Inside Formula One: A F1 Race Mechanic’s Story - Scott Duncan

1. 0:00 – 3:12

   Intro

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr0:00

      Quick shout-out to this week's sponsor, Vybey. They've been supporting my show for absolutely many years. Today's podcast has all been about high performance and high-performance culture, and that's what these guys promote. You may have seen Gordon Belch on the podcast three years ago. He's the founder of this, uh, this amazing brand. Today, I'm holding up their Hydration Plus electrolytes that I've been using every morning before a podcast. I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about the product. Zero sugar, vegan, gluten free, and it tastes good. This is the watermelon flavor. I've been using that. Uh, but there's also lemon and lime, tropical, and more. Each sachet turns water into clean fuel, no crashes, no compromises. I've been trying to cut down on my coffee consumption, so usually I've been having, like, four or five coffees a day. I'm down to, like, one now. So instead of a morning coffee, I've been having one of these for energy. I'm not selling you a dream. I'm not selling out. These guys have supported me for a very long time. Uh, Vybey has been my performance partner for the podcast from the beginning. Uh, most hydration products are just salts. I'm not sure if you've seen some of the competitors in the market, uh, but Vybey really go one step further. Three in one optimized electrolytes to rehydrate fast and recover stronger. Brain-boosting nootropics. That's L-theanine, ginseng, and guarana for calm, focused energy, and gut-friendly prebiotics to support digestion and immunity. Level up your hydration and focus at vybey.co.uk. Search Smart Hydration Plus or hit the link in the show notes, uh, and use code DMAC for some money off. Thank you, Gordon. Thank you, Vybey, for sponsoring this episode. Uh, as you can see, I've been using these. Uh, I totally testify the product, uh, and I hope you enjoy them. Scott Duncan, welcome to Origin Story.

   2. SDScott Duncan1:49

      Thanks. Good to be here.

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr1:50

      Recently, you have been in Brazil and Mexico for work.

   4. SDScott Duncan1:55

      Yeah.

   5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr1:55

      If I weren't to tell the audience what you do for work, they're probably gonna think that you've been running-

   6. SDScott Duncan1:59

      [laughs]

   7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr1:59

      ... some sort of drug cartel.

   8. SDScott Duncan2:01

      Yeah, yeah.

   9. DJDavid McIntosh Jr2:01

      When people ask you, "What do you do for work?" how do you bring it to life?

   10. SDScott Duncan2:05

       Uh, yeah, it's pretty surreal. Uh, and not, not that many people know about F1. Uh, if you didn't know about it, you'd probably not really have a clue about the stuff that goes on and how, how much stuff happens behind the scenes. Um, but yeah, there's ten teams in F1. Uh, I'm part of one of them, Red Bull, uh, as a mechanic, so it's-

   11. DJDavid McIntosh Jr2:25

       What's your job title?

   12. SDScott Duncan2:27

       Uh, tyre technician or tyre man. Uh, which is [laughs] probably not a clue what that is. But, like, F1's so specific, there's so many small jobs in it because there's so much resources, so many specialisms, uh, so I kind of focused on going down that route. Uh, it's still a mechanical background or a mechanical, uh, position, so I like it.

   13. DJDavid McIntosh Jr2:48

       A tyre man. That sounds like a Superman... Sounds like Superman for someone that is really lazy, like tyre man.

   14. SDScott Duncan2:55

       Yeah.

   15. DJDavid McIntosh Jr2:55

       Like a superhero. [laughs]

   16. SDScott Duncan2:56

       Yeah. I, I tell people most that, yeah. It's the most prestigious job, but there's definitely a lot of higher ones up, but...

   17. DJDavid McIntosh Jr3:02

       [laughs] Nice man. That's awesome. Like, growing up, you would always see, like, Michael Schumacher on TV.

   18. SDScott Duncan3:08

       Yeah.

   19. DJDavid McIntosh Jr3:08

       Would see a lot of F1 on TV, and would

2. 3:12 – 10:45

   Growing up in Scotland & first F1 memories

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr3:12

      have guessed that working in an F1 team or F1 as a racer would be a very elitist sport that didn't provide much accommodation for people from working-class towns in Scotland-

   2. SDScott Duncan3:25

      Yeah, definitely

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr3:26

      ... uh, into the career. However, we grew up in Ayrshire. You're a couple years older than me, but we grew up in a very working class, west of Scotland town, and now you're working with the most prestigious race team as a tyre mechanic.

   4. SDScott Duncan3:38

      Yeah.

