Secret mechanic: All is not as it seems in F1 pre-season

January and February are always a tough time for a Formula 1 mechanic. The Christmas holidays draw to a close after just long enough to remind you what life used to be like in the real world, with friends, family and not living from an open suitcase in the corner of a hotel room.

Much as we all love our jobs, the rare opportunity to synchronise time off with loved ones, and have free choice over what to wear, means the dreaded back-to-school feeling often sets in as the first days of January approach.

Those first few days back can often be a little tedious for the race team, depending on how close the factory is to its intended production schedule. If the parts aren't made, we can't do much.

Teams sometimes release digital images of new cars before the real thing is ready

The first public appearance for the car tends to be the press launch, shortly before the first test. The days of the extravagant, glitzy launch parties seem to be over, but even so, if the world's media are coming to your factory to see the new challenger, it better at least look like a finished product.

I've been in teams so far behind schedule as the car's press launch approaches that we've had to quickly 3D print pretend parts to make the car look complete on its display stand.

One year we had to 'print out' a set of plastic upper front wishbones, because we'd had a problem with the first iteration and version two was still days away from reality. A quick coat of black paint from a spray can out the back of the factory and with them very carefully placed into position using a combination of tape and tie-wraps nobody would ever know!

Of course had anyone so much as coughed a bit too loudly in the vicinity of the front end it probably would've slumped to the floor like a dog wanting to play.

In another desperately chaotic January, we approached the much-hyped media launch knowing that our engine partner was struggling to deliver a powerplant in time to assemble the car. A much lower-tech solution got us out of that little mess as we got the fab-shop to urgently knock up a very rough steel frame that we could bolt to the back of the chassis and in turn bolt the gearbox to and we built the car around that.

With bodywork on and a couple of bits of spray-painted steel tube taped in position to look like exhausts, no one was any the wiser and the photographers snapped away and talked admiringly about attention to detail like they always did.

Of course when you do eventually hit the track and your hopes or fears are given a glimmer of realism, there's a lot of hard work in getting through the test programme with any new car.

Even once through a day's running, the car needs stripping down so everything can be inspected, crack-checked or non-destructive-tested and then carefully re-assembled, fired up and set up for the next day, when the entire process will be repeated.

Spare parts are generally scarce, even by the time the cars head off to Australia for the first race, so the last thing anyone needs is the driver going off and putting it into the barriers in testing - which is exactly what happened to me a few years ago, the day before we were due to pack our race car into the F1 freight plane headed Down Under.

McLaren mechanics built a 'show car' for its 2011 launch in Germany © LAT

Our test team had taken my race car, one of only two in existence at that time, for a day of last-minute straightline aero testing, before we packaged it up that night for the first race.

When the call came through mid-afternoon to say that somehow, in a straightline test, they'd managed to smash the car into the wall and destroyed the front end, it didn't go down too well at all, I can tell you.

When the car was rushed back and we began what was now looking like being a very late night in the factory, it was discovered that the lower wishbone had in fact punctured through the base of the chassis and it was effectively destroyed.

That was about the worst news a team can get at this time of year and whilst any salvageable parts were stripped from the tub, all focus turned to the T-car bay across the factory floor. Those poor boys had to give up their lovingly, but partially, built car to us to finish off overnight and had their flights to Australia delayed while they stayed behind to do what they could with the next bare chassis that was now being accelerated through the carbon shop.

That goes down as a bad day at the office and was the start of a bad year as I recall.

Despite the driver's persistent claims of a system malfunction, I still like to remind him of the occasion on a semi-regular basis and how the experience traumatised my colleagues and me for some time.

HOW IS YOUR YEAR SHAPING UP?

There's a lot of work that goes into getting to that first test. By mid-way through January everyone in the factory is working flat out, doing long hours and working weekends to meet the various targets.

The first month of the year brings with it an enormous sense of anticipation and hope throughout any F1 team. Despite fans and media looking for any clue, no matter how tenuous, to the expected success of each of the new cars, the reality is that even we have no idea.

We can measure the numbers in the windtunnel or through the CFD simulations; we can talk to the designers or to management over coffee and gauge their optimism; we can even begin to get our hands on the real thing and see for ourselves what remains, or has evolved, from the previous year.

Force India used a 2014 car to launch its 2015 colour scheme last week © LAT

These things can all give us some rough idea of our relative performance in certain areas compared with last year's car, but never much more than that.

It's useful to know that we have indeed learned from all the hard work of last year, but what we really want to know more than anything else, is how this new pile of bits that we're meticulously assembling into a racing car is going to effectively shape our lives over the coming 11 months?

Are we going to be enjoying success, accumulating a giant win bonus and spending our days honing the finer points of performance and polishing the car that the rest of the pitlane wants? Or, will we be the last ones at the track each night, fighting fires, fixing broken parts, struggling to work on an impractically designed car, or just downright slow compared with everyone else?

These things can govern the season ahead, steer the mood and morale in the garage and ultimately affect the life of an F1 mechanic. And yet it's not until the car hits the track in February that we get the first preliminary picture of our chances.