Anyone here work for an F1 team?

I do work for an F1 team, but don't actually work for them sadly.
 
I used to have "access all areas"
at Red bull a few years back,
and before that when it was Jaguar Racing,
and even Stewart racing.
but sadly that contract is no more.
 
I buy a can of Red Bull once in a while. ...does that count?? Lol
 
Does an F1 lawnmower racing team count :D
 
I've done a bit of aerodynamics work for maclaren in the past. Funny old team though, very serious, none of them seemed to have a joke though so I always felt a bit bad dropping the one liners to lighten the mood!
 
I do stuff for Williams, I get to go to the factory every few weeks and have a mooch about.
Pretty impressive set up and absolutely spotless, I feel pretty bad strolling in with my oil covered boots and trousers!
The canteen does a wicked breakfast too.
 
I wrote a Windows NT driver for the original Pi Developments car to pit telemetry system for the Williams team, back in late 90s I think. Worked with a guy at Williams, who's surname was Williams... Was amusing to get a phone call from him one day which a colleague answered, when he called out to me to answer it you could have heard a pin drop in the open plan office. Also wrote other drivers for plain ol Windows which was used for the umbilical comms on various teams cars. Haven't thought about those years for a long time.
 
Cobra said:
I used to have "access all areas"
at Red bull a few years back,
and before that when it was Jaguar Racing,
and even Stewart racing.
but sadly that contract is no more.
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Cool


Flightphoto said:
I've done a bit of aerodynamics work for maclaren in the past. Funny old team though, very serious, none of them seemed to have a joke though so I always felt a bit bad dropping the one liners to lighten the mood!
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I have a mate that works at McLaren. He says they have a no tea / coffee / drinks at desk policy :(

BethAtTheHug said:
I wrote a Windows NT driver for the original Pi Developments car to pit telemetry system for the Williams team, back in late 90s I think. Worked with a guy at Williams, who's surname was Williams... Was amusing to get a phone call from him one day which a colleague answered, when he called out to me to answer it you could have heard a pin drop in the open plan office. Also wrote other drivers for plain ol Windows which was used for the umbilical comms on various teams cars. Haven't thought about those years for a long time.
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Wow - driver development. Not many people write drivers these days. I am impressed! Nice claim to fame writing some nice low level code for an F1 team :)


Gremlin said:
Does an F1 lawnmower racing team count :D
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Only if we see some pics! :)
 
FlyTVR said:
I have a mate that works at McLaren. He says they have a no tea / coffee / drinks at desk policy :(
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But they might have a go and have a brew in a nice breakout room/outside policy instead? I know which I'd prefer.
 
I know someone currently working with the Mercedes team currently and two others for Force India.
 
I know someone who works for Red Bull if that counts?!
 
I could never say I wrote "nice code", but I did have a knack of managing to write code that interfaced to hardware which people much cleverer than me failed at.
 
I've done some work connected with the sport...
 
Williams have bought hardware from us in the past. We always used to joke about Patrick Head or someone coming on the team radio and telling one of the drivers to unplug it and plug it back in again if the car stopped on track (but in reality it wasn't for the cars).

edit : thinking about it, I'm 99% sure that Pi were customers as well, over a decade ago, but not for hardware, just software.

BethAtTheHug said:
I could never say I wrote "nice code", but I did have a knack of managing to write code that interfaced to hardware which people much cleverer than me failed at.
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If you were writing device drivers in the 1990s, you might know what Ralf Brown's interrupt list is (or was, as the DOS kernel used by Windows 9x is obsolete). Only mention it as I'm in the credits as a contributor :p
 
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onomatopoeia said:
Williams have bought hardware from us in the past. We always used to joke about Patrick Head or someone coming on the team radio and telling one of the drivers to unplug it and plug it back in again if the car stopped on track (but in reality it wasn't for the cars).

edit : thinking about it, I'm 99% sure that Pi were customers as well, over a decade ago, but not for hardware, just software.


If you were writing device drivers in the 1990s, you might know what Ralf Brown's interrupt list is (or was, as the DOS kernel used by Windows 9x is obsolete). Only mention it as I'm in the credits as a contributor :p
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Memory lane - you'll be talking about TSRs next!
 