   5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr3:39

      How does that happen?

   6. SDScott Duncan3:41

      [laughs] The most indirectly possible for me. Uh, like, there's no right or wrong way to get into it. I said, uh, the hard part for me is when I left school, I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do, which is probably quite familiar for a lot of people. Uh, if they are in the fortunate position where they do know what they want to do, I'd say it's a lot easier to work out, right, well, if I want to do this, I need to go to university and study this, get this experience. Whereas I didn't. Uh, my brother and sister are the same age as me, triplets. They-

   7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr4:10

      Really?

   8. SDScott Duncan4:11

      Yeah. So they, they knew exactly what they wanted to do, which I found a lot harder. So they knew. So my sister wanted to be a radiographer. My brother wanted to be a PE teacher. So both went to university, then got graduate jobs and went from there. Whereas I spent a couple years just trying to find out what it was I wanted to do. Uh, got a couple of random jobs, uh, and then kind of decided I wanted to do something environmental. Thought maybe work in wind turbines. Everything was going that route. So, uh, I went to university and studied environmental sciences for four years. And still, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I thought it would work in that sector. Uh, so I did the full four years, then got a graduate job as a environmental engineer, uh, for a year, and it was within probably two or three months, I kind of figured out, yeah, this isn't for me. [laughs] Don't get me wrong, it was nice. Like, got a van. I was working, like, a nine-to-five in an office. Like, I liked it, but I just knew I can't, I didn't want to do this long term. Uh, and that kind of showed me then it doesn't really matter what the job was or what the money was like, like, if you don't enjoy it, you're not, you're never gonna see out. Uh, so I took a year out then. During COVID, uh, thought the best thing to do was move to Barcelona, so went there. I, I told everyone I was going to get a job, but it was really just to get a break and try and figure out what I was doing. Felt as if I, if I stayed at home, I'd be kind of wasting my time, so I just wanted to try and keep or look busy anyway. Uh, so I moved out to Barcelona. Uh, and obviously during COVID, there was absolutely no jobs going. So I spent pretty much every weekend at a bar watching F1. [laughs]

   9. DJDavid McIntosh Jr5:45

      [laughs]

   10. SDScott Duncan5:46

       I, I'd always liked F1 motorsport. Al- always watched it. I just never saw that as a route, as a job, as more as a hobby. Uh, I think it was one day I was sitting watching in the bar, uh, watching TV, and I saw a pit stop, and I was like, "That'd be pretty cool if I could do that." Uh, so I started having a look then at different routes, and there was kind of two routes that I, I figured out. You could go back to university and do engineering, or you could do an apprenticeship and get your mechanical qualifications and go from there. So I found out apprenticeship through Williams F1 team. Got to like the final stages over a couple of months. And I, I just put it in my head that I'd done it, I was getting this job, and that's how I would get into F1, so I kind of put all my eggs in one basket with that. Uh, and then got the final call about a month later saying I've unfortunately unsuccessful. And it, it just, it hit me. I was, I wasn't expecting it. Like I, I just assumed that I was gonna get it qui- quite wrongly. Uh, so [laughs] I just went, went down to the lo- like a, a near supermarket and got like a case of four beers, went down to the beach, and I like just lay on the beach and just sulked and like I, I just thought like, "What do I do now? I'm out in Barcelona. Got no family here. Got no job. Like what do I do?" Uh, but yeah, I just, I moved back to home at that point and managed to get an apprenticeship with Audi in Ayr. So for me, that was kind of a turning point going from like a graduate job, like a decent salary, stable, to an apprenticeship. Obviously, you know what apprenticeships like, like minimum wage. I'd come in in the morning, the first thing I'd do would empty all the bins. At 10 o'clock I would go and do the roll run, like get all the rolls for everyone, like rolls and a slice. Uh, so yeah, it was like back to s- kind of the start, but at that point, like I knew now what to do. I would, I would do the apprenticeship, and that would kind of get me further to getting into F1. Um-

   11. DJDavid McIntosh Jr7:34

       One thing I like about your story is that, that you would volunteer on the weekends, going down to England-

   12. SDScott Duncan7:41

       Yeah

   13. DJDavid McIntosh Jr7:41

       ... to volunteer as a mechanic on race day for other races. It wasn't F1, it was like track days and that kind of shit-

   14. SDScott Duncan7:47

       Yeah

   15. DJDavid McIntosh Jr7:48

       ... wasn't it?

