Alianora La Canta

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  • #447240
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    Because the regional council sponsored the event, and the aversion to having two races in the same country no longer exists for the F1 leadership.

    #445769
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    Depending on how the UK fares in continuing to fight COVID, I think all the races up to the end of June are at varying levels of risk. That is because until vaccines catch up, there’s a risk mishandling there will cause other nations to reduce their willingness to allow a paddock that is 70% British to spend time without passing through even more hoops than in 2020. (Let us remember that for most of the 2020 season, despite less virulent strains back then, there were an average of just under 10 people testing positive per week, in a paddock of under 1500 (giving a per-week 0.75% positivity rating), which is rather high).

    On the other hand, vaccination is progressing fast enough that I think events in the second half of the season are likely to go ahead in some form. In particular, by the time Australia rolls round in November, I think most of the paddock will be vaccinated (simply due to how distribution is going) and Australia may well exempt the paddock from quarantine requirements as a result.

    #428297
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    Yes. I’d planned to attend the Formula E race in London and the WEC/ELMS round in Silverstone, but neither of them are happening.

    Still unsure if I will be able to see Shaun Tarlton race his new Miodified car; I promised I’d look into it but I don’t want to buy any tickets until I know or are reasonably confident what dates things are happening on. I am still trying to find out if I will be able to learn how to marshal this year (the paperwork is proving more complicated than expected), which would be a good consolation.

    My family was going to compete in the Corporate Games karting in Lancaster… …we decided we probably couldn’t afford it two weeks before they cancelled (a few days back). At least one of the local karting tracks is set to re-open next week (I forget which one), but our family has agreed to wait and see how the social distancing is going to work before attending. Still, we suspect we will be karting before there is any F1 for us to watch on TV.

    My 10 km running race trip in Silverstone has also been cancelled. I generally pair that with a visit to Racing Point’s reception, but in the nicest possible way, I don’t think they want to see my face in their building right now either ;) For that matter, the first running race that’s still scheduled for me is the town half-marathon in mid-October. That’s how pessimistic people are near me when it comes to mass sporting events. (Even music concerts are more confident – I have two that have been rescheduled for September).

    Edited to add: everything I had paid for was refunded immediately, and I hadn’t bought a ticket for any motorsport activities at the point of lockdown.

    #403468
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    The theme music works for me in the intro sequence, or as a separate track on my music player… …and only then. I don’t like how the rest of it gets shoehorned into places where it doesn’t fit – especially when it’s played on the polesitter’s/winner’s arrival into parc ferme. Often, these are pieces that simply shouldn’t have background music, to my ears.

    This is why, in the beginning, I wanted to know how the song sounded in context before making judgement. As a theme tune, it works. As the catch-all background noise to F1, it doesn’t.

    Those five beeps break immersion into the start sequence for me, and I’d prefer they weren’t there. I get that the modern F1 sound is all about Soundblaster 16 impressions, but I don’t want to be reminded just before what is often the best part of the race.

    #403379
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    Ranking (note that spaces are between drivers, or sets of drivers, with significant differences in performances; had I been in a different mood, I might well have rearranged the orders of some of the drivers sharing a given paragraph):

    1) Hamilton

    2) Sainz
    3) Vettel
    4) Leclerc
    5) Verstappen

    6) Raikkonen
    7) Bottas
    8) Norris
    9) Russell

    10) Albon
    11) Kyvat
    12) Stroll

    13) Perez
    14) Gasly
    15) Riccardo
    16) Hulkenberg
    17) Kubica

    18) Giovanazzi
    19) Magnussen
    20) Grosjean

    More detailed impressions:

    Hamilton – He’s closing in on the title for very good reason. Has made maybe three notable errors all season, which is astonishing given that there have been 12 races so far. Particularly given that he’s clearly been using the full range of the driver skillset at various times of the year.

    Bottas – Did excellent work at the start of the season, but has faded as the season goes on. I get the impression he’s actively looking elsewhere, for reasons that aren’t quite clear, and unfortunatly it’s showing.

    Verstappen – Much better than last year, but has ridden his luck on several occasions and still only seems to know one way to overtake people. Will need to make another jump to become a title contender, regardless of what the Red Bull does.

    The part of the skillset Verstappen is using, he’s using well. The part he’s not using prevents me from rating him as high as many others currently do.

