How to run a Formula 1 team

Winning is a virtuous cycle. First place nets you more prize money, greater visibility to advertise top sponsors and the ability to attract the best drivers. There is more resource to make cars even faster: success breeds success. But aligning everything to win is a monumental task.

Williams's last win was Pastor Maldonado's victory at the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix (before that it was Brazil 2004), while McLaren hasn't won since 2012 either. Force India has started over 200 races but has never won one, while both Sauber and Toro Rosso have just a solitary GP win each.

A grid is separated by seconds, so why is it so difficult to make it to the top step of the podium?

"An F1 team is like an orchestra with everyone playing a different instrument and you need all 700 people to play in harmony," says Williams's deputy team principal Claire Williams.

Here we take an exclusive look behind the scenes at Williams, witnessing the sheer scale and complexity of an F1 team, which emphasises just how hard it is to succeed.

The logistics of getting to a race on time

The F1 teams descend on Melbourne in March for the season-opener, but for Bryan Hart, logistics coordinator at Williams, his work starts eight weeks earlier. Leaving the Port of Southampton in mid-January is a ship containing much of what the team needs (apart from the cars and 30 tonnes of parts and other equipment) in two 40-foot containers, weighing 30-40 tonnes. And over the coming weeks, three other ships will take similar paraphernalia out to Sakhir, Shanghai and Baku.

"When the Melbourne freight returns to the UK, we send it on to Montreal, while later in the year we're planning to ship the Singapore freight straight on to Brazil," says Hart.

"Throughout the year we have five sets of equipment that are constantly criss-crossing the globe."

Inside the freight containers are generators, grid trolleys, ancillary items and panelling for the garage interior, plus hospitality equipment, 10 tables, 54 chairs, four TVs, two counter units and coffee machines for the engineering room, garage and hospitality - as well as two spares.

But what of the cars? A week before a flyaway race, three trucks leave Williams HQ in Grove, Oxfordshire, and travel to East Midlands Airport.

Two chassis, gearboxes and bodywork and 30 tonnes of spares and equipment will be loaded on to a cargo plane on 12 pallets and are then flown to the destination city of the grand prix.

Logistics partner DHL delivers the sea freight to the team's designated pit, and ahead of the race weekend a crew arrives to unpack it and build the garage and hospitality unit.

Hart is also given a checklist of requirements from the circuit: "Once our garage is allocated, we will organise payment to have the floor painted to our specification, and hire equipment such as forklift trucks, dry ice and gases for the wheel guns and jacks - any service we don't bring ourselves."

When the crew of mechanics arrive on the Tuesday before the race (air tickets, hotel accommodation and transportation to and from the hotel in up to nine minibuses is all organised in advance), they begin the job of unpacking the cars from the air freight and assembling them for the weekend. Mercedes transport the engines separately, while Pirelli handles the transportation of all the tyres.

For the European races, ships and planes are replaced by eight trucks. Ahead of May's Spanish Grand Prix, the engineering lorries trundle out of Grove on a Thursday evening to make the 1000-mile journey to Barcelona, arriving the Saturday before the race weekend.

Again, the cars leave later, crossing the channel late Monday to arrive at the track on Wednesday morning. And all this is a separate operation to the team's motorhome, which requires an extra 14 trucks and a two-day build, so that it's ready to house guests and feed the team from Wednesday evening onwards.

Late on Sunday night, the reverse happens. Everything is packed up ready to go to the next event.

"Once the champagne's been sprayed and the drivers are long gone," says Hart, "we're here six to eight hours later packing up in the dark."

Q&A: Dave Redding, Team manager

F1 Racing: Once everything is unpacked for a race, what do you do next?

Dave Redding: The event starts at 10am on Thursday morning and that's when the FIA remove the seals from the power unit so we can fire up the car for the first time and make sure everything works. Then we take the cars to the FIA weighbridge to ensure we are technically compliant. The first curfew comes into force at 11pm on Thursday and lasts until 7am Friday.

F1R: Are you responsible for ensuring that you are compliant with the rulebook at all times?