   16. SDScott Duncan7:48

       It was like the kind of more lower, basic form of motorsport. But I knew the-

   17. DJDavid McIntosh Jr7:52

       I mean the, the low-

   18. SDScott Duncan7:53

       ... the apprenticeship-

   19. DJDavid McIntosh Jr7:53

       The lowest form of motorsport is driving your car at like a-

   20. SDScott Duncan7:56

       [laughs]

   21. DJDavid McIntosh Jr7:56

       ... industrial estate that like, like a 300 pound car setup-

   22. SDScott Duncan7:59

       Yeah

   23. DJDavid McIntosh Jr7:59

       ... with like a 500 pound exhaust. That's, that's the lowest-

   24. SDScott Duncan8:01

       Yeah

   25. DJDavid McIntosh Jr8:02

       ... form of motorsport.

   26. SDScott Duncan8:02

       But you start somewhere.

   27. DJDavid McIntosh Jr8:03

       And then there's that. [laughs]

   28. SDScott Duncan8:04

       Yeah. But I, I knew, I figured out myself that the apprenticeship alone wouldn't make me stand out at all. Uh, I had to get experience in motorsport, and motorsport's very hard to get into a team. So you just need to put yourself out there and volunteer and say, "I'll come, I'll drive down myself. I wa- I won't take any pay. Just give me the experience." Uh, and I, I scrolled through LinkedIn and like every single page in motorsport I could find and sent hundreds of emails and got nothing back until one team. It was just a, a guy, a woman and wife, uh, a guy, uh, a partner and his, uh, wife, and they just said, "Yeah, come down. Like we, we can't provide you anything, but we'll, we'll let you mechanic for us." And it just went from there. Uh, it was a lot, it was a lot of work. Like I was leaving at Audi on a Friday, driving down to like Silverstone or whatever, like seven hours, working the weekend, and then driving back Sunday night and back in at work on Monday. So, you know, it was a lot, but I suppose if, if you want to get experience, you have to, you just have to do that kind of stuff. You have to like show that you're committed.

   29. DJDavid McIntosh Jr9:06

       And it's clearly paid off innit. I- In those races and doing that volunteering, that's where you found the opportunity to join an F1 team, right?

   30. SDScott Duncan9:13

       Yeah. Yeah, kind of started from there. Um, so it was them. They knew someone at McLaren. So again, like the old saying of like, "It's not what you know, it's who you know," uh, and kind of put my name forward for it. I applied like on, on the McLaren website, um, for like the fact that they'd put my name, and did that anything or not probably did. But yeah, I got the job. And for me, that was the first time obviously I'd, I'd stayed in Scotland my whole life. I lived there. So I moved down to Bracknell, uh, which is a bit of a rough area. [laughs] It's not the best, but, uh, yeah, moved down there and started. Uh, I, I've had my fair share of imposter syndrome throughout my life in some jobs. Red Bull was the worst. Like in my first day at Red Bull, uh, the imposter syndrome was ridiculous. I was like, "I, I don't deserve to be here. I'm, I'm not gonna be able to do this." Uh, yeah, mo- I think the fact I was just moving down, moving out the family house and everything, uh, it was quite a lot for me. But yeah, I was there for a year and a half, uh, building the McLaren GT cars. So that was a surreal experience, like walking into the garage, seeing all these like mint top-end McLaren like GT cars and whatever just sitting about. Stuff like I would, I've never seen before in my life, stuff that I like watch-
3. 10:45 – 19:30

   From uni & early jobs to Red Bull Racing

   1. SDScott Duncan10:45

      and then I'll get a job in the F1 team. But I was there for a year and a half, and I just could not get a job. I applied for a couple, but I didn't even get an interview, which was pretty crazy. Uh-

   2. DJDavid McIntosh Jr10:55

      What are the main differences between motorsport, GT, and F1? Like how... Give, give me some like context-

   3. SDScott Duncan11:01

      Uh, so-

   4. DJDavid McIntosh Jr11:01

      ... about the differences

   5. SDScott Duncan11:02

      ... motorsport is basically derived from the road cars, so a, a standard McLaren road car but then it'll be like fully stripped out with a roll cage, like carbon fiber panels, uh, a lot faster. Um, so we were like building them for teams.

   6. DJDavid McIntosh Jr11:16

      How fast do they go?

   7. SDScott Duncan11:17

      Uh, oh, the G- GT cars can go like upwards of 200, uh-

   8. DJDavid McIntosh Jr11:21

      Kilometers or miles?

   9. SDScott Duncan11:22

      Miles per hour.

   10. DJDavid McIntosh Jr11:23

       Holy shit.

