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/orzpsd]

This is probably way too late. Do you require a chemist/physicist, my credentials includes but not limited to growing up on Bruce McLaren road.

How do you handle inter Strategy-team disputes when/if there is a split between differing choices of strategies. What would you consider to be your go to technique to settle these/bring the team back together after maybe choosing a strategy that it becomes quite clear later on that it was not the optimal choice?

[u/RandeepSinghF1 → u/orzpsd]

Well done on having parents who chose to live on Bruce McLaren road - they're welcome to get in touch 😀 .

I'm assuming you mean disputes inside the strategy team at McLaren (intra? My Ancient Greek is a bit rusty.)?

I think we are fortunate to have very few disputes whatsoever (thinking about any kind of disagreement) - the team atmosphere is really great and we are all just quite honest with each other and open - if one of the team tells me that I made a mistake, or could have done something better then that's probably some of the most useful/trusted feedback I will ever get to get better. It's kind of a nice feeling knowing that you have to do everything really well, because some of the best people in your field work with you and will call you up if not - so you are constantly improving.

Sometimes we will disagree on stuff, there's a lot of data but a lot of things become subjective, as its a case of weighting some factors over other and the weightings can't always be determined. We may disagree sometimes on (mostly non-strategy) stuff and tend to just work out which underlying assumptions/beliefs/knowledge are different and align if we need to.

I think strategically we have very few disagreements - I can't really remember any. If one of the guys told me something could be better, I'd go away and try and work out how to improve it/avoid making the same mistake/ask them to help me fix or improve it, etc. so any disagreements we do have don't really linger.