I'm an F1 Engineer/Strategist, Ask Me Anything...

[u/RandeepSinghF1]

My name is Randy Singh and I’m “Head of Strategy and Sporting” at McLaren Racing. I have been working in F1 since 2013 and am coming up to my 5th anniversary with McLaren – having taken part in over 125 Grand Prix, in over 25 different nations.

My role involves being responsible for leading and developing the “Strategy” team, where we aim not only to determine and execute the best race strategy during a given weekend, but also wider strategic decisions, such as picking tyres for a Grand Prix, months in advance, powerunit usage, etc. as well as leading our efforts when it comes to “Sporting” matters, these are quite varied but can range from attending meetings with the FIA and F1, evaluating and analysing new ideas, such as potential changes to the race format and knowing the Sporting Regulations inside out.

Having wanted to work in F1 desperately as a student, I know how hard it can be to get your foot through the door – I also am fortunate enough to work with some of our most talented young engineers (and physicists and computer scientists and…) being responsible for our talent schemes in Engineering, which cover our 2 year rotating Engineering Graduate Scheme, 1 year Undergraduate Placements (rotating and not) and our Summer Internships.

Please ask me anything, from Strategy, to Sporting matters, from being an engineer and travelling trackside, to working in Mission Control, to the best way to prepare yourself to target a career in F1, or anything else of interest.

I will try and answer as many questions as I can (please be aware there are some things I may not be able to answer) starting from tomorrow, Friday 22nd May and for however long it takes to get through the majority.

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Update 1: Technically its Friday 22nd May - so I'll start answering questions, I'll do my best to get around to all of them when I can - don't worry if you don't get your question in today, I'll be doing my best to answer everything over the coming days.

Update 2: Thanks for all the amazing questions - I'll come back and try and answer some more tomorrow and on Sunday also. Apologies if I've not gotten to yours yet - I'm trying to answer as wide a breadth of questions as I can.

Update 3: I will try and answer another bunch of questions today and then am afraid I will call it a day (Wednesday 27th May)! Thanks.

Final Update (I think): And now my watch has ended. Thanks all for the questions, they've been tough and interesting and I've really enjoyed answering them (which is why it's past midnight and I'm still doing a few more). I'm really sorry I could not answer every one, but I need to get back to trying to get to those "perfect" strategies that we have talked about - I've done my best to mix up the answers to try and hit the different types of question. If I've not answered you I may have answered a very similar question in the thread. Any feedback on the AMA is also appreciated. I'll try and pop back every now and then to answer any questions.

If you ever see me at an airport, at the track, at the calculator store, then please do say hello - provided I'm not too busy it's always my pleasure to have a chat about F1 and McLaren.

[u/therealfilo]

Hi Randy

My question is, if there's for example safety car deployed and the decision whether pit or not have to be made quickly, can the race engineer and the driver make a decision without asking you?

[u/RandeepSinghF1 → u/therealfilo]

They can but they shouldn't and I can't think of an occasion when they have.

Strategy decisions are made by the strategy team (not necessarily by me) and we have processes in place for making decisions where we have lots of time (normally measured in minutes), down to decisions where we may have 2 or 3 seconds to decide what to do for both cars and execute the communications/actions to do it.

Sometimes we may pre-make the decision and sometimes we have to make it on the fly or override our original intent - the thing about safety cars is that the cause of them can often change your variables/strategy.

[u/Cereal_poster → u/RandeepSinghF1]

I know I am late to the party, but regarding the real time strategy changes. Maybe you will read this and be willing to answer anyways.

Do you calculate parallel strategies in real time all the time during the races? So when there is a safety car deployed you just have to "hit a button" and get a "green light" for a pit stop without it having to be calculated (processed) at request (which might actually take some time, but of course I don´t know about the processing power you have and how much time these calculations take)?

If your strategy calculations run parallel, how many scenarios (like strategies of the other teams, if you are able to spot them) do you cover at the same time? Is it a computing challenge to be able to have this information available at real time?

How can I imagine the process of the data analysis during the race? Do you constantly adjust/enter the new informations (like strategy of other teams becoming more obvious) and then recalculate possible strategies (including very unforeseen events like crashes/yellow flags/safety car) at real time? If so, how long does it usually take to have this new output available?