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The Race F1 Podcast

Tech Show: Inside Red Bull's trackside fuel and lubricants lab - and why it matters

The Race F1 Podcast

The Race Media Ltd

Sports

4.51K Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Fuel and lubricants are often taken for granted by F1 fans, but it’s a crucial battleground that has a big impact not only on performance, but also reliability. 


We hear from Exxonmobil’s Fiona McKewan, whose role as Red Bull technical advisor means she attends races and closely monitors and analyses the various fluids that are essential to the operation of the car and power unit. 


She explains the rigorous processes that ensure not only are the products working as intended, but also how the trackside lab can be used to warn of and prevent imminent reliability problems. 


Gary Anderson explains why the competitive order will change after F1’s August break despite the focus being on 2026. 


And we also tackle listener questions on AI, tyre pollution, attitudes to reliability and containing outwash.


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Transcript

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1:08.1

We hear from ExxonMobil and Red Bull technical advisor Fiona McEwan to learn about F1 fuel and lubricants,

1:11.6

while Gary tackles post-August break development and tackles your questions on engine reliability, outwash control, tire pollution and AI.

1:20.2

Welcome to another episode of the Race F1 Tech Show with me, Ed Straw and...

1:25.2

A real star of the show, of course, is Gary Anderson, who's with me here now. Rowing to go, Gary, F1 season, about to get started again? Yes, it's about to get gone. It seems like a long break, to be honest. It's, yeah, it's one of those sort of things where it's just, you know, once you get an extra week in it, an extra weekend and stuff, it seems to be forever.

1:45.7

But, yeah, I mean, the teams obviously, they take this two-week break, which is well deserved for the people, the mechanics, etc.

1:53.7

It's one of those things where I always say that for me, having the break is good because you can clear your head of all the, you might call it

2:02.0

disappointments or frustrations or all that stuff and just really start again. And you can

2:07.3

think about the stuff you've been through and what worked and what didn't work. So you can

2:11.7

actually get a bit better direction when you head into the second half of the season just

2:16.4

because you've been able to clear your head and think about things logically rather than just race after race just doing the best job you can so I think we'll see a bit of a change through the pack I'm not sure we'll see much of a change at the front of the pack but I think we'll see a bit of a change through the pack which would be be good to see because, you know, there's still a lot of competition there,

2:34.8

even if you, you know, McLaren have obviously run away with the championships, to be honest. They just need to keep their nose clean and it's home and dry for them. But from there on down, I think there's still a bit of competition going on. And it'd be interesting to see really how Ferrari come back, because obviously with Leclerc and Hamilton,

2:32.9

they've got two drivers there.

2:34.1

If they can latch on to getting the best to see really how Ferrari come back because obviously with LeClerc and Hamilton, they've got two drivers there.

...

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