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VINTAGE
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Copyright © Marc Priestley 2017
Marc Priestley has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Yellow Jersey Press in 2017
penguin.co.uk/vintage
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
For Clare, Lexi, Leo, Rex and Ginger
Marc Priestley, or Elvis as I know him, is the perfect example of an evolution of talent.
He started out getting his hands dirty as a mechanic in Formula Ford and British Formula 3 before rising through the ranks to the pinnacle of motorsport, which is where we first met when we both worked for McLaren’s Formula One team. F1 attracts many, but few sustain in that rare air of competition where the correct answer to any question is ‘Yes I can’. The relentless pursuit of marginal gains with many late nights and early mornings would break a mere mortal, but Elvis represents the pinnacle of a man’s desire to constantly push to be the greatest version of himself.
No other sport relies on their backroom staff in the way that Formula One does. Yes, football clubs have their physios and coaches, and tennis players their psychologists and trainers; golfers use a caddy to strategise their way around the course. But within the fine margins of a Grand Prix, a pit crew can physically and decisively alter the outcome during a race, not only with the work they do in preparation, but with the consistency of their performances in pitstops too. Operating well for three out of four stops isn’t acceptable if the fourth turns out to be a nightmare. Getting even the tiniest thing wrong might prevent the driver from taking a win, and so a team’s support crew can be every bit as crucial as the guys behind the wheel.
Their in depth understanding of the car and its engineering, and my reliance upon them, became truly apparent when we had a freak technical failure right before the start of one particular race. It was the Canadian Grand Prix in 2001 and I remember leaving the grid for my formation lap ahead of the imminent race start, when I felt something rattling around in the cockpit. I couldn’t look down to see what was going on because I was strapped in so tightly, but once I’d pulled up in my grid slot, I used what limited movement I had to scrape the mystery item along the cockpit floor towards me with my foot. It was what looked like a very big and very important gold nut.
I got on the radio straight away. ‘Er, guys, I’ve just found something floating around in the car. It looks like a big gold ring.’
There was initial confusion on the pit wall. The mechanics and engineers were naturally concerned and wanted to know what it was, so I repeated my not-so-technical description.
‘What do you mean a big gold ring? Can you describe it in more detail?’ came the reply.
‘It’s bloody big, about two and a half inches across, circular, gold, and has small holes all the way around the outside. There’s a fine thread in the middle … and a big crack through the centre!’ I said as the remaining cars formed up noisily behind me.
As the mechanics and engineers rapidly worked out, using the spare car in the garage, what might have happened and what consequences it could have, someone suggested I throw it out of the car and over the pit wall next to my grid slot.
I couldn’t believe it. There I was, attempting to ready myself for the start of a Grand Prix, all the while trying to throw what I hoped wasn’t a vital part towards my mechanics. It was ridiculous, especially as I was strapped snugly into my seat and couldn’t really move my arms over the sides of the cockpit. It must’ve looked hilarious from the outside. I jettisoned it from the car with all the might my forearms could muster.
I tried not to panic and almost instantly the team calmly reassured me the broken nut would not present a safety risk and I should prepare as normal.
Apparently, it was a retaining nut, which was supposed to hold the front rockers in place – a big part of my internal suspension buried deep at the front of the chassis, but the guys were able to explain, quickly and incisively, that its main job was to hold the rockers in during the build process or while the car was off the ground on stands in the garage. The dynamic loads going through the suspension on track were such that nothing was going to fall apart.
As ever, I had to put my trust in the guys who knew that car inside out, and as the five red lights began to light up one by one on the gantry to start the race, I confirmed I was happy to go for it and put any worry out of my mind. I had absolute faith in my team.
I did OK for the first few laps. The suspension, as predicted, was fine structurally, even if the balance of the car seemed a little strange. But halfway through the race my engine blew up, as they sometimes did back then with the extremes we were pushing them to, putting an end to any podium hopes. The failure was completely unrelated, but it showed just how stressful and chaotic life in F1 could be back then, and what an intense job the mechanics had when looking after such a complicated and technical race car.
Amongst all of this chaos over the years, Elvis was a dependable, reliable pair of hands and a great character to be around.
It’s no surprise to me that after playing his part in securing Lewis Hamilton’s first World Title, Elvis has moved on to his next challenge, still surrounded by engineering excellence and cars but now in his role as a TV presenter, where his easy, relaxed style makes it feel like he’s putting his arm around the viewers’ shoulders and taking them on a walk behind the scenes of one of the biggest sports in the world. I look forward to watching him continue to push the boundaries in this field whilst inevitably looking for his next great life challenge.
I hope you enjoy reading the book and joining him on his journey.