   11. SDScott Duncan11:23

       Yeah. So yeah, pretty cool. Fortunately, I didn't get to drive one. But I, I, I back myself as a driver, but, uh, no, I don't think that, don't think that [laughs] career's ever gonna start.

   12. DJDavid McIntosh Jr11:32

       [laughs]

   13. SDScott Duncan11:33

       Um-

   14. DJDavid McIntosh Jr11:33

       And what about an F1 car? How fast do they go? Like explain some of the kind of mechanical differences.

   15. SDScott Duncan11:38

       I think they're slightly restricted as well, but I mean, they can go, they can go upwards of 200 miles per hour as well. But the difference with them is they can go like 180 miles per hour around a corner.

   16. DJDavid McIntosh Jr11:46

       Holy [laughs] shit.

   17. SDScott Duncan11:47

       Which is, which is ridiculous, yeah. Um, so obviously like with that comes like the, the safety has to be like e- elite level, um, they're in a carbon monocoque where if it goes into a crash, but we've seen like-

   18. DJDavid McIntosh Jr11:59

       Carbon monocoque. I don't know why that was funny. [laughs]

   19. SDScott Duncan12:02

       [laughs] 'Cause I mentioned cock. [laughs]

   20. DJDavid McIntosh Jr12:05

       [laughs] It's like the name of a dildo. [laughs]

   21. SDScott Duncan12:07

       Showing your maturity here. [laughs]

   22. DJDavid McIntosh Jr12:10

       [laughs]

   23. SDScott Duncan12:10

       But have you probably seen F1, like, if a, a car gets touched, like it just falls apart. But the, that's the exterior parts that the, the body work and the wheels and whatever, but the, the internal chassis, not monocoque-

   24. DJDavid McIntosh Jr12:22

       [laughs]

   25. SDScott Duncan12:22

       ... uh, is bulletproof and you, even if you Google Formula 1 crashes and you see some of the stuff lately. There was a really bad one in Brazil at the weekend there, uh, and the c- car like obliterated. Everything around it had came off, wheels, body work, but that carbon monocoque was completely untouched, and he, he walked out, uh, I think it was up- upwards of like 140, 150 miles per hour, went into a barrier.

   26. DJDavid McIntosh Jr12:46

       Oh my God.

   27. SDScott Duncan12:46

       It's crazy.

   28. DJDavid McIntosh Jr12:47

       Yeah, it's crazy. So tell me your progression from the GT cars to F1. How did you go from McLaren to Alpine to Red Bull?

   29. SDScott Duncan12:59

       Yeah. So I was at McLaren for a year and a half at that point, and I kinda got to the point where I was like, "I n- I need to make the next step now." Uh, there was nothing available at, um, McLaren, so I decided to take a look elsewhere. I saw a job with Alpine. Uh, again, it wasn't on the race team, but it was in the F1 team, on the test team it's called, which is basically like a reserve team, uh, that train people up for joining the race team. So that was my first experience in, like, an F1 team, was pretty surreal. Uh, I was there for a year. Um, and you travel around, not to the races, but to different tracks, uh, with the test car and their reserve drivers. So at that point it was Franco Colapinto, who's one of the drivers at Alpine now.

   30. DJDavid McIntosh Jr13:41

       Wow.
4. 19:30 – 27:05

   Inside the tyre bay: what his job actually is

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr19:30

      who's got the best gear-

   2. SDScott Duncan19:31

      Yeah

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr19:31

      ... and how do we use that gear?

   4. SDScott Duncan19:32

      Yeah.

   5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr19:32

      And that was one thing I didn't really realize is how, um, encouraged the variation and innovation is.

   6. SDScott Duncan19:39

      Yeah. The, as, as Formula One's at the, for a l- most elite motorsport level, with that comes with the most elite engineers, designers. So, like all the innovation they come up with is like, it's, it's absurd some of the stuff they're doing. They've got simulators in the factory where they'll run a small scale model of the car.

   7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr19:58

      Like 60% size, isn't it?

   8. SDScott Duncan19:59

      Yeah, yeah. So they'll ru- run that in a wind tunnel to see if the parts they're designing correlate to the performance that they expect, and if it, when it passes or if it makes an upgrade, they'll then put that on the car. Uh, which costs millions of pounds. Uh, but obviously it, it shows that like the more innovative they can be, the, the more performance they're gonna get out the car.

