In Formula 1, there are different roles for engineers to support the drivers – Ferrari engineer Bryan Bozzi explains the differences
What do a race engineer, a performance engineer and a driver coach actually do in Formula 1? The drivers need the support of the team to achieve the best possible result. Bryan Bozzi is Charles Leclerc’s race engineer at Ferrari and explains who does what in the premier class
What does a race engineer do? Bozzi explains: “The race engineer is responsible for the use of the car on a weekend. This includes implementing the plans from free practice and fine-tuning the car. The race engineer talks to the driver over the radio and passes on all the important information to the driver during the sessions.”
What does the performance engineer do? Bozzi says: “The performance engineer is responsible for the functions on the vehicle, such as the brake balance and the balance of the differential. The job description says that he spends a lot of time analyzing the balance of the car and making sure that the car behaves as the simulations predict.”
What does the driver coach do? Bozzi explains: “The driver coach takes care of improving the driver’s performance. He analyzes the videos and telemetry data of all the cars in the field and gives the driver tips on the line or develops ideas that the driver should try out in order to become faster.” The driver coach works closely with the engineers at the racetrack, but also with the employees at the factory, in Ferrari’s case in Maranello.
“Together, they try to optimize the car to get the last thousandths out of every lap. That often makes the difference in modern Formula 1,” explains Bozzi. Although each employee has their own area of responsibility, there is a lot of overlap so that the performance of the car and driver can only be optimized through teamwork.
