Rob Smedley slams slow F1 race engineers

Rob Smedley says some current Formula 1 race engineers are failing at the heart of the job, describing those who take too long to answer drivers as "pretty dreadful" and calling that delay "unacceptable."

Speaking on the High Performance Racing podcast, the former Ferrari and Williams engineer said the key test comes when a driver radios in because they do not understand a situation and need immediate help. In those moments, Smedley argued, the race engineer must get the situation under control "very, very quickly," not leave the driver waiting while the answer is worked out elsewhere.

That, for Smedley, is what separates a strong engineer from a weak one. He said a great race engineer is someone who understands the driver and can "optimise their position always," whether in qualifying or in the race, while also bringing strong knowledge of aerodynamics, tyres and the car's mechanical systems. The job is not just to know those areas in isolation, but to use them together to make the car faster.

He said that technical knowledge only matters if it is matched by an understanding of the person in the cockpit. A race engineer, in his view, must know the driver's psychology as well as the driver's style, because a setup or instruction that looks right in simulation may still not suit the driver using it. Smedley said engineers have to stay "constantly in the head of the driver" and translate feedback back to the team, because drivers "are not engineers" and each of them describes what the car is doing in a different way.

Asked what makes a dreadful race engineer, Smedley pointed first to indecision and then to a poor grasp of first principles. He said engineers need to understand tyre science, tyre dynamics, vehicle dynamics and aerodynamics well enough to hold their own with specialists, adding that they need to know "80% of what they understand" or they are "dead in the water."

That is why he was especially critical of engineers who cannot respond without waiting for support from the factory. Smedley said a race engineer should already have "80% of the answer" when the driver asks the question. "I'm in Miami halfway around the world, and I'm waiting for somebody in Brackley or Silverstone or Maranello, some 22-year-old graduate to come back and give me a number that I need," he said.

For Smedley, that reliance shows the race engineer is no longer controlling the situation. He said the engineer should be the person keeping everyone else on their toes, not the one waiting for others to deliver the answer, and his criticism lands on a central part of modern F1 race management: when the driver needs help most, the quality of the engineer is measured by how fast a clear, technically grounded answer comes back.