   9. DJDavid McIntosh Jr20:19

      And it's funny because these, um, these innovations only shave like a millisecond-

   10. SDScott Duncan20:25

       Yeah, that's the, that's the thing that's weird in Formula One. Like-

   11. DJDavid McIntosh Jr20:27

       The margins are so small

   12. SDScott Duncan20:28

       ... the margins are so small. The margin in qualifying between first and second can be like a thousandth of a second, or between first and 10th can be like a 10th of a second. Which is crazy, 'cause for them finishing in 10th, even if, you know, you're having a bad weekend, but you're only really like a, a couple of tenths off of the person in P1. So yeah, it's fine margins, but that's why small things like upgrades are how fast... If a pit stop's 2.5 seconds compared to three seconds, there's that, that difference does make a big impact in the race. So yeah, it's all fight, like small margins, but-

   13. DJDavid McIntosh Jr21:03

       Yeah

   14. SDScott Duncan21:03

       ... does make a difference.

   15. DJDavid McIntosh Jr21:05

       The success is found in like the, the margins.

   16. SDScott Duncan21:07

       Yeah.

   17. DJDavid McIntosh Jr21:08

       I like that.

   18. SDScott Duncan21:08

       Yeah.

   19. DJDavid McIntosh Jr21:09

       And I think that's a metaphor for life really. Like, if you can, especially like in podcasting, right? Like, a podcast is just a conversation, but if you can be just slightly more intelligent or have slightly better set or whatever, like it's, it's noticeable.

   20. SDScott Duncan21:22

       Yeah.

   21. DJDavid McIntosh Jr21:23

       Um, yeah, I think it's such a good metaphor for life. One thing that I, uh, I didn't know about Red Bull, uh, and F1 I guess as a whole, is like all of the data engineers and some of the kind of, for the lack of a better term, nerds of F1, dorks of F1-

   22. SDScott Duncan21:41

       Yeah

   23. DJDavid McIntosh Jr21:41

       ... like these, [laughs] these, these people who are sitting behind computers doing incredibly complex simulations in the UK in real time as these races are happening, feeding communications back and forth.

   24. SDScott Duncan21:54

       Yeah.

   25. DJDavid McIntosh Jr21:54

       Like testing strategies, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, doing real time simulations to alter the results of the race. Uh, I- I'm using such a bad term calling them dorks, they are intel- like incredibly intelligent-

   26. SDScott Duncan22:06

       Yeah

   27. DJDavid McIntosh Jr22:07

       ... like high-end academic grads. Like, winning races from, from a computer screen a hundred if not thousands of miles away.

   28. SDScott Duncan22:16

       Yeah.

   29. DJDavid McIntosh Jr22:16

       Um, in real time. I think that's just so fascinating. No other sport has that.

   30. SDScott Duncan22:20

       No, it, it comes down to the resources again. Like obviously in F1 they've got the resources and the means to be able to do that. Uh, and they've got obviously the people that are qualified from the highest level, uh, to be able to be d- doing that as well. So you, you usually run simulations back in the factory at Milton Keynes with one of the test drivers on, on a simulator with the setup that they want to use for the race on the Sunday, and see how that compares. Uh, and they can then use that for the car at the, at track to see how they set it up, and if they want to do one stop or a two-stop strategy. So like it's so much thought. You'd be, you'd be... Watching the race, you wouldn't think that that much goes into it, but, uh, because it's such fine margins and the, like the money involved with winning, like they, they want to put that effort in.
5. 27:05 – 36:20

   Race week routines, stress & team culture

   1. SDScott Duncan27:05

      easy for to overtake cars in front of you. But yeah, the, the, the innovation in the last few years is, is crazy. Like, the wings and everything. Uh, the floors this year have been the, the big thing.

   2. DJDavid McIntosh Jr27:16

      Floors?

   3. SDScott Duncan27:17

      Yeah. The, the floor of the, the car, uh, it's made out of carbon, but this year's, uh, kind of down force, uh, or ground effect car. So they're trying to run them as close to the ground as they can. Uh, and also under... I c- couldn't possibly tell you what the, the f- the floor looks like underneath because it'll get shot down by Red Bull. But, uh, yeah, they try and f- get the air to flow in certain ways that sucks it to the floor.

   4. DJDavid McIntosh Jr27:42

      Oh, I've seen that they create little vortexes.

   5. SDScott Duncan27:44

      Yeah.

   6. DJDavid McIntosh Jr27:45

      Yeah.

   7. SDScott Duncan27:45

      Yeah. So that's, that's pretty innovative. Um, but that's all changing next year. It's gonna be more comp- uh, like, straightforward, not as complex.