David Coulthard
The British Grand Prix, Silverstone
‘Box. Box. Box!’
We heard the call across the team radio; there was a split second of free-fall, twenty mechanics charging towards the pitlane, dressed in fire suits, balaclavas, helmets and gloves, emerging from the garage at a pivotal moment; nerves, fear, excitement and pride take over. The noise of the passionate British crowd and the overwhelming scream of passing engines threaten to distract focus; a burst of radio chatter between driver and team as one of the most tactical, choreographed and adrenaline-fuelled procedures moves into action at The Fastest Show on Earth: the Formula One pitstop. Or as I lovingly called it for the best part of a decade, work.
I’m in the pack somewhere, anonymous to the millions of people watching on TV, waiting for our car to appear at the end of the pitlane. I did many jobs in pitstops over the years, but on this day I’m operating the right-rear wheel gun to remove and refit the retaining nut, while my teammates swap the wheels and tyres for me. It’s a well-orchestrated routine that should take no longer than a few seconds with no fuel going in this time. A few seconds of technical, highly pressurised precision that takes place multiple times in every Grand Prix. But under high-pressure conditions, with zero margin for error, this pause in racing can often be the difference between winning and losing.
I can see him now: Lewis Hamilton, McLaren’s World Champ-in-waiting, arcing into view and bearing down on us at 100kph. Several hundred kilos of pointy, sharp Formula One car moving in at speed as I kneel on a marked spot telling me exactly where he’s supposed to land. I take a deep breath, fighting the urge to move back to a safer distance … Lewis’s barely in-control car moves in hot, missing me by centimetres and screeches to a stop.
The timer starts …
I track the rear wheel as he arrives, my gun landing on the nut before the car comes to a complete standstill, both a test of trust and nerve. If Lewis were to overshoot his pit box, I’d almost certainly get dragged along with him, but he’s one of the best and stops exactly where I need him. The gun unlocks the nut, trying to wrench itself violently out of my hands in the process, and my job’s halfway done before I can even register the sights, sounds and emotions smothering me. I always loved the danger of pitstops. They delivered the adrenaline rush I needed to operate at the best of my ability, but the risks were high too. A fuel accident might engulf the crew and driver in a mini inferno; the heat coming off the brakes – a thousand degrees of glowing red carbon fibre – could burn instantly through my gloves and cook my skin.
One second …
The sensations quickly become intense. I lean back, switching the gun’s direction of rotation as the rear wheel comes off. The new one goes on and I follow it in, pushing it on with the wheel gun. The acrid smell of burning rubber chokes my nostrils, as small marbles from the old tyre become dislodged and melt instantly on the brake discs, smouldering and catching fire.
Two seconds …
The nut’s zipped back on with another high-pitched and violent whine. Then the noise explodes around me, the mind-blowing yelp of a 19,000rpm V8 engine flexing its muscles. Lewis is hard on the throttle now, the engine bouncing off its rev limiter, desperate to drop the clutch and get the car back into the race. I’m less than a metre away from the deafening scream and vibrations. I can feel it hammering my bones, my teeth, my muscles, like I’ve jammed my head into the launch pad of a lifting NASA rocket. It’s overwhelming, despite my moulded earplugs and helmet. Behind the tyre I can see thick smoke rising; the brakes are being licked by flame, but there’s no time to do anything about it. The fire will go out as the car moves away and the airflow returns. Instinctively, everything tells you a blaze like that’s bad, yet I can do nothing but watch. Three seconds to change the wheels and tyres meant success. Five seconds was slow, and to hesitate was always to lose.
Three seconds …
As with every other pitstop, I do my job, hoping that everything else has gone to plan. It didn’t always work that way: the occasional practice pitstop sessions where we’d sent cars away with cross-threaded nuts or dropped the car off the jacks before the nuts were tight had taught me that mistakes sometimes happened. In those relaxed practice situations I’d think, ‘Shit, if that happened in an actual race it’d be disastrous …’ Luckily, it rarely did, and trust, skill and nerve became the strengths my teammates and I relied on throughout my career.
I lean back, my arm instinctively raised in the air as the rear wheel shudders, clunking into gear, and the car drops hard onto the ground. My heart’s racing and my senses are confused and disorientated by the incredible noise shaking my core.
My job’s done.
Go! Go! Go!
Lewis wheelspins away from right under my nose as the sounds, vibrations and emotions reach new levels, and he’s back in the game. Yes! We did it! High fives and fist-bumps all round as we rush back to the garage TVs, pumped on adrenaline, chests puffed out in pride, to see where he emerges back on the track.
