The Athletic

The Race is on, and while the drivers are the stars in Formula One, the real heroes are the thousands

working behind the scenes to design, develop and run the cars.

One hugely important group are the engineers, who often talked about, but not always well understood.

I'm Ed Straw and joining me to shed more light on their role, and Mark Hughes, and special guest, legendary F1 race engineer, Rob Smedley.

Well, Rob, we'll come to you first. Obviously, you're very well-known, legendary Formula One engineer,

with your experience stretching back to the late 90s when you came in with Jordan, worked with Ferrari,

of course. So, yeah, engineering not always well understood, but you're someone who knows that game inside out.

Yeah, I don't know whether anybody knows it inside out, Ed.

But certainly, yeah, I've been around for a while, not quite as long as Mark, as he'll come to tell you.

But a few years, yeah.

And engineering has changed a lot over that period.

I'm interested in the comment about we're not very well understood as a breed of people because I think once an engineer, always an engineer, you know, no matter what position

you end up in, so you see there's lots of, there's this trend now of engineers becoming

team principles, but they're very,

they're very, very different as a breed of team principle from, you know, a more classic

team principle, which is for a more business point of view.

And before that, you know, team owners like the wheeler dealer, we're quite a different breed in how we go about things.

And yeah, I get that.

So I'd like to explore that a bit more about that bit that we're not very well understood.

I think it's because we're too detailed.

I think because we can't be superficial.

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