    Gasly – I want to rate him higher. Britain showed Pierre can do more. But while Red Bull continues to treat him like a spare part, it’s going to be very difficult to do. The past five months are unlikely to sway Red Bull to treat him well, but there’s a limit to how low I can score him while his team is this unsupportive. (Red Bull should note that he is not a total loss – he did well at Toro Rosso last year – and they really need to remember there is more than one way to be a good F1 driver and to accept that two Maxes in the same team would be a Very Bad Idea).

    Vettel/Leclerc – more difficult to disambiguate the two than the standings suggest, because Ferrari has written their strategies in greater tandem than any other frontrunner. Both frustrated with it but expressing that in different ways. Occasionally, for both, it leaks into their driving and causes errors under stress. Although Vettel has made more of these stress errors, I also take into consideration that he’s been carrying more of the strategic load – on at least one occasion that I know of (Baku), he’s been the one to tell the pitwall to fix a problem Leclerc’s strategy, and on multiple others has had to argue hard to retrieve his own strategy. On the other hand, Leclerc seems to have been doing quite a lot of the media diversion work. Both seem to having to spend more time talking back to their team than they are letting on, and both would perform better if the rest of Ferrari was fully functional.

    Hard to categorise them in relation to Verstappen (who’d be the most logical person to think of in comparisons), as none of this stuff is being tested at Red Bull. That team simply knows where it is going and goes there. Occasionally, as in Hungary, that works against them. But in general, Max doesn’t need to use as broad a range of a driver’s skillset as the Ferrari pair do just to get a decent day’s work done.

    Sainz Jr – Consistent, smooth and quietly scoring lots of points. Exactly what Red Bull need in their junior driver… …oops they dropped him a while back. McLaren’s gain is a high one.

    Norris – Ditto, but making occasional tactical errors due to less experience.

    Giovanazzi – Occasionally does something good, better than his previous attempts, but not making the impression he would have hoped for. Put it this way, I’m not thinking “Ferrari needs to stick him in a Haas next year”.

    Raikkonen – Sauber has reinvigorated Kimi, and it’s good to see. Some of his performances have been quietly excellent, and he’s providing the technical backup Sauber needs too.

    Riccardo/Hulkenberg – It’s sad seeing what happened to Daniel this year. This was meant to reinvigorate him the way Kimi got reinvigorated. It hasn’t happened, and if anything he seems even less energised than at the end of last year, where he said he needed to leave Red Bull to avoid becoming embittered. The driving has lost its verve, errors are starting to creep in and points are therefore proving hard to come by. Daniel’s a tough cookie… …and he’ll need to be. Came into this season with what is apparently a better idea of what to expect. Has made almost as little of it. Seems to have unspecified difficulty with taking the “high” results that defies this viewer’s understanding – and that Renault needs to justify the spending.

    Like the Ferrari duo, hard to separate them when the team appears to be the limiting factor. However, I don’t think they are making as much of what opportunities there are.

    Kyvat – After a slow and error-prone start, has built up a head of steam and shown us what he meant to show us the first time he was in F1. Still not seeing the tests of mental strength that would prove he could carry the burden Gasly’s being asked to carry, but doing well in the environment he is currently in, and making good use of his niche.

    Albon – Excellent debut in context. A bit less savvy than Kyvat, but otherwise a good match for him, and good at taking opportunities too. Also hasn’t done the tests of mental strength that would prove he could carry Gasly’s burden.

    Perez – Has tracked the car’s performance. While I had hoped for more, after not having to take on any of the team principal’s duties this year, he did OK when the car was middling in the start of the season. Unfortunately, as the car has got slower, he’s made errors attempting to transcend that level, to the point where Stroll is sometimes outperforming him. I predict he will improve with the car after summer and leapfrog Stroll when the car allows his oversteery style to pay off better, but that’s no help to his rating this half of the year…

    Stroll – In the beginning, looked like the driver Williams did well to get rid of. However, he has improved as the season has progressed, capitalising on excellent start speed and good consistency to occasionally beat his team-mate. The points of course are not reflective of the true gap, being based on one race that many other drivers made look farcical (Germany). However, I don’t see Lance looking back from here. This is the year Lance looked like someone possibly worth putting in effort to keep in F1.

    Grosjean – Romain has for the most part been a caricature of himself this year, and it’s a shame. He knows how to drive better than this, he just stuggles to do it consistently, and I’m not sure what will help him not go through this same rigmarole every year. Hitting a team-mate twice in consecutive races (and three times so far this year) is the icing on a mouldy cake. Another driver I want to speak well of. Yet it’s even more difficult to do that for Romain than for Pierre. I doubt he will be a F1 driver in 2020.