During a career with the McLaren F1 team from 2000 to 2009 I’ve seen plenty of good and bad pitstops. I’ve watched as technical errors and bad strategy calls from the team have cost drivers their Grand Prix victory, even a Drivers’ Championship, the ultimate accolade for any F1 racer hoping to prove their elite status. I’ve also seen how our good calls and quick thinking have delivered great success, and I’ve been involved in many races where the final results have come down to pitstop performance; there’ve been several occasions where the two leading teams pitted their drivers at the same time and I promise you there’s no better feeling than watching your man stop at his box in second place, only to leave with a fresh set of tyres as race leader moments later.
The flipside, as always, were the critical failures, and I witnessed one or two during my career. Seeing another team sneak an edge on you after a particularly slow pitstop was always tough. At McLaren, a notoriously professional and fastidious organisation, we used to pride ourselves on being the best at what we did. To make a mistake was a painful experience, particularly because our actions were being played out and analysed in a very public way. The pressure of performing in front of worldwide audiences could bring with it real anxiety when I first started out as a young man, and I was always struck by the surreal nature of working in a job that I’d been fascinated by as a kid. Watching the British Grand Prix on the telly did nothing to prepare me, however. If anything, it only expanded the fear of failure, and I pictured the fans at home, quick to criticise the pit crew for making any mistakes during a driver’s shot at glory.
Fortunately, I quickly got used to dealing with the pressure and was able to function at the highest level. Which was good because within those years at McLaren I experienced all kinds of drama: Grand Prix wins and soul-destroying losses; controversy and scandal; cheating and espionage. There were episodes of drug- and alcohol-charged recklessness; lavish parties and extravagant spending. I’ve also been at the frontline of technological advancement in a business that prides itself on pushing development and speed to the absolute limit, while working with some of the most talented and explosive drivers on the planet. It was a dream come true, and I thrived in this exciting sport during a period where the thrills, stakes and rewards were high; in an era when inflated tobacco sponsorship meant we were able to play with a seemingly endless reserve of cash.
From my position in the garage I was involved in some of the most dramatic moments in F1’s recent history. I worked with world-class drivers like Mika Hakkinen, Kimi Raikkonen and David Coulthard, but I was also right there as the controversial battle between Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso unfolded in 2007. It was fascinating to watch as Lewis developed from a young rookie into a potential championship-winning superstar; a potential that was realised not long after a damaging fallout with Fernando which would tailspin into part of one of the sport’s biggest scandals: Spygate.
In his first months, however, the youngster was remarkably humble, and I remember a marketing event, I think for Hugo Boss, that we went to one evening, just after Lewis had come into F1. When Lewis emerged from the team’s chauffeur-driven Mercedes to see his own face projected, in enormous scale, on the side of the building, he couldn’t hold back the tears of disbelief and needed a moment to compose himself while the emotions around his life-changing role as an F1 driver hit him all at once. It was rare to witness a reaction like that from a top sportsman, especially when surprise, or vulnerability, is often viewed as a weakness in such a testosterone-driven industry. But Lewis was just a young man entering a strange new world for the first time, and his responses were genuine. I found it to be an endearing quality back then.
Inevitably things changed as his stock began to rise and the war between him and Fernando took centre stage. Both were brilliant in a car, probably the two most complete drivers I’ve ever worked with, but the rivalry, distrust and disrespect they developed for each other bred some characteristics in each of them that would leave many in the team falling out of love with their two star drivers.
At times, I had a ringside seat to some incredible bust-ups between the pair, some of them involving McLaren’s iconic team boss, Ron Dennis. But once the dust had settled and Fernando had moved teams, Lewis began to flourish even more, and by 2008, after just two seasons in the sport, we were celebrating his first World Championship. It was a moment I’ll never forget.
Elsewhere, I worked at the Monaco Grand Prix, where the bar bills were sobering and the super-yachts moored in the harbour were more costly than a whole street of homes in Beverley Hills. I’ve seen emerging drivers on humble wages transformed into overnight millionaires, and witnessed Ron Dennis and the team spend fortunes in the pursuit of technical perfection. But one small incident sticks in my mind that perhaps sums up the financial bubble we existed in: at a test, not long after I joined the team, McLaren chartered a helicopter … in a desperate attempt to dry out a wet track.
