What it takes to be an F1 mechanic

Formula 1 mechanics are often described as the championship’s unsung heroes. But what does it really take to be part of the pitlane action at the highest level of motorsport?

Calum Nicholas, Senior Power Unit Assembly Technician for Red Bull and author of the book Life in the Pitlane, has opened up on this subject and how he dovetails his individual role with the team effort in the pitstops – after all, Nicholas is also part of the Red Bull pitcrew that held the world record for the fastest pitstop at 1.82 seconds, until McLaren edged them out in Qatar in 2023.

“I’m responsible for all of the Red Bull parts that integrate an engine into our chassis,” Nicholas explained. “So when you think of the power unit and you think of receiving the ICE and those components from your supplier, in our case, all of the parts that need to be built onto the engine and built onto the chassis.”

Full-on race weekends

While the glory comes on a Sunday, a race weekend really expands out into a full week of effort that culminates for race day.

“It depends whether you’re on a flyaway, where it’s all air freight, or whether you’re going to a European race,” Nicholas explained. “The European races, we tend to fly out on a Tuesday afternoon and our first day in the garage will be on a Wednesday.

“Wednesdays and Thursdays are your build days. So they’re the days where you’re really assembling the car, getting spares ready, doing any legality checks, fire ups, all of these things to prep for your weekend. You do your first pit stop practice on Thursday afternoon, which is normally the last job we do before we leave the circuit. They’re quite long days, Wednesdays and Thursdays, 12-hour days.”

Fridays start with pitstop practice and preparing the car for the first practice sessions, while the gap between FP1 and FP2 is used to make any engineering changes: “Friday nights are a lot better than they used to be. Fridays used to be the absolute worst day of the week. They were such long days. You’d be in the garage from maybe 8am till 1am the following morning. But the curfew periods we have now are a lot kinder. So three hours after the end of FP2, you’ve got to have that car with a cover on it, which leaves limited work for you to do. We don’t do things like engine and gearbox changes on a Friday night anymore, unless we have to.”

Saturday traditionally is the easiest day for a mechanic. “Provided that you haven’t had anything abnormal, like a shunt or anything like that, Saturdays can be quite nice as you’ve got an early curfew. It’s usually the evening when you can go and have a night out,” Nicholas added.

“Then race day on Sunday is now your longest day. You’re in in the morning and even though the cars are in parc ferme, there’s plenty of work you can do outside of that.

“For me, a Sunday morning looks like prepping any engines for the next race, dealing with any returns of parts and spares, and preparing for the end of the race, when we’re going to have to strip the car and get bits back to the factory.

“So a lot of my Sunday is admin. Certainly Sunday morning, I’m pretty much glued to my laptop, working all of that out and making sure that when the chequered flag drops I’m ready to receive. Sometimes I might return a hundred parts across the two cars, all bits that need stripping, packaging, sending home, accounting for on all the business systems.

“Once all that’s done at the end of the night and the cars are stripped, then you’ve got all your freight to pack and any bits of the garage that need dismantling. By the time we finish packing up, your race day is pretty much a 14-hour day. It’s really tough now. And then usually you’re back on the road Monday morning.”

Factory days

A 24-race calendar means that during the season, the mechanics who are part of the race team don’t see much of the factory: “Once the season starts, we tend to only do one day in the factory in between races, in those weeks off. So when we return from a race, we pretty much get at least six days off. Then we might do a half day in the factory.

Red Bull Racing mechanics with on the left Calum Nicholas, Senior Power Unit Assembly Technician

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“We pretty much go in to do pitstop practice, any meetings, any stuff we need to deal with before we get to the next event. And functional fitness is something that we’re quite big on, in order to maintain everybody’s ability on the pitcrew.”

Soft skills

While a mechanic’s role is primarily focused on the physical work on the car or in a pitstop, perfecting what is known as soft skills has become a vital tool for Nicholas.

“The skills to know how to read and understand engineering drawings and perform engineering operations are the basics of the job. Then a lot of it after that is being able to understand what can be some complicated business systems.

“But in terms of raw qualities, I speak a lot about soft skills. So your ability to communicate, work as a team member who can get on and make things work in what can often be really stressful situations. And be calm and collected when things aren’t going well. If I look at the team around me in the garage, actually what’s made us so successful and what’s made us a great team, is people’s soft skills rather than their qualifications.