   8. DJDavid McIntosh Jr27:53

      I think one thing that people might not know about F1 cars that I found out in my research, that despite all of this innovative technology, carbon fiber this, uh, carbon fiber that, there's a plank of wood-

   9. SDScott Duncan28:06

      [laughs]

   10. DJDavid McIntosh Jr28:07

       ... at the bottom of an F1 car.

   11. SDScott Duncan28:08

       The plank.

   12. DJDavid McIntosh Jr28:08

       Yeah, the plank. Tell me about the plank.

   13. SDScott Duncan28:10

       Uh, like, the plank, as far as I know, is there is to, well, one, to stop when the car bottoms out and hits the floor. It's there as a kind of structural point so it doesn't damage anything. But then it's also used to measure at the end of a race. 'Cause the lower you can run the car to the, the floor, the faster it's gonna be, 'cause it can get sucked down and it's quicker. But if you run it too low, it'll wear, it'll get damaged more quickly. So the FIA measure that at the end of every race. And if you've run it too low and it's got too much wear on the plank of wood, you'll get disqualified, which has happened quite a few times this season. Whether it's a team doing it knowingly and trying to get away with it, or it's just, like, an accident where they've, they've not set the car up right and it's, uh, running too low. And you'll see it a lot in night races when you see the sparks coming out the car.

   14. DJDavid McIntosh Jr28:59

       Mm.

   15. SDScott Duncan28:59

       That's the plank hitting the bottom. 'Cause it's got a little kind of metal ridge round the outside as well, so that's where the sparks come from.

   16. DJDavid McIntosh Jr29:05

       Ah.

   17. SDScott Duncan29:05

       Uh, so that, that's not just a, like, a bit of the car that's just getting smashed off the ground. Like, that's the kind of lowest point that's meant to hit, hit the floor.

   18. DJDavid McIntosh Jr29:14

       One thing that I found also very interesting was that per, and correct me if I'm wrong, per the kind of code of conduct, the rule book, whatever, that each driver must change their tyres-

   19. SDScott Duncan29:25

       Once

   20. DJDavid McIntosh Jr29:25

       ... during, once during the race.

   21. SDScott Duncan29:26

       Yeah.

   22. DJDavid McIntosh Jr29:27

       Um, and do they have to change between hard and soft in the race, or can they go from hard to hard, soft to soft?

   23. SDScott Duncan29:32

       Uh, they have to, I'm sure they have to change compound once. So they have to use two compounds. There's three, soft, medium and hard. So if they're starting on hard they would have to then go onto a medium and a soft. Uh-

   24. DJDavid McIntosh Jr29:43

       What are the differences between a hard tyre and a soft tyre, for example?

   25. SDScott Duncan29:46

       Uh, not a lot really, but it's, the softest tyre is meant to be the fastest. It's got the most grip but it degrades quickly. Whereas the, the hard tyre has got the least amount of grip but can go long stints.

   26. DJDavid McIntosh Jr29:58

       So I guess there's, like, a kind of, from a race strategy point of view, there must be, like, a toil up of between do we wanna put on the fastest tyres but doing more pit stops-

   27. SDScott Duncan30:07

       Yeah

   28. DJDavid McIntosh Jr30:07

       ... or do we put on the more en- enduring tyres, um, but go slower.

   29. SDScott Duncan30:11

       Yeah.

   30. DJDavid McIntosh Jr30:11

       And you have to kind of-
6. 36:20 – 47:10

   Vegas, Brazil, Mexico & F1 travel stories

   1. SDScott Duncan36:20

      level. So I'd never been that high before, so as soon as we got off the plane, like you could feel the, your kind of shortness of breath. Uh, so like working in that environment just makes everything a bit harder. Um, we always try and go a track run with Red Bull on a, on a Thursday night, and like I, I nearly had a cardiac arrest [laughs] running round the track, just 'cause I was... I wasn't, like, used to being so, like, short of breath and at that, at that level. Uh-

   2. DJDavid McIntosh Jr36:43

      How long is a track, like one lap?

   3. SDScott Duncan36:45

      They're usually around five kilometers, kind of give or take a couple of kilometers here or there. Uh, but yeah, usually around about five, which is, uh, good for a, a track run, 'cause 5K is pretty kind of standard. You can... If you're a runner or you're, you've never ran before, you can slog through a 5K. Uh, so it's, it's a good, another good way to keep fit, but also, like, as a team, it's a good bonding exercise.