DR: That's one of the many responsibilities, but yes, during sessions I sit on the pitwall and have an intercom that connects with Race Control, so I can talk to FIA race director Charlie Whiting about anything the stewards spot. We have a team managers' meeting on Thursday evening and a drivers' meeting on Friday where we discuss issues from the previous race.

F1R: What is the most challenging bit of your job?

DR: In isolation, nothing is particularly difficult - it's when three or four things happen at the same time. It could be a logistics drama where something hasn't arrived, or a medical problem combined with being called to see the stewards. When it all happens at once, that's the big challenge.

Creating and developing a racing car

Eighty per cent of the Williams team never actually attend a grand prix weekend. They remain back at base in Grove, designing and creating the two machines for Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin to race.

In January their focus is on the current year's car, but by June there will be a 50/50 split, with one half continuing to develop the current car while the other half concentrates on next year's machine. Depending on budgets and resource, more staff may migrate to next year's car as the current season unfolds.

"When we go to the track, our objective is to get the best from the car and win that race," says chief technical officer Paddy Lowe. "But there is another thing we do and that's to generate feedback to further develop the car to go quicker.

"Take the front wing, which is a very important part of the car. How do you make a better front wing? We might test a new one on Friday and that data goes back to the design office to help create an upgrade.

"First it is evaluated using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) and if the simulation looks good, a version of it will be built on a 60% scale to be tested in the windtunnel. Finally, if those results seem promising, we'll build it full scale and bring it to the track - and then start the process all over again.

"The quicker you can complete that cycle, the quicker you can develop performance and that is happening on every part of the car - I just gave the front wing as an example."

Lowe goes on to explain that if the factory has better tools, then the team's capability improves so that 20% of the workforce are focused in this area.

He's not talking about spanners - he means research and development (R&D) tools such as the simulator, dynamometers, the windtunnel, finite-element analysis and simulation software.

"Every single thing we do costs money and the finance people always wish that we could carry over at least half of the car into next year - but it's actually less than a tenth of the car. The rest of the car is completely redesigned for the new season," says Lowe.

"Those teams who have more resources can speed up the time of their cycle of parts and can develop their car quicker. Formula 1 is a little like a war, and if you study military conflict you'll know it's not so much about the battle but the underlying processes going on. The winners usually have the better economics."

After all the work back at base, the focus shifts to the car's performance on track during a grand prix weekend and, according to Lowe, the critical aspect is driving efficiency and avoiding errors.

"And that can be at any level, from the mechanic who accidentally fits a part that causes the car to break down, to a pitstop going wrong, or making a mistake in the engineering set-up - or even the driver going off the track," he explains.

"It's sometimes said that all the front line can do is screw it up, but there's still the opportunity for ingenuity, flair and brilliance."

Q&A: Claire Williams, Deputy team principal

F1 Racing: What do you need to create a successful team?

Claire Williams: Most obviously money, state-of-the-art resources and brilliant people. People are your critical asset. You need the best people working in harmony with their objectives very clearly laid out. Ultimately, talent wins. Culture is also hugely important. When you have a team that is as large as ours, trying to establish the culture is hard but crucial. If your talent is imbued with a culture that doesn't promote winning, then you're not going to win.

F1R: How do you change that culture?

CW: In Frank [Williams] and Patrick's [co-founder, Head] day they worked with 200 people and knew their names and their wives' and kids' names - and so they found it relatively easy to inspire the team to go that extra mile. Now the team is much larger, so that's much harder, but it's no less important and you can't just think 'it's too difficult'.

Good comms galvanises people. Visible leadership, engagement and fostering a culture of listening and learning is important. Driving the passion and belief that you can do it through an F1 team, particularly in times of poor performance, is paramount. If I didn't think Williams had the chance of winning again I wouldn't be here. One day that will come.

Running the cars during a grand prix

Two months before a race, engineers and vehicle dynamicists at the Williams factory begin to form their strategy for that event, firstly informing Pirelli how many sets of compounds for each particular tyre they would like to use.

A month before the GP, test driver Robert Kubica starts lapping the circuit in the simulator and from his work, as well as historical data, a car set-up is decided. Before it hits the track for the first practice session, wing levels, ride heights and suspension will all be predetermined.

The first practice session lets the drivers hone set-up to extract the maximum from the car.

