Behind the scenes of Red Bull's mission control

What was it that made us all fall in love with grand prix racing in the first place? It's that intoxicating cocktail of being caught in the moment, witnessing the battles on track and off, the personalities, the intrigue, the uncertainty, and that unprecedented intensity of spontaneous emotion when Toto Wolff pounds his fists on the table or Christian Horner's feet jiggle nervously as the denouement approaches.

Unless you work for a team - and that means actually living through the hard work, the stress, and the soaring peaks and crushing troughs of Formula 1 competition - then it's hard to fully comprehend how it can take over your life. Harder still to grasp how all that emotional investment gets wrenched and churned when those red lights go out on Sunday afternoon and everything is decided in two crazy hours.

That much came home to me last summer when I visited Red Bull Racing's Milton Keynes factory for a rare and privileged deep dive behind the scenes at the team's 'mission control', where the strategic decisions that can make or break a race are shaped.

The secret (strictly no photographs allowed) AT&T Operations Room serves as an engineering hub for the team when it's at races. It has the appearance of a posh lecture theatre, but on grand prix weekends its banks of desks are occupied by engineers and data analysts, all hunched over screens and listening to team radios as they provide a vital source of extra eyes and ears for the personnel who are actually at the track.

At the front of the room are an impressive banks of screens displaying moving images, timing data and other information. We're told the middle screen is the largest television in Europe - courtesy of team sponsor Hisense. I'm not sure any lounge in the world would be big enough to accommodate it.

But the Operations Room has a function beyond its role as a tactical fulcrum during those 20-plus crunch weekends a year. In the winter the team uses it to simulate live races to challenge themselves and stay sharp for the coming season. It's the most expensive, immersive and intense F1 strategy game I've ever experienced.

If you follow F1 regularly, you can sit there and try to second guess just how much benefit the undercut will deliver. But there's nothing serene about it when the call to pit is something you have to decide

Each desk is a personalised workstation bristling with connectivity. There are plug-in headsets and a race-spec digital radio control panel that has communication lines to everyone involved - the strategists, the team manager, the race engineers, the team principal, and of course the drivers.

In front of the desk are smaller screens - mapping out the track, the regular timing sheets and the race history charts. In repose the Operations Room feels tranquil, if a little intimidating; it's when the race begins and the data arrives in a torrent that the place comes alive.

On this occasion, the select group of invitees took on individual roles superintending the cars of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo during a half-distance British Grand Prix. Ahead of us lay a complex and constantly evolving puzzle dictated by the uncertainties of a high-degradation tyre and the imminent threat of rain.

If you follow F1 regularly then sitting down to watch the race unfold means you quickly come to understand strategies, tyre degradation numbers, pace delta and pitstop timings. We can sit and count down, fairly calmly, to the pit stop windows and then try to second-guess just how much benefit the undercut is going to deliver.

But there's no element of serenity when that call to come into the pits is your responsibility. That's when the consequences of making the wrong decision - losing the race - nag and chivvy at your consciousness.

Sitting in the Operations Room, soundtracked by the radio chatter as Verstappen and Ricciardo battle around the lap, your eyes and brain are bombarded by a constant stream of information, some elements more relevant and pressing than others. Filtering and prioritising is an ongoing battle.

There are race gaps to be mindful of; sector times to look at; competitors' performances to track; tyre degradation graphs; speed differentials; and traffic both fore and aft. All of these inputs shape your decision-making process.

Early on in the race it's not actually too hectic, since the cars are away and the pit stops are still a long way in front. In fact, things settle down quite quickly - as Mercedes and Ferrari pull clear at the front, and behind them Ricciardo chops in front of Verstappen as they quickly sort themselves out for a solid opening stint.

But as the first pitstop window looms, and the radar picks out rain showers blowing in from the north of the circuit, the stress levels spike as you try to juggle delta times, the performance curve of the tyres, and where the degradation stands.

The high-tech Red Bull system not only allows direct communication with a team of real strategists to help guide the best path forward - well aware, for example, that the supersoft is blistering or that a pitstop would put you behind two much slower cars - but also you can speak directly to the virtual drivers.

Ask them how the tyres are, how their car is feeling or to try to close the gap to the car ahead, and they respond almost immediately with their real voices. It all adds to the realism.

Deciding when to pit is like being given all your life savings and being told you need to put it on one colour at the roulette table. No matter how much information you are given, it's an incredibly edgy time

But there's little time to enjoy that, because as the first pitstop looms it becomes clear that on every lap you have a crunch moment, 10-second window where a decision has to be made. As Ricciardo and Verstappen blast down Hangar Straight each time, you juggle the options and possible outcomes again: do we do another lap, or do we dive in to try to get that undercut and hope that the tyres can hang on until the end? Then what about if it rains this next lap?

It's like being given all your life savings and being told you need to put it on one of the colours at the roulette table. No matter how much information you are given about previous form, how much advice experts are passing on about what is right and what is wrong, or where your best chances lie, when you commit to the call, it's an incredibly edgy time.

The race falls into a peculiar rhythm: regroup at the start of each lap, check what the opposition is doing, check again with the strategists and drivers, and look at the screen.

Then, as the cars near the point on the track where a decision on pitting has to be made, things get a bit more heated and that stress builds up again. Pick the right moment and it can mean jumping a rival; dither for a second, miss that perfect window and it hands the advantage to your rival with little chance of recourse.

The pressures, even in a computer simulation like this, are incredible. But it's also fascinating realising how totally absorbing the experience becomes.

Amid the chaos of the way the race panned out - Ferrari's race wrecked by a badly timed safety car period and Lewis Hamilton retiring from the lead with an engine failure - there really was no time to keep a proper eye on what was going on beyond the two Red Bull cars.

At the end of it all - as Verstappen triumphed thanks to Ricciardo suffering a late puncture - there was no way of evaluating what strategies other cars had done, or how their race had played out. No wonder F1 team bosses can be a bit reluctant to talk about incidents elsewhere when microphones are thrust under their noses at the end of races.

The near one-hour it took to run through the mini-GP passed in a flash, and afterwards I felt mentally and emotionally spent.

Even though the experience was virtual, this is what the real F1 is about - the best brains and technology locked in an all-out war for victory; where a single mistake, whether it's made by a driver or a strategist, really is the difference between success and defeat.