   4. DJDavid McIntosh Jr37:07

      One of the things I really enjoyed learning about in my research was that each team have different cars, but each driver has different cars.

   5. SDScott Duncan37:17

      Yeah.

   6. DJDavid McIntosh Jr37:17

      And they're kind of tailored to their own performance and their own specificity. Uh, but also each track, like, wildly changes.

   7. SDScott Duncan37:25

      Yeah.

   8. DJDavid McIntosh Jr37:25

      You have... One of the things I, I love watching, and I think it's so fucking cool, and it must be great for tourism, I, I can imagine these cities love it, but to be fair, the countries that you guys usually go to are quite elitist countries anyway.

   9. SDScott Duncan37:35

      Yeah.

   10. DJDavid McIntosh Jr37:35

       But these are street tracks that are, like, built into the city.

   11. SDScott Duncan37:38

       Yeah.

   12. DJDavid McIntosh Jr37:38

       I think that's awesome. One thing I didn't really think about was the absolute logistical nightmare of getting all of the team, all of the crew, all of the equipment, all of the tools, all of the cars, all of the drivers, all of the, the catering, all that stuff into the city-

   13. SDScott Duncan37:51

       Yeah

   14. DJDavid McIntosh Jr37:51

       ... standing it up, and operating it. Like, can you walk me through what people that are watching F1, illegally streaming it and not appreciating on their TV-

   15. SDScott Duncan38:01

       [laughs]

   16. DJDavid McIntosh Jr38:01

       ... what, what, what they're not appreciating about what goes into a race week-weekend?

   17. SDScott Duncan38:04

       Yeah. The logistics of it is, is absolutely crazy. I don't know how you'd even start to organize an F1 event. Um, but also the setup of it. I, I know that they start setting up F1 events, like, months before the r- the race just 'cause of the logistics of getting everything in place. Um, I know from our perspective anyway, we have a, a team that goes out a week before the race. So, so if we're going to Vegas tomorrow, a team would've went out last week to set up our garage, so when we get there on the Wednesday, everything's set up. I mean, that alone takes, like, a week to set up, and it's a lot of kind of forward thinking. Uh, and the logistics of all the freight that gets shipped around, all around the world. I know we take around, like, 14 air freight containers. Um, so if you, like, times 10 teams, uh, it's a serious amount of freight and, uh, tools that gets taken about all around the world. Uh, if you see it at the end of a race, like the forklifts flying about everywhere and everyone in high vis, it's literally a traveling circus. Like, you-

   18. DJDavid McIntosh Jr39:02

       [laughs] I believe it

   19. SDScott Duncan39:03

       ... you, you would never, you would never think to put something like that on and travel it around the world 'cause everything's, everything seems like a permanent structure. And all the hospitality units and the garages look like permanent structures that should never be moved around. Uh, so yeah, it's crazy.

   20. DJDavid McIntosh Jr39:19

       Tell me about your, uh, kind of day in the life or week in the life. How are you transported around? What does the average w- week in the life look like for a Red Bull race mechanic in terms of, like, where you're flying to, how you f- get there, how you're accommodated for-

   21. SDScott Duncan39:35

       Yeah

   22. DJDavid McIntosh Jr39:35

       ... how you spend your week working, and then how you relax whilst you're there.

   23. SDScott Duncan39:38

       Yeah. It's-

   24. DJDavid McIntosh Jr39:39

       'Cause like you said, you've been in, like, Mexico, Brazil, Azerbaijan this year, going to Vegas tomorrow.

   25. SDScott Duncan39:44

       Yeah.

   26. DJDavid McIntosh Jr39:45

       Uh, like, it does sound like a traveling circus.

   27. SDScott Duncan39:47

       Yeah. Yeah, it is. But, and y- you definitely, you have to like the traveling aspect of it. Um, not necessarily the airports. Like, that's by far the worst part, but you have to like going to different countries and working in different countries. Uh, and for me, like, I love that part of it. Like, I love traveling, and I love motorsport, so that's wh- I was sitting in that beach, you know, crying in Barcelona, uh, that was when I decided, yeah, this is for me. Um, yeah, the, the traveling part of it is they're aware that it takes its toll. So you get long-haul flights, kind of like 10, 11 hours. Uh, and even when you get there, different time zones, so you can give jet lag as well. So they, it's in their best interest to look after all the staff and the employees knowing that they've got a, a long week ahead. Um, so you get treated very well in terms of, like, the food we get is pretty banging. Um, you've got sports nutritionists, you've got physios. Uh, they've got a lot of stuff in place to, to look after you. Uh, they've also got, like, F1 medics around the track, so as I say, it's common that people get ill. If, if something happens, they've got, like, every single pill or medicine that you could possibly need, uh, to m- to look after you. So you feel very well looked after. It's not as if you're getting taken around the world, and it's absolutely beating out of you, and you're, like, constantly tired. Uh, they do take that into account, and obviously they want to make sure that everyone's at, like, the, the best possible level.