We’d exclusively hired out the Santa Pod Raceway drag strip in Northamptonshire to test a brand-new front wing on the car in private. Wind tunnel testing and computer simulations had shown that our developments, if successful, would give us a considerable performance advantage, but only real-world straight-line testing at high speed and in a controlled environment would deliver the technical data we required to confirm our predictions and approve the parts for racing. For that to work safely, we needed a dry surface, but during the morning the heavens had opened. A wet track not only meant that braking was difficult at the end of the straight (and driving through puddles at the speeds we needed to achieve would be dangerous), but the moisture had an impact on the airflow structures around the parts of the car that we wanted to measure, as well as on the sensors measuring them. To compare the data from the car on the racetrack to the one that had worked so well in our wind tunnel, conditions needed to be the same: dry. Meanwhile time was against us. We had a very small window, a matter of hours, to run the car and hopefully get the confirmation we needed that the wing was good. The parts then had to be signed off, manufactured, painted, assembled, and then packaged and flown out to the race team in time for the next weekend’s Grand Prix. If we missed the opportunity, the wings wouldn’t be ready for the race and the critical performance advantage they delivered would have to wait until the next round two weeks later – something we couldn’t afford to let happen. The pressure was on.
With the tarmac showing no sign of drying and time running out, some bright spark suggested we charter a helicopter. At first I was pretty sure he only said it as a throw-away joke as we all stood around waiting, becoming more and more frustrated at the situation, but in the end some of the most brilliant engineers in the business began to raise eyebrows and become excited. His crazy idea was to instruct the pilot to fly up and down the length of the strip, just above the tarmac, so his rotary blades could scatter the surface water away with the downdraft. Such was the urgency in completing the test session in time, and the bottomless money pit financing our business model during that era, that the call was put in without hesitation or question. It turns out you can actually hail a chopper at pretty short notice for enough cash, like an Uber for the super wealthy, and shortly afterwards a bemused helicopter pilot was swooping in low over Santa Pod, his blades whipping up a typhoon of rain. It was quite a spectacle, but the reality was that while it did shift an awful lot of water into the air, 90 per cent of it fell straight back down onto the track … We never did manage to complete the test, though it did give us all a rather unusual anecdote to take away from the day.
Even after years in the sport, things like that still blew my mind, and as a normal bloke on the street, albeit one with a passion for working with cars and technology, I got to live out my dream job while dipping my toes into the lifestyle of the rich and famous. Just being in the bubble proved both infectious and disorientating at times. The adrenaline rush and the excitement of F1 is what entices and then traps a lot of people into the sport. They don’t want to leave, and when they eventually do they often have a hard time finding a replacement for the emotional highs and lows. I was lucky and sidestepped the loss to some extent by moving from the pitlane to the paddock and into the F1 television media, working for Sky Sports, the BBC and other broadcasters over the last few years in presenting and reporting roles across Formula One and now Formula E. The excitement I get from operating on live TV, with no second chances or ‘take twos’, can sometimes be as big as a pitstop, and the deadlines and demands often match the pressure of a wheel change in the middle of a pivotal Grand Prix. It’s also afforded me a privileged position: I’m able to watch the changes of an ever-evolving sport close up, while appreciating my time with McLaren for the thrilling, life-changing, slightly surreal and intensely challenging ride that it was.
It was as if I was destined to work in motor racing.
As a kid, I grew up in a small village in Kent, which backed on to the world-famous Brands Hatch racetrack. At that time in the 1980s, the circuit shared the British Grand Prix with Silverstone in alternate years, and the sound of cars and motorbikes ricocheted around the village nearly every weekend. In Grand Prix week, the surrounding streets would overflow with fancy cars looking for parking spots, lots of them carrying unusual international number plates that fascinated me at that age. There were designs from all over the world and it piqued my imagination. ‘Wow,’ I thought. ‘This must be pretty special if people have driven from Germany, Austria and wherever else to come all the way to my tiny village for these F1 cars.’ To my mind, a glamorous circus had rocked up in town and I loved every second of it.
We didn’t have a lot of money back then as a family, so I couldn’t just pop over and buy a ticket, even though we lived next door to the track. Instead, it became a TV event and everybody in the house would crowd around to watch the start and the first few laps until, one by one, Mum, Dad, my brother and whoever else was in the house would drift away to make dinner, mow the lawn, or whatever. Not me. I would sit there transfixed, not just by the glitziness of the race, or the high-speed drama, which I obviously loved, but almost as much by the design of the cars and the teams involved. During F1’s earlier years there were some pretty outlandish ideas on show. I remember the Tyrrell P34 had six wheels because the designers believed it would better transfer their huge engine torque onto the track; a Brabham had a huge fan on the back, designed to suck the car onto the racetrack and give greater downforce and grip. It was engineering ingenuity at its best and I loved it. And whenever a pitstop took place, the anonymous technicians running around in their fire suits and balaclavas fascinated me. I was in awe of how quickly they could change the wheels and how they were actually crucial players in helping the drivers to win a race.
