Engineers Locked in After Silly Season

It’s not just drivers, but race engineers who play musical chairs during the off-season.

Four of the top five drivers are working in new pairings, Craig Lowndes and Jeromy Moore the only tried and tested combination at the top of the table.

While some see the swaps as red flags for the 2014 season, there are differing opinions as to how important this relationship really is.

With Will Davison’s departure from FPR, Mark Winterbottom will work with Davison’s old engineer, Grant McPherson, who has been in the FPR stable for several years.

Davison at Erebus Motorsport will team with up-and-comer Luke Mason, who has stepping up from a data engineering role he held at the team for the previous two years.

While there has been some criticism of pairing Erebus’ new star recruit with an inexperienced engineer, team boss Ryan Maddison believes there’s more to the story. It’s mostly about the team’s depth, rather than the immediate pairing, in his opinion.  

“We have complete confidence in how we’ve structured our engineering group,” he told v8supercars.com.au.

“If you look at it … in isolation, or in a vacuum with a driver and single engineer – really, there’s almost no team now in V8 Supercars that works in such isolation.

“You have to share information… If you’re a not multiple car team and able to share data across more than one car, then therefore there’s one set of ideas or strategy. That would be a limitation.”

Maddison named Wes McDougall, who has stepped up into an engineering management role, general manager V8 Ross Stone and team manager David Stuart as heavy weights within the team who were also able to lend a hand.

“As much as you look at Will and his engineer, they definitely won’t be in isolation – if anything I’d suggest we’re quite top heavy with our engineering group.”

On the other hand, Winterbottom – who works with his third engineer in a many years in 2014 – stressed how important the engineer-driver relationship was during the races. It feels as if you are both in the car, he says, and just the tiniest change of voice can strike anxiety into the heart of the driver. 

“It’s the little things people don’t see,” Winterbottom explained.

“It’s the radio chat, the pronunciation of words, the information they give you, the tone in their voice, things like that when you’re in the car.

“A guy who reads the play well, like a James Small (Winterbottom’s 2013 engineer who has moved on to NASCAR) who has raced before, they make you feel calm and that plays a massive part.

“Whether they can set the car up and that side of it, that’s probably the easiest part to deal with…

“If a guy has a little bit of an emotional tone in his voice you can hear that in the car – little things like that, is what takes time to get used to and feel like you’re comfortable with each other and not under pressure, feeling anxiety, that sort of thing.”

Given the adrenaline flying around the garage, tact can be lost in the heat of the moment. And different drivers like being fed different information.

“Even to know when you want to talk, what information you want, what information you give – people also forget the engineer is watching on the screen, but they feel like they’re in the car with you. They feel like they’re racing the race as well… it’s tough on everyone.

“That’s where your guys who have been together a long time, it just flows and it’s easy, you don’t feel those pressures and anxieties. It takes time to build.” 

Five-time Champion Jamie Whincup is another working in a new pairing, with David Cauchi, who has been part of the Triple Eight stable for some time, but is relatively new to the race engineer role.

Whincup admitted the pair got off-track at the sydney.com Test Day and it had been a matter of a few steps back, a few steps forward.

“I won’t lie, we were a little bit off-track there for a while… It’s all part of the process. Of the top six, four of them have new engineers so I’m not a lone ranger here.”

Whincup emphasised he wanted to bring something to the plate and offer Cauchi his first race win.

“I’m not 21 anymore and two rookies don’t work so I’d like to think I’m more of a senior personnel at RBR, so we can afford to bring on someone new.”

A range of changes have been made behind the scenes – below shows the driver-engineer combinations for 2014. Stay tuned for the Clipsal 500 Adelaide Engineer Preview on v8supercars.com.au ahead of the weekend's races.