The voices in their ears: A guide to every F1 driver’s race engineer for 2023

A Formula 1 driver needs an abundance of skill, a quick car and sometimes luck to be able to win. But their ability to maximise the performance potential of themselves and their car can come down to their race engineer.

The job of an engineer now is quite expansive, and during the races they spend much of their time on the radio either hearing from or delivering messages to their driver. That means their primary responsibility during track sessions is to be able to translate their drivers’ thoughts, feedback and concerns about their car into comments that other members of the team can deliver on.

For example, a complaint about understeer in one corner may require a specific solution that a colleague who is more closely examining the telemetry may have the answer to.

Once the driver is out of the car, the race engineer (and the supporting performance engineer) then spend even more time combining driver comments with data from the car to find areas to improve.

Although some racing purists may find it abhorrent, a modern engineer will also now be responsible for motivating their during their time on track and effectively telling them how to drive faster (or slower) when it comes to choosing from the wide variety of settings the driver can change from within the car.

Clear communication and trust are as important as knowing how to engineer a car, which is why drivers and race engineers tend to stick together once a fruitful relationship emerges. Here’s the rundown of who is engineering who in F1 this year, and how long each of them have been working together.

Red Bull

The title-winning 140-race partnership between Max Verstappen and Gianpiero Lambiase continues into an eighth year, and if they get off to a winning start in 2023 then it will be the first time that Verstappen has won the opening race of a season. When things go less well Verstappen “doesn’t hold back”, as he admitted after last year’s season-opener.

Despite F1’s calendar growing to a record 23 events this year, it would be difficult for Verstappen to replicate or better his tally of 15 wins in 2022 as that was a new record for victories in a season. It’s not only one of the must successful driver/engineer combinations on the grid, but also one of the longest lasting.

His team mate Sergio Perez continues with Hugh Bird, who has been his engineer through both of his seasons at Red Bull so far. Together they have won three races, though they also had to navigate a few tricky team orders calls last season.

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Ferrari

Xavier Marcos Padros has come under scrutiny on occasion during his time engineering Charles Leclerc, but the partnership has been successful enough to last the entirety of Leclerc’s Ferrari career so far.

The Spaniard always communicates with his driver in English, and had a long career in junior single-seaters before joining Ferrari.

Riccardo Adami goes into his third season engineering Carlos Sainz Jnr, who inherited the trackside setup of Ferrari’s former driver Sebastian Vettel. That meant all the positions on that side of the garage went unchanged from 2020 to 2021, when Sainz joined, with the driver being the only new component.

Mercedes

There are not many people among the F1 teams who have remained in the same role as long as Pete Bonnington, who has been Lewis Hamilton‘s race engineer since he joined Mercedes in 2013. Bonnington was put to work with Hamilton in just his second year as an F1 engineer, but had served his ‘apprenticeship’ at the team for that role by being Michael Schumacher’s race engineer in 2012.

Bonnington and Hamilton have won 82 races and six world championship titles together, with several well-known phrases including ‘hammer time’ having arisen in their time together, and Bonnington has more F1 podium appearances than many drivers. This season will be their 11th together.

George Russell made his Mercedes debut with Bonnington in his ear as he stood in for Hamilton at the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix before joining the team full-time last year with Riccardo ‘Riki’ Musconi as his engineer.

They got to stand on the podium together for the first time at last November’s Brazilian Grand Prix when Russell won, and Musconi engineered his predecessor Valtteri Bottas from 2019 to 2021, being promoted into the role after Bottas’s previous engineer Tony Ross moved across to Mercedes’ Formula E programme.

Earning a promotion from his long-held position as Hamilton’s performance engineer, Dudley has been substituted into the more senior position before, including at the 2019 Mexican Grand Prix where he engineered Hamilton due to Bonnington being absent.

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Alpine

Esteban Ocon first came across Josh Peckett during his rookie F1 season with Manor in 2016, although at the time he was working for his team mate Pascal Wehrlein. However the two still struck up a relationship and were reunited in 2020 when Ocon joined Renault.

At the time Peckett was a performance engineer, but the next year he became Ocon’s race engineer and it was a promotion that pleased the driver. The highlight of their two seasons together was Ocon’s 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix win, and they’ll be aiming for a podium return in 2023 as they continue to work together.

