Behind the scenes with one of F1's oddest engineer roles

The last time one team was winning championship after championship - Ferrari in the early 2000s - Formula 1 was in the grip of a tyre war and one of the key pillars of Ferrari's dominance was its close relationship with its tyre supplier, Bridgestone.

Now just one company supplies the whole grid and its products must be suitable for all - but that doesn't mean it leaves the teams to their own devices.

"We have a lot of systems in place to guarantee equal treatment for the teams," says Pirelli's racing manager, Mario Isola. "Not only the same product, but also the same level of service.

"Our job is to give them as much information as we can - but the same information - and all the tools to set up their cars to extract the maximum performance from the tyres.

"We assign an engineer to each team to help them maximise their potential and ensure safety. Our engineers' reports are based on a template, so there's consistency there. And we also feed back some information to the teams centrally, so for instance we provide some averages for characteristics such as wear.

"The teams agreed to this because it enables them to compare the results from their car with others in a way that doesn't compromise confidentiality - because we're dealing with averages.

"At the beginning [when Pirelli first entered F1 as sole supplier in 2011] we were supplying an average of all the teams, but then we were asked to refine this so we now provide what we call 'the favourite five'.

"Each team chooses five other teams at the beginning of the season from which it wants to receive the average. It's more useful for a team to compare itself with its direct competitors."

On the Thursday of a grand prix weekend the Pirelli engineers hold a pre-event meeting where they discuss the likely performance characteristics of the compounds that have been selected for that venue.

For this season the identity of the compounds have been simplified for the fans in terms of the tyres being labelled soft, medium and hard, but these are just three of five available compounds, so there are great variations between circuits. In Monaco, for instance, the C3 is labelled 'hard' but for Suzuka it's the 'soft'. Later, each engineer will have a separate meeting with their race team to pass on that intelligence.

Peter Mabon is the Pirelli engineer assigned to Mercedes, and his point of contact in the team is trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin. The Thursday-afternoon meeting is typically devoted to comparing Pirelli's predictions of how the track will evolve over the course of the weekend with the team's own prognostications. Senior engineering staff will be present, sometimes the strategists too.

"For me it's easier to compare if we've already used the compounds," says Mabon, "so at first I'll sort of bounce around where I think we'll be. But that's just off the top of your head.

"A lot of analysis goes in as well from our modelling department, in terms of the loading we expect to see. We have our starting pressures worked out, and of course the [Mercedes] team is always keen to know if we're likely to change them on Friday night.

"The strategists are most interested in the wear predictions - which axle we think might be limited, or which corner of the car could be a potential limitation. At that stage it's just a very broad overview.

"Mercedes are very good in that they accept that it's not set early on - we have to wait and see what happens when they're running the tyres. The virtual world is interesting but it's not one of my strengths - I prefer Friday, when we actually get going."

While many fans - and, indeed, media pundits - view Friday's two 90-minute practice sessions as superfluous and unexciting, it's here each team lays down the foundations of its race performance. It's necessarily a scientific process and a hard grind. Most team personnel will clock up over 17 working hours, whether they're operating power tools 
or poring over telemetry traces.

From a tyre-engineering point of view it's a key opportunity to monitor whether the track is evolving and the tyres are performing (and lasting) as expected. The Pirelli engineer's task is to connect data with practical observations.

"There's a lot you can tell from looking at a tyre," explains Mabon. "Whether there's been any graining or overheating. So, we've got that initial look, but then the useful information is the wear checking. We have a service technician in the garage who cleans up the tyres so we can wear-check them and build up a more complete picture.

"That's the main job on Friday. The team can see from their data what's happening inside the tyre so it's good for them to cross-reference that with what you can see."

Tyre management is crucial at every race although the axle, or corner, under most stress varies between circuits. Different cars put different stresses on their tyres and these observations feed in to the bigger picture of how teams understand the characteristics of their machinery.

The measurements of tyre life also have a big effect on race strategies, which is why races with disrupted build-ups tend to be more exciting. Practice stoppages or big swings in the weather means there's less information for teams to work with: in effect, practice is a process of minimising uncertainty.

"From the wear profiles you can see if camber changes or other set-up adjustments are needed, so it's quite fundamental to what we're doing," says Mabon.

"I wouldn't ever be so bold as to suggest set-up changes on a Mercedes F1 car, but if you home in on something that may be interesting then it's up to them to act on that information. If you're supplying the information in the correct way then it's quite clear to them what to do next in terms of set-up changes between FP1 and FP2, for instance.

"Maybe in other categories of racing the tyre engineer could be expected to come up with these sorts of solutions, but it's not something I've seen in nine years in this paddock that's terribly appreciated!"

Mabon spends each session in the pitlane, checking the tyres as soon as the car comes in.

"It's nice to see them when they're hot, because even then you might see something that can feed in to the bigger picture," he says. "My role is basically to be the eyes and ears for the team, because they've got people back in Brackley as well who are working remotely. If you can fill in some of the pieces it can help them.

"The key is to know what to comment on and what will just cause confusion. That's where experience comes in."

Each team's Pirelli engineer files their template-based report on Friday night ahead of another meeting chaired by Isola in which they digest the day's findings. While the teams might feed this information into set-up changes ahead of FP3, from Pirelli's side it's another opportunity to compare predictions with reality, and it's here the company's simulator specialists might recommend a change in the minimum tyre pressures.

"If the severity of the stress on the tyres is greater than the estimated severity then we will revise the prescription," says Isola, "and we do this only on safety grounds."

If Friday has been dry then FP3 is usually given over to qualifying simulations and performance running, but even then Mercedes likes to receive a report on wear.

"That can also be a tiny little clue to some track evolution," says Mabon. "Say there's been a bit of abrasion on the front tyres on Friday, you can usually put that down to the circuit, and often it goes away. If you clean up the tyres on the Saturday and see it's improving, that's quite nice, but you have to be careful commenting on it because you don't always see a lot of laps completed in FP3."

On the grid the Pirelli engineers are responsible for checking the starting tyre pressures and blanket temperatures, which is a mandatory part of the scrutineering procedure. They'll wear-check during the race as well, but here there's more time pressure because the results of that check are likely to be germane to the strategy for the second car to pit.

"Until that first stop you really don't know for sure where the tyres are going to be," says Mabon. "I know a lot of people think it's quite predictable, but really the Friday running is just a guide. That first stop is critical for what's happening on the day so we have to turn that information around really quickly."

Such intelligence can shape the outcome of races, because even in an era where one-stop races predominate an alternate strategy can deliver victory from an unpromising position. Heartening, in modern times, that eyes, ears and experience feed into these calls as much as squiggles on a computer screen.