‘Forget being a Formula One driver,’ I thought. (My karting skills, or lack thereof, helped me come to that conclusion.) ‘I want to be one of those guys …’
As a kid, I was interested in building stuff and breaking things down and my bike was forever in pieces as I tinkered with the wheels and chain. I loved technology too, and whenever we got a new hi-fi or video recorder, I would pore over the manual until I understood the workings inside out. This practical curiosity translated to my schoolwork too, and while I think my dad was keen on me taking a traditionally academic route to university with subjects like English, I enjoyed and excelled in Craft, Design and Technology (CDT). I loved designing and making things.
I’d also had my racing cherry popped on the Brands Hatch track when one day, unbeknown to my parents, some friends and I snuck onto the property. There was a Historic Formula One car test day taking place, and a mate of mine lived in a house that backed onto the grounds of the Brands Hatch site. Having cycled round to his place and dug a hole under his fence big enough for a ten-year-old kid to crawl through, we made our way through the wooded perimeter until we found ourselves standing at the edge of the racetrack. ‘We shouldn’t be here,’ I thought, feeling a little edgy, but undeterred, we watched, gawping, as a parade of high-speed, very noisy cars tore around the circuit in front of us.
Then I spotted a better vantage point: the infield grass at the Druids Hairpin at the top of the hill. The cars were braking heavily and coming so close to the apex of the corner I thought we’d get an amazing view of them as they went by, especially if we were over that side and tucked safely behind the low barriers. We waited for a pause in the action before, in somewhat suicidal fashion, we dashed across the racetrack and jumped behind the rubber tyre wall. It was a bloody stupid idea, but for a couple of laps we had the best seats in the house, crouching just a metre or so from the action. The noise was deafening and I could feel the draft as the huge cars with giant wings rushed right past us. I loved it. It wasn’t long before we were spotted, though and once the session had been brought to an abrupt halt by red flags and the safety car had been sent out, our rag-tag gang was plucked to safety, by the ear if I remember rightly, and dumped at the Brands Hatch main gate with a scorching reprimand. When I realised they weren’t taking me home to face the wrath of my parents, I quickly got over the telling-off. I’d just had one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. What a day. In fact, the only thing I was now annoyed about was that we had to walk halfway back around the village for a mile or two to get back to my mate’s house and pick up our abandoned bikes.
After my GCSEs, I tried to appease my family and embarked on A level courses in English, Design and Media Studies, but within a month or two, I knew I wasn’t cut out for it – plus my head had been turned by a Mechanical Engineering course at the same college. After an awkward but ultimately encouraging chat with my parents, I was allowed to switch paths and I immersed myself in the world of cars and technology. Only then did I begin to think that instead of just dreaming about working in motorsport, I might actually try to do it. After a few weeks on the course, already thinking I knew it all, I started writing begging letters to the addresses of racing teams listed in the advertising sections of Autosport, the biggest trade magazine at the time. I wanted work experience and I would scribble pleas every week asking for an unpaid internship. Unsurprisingly, my letterbox was stuffed with rejection letters and notes telling me ‘Thanks very much, we’ll keep your details on file should anything come up in the future …’
Then, one day, somebody who lived in the village mentioned that he knew of a guy who worked with a Formula Ford team, pretty much the base rung on the single-seater motorsport ladder. ‘He won’t be able to pay you,’ he said. ‘But if you want, he’d be happy for you to spend some time working with them.’ So, in the summer holidays of 1995 I decamped to Milton Keynes for a three-week adventure, where I slept in the spare room at one of the mechanic’s houses and became a lackey in their workshop, sweeping the floors and satiating a seemingly never-ending thirst for tea.
I loved every second of it, and when I was eventually taken to a sportscar test day at the Mallory Park circuit in Leicestershire to help one of the privateers it felt like The Real Deal, even though a lot of the competitors were over-aged, overweight and under-talented drivers who were just doing it for a bit of a hobby. I’d been let loose with a proper racing car, on a proper track, with a proper team. It was all the incentive I needed – I had to move up the ladder and get to Formula One.
At the age of eighteen or nineteen, I used my limited experience to land an apprenticeship with a small team in London that built and raced Caterham 7s. I had the time of my life, building cars during the week and racing them on the weekends. I took it very seriously, learning as much as I could and using it as a springboard to gain experience and make contacts in the racing world, quickly trying to work my way up from there. I was soon on the doorstep of the big leagues. British Formula Three followed, then Italian Formula 3000, where I wore the team uniform with pride and lorded it around the paddock as if I was working at the Monaco Grand Prix. The level of professionalism was amazing and I really embraced it, wanting to be the best at what we did. I remember being so proud of my job – and my friends being super jealous. Then, after a couple more years of writing incessant speculative letters to every F1 team and continuing to receive an endless stream of rejections, McLaren responded to one. And it wasn’t the standard copy-and-paste reply I’d become so used to. ‘We’d love to talk to you,’ it said. My head spinning, I read it over and over to be sure. I had my foot in the door of F1 and I wasn’t going to budge.
