Veteran F1 race engineer Rob Smedley believes the sport’s current crop of race engineers have become too cautious in their interactions with drivers.
Smedley, who partnered with Felipe Massa at Ferrari and later at Williams, gained renown for his blunt and colorful radio exchanges on the pitwall.
Speaking on a recent episode of the Red Flags podcast, the Briton urged today’s engineers to stop walking on eggshells and start asserting themselves in a sport that thrives on decisive action.
“In general, I think in Formula 1 now, there’s too much pussyfooting around,” Smedley said.
“Like, the way the radio messages go to the driver – I don’t watch every single race, but the races I watch, I’m like, fucking grow a pair, man.
“Just tell him what you need to tell him, right?”
Smedley, who never held back when engineering a driver on race day, has a simple message for race engineers: stop sugarcoating your instructions.
The relationship between a driver and their engineer isn’t about stroking egos but about executing a job in a high-stakes environment.
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“You give any narcissistic sociopath an inch and they’ll take a yard, right, so don’t give him that inch to start with,” he said.
“Don’t give him this fact that I’ve got some kind of inferiority complex here and I’m going to tell you something and maybe you’ll do it… No, mate, we’re at work, right? I’m going to tell you something, you do it.
“When my boss tells me something, I do it. That’s the way the world works.
“And if we don’t do that, right, as long as we’re not working for narcissists and sociopaths and they’re telling us to do the wrong things, if we don’t do that in a high-pressure environment like this, the whole thing’s going to get spun out.
“It’s going to get spun off its axis.”
Smedley didn’t mince his words when addressing the hesitancy he perceives among modern engineers.
“There’s a lot of this stuff like: should I make a decision? Should I ask this driver to move over or that driver to move him? Will his feelings be hurt?” he said.
“Look, you’re only ever going to get one driver at the end of the race who’s happy, right? You can’t please all of the people all of the time.
“So just fucking grow a pair and get on and make the decisions that you need to make.”
For Smedley, this philosophy extends beyond Formula 1.
“I think that’s true in Formula 1 and it’s true in life. You’re kind of like walking on eggshells and you daren’t make a decision, you just end up in the worst possible place.”
Smedley pointed to the relationship between Max Verstappen and his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase as an example of effective communication in Formula 1.
“Between Max and GP, they’ve definitely got that relationship right,” Smedley explained. “GP tells him how it is and Max will fire back.”
He praised Lambiase for his ability to manage Verstappen’s fiery personality, particularly in moments when the Dutchman’s frustration risks boiling over.
“One thing I really like about GP – and again that’s very similar to how I always felt as well – is sometimes the drivers can get slightly sociopathic with their views on the team,” he said.
“These are guys who are staying up until midnight a lot of the nights working for you and getting things right.
“You’ve heard GP a couple of times, and I’ve definitely said it to my drivers, I think you need to go back in the garage and apologise to the guys because how you’ve been behaving is not very adult, or you haven’t been a very nice person, put in polite terms, so get in there and apologise.
“GP’s done that with Max, I certainly did it in my time.”
Smedley highlighted a memorable moment when Lambiase refused to engage in one of Verstappen’s arguments.
“During one especially tense race last year, Lambiase told Verstappen he would not be drawn into ‘childish’ exchanges over whether other drivers were complying with the rules,” Smedley noted.
“I think the way Gianpiero conducts himself on the radio is probably just a reflection of their real relationship.
“They’ve got this good relationship, you’ve got a relationship that works, they both rely on each other fully and they both trust each other fully.”
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Smedley summed up his philosophy with a simple appeal to engineers.
“When you’ve got that, you can talk to each other how you want. You don’t have to have this like, ‘control,’ ‘check,’ ‘ten-four,’ all of this nonsense, right?
“We are checking, fucking hurry up then because I’m driving a car at 200 miles an hour.”
In a sport where split-second decisions can make or break a race, Smedley’s critique is a rallying cry for race engineers to step up, take control, and embrace the directness the job demands.
After all, as Smedley might say, there’s no room for pussyfooting when you’re traveling at 200 miles per hour.
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