Running in parallel is a programme where data is collected from new parts that are tested. With in-season testing so limited, this is the main chance for teams to research and trial new components.

"When I first started in F1, you turned up with a car you thought was somewhere near right, sent the driver out, looked at what he came back with - and reacted accordingly," says Rob Smedley, Williams' head of vehicle performance.

"Now there is a huge tranche of experimental work to develop the car throughout the year. If we do things right, we will have more experiments than time and one of my jobs is to balance future development with extracting the best performance from the car for the weekend."

FP1 will see cars laden with pressure sensors and flo-vis paint, and the data generated is fed back to the factory for R&D engineers to decipher. Then, in FP2, the first low-fuel qualifying sims take place, followed by high-fuel long runs as teams plan their race strategies.

"We have 200 sensors on the car looking at aero, balance and tyre data, so after FP2 the different factions analyse their specific areas and we debrief to learn what we must do for Saturday practice and qualifying," says Smedley."The key is not to get led astray if things don't work because of outside influences. Then as we head into Saturday, it's critical we are error-free."

Q&A: Sergey Sirotkin, Williams F1 driver

F1 Racing: How do you prepare before a GP?

Sergey Sirotkin: As well as the physical training, we run in the simulator the week before. There is also a lot of homework: I had a 120-page report from the last GP and an 80-page brief to read for the next race.

F1R: Talk us through the first part of a weekend...

SS: I arrive on Thursday morning and walk the circuit with my engineer, discussing set-up, strategy or issues from the last race. In the afternoon I have media and autograph sessions and sometimes an evening sponsor event.

F1R: Are you relieved to get in the car on Friday?

SS: Yes! I warm up in my room, before I go out on track for a familiarisation run or to test parts. It's simple runs in the morning to build up data. In the afternoon we focus on performance and tyre wear with heavy fuel loads.

F1R: Then the pressure starts to build...

SS: In FP3 we optimise everything for qualifying, as the only thing you can change after that is the front wing. Then we decide race strategy. There is more tension on Sunday morning.

F1R: Is it difficult to unwind after the weekend?

SS: You feel so tired on Sunday night when all the adrenaline has flowed away. Then you rush home to prepare for the next one!

Getting the message across

In the late 1960s, when Lotus famously changed its colours from British Racing Green and yellow to red and gold, in deference to their tobacco-company sponsor, racing cars became high-speed billboards.

Today the livery of every single car on the grid distinguishes that team's brand and incorporates the identity of whichever sponsor is paying top dollar for the privilege of a global shop window. But as Chris Murray, Williams' marketing director, explains, partnerships with companies now extend far beyond decals on a car.

"As an independent team, all of our partners are important to us, but the old-fashioned model of brand promotion is just one aspect of the relationship," he says.

"Take Unilever, who own a number of brands - one of which is Rexona. Yes we deliver visibility for them, but we also help them drive sales in local markets. For example, in China, Lance Stroll went out to a Carrefour supermarket to meet the local media and guests to boost a promotional activity that we had been running in store. But beyond that, there is a third aspect to our partnership - and that's a synergy programme.

"We're now able to share some of our technical know-how, so some of Unilever's engineers have been helping us and, in return, through Williams Advanced Engineering, we've been working with Unilever to help them create better, whiter washing powder and crunchier ice cream - primarily through computational fluid dynamics modelling around flow."

Murray also cites the JCB digger firm as another brand that wanted to tie up with Williams thanks to a similar philosophy - and one of their values in the relationship is to invite key customers to races.

"Like Williams, they are a classic British firm, family owned with second-generation family management, and the value they get from the relationship with us is through the further relationships they can establish in meeting CEOs of other companies at races. Both the Paddock Club and our own motorhome can be great places to do business."

Q&A: Sophie Ogg, Head of F1 communications

F1 Racing: How hard is it to manage drivers at a GP?

Sophie Ogg: We give them a schedule so they know what to do and where to be. Whether it's an engineering debrief, a fan session or the FIA press conference, they don't need to worry about timekeeping: it's all mapped out for them.

F1R: What happens when a driver causes a media storm with his comments?

