Name: F1 Chief Mechanic Answers F1 Car Questions | Tech Support | WIRED
Uploaded: 2026-03-05T21:41:50.000Z
Duration: 16 min 44 s
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Hi, I'm Matt Dean, chief mechanic at Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula one team, and I'm here to answer your questions from the Internet.

This question is from the Tools subreddit Mechanics.

What is your favorite or most underrated tool?

Some of the tools that we actually use are quite different to what you would use on a regular car.

We can change the bits over it quite easily.

And it's really good to get really confined spaces on the car underneath the bodywork and the fairings and all the winglets on the car, actually.

So one of the favourite tools of the Mechanic is the F1 wheel gun.

This is used to loosen and tighten the wheel nut up itself.

Unlike regular road cars, we only have one wheel nut.

So as the car comes in, the mechanic has to line this wheel gun up with the wheel nut.

It goes on, pulls the trigger as he comes off, changes direction on the wheel gun, new wheel is fitted, and then he comes back in, pulls the trigger to tighten the wheel nut up.

Once he's finished, he's lifting the wheel gun up in the air, pressing the button here to acknowledge that that wheel nut is tight and the car can leave the pit box.

All of this happens in less than 2.2 seconds.

We use this to cool the engine down as the car comes into the pit box and also to cool the brakes.

So we've worked with Einhell on this tool to ensure we get the maximum airflow through the brake ducts and through the radiators of the car to cool them down as quick as possible.

So now I've showed you a couple of the tools, let's get back to some more questions.

Probably shouldn't say this if Toto's watching, but I was putting a fitting, a fuel cell to the car, which made out of a Kevlar, very flexible material.

You put the fuel bag car and you've got to get your hands right in the corners to try and get the fuel bag to expand within the cockpit itself.

The chassis itself, I didn't have long enough arms, so I used a hammer, a rubber hammer used it.

Poked the fuel bag out, fitted the fuel bag fine, fitted the rest of the fuel system, buttoned all the top hatches on so it was all ready to go.

Sent the car out and it was probably about a race later that I'd realized I'd lost my hammer and it was left in the fuel system.

We've had other issues where tools have fallen out of mechanics hands and they've gone down in between the V of the engine and the gearbox box, bell housing and all the rest of the mechanics just look at each other and oh God, now we've got to pretty much take the whole car apart to try and fish this socket or the spanner out of where this mechanics drop the tool.

On that evening, a CORA user asks what is more important in Formula one, the car or the driver?

Obviously we as mechanics would say the car.

An age old question, really everything has to work together.

The car, the engineers, everybody back at the factory, the engine side of Brixworth and the driver.

It's a team sport and that's why everybody works together to try and get those final tenth of a second out of the track time.

This is from Fogerty4, how to become a Formula 1 mechanic.

I get asked that question a lot and I think the best advice that I could give you is learn how to use spanners, learn how to use ratchets, and whether that's from when you're a little kid repairing bicycles, repairing motorbikes, building go karts.

There are a number of colleges and there's a couple of colleges at Silverstone.

I believe that, you know, you can go there, you can train, but actually getting that hands on experience is vital.

We often take people from the lower formulas.

They start in formula forward, moving their way up to Formula 3, Formula 2.

So it's a great training ground for mechanics.

And then once you get to us in Formula one, you know how to use your spanners, you know how to use torque wrenches, you've gone through your training, you've dabbled with bicycles when you were a kid, you've worked on your motorbikes, you worked on your go kart, you've gone to college, you've got all your qualifications.

Pester me, pester the guys that are working on the team, drop them some emails, get yourself noticed out there.

But certainly, you know, if you're working in the lower formulas, Formula 2, Formula 3, they support a lot of the F1 races.

So it's great you're in there, you're traveling with the teams, so you get to know other people and that's super important.

Next thing you've got to deal with is strapping George Russell in the car.

On the grid, you've got to deal with that pressure and, you know, getting used to the amount of people around you, the cameras, and dealing all with all that side of Formula one, the travel and just working within the team environment, being a good team player.

Do F1 mechanics get angry when their driver crashes?

I try and remain calm, but there's a lot of the guys, the younger ones especially, they can get quite upset about it.

Obviously, we're at the end of the chain.

There's thousands of people back at the factory producing all the car parts for us to assemble.

If the driver has an accident into the wall or something fails on the car, then it's an awful lot of work for us to putting that car back together and we have to do it.

Often after P1 or P2, there's a short amount of time for us to repair those cars.

So it's all hands on deck to get that finished and the car back out on track.

Why are F1 drivers hot if wind is coming at them at 200 to 300 kilometers per hour?

Often we're working in places like Singapore, Qatar, where the ambient is, you know, 34, can be 38 degrees.

You've got to remember these drivers are sat in a really confined space.

They've got an air engine is running behind them.

They've got the brakes that are raging hot in front of them, and they've got all these electrical boxes that sit around them.

So the temperatures in the car can get as high as 48, 50 degrees.

In fact, now the drivers are wearing cool suits to try and cool them down during the race.

Also, there's small ducts in the side of the car that blow cool air over the drivers to try and cool them down during the race.

But you'll see in often races, the drivers will get out of the car.

They're so hot they can hardly stand when they get out of these cars.

Like on 5 in Formula 1, why aren't all the drivers given the same car to test who is the fastest?

Each car is designed by a different team, so they will always interpret the rules.

And also we've got different engine manufacturers, so it's not a one make series.

Everybody designs their own car and it's who does the best job will win.

How does F1 team manage to repair their cars in under a week after a horrible crash?

Often we have to do it in a lot less than a week.

Our shortest time period over a race weekend is from P3 to qualifying, which is three hours.

So we have to repair that car in that time.

Parts will obviously come back to the factory then to get made again.

But yeah, we're often rebuilding cars in less than three hours.

If we have a big accident and we do have to repair the car in three hours, then what we'll try to do is pull some of the mechanics off the other car.

Obviously we have two cars in the garage.

We've got a group of 15 mechanics on one car, same on the other.

So if we are trying to repair say George's car, then we'll take mechanics off of Kimmy's car to start rebuilding that one.

I remember there was a time in Monaco where we were very short period of time to get the car ready for qualifying.

We literally had two people on one of the cars and everybody else was on that one trying to get it ready for qualifying.