“We have a lot of personalities in the garage. Everybody has a role that they take on. Like we have people who are your agony aunts. Everyone will go and moan about their problems to them and they’ll cheer you up. And then there’s people who can break a stern environment with a sharp or witty comment.

“So these things that you don’t necessarily consider to be skills, are really important when you’re travelling 200 days a year with the same people. To have that cohesive unit, all of those soft skills really become quite important.”

The “side hustle” of the job

For the physical part of the job, which includes delivering sub two second pitstops on a consistent basis, the mechanics have access to both the team physio, who travels with the team, and training personnel at the factory.

Calum Nicholas, Senior Power Unit Assembly Technician, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“Personally, to us it’s like the most important thing,” Nicholas said about the pitstops. “One of the reasons I got into Formula 1 was to do pitstops. But realistically, doing pitstops is a secondary role for me. My primary job is as an engine technician. Pitstops is like my side hustle. So more than anything, my skill set has to focus on my primary job.”

In NASCAR it has become common practice to rely on the services of former athletes to change the tyres, but Nicholas doesn’t think it will go in that direction in F1, as with the number of operational personnel at the track being to 58, being part of the pitcrew will always be a side activity.

“I think where F1 varies from a lot of American series like NASCAR, is that for a lot of the people who do pitstops, the pitcrew is their primary role. So obviously you train for the role that is your primary role. In our situation, it’s about finding the best people for the roles on the pitcrew to make it work. Luckily, we’ve been pretty good at it.”

Gruelling calendar

Being part of the travelling team involves a lot of time away from home, which can be hard on families, and the increasing number of races on the calendar has made it tougher.

“When I was younger, the sacrifices I made in my personal life to go and race, they were just my sacrifices,” Nicholas said. “It’s just a choice you make as a person. As you move on with life, now I’ve just got to a point where I accept those sacrifices are being made by others around me. My partner and my daughter, for the last six years they’ve both been making huge sacrifices to allow me to do what I love.

“I think that most of us who are sort of in the same situation as me, with young families, the first thing we’ll probably say is having really understanding partners is key!”

As the burden of the F1 calendar is felt, teams are looking to rotate staff as much as possible to ensure a balance can be struck to avoid burnout, something Nicholas emphasised: “I think it’s absolutely necessary, obviously from a personal point of view and being able to have a job that enables you to still have a life.

Calum Nicholas, Senior Power Unit Assembly Technician, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“Professional burnout is a real thing. You are talking about highly skilled people working a lot of the time on the limit. We’re pushing boundaries. That’s what we do in Formula 1. Everybody’s working to the absolute best of their ability. And over a course of a time, you’re going to have to accept that if you don’t give people those breaks, then you are going to see professional burnout. Because it’s not sustainable.”

But although the option at Red Bull has been there for a while, some are reluctant to make use of rotating, Nicholas admittedly being one of them: “The last time that I had races off was when my daughter was born. I took three races off and I remember coming back and being like: nothing’s how I do it. Like, we get very protective. We work in a certain way. I think there’s always been an aspect of that. And we’re all very, very keen on maintaining the crew’s pitstop performance.

“We have got to the point where we’re going to rotate and we’re going to get these things done. I think everybody’s accepted now that in the long run it’s better that you maybe take a few races off a year, and pick the ones that work for you, than get to a point where in two years’ time you’re absolutely exhausted and you can’t carry on. And then you end up with a lot of people that you’re trying to replace.”

Not easy to stop

Despite the challenges, mechanics tend to stay in their roles longer than many other individuals working in F1.

“It’s an understanding that you’re doing it because you love it,” Nicholas concluded. “If you’re a talented engineer, technician or mechanic, you can make more money outside of racing. The people who stick it out, who are there in the paddock and doing it year in year out, they’re doing it because they love it.

“It’s a really hard thing to stop once you realise how great it can be. It’s not an easy thing to say: ‘Oh no, I’ve had enough of this. The calendar’s too long.’ So at the one time you’re like: ‘Oh my god, this is really hard, these 24-race calendars.’ At the same time, it’s not like you just want to say: ‘Oh forget this, I’m walking away.’ It’s not that easy. Once you fall in love with the sport, you’re in love with it, and you know you will make those sacrifices.”

Life in the Pitlane by Calum Nicholas is available to pre-order now.