SO: We had that in Austin in 2013 when Pastor Maldonado blamed his poor qualifying performance on the belief that we had 'sabotaged' his car. When that happened we sat him down to try to understand what he meant, because we all work flat-out for our drivers and clearly no one had sabotaged his car. After realising something had been lost in translation and he hadn't actually meant to say 'sabotage', he was more than happy for us to get him on TV as soon as possible to apologise.

F1R: How do you react to rumours being published?

SO: It's difficult because, for example, someone Tweeted over the winter that Robert Kubica was going to be our racing driver. But I try to work closely with credible media and give them off-the-record briefings as to why something like this story wasn't accurate. People might think they have a story, but until all the legal paperwork has been signed it's not a done deal.

An F1 army marches on its stomach

When you spend six months of the year on the road, it's the home comforts you crave the most: a full English breakfast or a decent cup of tea.

One of the philosophies of the Williams catering and hospitality staff is to make anyone dining with them - be that mechanics or VIP guests - feel relaxed and welcome.

"We are a friendly, warm and open team and as soon as anyone walks into our motorhome we really want them to feel like they are at home," says Michaela Kamphuis, Williams' hospitality service delivery manager. "With so many people away for such a long time, it's really important they are looked after."

Food, and nutrition in particular, are both vital aspects of keeping a team functioning to the best of their abilities, and the team have to cater for 70 members of staff needing three meals a day. If you add guests to that tally, it's around 1000 meals that have to be provided during a four-day grand prix event.

"We serve a lunchtime buffet between the various sessions for all the team members, but if for any reason the mechanics and engineers are really busy, we always ensure we take hot wraps, salads, sandwiches, healthy protein pots and fresh fruit to the garage so they never go without food," says Kamphuis.

There is also a record of every team member and a special allergy sheet for soy, gluten and dairy to ensure that if someone has an allergy, then the team's chefs can prepare an alternative. But the level of service also extends to the VIP guests who attend the grand prix.

One of Williams's ambassadors is the Michelin-starred chef Michael Caines, and he regularly attends races to prepare bistro tasting menus and special wine lists so that guests of Williams can dine in style over a grand prix weekend.

"We are briefed before every race in terms of who is going to be there and what events are being held. We have a database of visitors that we will cross-reference, so if we know we have a returning guest who likes green tea and honey, we go that extra mile to serve that to them, before they've even asked, to make them feel special," says Kamphuis.

"We want to create the ultimate guest experience and make people feel relaxed, allowing them to enjoy themselves when they visit Williams for a race weekend."

Sundries such as salt, pepper, tea and coffee are bought in bulk back in the UK and are then packed and sent over with the sea freight to grand prix venues, while the chefs will source as much fresh produce as possible from local supermarkets in the days leading up to a race. A thousand meals requires a lot of storage space, and you will often see chefs criss-crossing the paddock if they find themselves momentarily short of an ingredient. Pirelli can always be relied on for olive oil and balsamico...

"Ensuring everyone has three meals a day can mean that we work long hours," says Kamphuis. "Serving breakfast means being at the track for 6am and we often don't finish until 11pm. Working for a grand prix team means that we work very long days."

Q&A: Tom Fitzpatrick, Operations manager

F1 Racing: Where do you source food for the team?

Tom Fitzpatrick: Condiments and tea and coffee we buy in bulk at home and ship it over to the races. Then everything fresh is bought at supermarkets close to the track. The exception to this is Australia, which has strict customs restrictions, so we can't take any food in and have to buy it all there. I was once stopped at customs there for having too many M&Ms in my bag!

F1R: What is the most important commodity?

TF: I'd say it has to be coffee. We will usually serve up to 2,000 cups a week from coffee machines in the hospitality unit, the garage and the engineering room. We even have back-up machines in case anything goes wrong. Once at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, I got the supplies wrong and was forced to make a mad dash to Dubai to get the correct coffee for the machines. We were telling the mechanics to try to ration their intake so we didn't run out!

F1R: Are there any other logistical headaches you have to deal with?

TF: One of the biggest hurdles we have to get around is that for Bahrain, France and Abu Dhabi we have to have a different set of equipment because of restrictions on alcohol advertising. So all of our branded hospitality equipment is different for those three races.