    Magnussen – Almost a carbon-copy of Grosjean’s year. Kevin really, really does know better than this. Maybe the partnership has gone on too long. If either Haas driver was going to improve in the second half, I’d imagine it would be Kevin, but that’s no help to his first-half rating. It wouldn’t surprise me if we did not see him in 2020. Gets a slightly better rating than Grosjean due to fewer complaints, though he’s also complained too much about his own misfortune at the wrong moments.

    Russell – Williams needed this from their rookie. He has fresh ideas on how to race a Williams and sometimes makes it look better than it is, particularly in qualifying. I predict he will improve as the season progresses and he gains experience. Ranking position limited as it is not clear how much he is able to do of the out-of-car element of a driver’s skillset yet, and that’s a great situation for a rookie to be in.

    Kubica – Somewhat difficult to place, though definitely not in Russell’s league at this moment. I do wonder how he would fare in a Haas – they need his toughness, expertise and ability to not get in embarrassing situations, he needs a car that doesn’t fight him quite so much. The bare qualifying and race figures will almost certainly prevent him being considered (if his sponsor’s contract with Williams doesn’t!) but he’s not as bad as they’re making him look, and he’s not the worst driver this year. He won’t settle for that, though.

    #388018
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    Dad refused to go to Silverstone on the basis that the last time he went to “the last one”, it… …wasn’t…

    #383409
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    Channel 4 highlights, possibly with Twitter/Radio 5 Live support if I really can’t stand the wait (the highlights lead time is sometimes a problem). I watch with my family, and even if they could afford Sky, my parents cannot stand how Sky presents and commentates their coverage.

    #383408
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    There were days when, at least temporarily, F1.5 was able to beat Red Bull – Riccardo got passed at least once by a F1.5 member. Being opportunists, there were times when Force India simply let Red Bulls through and other times when they… …didn’t. Ferraris and Mercedes were never knowingly impeded, even on the one occasion (Les Combes on lap 1 in Brazil) where it was just about possible that the advantage might have been kept had it been taken – because for either to do so would have required assistance from 3 other drivers, each from a different team, and this was unlikely to happen in a manner that suited both the FIF1s on either side. (Brazil, on the other hand, involved 1 driver from 1 team, and looked substantially more plausible). This is not to say Force India was 100% innocent of the charge; I just can’t think of an example that wasn’t explicable from the way in which the F1-F1.5 gap worked

    In fairness to Gunther, I’ve never seen a Haas driver do any sort of differential driving of the type he’s complaining about – the times when they were impeding drivers, they were completely even-handed in how they did so. I’m not sure the same was necessarily true for, say, Williams (Singapore springs to mind – and not only was a Haas was trying to race the Williams for part of the time I have in mind, but also got penalised for ignoring blue flags while attempting to race said Williams. This would further explain why Gunther is so incensed by all this).

    #383208
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    Rubens Barrichello: Interlagos

    I think it’s holders of the most races ever started, and the track at which they took the record.

    #381431
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    The exception would be if a driver left F1, stayed out for two full seasons (thus losing their right to their original number) and then rejoined F1. At that point, they could either retake their old number (assuming nobody else has reserved it) or pick a different one.

    #381429
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    I’m not sure if a child would be ID’d or not, or if so how frequently it happens. It might depend if they look like they might be 14 (so if your teenager is 6 feet tall, it’s more likely than if they’re still 4 feet. Unfair but that’s IDs for you). What I will say is:

    1) they’re allowed to do so.

    2) the security staff at Hungary are zealous and keen – in general. They will politely but firmly refuse admission if they find out someone is the wrong age. For the avoidance of doubt, a child’s 14th birthday must be on or after 4th August to get child’s rates on the weekend (and, if it happens, the free post-race test). They also don’t change their mind in the face of arguments about their decisions, so negotiation is pointless.

    Also, a grandstand ticket that is invalid for the grandstand is invalid for general admission also (although general admission, at least, tends to be available on the day).

    No such check is likely to happen for the pitwalk (when one simply needs a valid ticket for admittance), so do not take acceptance of the situation on Thursday as evidence that everything will be OK for the rest of the weekend. Please note that if you decide to resolve the situation by getting the to-be-14-year-old a general admission ticket, you’ll still all be able to sit in the grandstand together for the post-race test (assuming it happens) because everyone can sit where they please for that and, again, it’s free for anyone with a race ticket.