   28. DJDavid McIntosh Jr41:11

       Peak performance, yeah.

   29. SDScott Duncan41:11

       Yeah, definitely. Uh, so yeah, it's good. I, I like it.

   30. DJDavid McIntosh Jr41:16

       And you're put up in hotels-
7. 47:10 – 56:40

   Pressure, mistakes & how you bounce back

   1. SDScott Duncan47:10

      there's, there's other drinks like water or whatever, but, uh, you do, you do kind of cop in it 'cause, like, Red Bull's everywhere. Like, all over your T-shirts, all over the branding, all over the car. Uh, and also the, the fridges are always full of Red Bull, so you're just feeling inclined to, oh, I'm gonna have a Red Bull.

   2. DJDavid McIntosh Jr47:27

      I feel sorry for the other sponsor, Oracle, which are like a cloud-based technology platform. No one's g- like, pure buzzing that-

   3. SDScott Duncan47:32

      [laughs]

   4. DJDavid McIntosh Jr47:32

      ... they're getting, like, unlimited cloud software.

   5. SDScott Duncan47:34

      I know, yeah.

   6. DJDavid McIntosh Jr47:34

      Everyone's buzzing-

   7. SDScott Duncan47:35

      Yeah

   8. DJDavid McIntosh Jr47:35

      ... that they've got, like, Red Bull. Uh, that's class, man. The future of F1, where do you see it going? Do you feel like they can might go full AI, like robots in the monocoque, whatever it's called?

   9. SDScott Duncan47:48

      Yeah. Th- th- they've started that.

   10. DJDavid McIntosh Jr47:49

       [laughs]

   11. SDScott Duncan47:50

       D- uh, they, they have started doing AI racing. It's m- it's crazy.

   12. DJDavid McIntosh Jr47:53

       That's shite.

   13. SDScott Duncan47:53

       You, you need watch it.

   14. DJDavid McIntosh Jr47:54

       That is so shite.

   15. SDScott Duncan47:55

       It's, uh, it's like F2 cars, but they're... Like, there's no one in it, so it's a robot that's controlling it. Uh, I think they started that last year, and they've started racing around s- some of the circuits.

   16. DJDavid McIntosh Jr48:06

       That is the gimpest thing I've ever heard.

   17. SDScott Duncan48:07

       [laughs]

   18. DJDavid McIntosh Jr48:07

       Honestly. That is like-

   19. SDScott Duncan48:09

       If, if you thought there was n- uh, dorks or geeks in F1, you should see these guys that are programming the, the AI cars.

   20. DJDavid McIntosh Jr48:16

       [laughs]

   21. SDScott Duncan48:16

       It's, it's cra- the AI-

   22. DJDavid McIntosh Jr48:17

       They have AI girlfriend as well, I can promise [laughs] me.

   23. SDScott Duncan48:19

       Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine they would. Don't get me wrong, like, they're of like elite level of intelligence to be doing that kind of stuff. But I can't see AI coming into it yet. Um, the, the n- the next natural progression you'd think would be all go electric. But, I mean, they've already... Formula E, which you've heard of, is already a thing, and it's just not taken-

   24. DJDavid McIntosh Jr48:36

       I thought Formula E was like Formula 1 but everyone's on ecstasy

   25. SDScott Duncan48:40

       Yeah. Uh, but it, it looks like it when they're going round 'cause they're going just as fast but you can't hear anything, so you'd think, you'd think you on ecstasy watching it-

   26. DJDavid McIntosh Jr48:46

       [laughs]

   27. SDScott Duncan48:47

       ... 'cause it's like, it's pretty mental. But it's just not taken off. I think the whole point of F1, people enjoy, like, the racing bit. It's the sound-

   28. DJDavid McIntosh Jr48:54

       Yeah

   29. SDScott Duncan48:54

       ... of the cars going round. Obviously going back to, like, V8 and V10s when it was, like, a completely different level of sound. Uh, that, that's part of it, so I can't see it ever going full electric.

   30. DJDavid McIntosh Jr49:05

       You ever, uh, got protesters outside?

Episode duration: 52:43