Despite being only 22, I felt I had what was required to be an F1 mechanic. I was good at my job and very professional; I was keen on attention to detail, not quite to McLaren levels at that stage, but enough to have set me apart a little bit in Formula 3000. I was meticulous in my work and I knew how to behave around drivers, sponsors and team owners alike. After a terrifying phone call with the Test Team Manager, I was asked to come in for an interview at McLaren.
I remember putting the phone down and shaking like a leaf. An interview at McLaren! If nothing else, it meant I’d be visiting the McLaren factory and even that would be a dream come true. I thought about little else in the weeks that followed and when the day finally arrived I was as nervous as I’d ever been. I set off for the hour-and-a-half drive down to Woking from my home in Northampton at least three hours before my appointment time – there was no way I could risk being late. When I got there, I drove into the car park in my beaten-up old banger and found a spot tucked away in the corner, in an attempt to not draw attention to myself amongst the shiny new Mercedes cars filling most of the other bays. For an hour or so I sat there, worrying, wondering, imagining and dreaming, going over notes I’d written and trying to justify to myself why I should possibly be sat outside one of the most famous and successful Formula One teams in the sport’s history.
Then the time came and I smartened myself up one last time, locked the squeaky car door and walked nervously towards the glowing red McLaren sign above the black glass front doors. The interview itself was all a bit of a blur. I met the Test Team Manager and the Chief Mechanic and was then shown around the factory floor where the team were building their cars for an upcoming test. It was amazing just to be that close and see what was going on, I was in total awe. When I left, I had no idea how it’d gone. I got on well with them both, but was sure I must’ve come across as a young, inexperienced, nervous, sweaty mess, because that’s exactly how I felt. Why would a huge team like McLaren want someone like that to join their elite?
I went away having had an incredible experience and tried to take it as just that, but try as I might, I just couldn’t think about anything else, dreaming of being one of those guys. Two weeks went by and I began to resign myself to the reality of not making the grade this time. It would never stop me trying of course, I would never give up and was sure that one day I would definitely make it, but for now I needed to continue my journey. I’d been offered a great job at Prodrive – not Formula One, but a big company who were hugely successful in the World Rally Championship (WRC), so I gladly took up their offer and proudly went to work for my first day in a top-flight motorsport team.
By lunchtime, things were going well. I’d met lots of people and been shown around the impressive factory and the equally impressive WRC cars. Then my phone rang. I answered it in a quiet spot and was shocked to find it was McLaren’s softly spoken Test Team Manager. He calmly told me they’d seen lots of people over the last couple of weeks and would now like to offer me the position of Number Two Mechanic on the McLaren Test Team! Oh … My … God! I was beside myself. Desperately trying to sound in control, I thanked him profusely before ending the call and then jumping up and down on the spot, screaming inside. I’d accepted instantly, without thinking anything through, and now had to deal with the awkward situation of being on my first day in a great new job at Prodrive.
I went to my new boss, very gingerly, and bumbled my way through the explanation, trying to sound remorseful, when inside I was excited beyond belief. He understood, I think, and I left immediately without even completing a full day. I felt like I’d just found out I’d won the lottery and all my dreams had quite literally come true. I remember driving home in a complete daze and called my mum on the way. ‘Mum’, I said, trying to remain calm, ‘I’m a bloody F1 mechanic!’
My inaugural year on the McLaren Test Team was incredible, everything I’d hoped for and so much more. Each day opened my eyes a little bit more to this mystical new world I’d longed to be part of for so long. It gave me plenty of much-needed experience in the workings of my new environment. I got to know the way things were done in Formula One and, especially, the way things were done in the team. I was working at tests, away from the pressure of being at a Grand Prix. That’s a great place to start out, and from the team’s point of view, a great way to bring people into the game and train them, fine-tune them and prepare them for life under the huge spotlight of Grand Prix racing. It’s a luxury they don’t really have today, with test teams having been disbanded, and tests reduced to a bare minimum in the regulations in order to cut costs.
Whilst I loved every minute of it, despite the relentless hours and punishing schedule, I was soon impatient to go racing. I still had my dream of being part of an F1 pitstop crew and wanted to move up. It dawned on me after some time, though, that if and when that moment came, how would I ever be ready? There were no pitstops while all I was doing was testing. Not once did I ever change a wheel in a hurry during that spell, which I was surprised at, and whilst, believe me, there is no set of circumstances that can fully prepare you for the reality of a real-time, heat-of-the-moment competitive pitstop, it would surely have helped to have at least been introduced to the process.
