My job is …
I am the team manager of Scuderia AlphaTauri. It’s a very broad job. The three main tasks are team management: It is the management of all logistical processes, the management of the operating staff and the sporting regulations – i.e. the alignment of the team to the regulations of the FIA and the Sporting Code on the sporting side.
The technical side of the regulations is handled by the technical director. You are my three main roles. All are very different, but equally important.
How busy is it with these three roles? It really varies. If the sporting regulations are stable and there is not really anything going on – and you can only read the rules so many times a week and learn them by heart – then it’s relatively easy.
But then there are things like introducing a young driver. In these cases, I prepare the documents for the super license application and submission to the Contract Recognition Board in Geneva. So there is everything to be organized, of course with the support of others. It’s up to me to make sure everything works and to ask for help from others if necessary.
And then on the team management side, if the team works and the operational staff is stable and morale is high, then everything is fine. But when there are problems in the garage or when people have personal problems that they need to solve, that makes a little more work. So it goes up and down a lot.
Logistics is a very important part of the role with the focus on staying ahead. It plans for all parts of the logistics. Air freight, sea freight, personal flights, hotels and road transport will start with the publication of the official calendar for the following year.
Nothing is left to chance or the last minute. But even the best of plans may need tweaking, and it may need to be tweaked over the course of a GP weekend.
The AlphaTauri garage
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
I also join the drivers when they are called by the stewards. Hopefully you don’t have to go there too often during the season. To be honest, working with Dany and Pierre is no longer as common as it used to be to work with the right young people.
I think Max and Carlos in the first year, 2015, got pulled quite a lot for some indiscretion. And to be honest, a lot of them were pretty insignificant.
But I think if you are new to the sport the stewards and the race director want to make sure they all understand the situation. F1 is not a small sport, but a sport of the big boys, everything is on TV.
I suppose you want to get to the point a little. I’m here to listen and defend when there’s real reason to believe you aren’t wrong. If you are wrong, then you will fight for the gentlest possible punishment.
My race weekend schedule …
It’s usually a five day weekend. At the European races, we will come out on the track for the first time on Wednesday morning, as the plant is relatively close to all European racetracks. So we arrive on Wednesday so that the mechanics can assemble the units.
On Thursday we go through our normal routine with scrutineering, meetings and pre-briefings. And I do the team manager meeting with the FIA and the other team managers to discuss the previous event and anything related to the event you are planning. And then it rolls into Thursday evening. As a team manager, I also make sure that we don’t break the curfew.
We get up relatively early on Friday. We come in and again I make sure the team doesn’t break the curfew which is a top priority. We do pit stop training on a Friday morning and then we have two training sessions. Then hope you won’t be called to the stewards.
That evening I sit in the engineering meetings and bring all operational issues to the fore when there is something to discuss. Friday evening: curfew don’t break again. Saturday: arrive early in the morning again, do a few briefings, two sessions, hopefully qualify for pole and not be called to the stewards again.
Again, we have a curfew on Saturday night, so we have to make sure the car is sealed and tied up and under cover by a prescribed time, which is 3.5 hours after qualifying. So I make sure we don’t break this rule.
Then Sunday: We come back in, the car covers off, every last minute detail, one more pit stop practice and then we keep the team on the right side of the sporting regulations through the race. And hope you won’t be called to the stewards at the end of the race. That sums it up pretty well.
Then there are all the other things. People will always have life. There are always problems in life. We had a man in Singapore who had to go home out of the blue, so he arranges a flight for him and has someone else replace him. It always works. It’s just trying to keep everything on an even keel.
The most important thing in my job …
I have a lot of things that are important to me. One of those things is consistent. I think that’s my biggest personal goal, which is to make sure everyone knows who I am and where the limits are so the team knows where the limit is in the sand.
When it comes to doing the most important thing physically, the team is likely to stay within the sporting regulations because that will have the greatest impact on us as a team.
If you get it wrong, you could end up with a huge fine or penalty. If you are really wrong you can be left out. You can be excluded from the race or the championship. It’s a pretty serious job that I have on this side.
Three tools that I can’t do without …
Cell phone, laptop and my sports regulations, a printed book that I use as a reference work. I always have this book with me. On the plane, in my hotel room. I have two printed copies. One is sitting on my desk and one is in my wheelie bag and I refer to everything.
AlphaTauri mechanics
Photo by: Andrew Hone / Motorsport Images
People with whom I am constantly in contact …
The chief race engineer, the chief mechanic, the logistics manager and the team manager. It probably really is. You are my key people. I deal with the drivers a little, but not too much.
When you are not on the line …
Before we get to a race, there is also a lot of work to be done with the logistics department. 70-80 people fly around the world and then there is air freight and sea freight. All of this also falls within my area of responsibility. A lot of people think we’re going home and going on vacation. Take Singapore for example last year.
I landed back in Bologna at nine o’clock in the morning on Monday. After clearing customs, I got back to the factory at 11 p.m. Franz asked me to come to a meeting on Tuesday morning, so I met with him right away and then with the logistics department, which has three people. They obviously had a thousand questions because I was gone for a couple of weeks.
So we talked about flights, hotels and budgets for the rest of the season and the start of next season, which is a rolling machine. And then there were a few more meetings outside of that; Debriefings, preliminary discussions for the next race and meeting with the chief mechanic. When the boys are in the factory there are usually two or three pit stop training sessions. So it’s pretty full. The weeks are not calm.
Without me…
In all fairness we have a pretty strong structure now. I’ve been working here since 2014 and when I came to Austin that year there were a lot of shortcomings, I would say, operational. And I’ve tried to make people believe that we can be as good as the rest of the world. I think there was a bit of a lack of faith – and there is still a lack of faith in some areas, but we are working on it all the time.
I suppose it puts structure and belief in place. So when I’m not here, I think the team would now work with our racing team coordinator and our logistics manager at the factory and our chief mechanic just as the processes are in place.
But if it’s for a longer period of time – I wouldn’t say I’m a key piece, but when a key piece of the puzzle comes out – there will be an adjustment phase and certainly some of the things we have put in place might slip or pass by because someone might think it isn’t necessary. I suppose you need to have a leader at the end of the day, someone who can always bring it back to where we want things to be.
Formula 1 is …
I see my Formula 1 life in such a way that, as the son of a farmer in New Zealand, I lived on a gravel road – 40 km of gravel road before you even saw asphalt. To get to school, I had to take two different school buses because the street we lived on was so small that the big bus couldn’t come to us.
So I had to take a small bus and travel 40 km on the small bus to get on the big bus. And with the big bus we had to drive another 60 km. We used to get up at 5:30 a.m. to go to school. That was when I was seven, eight, nine, ten years old.
Graham Watson, AlphaTauri
Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool
And now I think to be the son of a farmer who lives on this farm in the middle of nowhere on the back streets of New Zealand, to be a team manager in Formula 1, that is what it means to me. It means everything because I risked everything to make it happen.
And I think I’ve proven to everyone that it doesn’t matter what education you have, where you come from or what nationality you have. If you work hard and stick to your guns and push hard, you can achieve anything.
And that’s what Formula 1 means to me. People say, ‘Oh wow, I wish I could do this.’ You can do it. You can do everything. You literally have to be willing to sacrifice and work hard.
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