Tech F1i: More team manager insight with Toro Rosso’s Graham Watson

Are you also involved in the strategy from the pit wall?

“Only from a logical point of view, the strategy is based on a massive digital system with thousands of permutations being calculated all the time advising the engineers, myself, and James [Key, the Technical Director] in particular. They will be talking among themselves and forget to lift their heads and look at the TV, so occasionally you need to say ’Guys wait a minute, a car has already pitted and he is now 15 seconds behind us – where are we going to be with that?’

“But trust me, it doesn’t happen often, because the guys are very good. All I really do when it comes to strategy is sometimes not add a little logic but offer what I am looking as to what they’re doing with the car.”

You have worked with a lot of drivers over the years, how have they evolved?

“The technology has changed things so much. Gerhard Berger was the first driver I worked with, and he was from the old school days when there wasn’t any simulation. Engineering was at a fairly crude state and the engineers were starting to become what they’ve become now. We relied a lot on driver feed-back.

“And the fitness levels, Schumacher kicked that off, being the first driver to be super fit. Schumacher was the one who worked out that if he could come into the pit lane as fast as he could, and get out as fast as he could, he could probably pick up ten spots. The guys who came after Gerhard, Jean [Alesi] and Michael reaped the rewards and attained the information that Michael and those guys garnished. So, I have definitely seen a change in philosophy and a change in attitude.

“We now have driver simulation and the guys spend a lot of time in the simulator. It is no longer an engineering project: it is even a scientific engineering project. We are now refined to such detail and to such a degree that now it is very difficult to miss something, or not to realize you are deficient somewhere. Now, we don’t rely just on the drivers’ feed-back, because the data from the car is a phenomenal tool.”