There was no mechanism for grooming the next generation of pit crew, which was something I found strange at the time. What happened if someone got sick or injured on the race team? Who took their place in the pitstops? Wait … there were no backups?! Being young and inquisitive, but not wanting to ruffle any feathers in my new role, I kept my questions to myself, but pondered them endlessly. If I did one day get the call to step up to the race team, how would I ever be ready to join the crew? Would they expect me to slot seamlessly into position? A precision, choreographed pitstop only works when every single element operated perfectly, in harmony. One slip-up could bring the whole stack of cards tumbling down.
Eventually I suggested to my Chief Mechanic that we should operate a backup pitstop crew on the Test Team and practice regularly at tests. It would give us all a taste of what was involved and we could have an understudy for each position should the Race Team ever need a stand-in. The idea was discussed for a while, but never implemented. Their reasoning was that the Test Team simply had no spare time to spend on something that was so rarely required. So, when I was eventually promoted to the Race Team at the end of 2001, after a year and a half of testing, I had no idea what would be involved.
The step up was a dream come true, of course. It was all I’d ever wanted for years. Getting my job at McLaren in the first place was one of the best days of my life, but as much as I loved my time on the Test Team, it wasn’t racing, I wasn’t attending Grand Prix, and wasn’t part of the pitstop crew. I looked up to those boys, almost as idols, watching them as they came and went at McLaren’s Woking factory, returning from successful races to the congratulations of the hundreds of people who worked there. I wanted to be part of that experience.
Joining the team for the final Race Team test of pre-season, before heading off to Australia for the opening Grand Prix of 2002, was my first experience with the crew. As the new kid on the block and a rookie youngster, the Team Manager, Dave Ryan, and the Chief Mechanic had given me a pitstop role that rarely came into play. My job was to replace the spare nose cone, which only ever happened if the driver suffered an accident in the race and damaged the original. That was a pretty rare eventuality, and given how nervous I was, I was quite satisfied with that level of responsibility.
Pitstops were a bit different when I first started, all those years ago. They were nothing like the slick, two-second spectacles of modern Formula One. There just wasn’t the same value placed on them back then by the team, and more impetus was given to making the car go around a lap as quickly as possible. The fact that we only practised them occasionally, and only ever at a Grand Prix, was a good example of their indifference, and if work on the cars ever slipped behind, pitstop practice was the first thing to get bumped from our schedule. I got the impression it was viewed by management as an inconvenient necessity and a bit of a pain in the arse, rather than the game-changer it should have been, and later became. For me, though, there was nothing more important in the world that week than making sure my first competitive pitstops went well. So when we got to Melbourne and rolled the T-Car (or spare race car) out into the pitlane for practice on Thursday evening, I took it very seriously.
My role was to work like this: the car stops on its marks in the pit box and is manually lifted onto a small stand. Someone takes off the broken nose cone, then I seamlessly move in, swinging the new nose and the enormous front wing into position. I line the nose up with four pins on the front of the chassis and push it on, at which point two guys lock the catches, which secures it to the car. Once attached, I leap out of the way, allowing the front jack man to move in and lower the car back onto the floor.
At least that’s what should have happened …
When my moment came the first time, I stumbled with the heavy nose and wing assembly, tripping and bumping into the guy taking the first nose off. I continually missed the four small pins on the front of the chassis, and in doing so damaged parts of the brake and power steering systems by heavily battering them with the nose cone. Once or twice I let go before the catches were completely done up and the nose cone dropped to the floor. On one occasion I even stood still, admiring my own work, preventing the front jack man from getting close enough to the car to do his job. Basically, it was a disaster. Everything that could go wrong went wrong, and I was so terrified it was going to happen on Sunday afternoon that I went to see the Team Manager after practice to express my concern over the situation. His reaction was telling about the way pitstops were viewed by the team back then.
‘Oh, don’t worry about it, Elvis,’ he said, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder. ‘There’re two things to remember here. Firstly, it’s highly unlikely you’re going to be needed anyway, so just chill out … Secondly, if we do need a new nose, it means the driver’s had an accident, so his race is probably ruined. Just don’t worry about it, it’ll all be fine.’
His nonchalance was worlds apart from my paranoia, and as he waved me away with a pat on the back, I walked off to do exactly the opposite of his advice. Worry.