    Checks also happen when entering any area not permitted by general admission. I cannot guarantee that the security guards on the grandstand will make the same decision as those on the gates. I also think that there would be more chance of ID requests there than at the gate, because at the gate they also worry about water and bulky bags – for everyone entering the track in that direction. Grandstand staff have time to check every ticket, so I can believe they also have time to check IDs if they believe it appropriate.

    I would recommend finding some way to get an adult ticket for the 14-year-old before December 31st, even if that means they are fending for themselves in General Admission while the rest of you are in the grandstand. (General Admission is cheap, safe and has several places where good views are obtainable. As emergency plans go, it’s not a bad one). Why December 31st? Because tickets are 20% off until then.

    #375361
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    @David, hope you enjoyed whichever race you chose.

    #374496
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    For anyone reading this in preparation for next year…

    …it turns out that heatwaves, plus the rule about only being able to bring 0.5 litres of water to the circuit can cause trouble. Keep close to the sinks (where you can get free refills), drink lots of water and stay far from the cheap beer during the hottest times of the day.

    And if it doesn’t go to plan… …I stayed in a Hungarian hospital for 5 days for heatstroke. They treated me well and understood the English medical documentation I had with me even without me needing to self-advocate. So if you have a medical issue, can handle heat and want to travel to a Grand Prix, Hungary looks like a good choice.

    #372422
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    I’m going to the Hungaroring this year :D General Admission for me (basically, the aim is to do a week in Budapest as cheaply as possible, to the point where I am flying as far as Prague and getting a couchette train the rest of the way to Budapest because it’s cheaper than a direct flight plus hostel room). I will definitely be at the test days too, and hoping to also meet a penpal, squeeze in a visit to the water park and to see some of Budapest’s sights.


    @Rachel
    , according to the guidebook, there is a pit walk on the Thursday, between 16:00 and 18:00 (last entry 17:30), which offers a potential way to meet drivers, get autographs and look at the pit garages. If you have a 3-day ticket, you will be allowed in free of charge. However, there is no free shuttle like there is on Friday-Sunday. From what people who have been before tell me, it is important to arrive well before the session starts, and expect things to be jam-packed. Lockers for anything you don’t need on the pitwalk itself (or that are just plain forbidden) can be put in lockers at Gates 7 or 8 for safekeeping.

    I cannot speak for whether the paddock entrance will be accessible at any time during the weekend proper. However, I would also note that 3-day-ticket holders also get free entry to the following week’s test session, which potentially (though not necessarily) could offer more scope.

    #357358
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    Sorry for the delay – I don’t go to the forums very often. Also, warning: long post alert!

    For an F1 team, I would note the following (if you just want numbers, scroll down to “Estimates”):

    – Every team is a Constructor, though as you will see in the factory notes, some construct more than others.

    – Your budget is always an issue when it comes to headcount. Toyota, last decade, were always a midfield team. But they spent more money than any other team in F1, and had more headcount than any other team (slightly over 800) until Ferrari and Mercedes broke their record in the early 2010s. Some midfielders in current F1 have half the headcount of others, and half the budget of others – the two are pretty closely correlated, because in F1, people power matters.

    Trackside explanation:

    – You can have 46 (last I checked, which was admittedly back in 2015) people work on your cars over the weekend. They get different paddock passes to everyone else, which allow them access to the various places where they might be needed – some get access to the grid and pit lane, but all will get garage access.

    – Some of these will be “truckies” (they drive the lorries and typically set up your motorhome), while others are race engineers, data engineers, mechanics, front/rear jack staff, gearbox technician, tyre changers, refuellers, part replacers, electronics engineers and storespeople. All of these roles are somewhat flexible, in that if a task needs doing, one or more of the 46 will do it, but everyone will get an assigned role or combination of roles. If you can see Guy Martin’s documentary about participating in a Williams pit stop earlier this season, that assigned-role-with-flexibility combination is demonstrated very well there. They are vital, and every team will indeed use their full total of 46 car-working staff.

    – This count of 46 does not include your race drivers. Absolute minimum would be 2 (the race drivers), but unless you have a close enough association with your engine manufacturer to borrow a spare, Superlicence-holding driver at short notice (no supplier seems to have a constant supply of these), you’d be well advised to have a reserve driver as well.