As I posted elsewhere on the forum, there is at least one TP member who does currently work for an F1 team. We were chatting about it when we met at last week's Whipsnade MegaMeet and if you search back far enough, you can find his pitlane photos ;)

But I can't quite understand the fascination. It's not glamourous! Although I'll agree the gossip is good. Once upon a time, it used to be bloody hard work in a small outfit; nowadays it usually involves working as a small cog in a self-important engineering company that will be horribly badly run and an umpleasant place to work or financially exciting, waiting to see if you get paid at the end of the month, or both!! :p
 
FlyTVR said:
Something to be proud of! :)



What sort of work did you do Matt?
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acoustic engineer. it was trackside work but sadly didnt involve going to any races
 
One of my female friends once dated a guy who worked for Williams. He travelled with them in the marketing dept I think. Sadly they split before I had a chance to ask for free tickets!
 
My son works with F1 cars but not with a team, although he did say the other week they did some work for a team... Can't remember which, I'll have to ask him :)


Sent from The Moon.....
 
Yves Geza said:
As I posted elsewhere on the forum, there is at least one TP member who does currently work for an F1 team. We were chatting about it when we met at last week's Whipsnade MegaMeet and if you search back far enough, you can find his pitlane photos ;)

But I can't quite understand the fascination. It's not glamourous! Although I'll agree the gossip is good. Once upon a time, it used to be bloody hard work in a small outfit; nowadays it usually involves working as a small cog in a self-important engineering company that will be horribly badly run and an umpleasant place to work or financially exciting, waiting to see if you get paid at the end of the month, or both!! :p
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Much truth in that :)
 
FlyTVR said:
Memory lane - you'll be talking about TSRs next!
Click to expand...
Bane of my life those were, people used to write them to intercept the various INT instructions and muck them about then tended to leave the parameters in a mess so nothing worked properly. Ended up writing code to direct program the hardware with IN and OUT instructions (good old days, before IOPLs and the like) to avoid all that.

(sorry for going all nerdy in a motor racing topic :p )
 
onomatopoeia said:
Bane of my life those were, people used to write them to intercept the various INT instructions and muck them about then tended to leave the parameters in a mess so nothing worked properly. Ended up writing code to direct program the hardware with IN and OUT instructions (good old days, before IOPLs and the like) to avoid all that.

(sorry for going all nerdy in a motor racing topic :p )
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No probs! Those were the days! :) Proper satisfaction!
 
onomatopoeia said:
Williams have bought hardware from us in the past. We always used to joke about Patrick Head or someone coming on the team radio and telling one of the drivers to unplug it and plug it back in again if the car stopped on track (but in reality it wasn't for the cars).

edit : thinking about it, I'm 99% sure that Pi were customers as well, over a decade ago, but not for hardware, just software.


If you were writing device drivers in the 1990s, you might know what Ralf Brown's interrupt list is (or was, as the DOS kernel used by Windows 9x is obsolete). Only mention it as I'm in the credits as a contributor :p
Click to expand...

Ralf Brown... nope don't recognise the name, but then I've lost far too many brain cells since then.
Pi were quite diverse and in 3 main parts, Pi Technologies did the diesel engine ECU and stuff - nicknamed The Smokies. Pi Research who did the off the shelf data loggers and dashes. Pi Developments came about to concentrate on the bespoke F1, Indy/Cart stuff. So your path might have crossed with Pi, but no-where near me - I worked for Tim Routsis in Pi Dev. I've remembered I left in early 2000, and was very glad to be out of it.

The umbilical data comms was problematic for a long time due, in part, to the pcmcia network cards and laptops of the time. Yup, you had to plug it in, see if it worked and if not unplug and try again. The network protocol driver for Windows 95 (yuk!) was buggy as hell, and I was brought into to fix it, essentially, as I had previous hardware driver experience. The original writer of it having left. Fun times those.

The Williams telemetry NT driver I wrote wasn't in use long, at least as far as I know. The Plextek transputer based system was to replace it... think that worked eventually but it had some teething troubles for a while. Ah, you're from Bristol way so maybe that's the connection!
 
A Friend of the wife's is IT support for one of the teams. Quiet regularly see him in the back of the garages on tv.

I was chatting to an old friend who used to work for Goodyear back in the day. He said he loved the job. They were constantly playing tricks on the drivers (well the ones with a sense of humour) His funniest was putting a piece of wire from the HT lead on one particular drivers moped leading towards his leg.

Then standing back and laughing as he rode off getting 20 shocks a second until he could stop.
 
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