The juggling act that makes up an F1 team principal’s weekend

The track walk

Mike Krack undergoes a track walk with Sebastian Vettel and team members

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Not all team principals join the regular Thursday evening track walks but they’re a great bonding exercise. Since the TP carries responsibility for the team’s results, back at the factory their days are dominated by meetings with various heads of department. Here at the track is where that has to be translated into action, and exploring the circuit at ground level can reveal nuances you don’t see on TV.

Since he comes from an engineering background, Krack likes to be across all technical matters so the track walk is an ideal place to discuss them in an informal way. It’s also great to get out from behind the desk if, like the former BMW Motorsport boss, you’re a keen runner and like to stretch your legs after a day of meetings…

Facing the world

Part of Krack's weekend duties involve speaking to the media

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Another aspect of the team principal’s race weekend far removed from their day-to-day factory duties is the frontman role. Acting as team spokesperson not only presents a unified face to the world, it enables the rest of the team to focus on the job of preparing for the race without being interrupted by content-hungry TV crews.

Even before the Netflix show Drive to Survive vastly augmented the number of cameras in the F1 paddock, pay-TV networks and national broadcasters all sent large numbers of camera crews. The FIA arranges its own partially televised press conferences; Saturday’s one is usually the province of the team principals, but sometimes the governing body likes to feature senior engineers to add variety. For Aston Martin, Krack is called upon most regularly, but chief technical officer Andy Green and performance director Tom McCullough are also on the FIA’s list.

In Hungary, Sebastian Vettel’s retirement dominated the news agenda at the beginning of the weekend so, naturally, Krack was first to be grilled about his feelings about the four-time world champion – and who might replace him. Tricky tasks both, since Krack was an engineer at BMW when Vettel tested for that team, and in the present day there was the small matter of the moves behind the scenes to bring Fernando Alonso to Aston Martin.

“I think this weekend we should keep Sebastian in focus, and not speculate about names,” he said, diplomatically. “We will take care of that from Monday onwards…”

After the FIA conference the team principals move to the TV pen (top) to rotate through various broadcasters. As you can imagine, there’s considerable overlap and duplication, but the key is to keep smiling… it also helps if, like Krack, you’re a polyglot: he can speak in his native Luxembourgish (a Moselle Franconian derivative of German – and, yes, there is a Luxembourg-based broadcaster), German and French as well as English. He also speaks Italian, “but not good enough to do an interview – perhaps
 I should do a course in Spanish now…!”

Marshalling the team

In the minutes before the race start, as the cars assemble on the grid, it’s the team principal’s job to ensure everything is ready to go

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Getting the car out on track and maximising its potential during the race is the team principal’s priority during the grand prix weekend, and that demands attention to detail as well as
the capacity to delegate. Here they take the role of captain, ensuring everyone in the team performs at their highest level,
but without micromanaging them.

Behind closed doors, the team principal will sit in on all the post-session debriefs and take part in the race simulations which determine the most likely strategic scenarios on Sunday. If there are development components on the car – in Hungary, Aston Martin brought a new (and controversial) rear wing featuring an apostrophe-shaped profile on each endplate – the team principal needs to build an understanding of how well they’re working, and whether they fulfil the benchmarks laid down during all those meetings back at the factory. That and having to field questions about them from reporters on the grid.

In the minutes before the race start, as the cars assemble on the grid, it’s the team principal’s job to ensure everything is ready to go. Krack lets the mechanics get on with the job (top) while he liaises with the likes of performance director McCullough and head of trackside engineering Bradley Joyce.

It’s not always a case of being hands-off: sometimes there are difficult decisions to make, such as in Miami where Aston’ s fuel was too cool (it has to be within 10C of the ambient temperature as declared by the FIA) so both cars ended up having to start from the pitlane.

On the pitwall 

Like most F1 team principals, Toto Wolff excepted, Krack takes a seat on the pitwall during live sessions and races

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The majority of team principals take a seat on the pitwall, a notable exception being Mercedes’ Toto Wolff, who generally operates from the garage. When the cars are on track, teams generally communicate with the drivers solely via their race engineers, to avoid distractions and people speaking over one another.

The team principal is essentially watching and listening, ensuring everyone sticks to plan; that’s why many of the pay-TV stations are able to dial in and interview TPs during the race, because the engineers and strategists are calling the shots. If the crew gets it wrong, then of course it’s the team principal’s job to analyse what happened and prevent any repetitions.

The TP can and will communicate with the engineers via the radio during the race, and will often speak to the drivers to congratulate or commiserate on the cool-down lap. Some drivers thrive on having some attention from the boss and may request in-race comms, but generally the TP will only speak to them if a team order is being disobeyed and a commandment from above is required.

Orders require delicate management, especially if they arise because of how strategy is playing out: in France, Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll nearly collided at the final corner, and in Hungary Stroll had to wave Vettel by and yield 10th place because his soft tyres weren’t working as well as Vettel’s mediums.

Since modern team principals are employees rather than owners, they often have their own bosses present: for Krack that means team owner Lawrence Stroll, who prefers to keep a low profile and watch the action from his own station in the garage. Aston Martin CEO Martin Whitmarsh rarely attends races.

Krack has the delicate job of overseeing the race team's multiple functions on a race weekend, a position that requires an ability to spin multiple plates

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images