    – You would probably also have 1-3 simulator drivers and 1-2 young test drivers (unless you can borrow these from your engine supplier – and Ferrari, at least, can consistently manage this). These are all part-timers – you’d pay for them to do X number of days in your (or your engine supplier’s) simulator/your car, and the rest of the time they’d do whatever their usual job happens to be. I think Force India has one nearly-full-time simulator driver (Nick Yelloly), but that is very much the exception – it’s more usual to have 1-3 drivers doing a few weeks/months each, to cover possible clashes with racing commitments.

    – Don’t forget to include yourself and your deputy boss (or someone authorised to lead the race team in your absence) in your staff count. The deputy boss typically helps out with media, marketing or administration if you are able to lead the race team throughout (which is most team boss’s plan for most races), but the FIA will require the deputy to be present even so. If you are in Force India’s position and, as boss, you knowingly cannot travel to most of the races, you’ll need to employ a deputy’s deputy in case your deputy is incapacitated or simply attending an emergency when the FIA needs a team representative. (I think the rule got brought in because in a junior sportscar series, all the team managers got called to an emergency mid-session meeting and someone realised one team couldn’t because their team manager was in the car at the time…)

    – It is theoretically possible to have the staff of your team consist only the above people. Manor did this at the start of 2015 (I tried to visit their Dinnington warehouse-factory with cake and sympathy the day after Melbourne – they didn’t qualify – to find there was nobody at home as everyone was on a plane. Had to convince their neighbours that Manor hadn’t gone bust for the second time in three months…) However, any team that does this is highly unlikely to make it into the midfield, at least that year!

    – Optional but useful people to have on your travelling team include people who do marketing/PR (typically 1-2 people for the drivers, perhaps 4-6 for your sponsors depending on how many you have, 2-3 for the media – and in a small midfielder there is crossover between marketing and PR), catering (perhaps 6 people serving food and another 2 in the bar area, if your motorhome has a separate one) and a driver coach (1 – you can bring them to races, but some teams make it a factory-based role and others subcontract it, so you have options).

    – You will work with 3-5 engine technicians, perhaps 3 tyre technicians, 2 managers, 2-10 driver’s friends/family/assistants/entourage members, some FIA officials and no end of hangers-on, but you don’t employ any of these people. So let’s not worry about them right now ;)

    Factory explanations:

    – There’s considerably more guesswork here than for the race team complements.

    – Unless you are running an old (pre-2014) car because you are training the next Lance Stroll, you don’t need a separate test team for F1. This is because the test car is one of the race cars (and unless you get a tyre test cancelled or something, you’ll never need two cars to test simultaneously) and the pit crew for tests is usually the same people who would work on that chassis on race weekend. In previous decades, there could be 30 people on the test team per car, and usually a full-time driver to do all those miles, in addition to all the other drivers I mentioned sharing the burden of testing. If you do want to run a program with an old car, that would be 20 people plus the driver (who I’ll assume is at least supplementing with testing in your simulator and therefore is in the driver count above)

    – Then again, you may also want to have a demonstration department, like Ferrari and Red Bull do. Yes, they’re big teams, but Toro Rosso contributes people to the Red Bull demo department occasionally, and if your budget is infinite, there could be payoff in running one. If you do, you’ll probably need 20 people, not including the drivers (who I’ll assume are included in the earlier driver count). Also, if you are running the old-car-test-team in the previous paragraph, they’re almost certainly going to be the same 20 people. They’ll probably be recorded as being part of a separate company for legal and tax purposes.

    – Your factory staff complement is dependent on what arrangements you have for making parts once you have designed and prototyped them (and you will prototype them in-house!) Haas subcontracts its production to Ferrari. Force India subcontracts some and is doing an increasing amount in-house (this dates back to when it was Jordan, when it subcontracted to what seemed like half of Motorsport Valley and several companies further afield…) I think Sauber and Toro Rosso produce everything they are allowed to in-house, and Williams definitely does. I say “allowed to” because a handful of components – such as fuel tanks – have to be bought from one of a list of FIA-approved parts, none of which are made by an F1 team. A team that only makes prototypes, like Haas, may only have something like 40 people in Production, and some of these may only be needed at the time of peak prototype production (September-February). A team that makes everything it’s allowed to on-site may have 200, and can probably give all of them work for the entire year.

    – Your engine supply deal has an effect too. All suppliers provide control software to go in the FIA-issued engine control unit, but some also provide staff specifically to help combine it with the car and keep it working through the weekend. If yours doesn’t, add 5 for that function.

