Name: メルセデスのF1チーム代表だけど質問ある？ | Tech Support | WIRED Japan
Uploaded: 2026-03-07T17:42:48.000Z
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I'm the CEO and team principal of the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula one team and I'm here to answer your questions.

How do you make decisions when the data says one thing but your instinct says another?

Formula one is the only real sport where you have that interaction between engineering and the human.

So we have all of these data channels that provide us information around what the car does.

And then you have a human in the car that's driving it.

You can't really map that human because what does it mean to have a good and a bad day?

And the engineer saying, I can't see that.

You know, the driver will say, well, I think the car moves on.

Braking, the engineer says, doesn't do that really much.

So I am a little bit of the translator between the driver feedback and what the engineers see in the data.

I've been a racer myself, but I'm realistic.

So instinct plays a role when it comes about judging how a driver feels and judging about whether strategy is realistic from the driver's point of view.

And in that context, I'm helping the engineers that actually run the operation with the kind of more common sense approach.

But it's that interaction, data and instinct that hopefully makes a team successful.

What happened to F1 team principal is accusing everyone and their mother of cheating.

You know, I've been very angry, very emotional at times because when we are being taken for a ride, I see this as my tribe.

I want to protect the organization and the people and this is where I can emotionally react.

Now as a leader of the team, I should be also balanced and not oscillate between exuberance and depression.

So I'm trying to get better over the years and have less of that rage managers and trainers need.

Coaches are very emotional about it in order to motivate their players, motivate the organization.

So we are a little bit all from the same cloth.

We are sports people and we want the best for our organizations and for the team.

I think the team principals of the past were the ones running the organizations.

Being co owners stems from the Frank Williams days and Ron Dennis where it was smaller organizations and probably I'm the last dinosaur left of that old generation.

Today's more common sense balanced engineers that run some of the the next one up is Wheel with Wobby, who is currently the most underrated driver in F1.

He's won everything in go karting, in Formula 3, Formula 2.

He came into the team next to Lewis Hamilton, the biggest sports star in our industry, if not one of the biggest overall.

But George has grown so much as a driver, in his skills and as a personality, and

I think today he's definitely right up there and someone that leads the team going forward.

By Brendan White do you think we've reached the ceiling of F1's global growth or is this just the beginning?

I think neither of the two because the sport has grown over more than 70 years now and there were episodes where the incremental was huge and other phases where it kind of leveled off.

I think what we see now is that we had great racing, great rivalries, good personalities coming up, polarizing and controversial people.

Also Netflix certainly had a big part in the success, particularly in the United States.

The social media activities of the drivers are much more than they used to be in the past and I think all of that kind of made us grow very strong.

Our strongest growing audience base is young females 15 to 24.

Total female fan base is 42%, believe it or not.

And I think that it's quite balanced between the hardcore fans of the past that love the loud roaring engines and all of the new generation, the Gen Zs that follow it with great interest from the free practice sessions all the way to the race.

Now I'm always seeing the world in a half empty glass perspective rather than half full.

And we need to be continuing to handle the sport with great care.

We must never believe that this is the real deal.

This is so successful and it's going to continue forever.

The Apple deal, taking the rights in the US which is fantastic for the sport.

So we need to be really aware that we have a great thing at our hands and it needs to be entertaining, it needs to be unpredictable and that's what we always try to calibrate in the right way.

So the next question, Yogi V88 asks how is a typical Formula One team setup?

The typical setup is that we are divided into three entities.

One is producing the engines, that's about 1,200 people.

The other one which is all chassis related items, it's in principle the same size.

And then there is the race team itself which is around 150 people that travel to the races and are basically deploying the product and that includes the drivers.

So what you see on television is only the race team.

So it's literally the tip of the iceberg.

And most of the performance is being done in the factories.

Next up, Rayo Garden asks what does an F1 team principal actually do?

So as a team principal, I have responsibility not only for the racing team, but

We have about 1,200 people and it's not only technical, it is also the commercial side, legal, finance, hr, it.

And obviously I'm in charge of doing that in a way around people that run racing cars.

Josh Hamilton, a question for the F1 geeks.

Is Team principal the same thing as crew chief?

Formula one is a bit weird in that sense because a team principal is what you would see in American sports as the president, the CEO, the coach, the trainer and the crew chief.

Obviously our organizations have grown from back in the day 100 people to 2000 people that are dedicated to these roles.

But fundamentally the responsibility of the team principal is to look after all of these.

So there is no clear, let's say cut between a CEO, US style sports team and the sporting director or the coach is what we do as team principals.

Why do Mercedes race engineers, strategists and toto sit inside the garage during races?

So this is a little bit of a legacy situation.

In the previous setups of teams, the team principal would sit on the pit wall to oversee the the pit lane to oversee what's happening on the main straight.

We don't use stopwatches and we don't look at cars that are passing by.

Not to sit on the pit wall but to be in the garage.

So you can see me standing in the middle island center console.

So I can see the left and the right side of the garage.

And that gives me the best possible overview.

The mechanics refer to it as the fantasy island because engineers and myself, we dream stuff up there rather than doing the hard work.

So where I sit I basically have a few data chann that I look at.

I can follow all timing, the comparison to the other drivers.

I have charts and overlays that I look at what our cornering speeds looking like compared to the opposition.

I'm seeing GPS data, how the cars zoom around the track.

I am also speaking to many engineers My intercom channel has about 30 people that I listen to and it's a little bit like an airplane.

So you get used to hearing voices out of the chaos.

That is a big part of deciding what the strategy needs to do.

Being a partner for some of of the engineers and challenging them.

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メルセデスのF1チーム代表だけど質問ある？ | Tech Support | WIRED Japan

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