you balance out what you're spending on this year versus next year versus the new regulations because you want to try and ensure yourself down the line to make sure that you give yourself the best possible start to your car

by the same time if you stop working on this year's car your competitors are going to get past you and you also have to keep an eye on next year's car because you obviously want to better this year's car. So there's never one solution and it is a little bit fluid but the idea is that you always have to try and make sure that you cover off all your bases

because generally if you get to, we've been working on the 26th car for a while now and you want to try and make sure that you constantly are doing that because little by little you will start putting more and more people on that project and it's not just a clean sheet, but then lots of things have been happening, lots of meetings and concepts have been drawn up, and lots of detail starts coming out of that.

Amazing. Could you tell us about how a race weekend typically looks for yourself? For myself, I'm hopefully at home watching it on the telly, which is quite nice because you get quite a lot of data there. But yeah, I mean, I don't really have to be in the factory. for the race. Amazing. Is that something that is enjoyable as a fan of the sport, I'm guessing, as well,

that you get to actually enjoy it because I guess there's a lot of other people that maybe are in full-on work mode, I'm guessing, during those times. I mean, you've got people from vehicle performance and lots of other engineers who are in the operations room that you would have seen who are there doing the run-up to the weekend, looking at all the systems of the cars, talking to the track saying, you know, just telling them some of the vitals of the car. There's so much data that flows back and forth. It's quite terrifying the amount of data that happens.

And then as the weekend progresses, you get the more strategic side of the race team working in the option. And there will be people even logging from home which have got access to the data. And they're there just in case something happens or a question needs to be asked. And you will have heard also that Jack Duhan spends a lot of time here on the simulator, sometimes late evenings,

just trying to go through iterations of something in order to be able to feed back to the track. So it's quite a combination of depending on where you have to be. I mean, the race team, obviously, they work the weekends and so on. So we're talking different things. In engineering, you're generally looking forwards as opposed to, you know, on the race day itself. Fascinating stuff.

Now, what are some things that F1 fans might not know that you have to contend with when running a Formula One team? Are there any sort of things that go under the radar that you think, oh, they don't really understand? I think fans will generally know that there's quite a lot of work that happens, but they don't quite understand the, or they might not know the level of motivation of the people that I'm very lucky to work with. And every single person who works here, they have, in a lot of cases,

they've been dreaming about working here forever. and it's so easy to work here in that people you don't have to ask people twice to do things they're so keen to do it because they're part of a team they're part of something bigger than themselves they're part of history they make history they um and and it's it's a really good feeling to walk in and be able to sort of get that energy from around you where things can happen you know everything's possible and there's no negativity it's all good. It's all like, let's go and get them, you know.

Amazing. A proper team spirit. Yeah, amazing. Right, I think that's it. Thank you so much, Seb, for coming on and sharing some of your wisdom with us. Thank you very much. Thank you. Join us after the break where we'll be speaking to Paul CB,

Race Team Factory Support Manager at Alpine. Welcome back to the P1 podcast. Let's get straight into our chat with Paul CB, who is Alpine's Race Team Factory Support Manager. Remember, head on over to Amazon Music, where you can listen to an extended version of today's episode where we ask Paul and Seb your questions. So we are here with Paul C.B, the race team factory support manager. Thank you so much, Paul, for coming on to the P1 podcast. Pleasure.

How are you? I'm good. Thank you. Yeah, very good. Perfect. So let's dive straight into the questions. Go for it. The first one is how hard is it to organize the team from a logistical standpoint, whether that's travel, equipment, transport, time changes, whatever it might be. How difficult is it? Um, there's a lot. It's multifaceted. And it takes up, um, all of my time. Basically, and probably more if I should. Sorry for that we took you away from quite clearly doing some logistics. That's okay. I was at Silverston today. And, uh, yeah. So it's, yeah, there's a lot to do. There's a lot to do. So they've all got to be synced. They've all got to go to the right place at the right time and avoiding all sorts.