I was genuinely scared. I thought about little else for the next few days and even struggled to sleep on the Saturday night before the race. I went over and over the scenarios in my head, trying to visualise the perfect pitstop, but I was convinced my introduction into Grand Prix life would be a very public disaster. When race day finally arrived it was a mind-blowing experience. Our cars had qualified in fourth place (David Coulthard) and fifth (Kimi Raikkonen), so we were near to the front of the grid, right behind the two Ferraris. It felt surreal being on the track in amongst the scenes I was so used to watching on the telly. For a short while I was distracted enough not to think about the huge responsibility of my work and revelled in the addictive atmosphere of the first race of a new F1 season. I was in my element, strutting around David Coulthard’s car with pride as the passing celebrities and TV cameras looked on. It felt larger than life.
Once we’d wished the drivers luck and strapped them in, they screeched off for their parade, or green flag lap, before the official race start. We headed back towards the pitlane, dragging the jacks, trolleys and equipment from the grid, so we were ready in case of any early pitstops. Eventually I heard the cars roar away from the start line, the lights going out as we rushed back towards our garages with the huge crowd of other fire suit-clad mechanics and engineers from every other team. The fear kicked back in and I zoned out from the rest of the world. All of a sudden I didn’t want to feel larger than life anymore. Part of me wanted to be back home, watching it all on TV again, where I couldn’t mess anything up. And then, my radio earpiece burst into life. It was Dave Ryan, the Team Manager. The Grand Prix had started but already he was delivering a message to the team with his usual commanding calm, but to my mind it was the sound of an impending panic attack.
‘OK, boys, Kimi’s been off at turn one and damaged his front wing,’ said Dave. ‘He’s coming in for a nose change. Prepare for a nose change …’
My whole world stopped. My heart was pounding so hard I could almost hear it over the screaming noise of the cars echoing around the circuit. Was I hyperventilating? Was I having a heart attack? Flustered, I ran back to the garage, tripping myself up with the front jack and starter motor trolley I’d been dragging behind me. When I got there I threw the equipment carelessly into the garage, in among the VIPs and team management still watching the first lap on the monitors. My arrival certainly didn’t go unnoticed. I’d made a huge mess, and was running around like a complete amateur in front of everyone.
I grabbed my balaclava, ran into the pitlane and picked up the replacement nose for Kimi’s car, checking at least four or five times that I had the right one. Still overwhelmed with adrenaline, I leapt to the front of the pitstop box and prepared myself for the inevitable. But I was standing there alone. Turning back to the garage, I saw my more experienced colleagues clearing up the mess I’d just created in a fairly leisurely fashion. They knew we had around a minute and a half to set ourselves up while Kimi limped his way through the entire lap with a broken car. More worryingly, I could also see Ron Dennis, the team principal and a notoriously fearsome character, gesturing towards me as he chatted to one of the boys.
‘Who’s that?’ I guessed he was saying. ‘And why is he so out of control?’
I couldn’t go back into the garage now, so embarrassingly I stood in the pitlane, shaking like a leaf in my fire suit, holding the spare nose and front wing in my arms. I prayed that nobody had noticed my arrival … But they had. My amateurish entrance had advertised to a TV cameraman the fact we were about to make a pitstop. He’d taken up position, no more than a metre away from my face with his camera. The pressure was on. I imagined the hundreds of millions of people on the other end of his lens all staring at me for the entire minute and a half. Clearly that’s not what was happening – it would have made for terrible television – but paranoia had taken hold. I even pictured my friends and family watching back at home and instantly regretted telling them what my pitstop role was. I could’ve been completely anonymous with all my gear on, but now they were all about to see me screw up McLaren’s race.
The noise of the other racing cars screaming past, just a few metres away on the other side of the pit wall, was enough to rattle my bones in those days, and with the sweat of anxiety running down my face and pooling into my stinging eyes, there was more than enough to put me off my relatively simple task. The truth is that most people are more than capable of picking up a nose cone and popping it onto a few pins. That’s easy. But in that moment it seemed like the hardest job in the world. I imagined Murray Walker, up in his commentary box, talking viewers through the ‘catastrophic mess-up in the McLaren pit’. The back pages of tomorrow’s newspapers running the headline ‘McLaren: Disaster!’ with a picture of me underneath. Of course none of these things were actually going to happen, but that’s what was going through my mind during these frantic moments.
The other members of the crew finally gathered around after what seemed like a lifetime, laughing at me for having stood there on my own for so long. I was humiliated, but at that point I at least felt a little less exposed, as Kimi eventually appeared at the far end of the pitlane and sped his way towards us. The pitlane speed limit back then was 120kph, just over 70mph. Watching him bear down on us, hoping, praying, that the car’s front wing might stop at a spot just in front of my ankles, felt like standing in the fast lane of a motorway. The brakes on a Formula One car are so good though, that at around 15 metres from the pit box, a driver can still be doing 70mph! Still to this day it’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done.
Kimi screeched to a halt, hitting his marks perfectly.