    – Finally, your windtunnel arrangements will influence your staff count:

    If you are Renault and have exactly one windtunnel of the appropriate size (60%), you will have the staff to run it and also the staff to maintain it – maybe 30-50 people in total.

    If you are Toro Rosso and subcontract your wind-tunnel work, you can drop that to something like 15-25.

    If you are Williams and have two appropriately-sized windtunnels, you’ll employ 30-50 people to work on your F1 car in one tunnel and have 5-12 people in a separate company leasing the other windtunnel to other users (for the revenue stream – F1 rules only allow the use of one windtunnel, but by the time the rule existed, some teams already had two).

    Finally, if you are Force India and own one tiny windtunnel using outdated technology, you have maybe 5 people leasing out that windtunnel – and send the other 35 members of your team to the full-sized tunnel you’ve subcontracted… …to then test a 60% model. Take your pick from those scenarios.

    – There’s no getting around it: you’ll need a design crew. There are many specialist parts to an F1 car and this is a particular guessy guess, but 60-200 would seem a plausible range.

    – A surprisingly small crew is needed to maintain the supercomputer you’ll use to aid the designers – probably 4-6 people.

    – Some teams subcontract cooking and cleaning. Others employ them directly. If you do the latter, you’ll need 6-12 kitchen/catering staff, depending on how long you need the catering hall to be open, and 10-15 cleaners.

    – You will need a company lawyer, even though every team subcontracts unexpected legal problems (and, sometimes, expected legal issues that happen to be large, like changes to taxation law). This is for preventative purposes: someone up-to-date on company law helps the HR staff keep things like contracts in good state and advises on ways your team can avoid silly reasons for court cases (I seem to remember Jordan not having an in-house lawyer that time it tried suing Vodafone for £150 m on the basis of an unsupported mobile phone call. I’m talking about avoiding that sort of error…)

    – Marketing is a significant area, unless you are Haas or Toro Rosso (where there is one big sponsor, rather than multiple smaller ones). Even those two will probably have 10-20 people in marketing. Expect more like 40-50 in a team like Force India, whose budget is based on a gridful of smaller sponsors, and expect some of those to be specialists in looking for and/or securing new sponsorships.

    – PR is probably more consistent between teams, though some teams may not treat it as a separate department. 5-10 people, regardless of what sort of midfielder you are.

    – Expect 1-3 factory-based security staff to be employed, unless you are subcontracting the job. This does not count reception (who may help security with things like paperwork, without being involved in any actual throwing out of uninvited guests).

    – Do you plan to have a gym? Many midfield teams do, for mechanics and drivers in particular but open to all other employees. Expect 6-20 staff to be needed, depending on how many hours it’s open. The latter figure would include some people dividing their time between keeping the gym open and other tasks such as HR and administration.

    Factory supplemental

    – You will also need IT people to maintain your networks (separate from the supercomputer staff), fend off viruses and keep all these people working. Plan on 1 person per 100 staff (and for 1-3 of your 46 car crew to be IT specialists, looking after car and pit garage electronics as a major part of their roles).

    – For every 100 staff, you’ll probably need 3 HR/administration people, 1 of whom will be an accountant. The others will process other forms of paperwork and do other office jobs that help keep your team running and looking good. Sure, you don’t have to have a receptionist on all office hours, but you’ll impress more sponsors if you do.

    With that in mind, I’d give estimates for a team fighting in the midfield battle:

    Estimates:

    Travelling team

    Drivers – 3 full-time, 2-5 part-time (of whom 0-2 attend each race)
    Mechanics/engineers working on cars at races – 46 full-time
    Marketing staff attending races – 8-11
    Hospitality – 6-8
    Driver coach – possibly 1
    Deputy bosses/managers – 1-2
    Subotal – 64-73

    Factory:

    Old-car-test/demonstration crew – 0-20 (probably 0)
    Powertrain integration – 0-5
    Wind tunnel technicians – 15-62
    Production – 40-200, with some of that possibly being seasonal (winter) work
    Designers – 60-200
    Supercomputer – 4-6
    Marketing – 10-50
    PR – 5-10
    Cooks/cleaners – 12-27
    Company lawyer – 1
    Subtotal: 147-581
    Running total: 251-654

    Supplemental staff – 4 per 100 people you have in the running total (round up to nearest 100)

    Grand total: 263-682

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