You know, we go by truck, by plane, by train. So all has to be organised. We do use third parties, but then I look after the third parties. Yeah, there's enough to keep you going. So you have like 25 monitors in front of you with just everything that's going on. Is it some sort of like movie that you see? I've got two monitors and the other 23 in my head. Is it become more challenging now?

We're getting more and more races as well, I see. Yeah, it is. It is. I mean, when I first started in F1, we didn't have C-Fray. we just took our kit, set it up. You know, one set, ten tons of kit, and now we are where we are, you know. So to make it more efficient and money-saving,

then we have to replicate things into sea freight. So, you know, we have six sets of sea freight, taking garages and pit walls and all sorts of equipment to different places, catering stuff, etc., etc., etc. So, yeah, there's a lot going on. So where did you begin in Formula One? Talk us through your journey and especially in Alpine. Yeah, how long have you got?

We extend it, it's fine. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, so in 1989, I was just came into F1 as a mechanic from a roadcar garage, in as a mechanic into F1 and started off then. So a number two on a car, a number one on a car. I gradually worked my way through Chief Mechanic. Then I became an engineer. Then I went on to be team manager, race team manager, for about five or six years.

And then I came back to the factory and thought I wanted to take all of the logistical nightmares from the track side. And then I'd look after that, let them go racing. So, yeah, so I've been since 1989, which is basically the same team. The sport has changed a lot. It's changed a little bit, I have to say, yes, a little bit. We moved here with about 100 people and into this building in 1993, and now there's 985 people. Incredible.

So, yeah. What does an F1 team do during the mid-season break? It does nothing. It literally does. There's only certain things we're allowed to do. But it gives everybody a break from design anything to do with the car. either making it faster or designing other stuff for other years or whatever, nothing can be done about the car.

I'm guessing you feel like you want that even more now with how the schedule was compared to how it was back when you started. I'm guessing it's like, because I can't remember the exact, you probably know when this got introduced of like a strict shutdown. Yeah, it was, I suppose it was probably 10 years ago now. But if you think back in the days, There were 16 races. They began in March and they ended in October.

Now there were 23, 24 races. They begin in February and ended in December. So, you know, you have to have a break. People, you do see burnout, you know, and there's a bit of rotation goes on, etc, etc. But yeah, it's becoming more and more difficult to find people to completely commit. But it's F1.

People love F1 and there's always. fans and there's always people that want to do it so for sure now turning our attention a bit to the to the car of course you said you've worked on many a car I'm sure can you talk us through a little bit about the design process and how it sort of goes from the initial I don't know jotted down drawing all the way to a car that's right behind us yeah well it basically starts with regulations so you interpret you get the regulations from the FIA within the regulations they give you all the measurements of the boxes that the car has to fit in.

So the wings, the bodywork, etc., the wheels. And then from that point, you then go and design a car around it. Mechanically, you know, like a fuel system or an engine or a gearbox, they all have to fit within your package anyway. So that's fairly easy. You work on that. You look at the cockpit for the driver. If you're getting a taller driver, that has to be taken into consideration early on

because we've had drivers that don't fit. Obviously, Esteban is quite tall, isn't it? Estaband's very tall. And then you look at the mechanical design, so the suspension, to give you grip. So you work your design around that, and then we've got mechanical engineers that look at that, the best way to get the tires on the tarmac, if you like. And then on top of that, you design your body work, so you've got your Aero engineers, and they're dreaming up things within the regulations to try and get the best flow.

You know where you want flow and you know where you don't want flow. And then they look at the best ways of doing that. So from those initial thoughts, if you like, all the Aero stuff goes to the wind tunnel. The wind tunnel will start making parts, checking it out, seeing the downforce and seeing if it's improving or not. And then we keep going through that. We have thousands of iterations of everything, as you can imagine. Once we get our best iterations of everything, it then goes from six, 60% design, which is the size of the wind tunnel model, to 100% design, which is the car.