Pierre Gasly inherits the engineer of his predecessors at the team, with Karel Loos having engineered Kevin Magnussen, Jolyon Palmer, Sainz, Daniel Ricciardo and finally Fernando Alonso before the team’s latest signing came in.

McLaren

Lando Norris has had the voice of William Joseph in his ear since his F1 debut in 2019, and that will continue to be the case. The pair have become known for some of their more comedic radio antics, but Joseph has also been critical in Norris’s rise up F1’s pecking order.

An ever-constant on the other side of the garage has been Olympic medal-winning former rower Tom Stallard, who has worked with Jenson Button, Stoffel Vandoorne, Sainz and Ricciardo since 2014. This year he will return to working with a rookie, as he did with Vandoorne in 2017, by engineering 2021 Formula 2 champion Oscar Piastri.

The relationship they have been able to foster in the off-season may be critical to how Piastri performs this year due to contractual disputes only allowing him to start working with McLaren towards the end of last year.

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Alfa Romeo

Valtteri Bottas was partnered with Alex Chan when he arrived at Alfa Romeo last year, marking the second Finn in a row Chan had worked with as he previously helped out on Kimi Raikkonen’s side of the team garage as a performance engineer. He was given additional responsibilities as race engineer when Bottas came in.

The combination worked well, but Alfa Romeo became less competitive over the season and after scoring seven times from the first nine races they then only finished in the top ten two more times.

Zhou Guanyu started his time with the team, and as a F1 racer, with Jorn Becker engineering his car. He had previously engineered Antonio Giovinazzi, who lost his seat at the end of 2021, and helped Zhou’s adaptation to his new environment. Alfa Romeo have sensibly kept them together for 2023.

Aston Martin

Lance Stroll‘s race engineer Ben Michell started his job late in September 2021, being promoted from the position of senior performance engineer after Stroll’s previous race engineer Brad Joyce became Aston Martin’s head of trackside engineering.

He has remained with the Canadian since then, but the team’s fluctuating form means they have only scored 10 times in the 29 races since their partnership begun. Aston Martin are confident they are on the rise, and originally made the change to who was responsible for Stroll’s car because they thought Joyce could help bring the team up the grid in a more senior role.

Chris Cronin retains his job in engineering the sister car, which will now be driven by Alonso. Cronin worked with Perez until he left the team at the end of 2020, then engineered his replacement Vettel for two seasons, and following his retirement now will look after another multiple F1 champion.

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Haas

Kevin Magnussen and new engineer Mark Slade have already made headlines, having started working together towards the end of last season. They took pole for the Brazilian Grand Prix, and team principal Guenther Steiner laid some credit on the driver-engineer relationship for producing that breakthrough result.

Magnussen and Slade previously worked together at Renault in 2016, and Magnussen had started 2022 with Ed Regan as his engineer before he moved into an office-based role. Dominic Haines served as an interim replacement before the highly experienced Slade – who worked with the likes of Raikkonen at McLaren during the 2000s – took over.

His new team mate Nico Hulkenberg will be engineered by Gary Gannon, who worked with Romain Grosjean and Magnussen from Haas’s entry into F1 back in 2016 through to the end of 2020, before then engineering Mick Schumacher for two seasons.

AlphaTauri

Yuki Tsunoda and Mattia Spini go into a third year of working together at AlphaTauri, and they are not just looking for a maiden podium but also do enough to convince Red Bull that Tsunoda should be retained for 2024. Several years before that Spini engineered Gasly, who has now left for Alpine.

F1 rookie and Formula E world champion Nyck de Vries gets Pierre Hamelin as his engineer. He has spent the last two seasons engineering Gasly, and has been working with the drivers at AlphaTauri for a decade. He also inherits Gasly’s performance coach Pyry Salmela.

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Williams

At F1’s last-placed team of 2022, there is continuity on the engineering front. James Urwin goes into a second season leading the charge on Alexander Albon’s car, having previously spent three years engineering Russell and two campaigns with Stroll before that.

The team’s rookie driver Logan Sargeant has been partnered with Gaetan Jego was the voice in Nicholas Latifi’s ear at Williams from halfway through the 2020 season to the Canadian’s last race with the team at the end of 2022.

2023 F1 season

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• F1 drivers join Vettel’s initiative to build insect habitats at tracks worldwide
• Piastri “much more comfortable” at new circuits than at start of rookie season
• First pictures from the 2023 Japanese Grand Prix weekend
• FIA reintroduces maximum time limit for all laps in qualifying

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