Dirty Side Deckchair

Paul McCartney belting out the hits, Emma Radacanu belting back returns* , and the sights of cars belting up narrow hillside roads. Great Britain has been busy this week with  Glastonbury, Wimbledon, and the  Goodwood Festival of Speed (you must read that last word in a Clarkson voice).   Things don't let up as we head to Silverstone this weekend for one of my favorite races at a track with a corner named after me** Watching all these events and looking ahead to the F1 race got me all sentimental about the little island I was born on. So, please indulge me as I take you on a little drive down memory lane taking in the F1 sights as we go.  For a little island we've made some big contributions to F1 down the years. In fact, it's fair to say we've made the biggest impact on the sport than any other nation. Big claim? Let's go with some Sap-Stats to take a look at the numbers behind the claim. 10  -  The number of world driver champions down the years....

...makes the dream work This week we chatted to Blake, an ex-Red Bull & Force India performance engineer of 10 years, who shared with us what it means to perform that role in an F1 team. Yep, that's a teaser trailer for this weeks episode so please make sure you are subscribed to the pod so that you don't miss it. OK, with the pod-pitch out the way let's get back to the blog... After hanging up the call with Blake I (this is Rob by the way so please read in an English accent) got to thinking about overall team structures and roles.   It also got me thinking to Pit-lane Paul and the various roles he has played and shared with us on the pod (yep, second pod-pitch in as many paragraphs - not sorry). This sent me off down a rabbit hole exploring a question I hadn't really ever given any thought to: Just how big is an F1 team and what are all the various roles both at the track and back at the factory? Well the answer is, as you might imagine, it depends. The "big...

  For listeners of the pod, this first real post on the Dirty Side Deckchair blog will come of something as a shock given that it is Rob mashing the keys right now... Tires. "Wait, what? Doesn't Rob hate the subject of tires?" Well, if I'm totally honest this is more about the overall subject of grip, not specifically caring about what compound is being used. Sorry Brian. As F1 heads to Montreal this weekend, the subject of grip at this track will no doubt raise it's slippery head again.  Why I hear you ask? Well luckily for you this whole post is dedicated to that subject. I had my own brush with grip problems in Montreal so can totally relate to what the teams will be facing this weekend.  A business trip to the city in January 2020 saw me staying 5 minutes away from the office I would need to walk to.  Things did not pan out this was as my shoes, while perfectly acceptable for the office, offered no grip on the snowy streets of Montreal.  I think a pair of bo...

Not content with dominating the airwaves via our Dirty Side podcast, we have decided to start up a midweek blog. We'll be aiming to share our thoughts somewhere around Wednesday each week but whereas on the weekend you pull up a bar stool and chat F1 with us, the deckchair is a more laid back look at the world of F1.   So come and hang out, relax in a deckchair, and let's see where this takes us. Dirty Side