And then that comes again across to the DO over here. They'll draw it, they'll put it into drawings to manufacture it. It will then go into manufacturing production, and it'll either be made here or be made by third party. And then it's all brought together by production. And then the mechanics, etc., come along, build it. I get it sent, and then we go race it. Now, you touched on your mechanic and engineering experience. How does that help you do your job now?

You understand what people need and when they want it. So, yeah, so you know what to get where, if you want to improve things, so I look at the garages, how people work in the garages, how people sit on a pit wall, how trucks are brought around, how they're packed. you just basically know how the garage operates and because of that or how everyone operates how an engineer operates when he wants to sit at his desk and work

you know so you can so because I've pretty much done most of the jobs in the garage or in the team then you get to understand it and if you understand it then you can work with it and you can improve it so so I think that's where it helps you think that's helped

helped you in the position you are now that you've kind of you've been there like you say coming into a team quite early when it was quite small and you've seen the changes and how it's all developed yeah yeah exactly and with the changes i mean once upon the time our money worries were because we didn't have a lot of money you know and now it's having to spend the money in the right way because of the regulations so again you know you can't go too mad in one direction because if i go mad in one direction then i'm taking performance away from the car because the money I spend is the money that we could also use to make the car go faster. So as well as trying to, it's a juggling act between performance with the guys and how they work and performance with the car. And it's something that has only come in

now that we use cost cap. You know, it's a, that in itself is a big challenge. How does a race weekend typically look for yourselves? For me, it looks really good because I'm normally at home, nowadays. So as long as they've got there, I'll go out to about five races and I'll get feedback from the guys, every, from whoever, from the engineers, from the chief mechanic, from the mechanics,

from the truckies, from catering. And I'll go out there and see how they're doing, see if they need anything, and then see how we can help out. Apart from that, because of my, position now it's basically factory-based position so as I say I'm just here doing all the

donkey work if you like and letting them race so when you do go to those five races do you still get that kind of like oh I'm back I'm back at the track yeah yeah every time every time I watch a race you've still got the initial butterflies that I had the first time I ever went on the grid to start a car

up to to send it it's a really weird it's a weird feeling surely I'm over it by now you would think you would think so wouldn't you? You absolutely would think so but it's still the same because the amazing thing about an F1 and I think that's why it's so appealing not only is the technical side of it but it's also when the lights go out you haven't got a clue what's going to happen you know you might be in pole but you might be pushed off at the first

corner or stall it on the grid or you just don't know you haven't got a clue and the fun with it is reacting to what's going on on the circuit and having to be prepared for that. So when I was team manager we used to look after the pit stops. Having the pit crew ready for any eventuality is part of the fun, you know, because it might be a nose change or a tire change or a five second penalty or a puncture or a wing angle change or, you know, you just don't know. So you're just there waiting with your toolbox full of things that you can do and saying, right, okay, what do we need to do? Right, okay, bang, off we go. So. Love it. what are some things that F1 fans might not know

you have to contend with when running an F1 team? What goes under the radar? I think a lot of the logistics had to, honestly. I think that's something that people don't know. The other thing, I honestly think people think we just take the same car and race it. You know, we might put a new front wing on it, but the car that's launched is,

the same car that goes to the first race or the second race or the third it changes every time there could be anywhere between i'd say 25 and 200 changes to a car every race and i don't think people know that they just see a car with a driver um going around you know um so i think that's i think really they're the two big things the amount of logistics involved now and the amount the car evolves is quite amazing really. Absolutely. Amazing. Perfect.

Well, thank you so much for coming on and for giving us a bit of insight to it all, Paul. Thank you. Yeah, pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of P1 and thanks to Paul Ceeby and Seb Shepard for their awesome insight. Remember, if you want to hear more from the guys,

then head on over to Amazon Music, where you can listen to an extended version of today's episode where they answer your questions. P1 is a Stack production and part of the ACAST created network.