racing track at twilight, as the lights start to come on. a red blur is seen to show a car speeding past. formula one strategy is key to ensure high performance in all conditions.

Annaleece Longmore

Victories in motorsport don’t come easy, and it’s up to tight-knit groups of talented people to ensure everything runs smoothly during races. Here are some of those individuals who have made a name for themselves in Formula One as strategic masterminds. 

Ravin Jain – Ferrari

After Frederic Vasseur was appointed as Team Principal of Scuderia Ferrari at the end of 2022, the team faced some major reshuffling of senior staff. The previous Head of Race Strategy, Iñaki Rueda, was moved to a factory role. He has since been replaced by Ravin Jain who has taken a trackside strategy role.

While Vasseur has been careful not to pin the blame for Ferrari’s 2022 blunders on any specific individual, fans called for some big changes in the strategic team.

Ravin Jain is a 28-year-old Oxford University graduate. Upon entering the formula racing industry, he worked in several summer placements at different teams. These included Ferrari, Williams, and Caterham Formula One Team. Since 2016, Jain has worked his way through different roles at Ferrari. Starting in the team as a Mathematical Modelling Engineer, he was promoted to Race Strategy Engineer, and finally Head of Race Strategy Operations in February 2023.

Rosie Wait – Mercedes

After graduating from Cambridge University in 2009 with an MSc in Engineering, Rosie Watt entered the Formula One world as a Vehicle Dynamics Engineer with McLaren Racing.

In an interview in 2021, Wait described her role as Head of Race Strategy broadly. This includes being responsible for race strategy, tyre choices during race weekends and organising work within the development factory. When asked, she said: “Strategy is awesome because you get to make really big calls live, but you also get to do a lot of simulation and modelling.”

“Strategy is awesome because you get to make really big calls live, but you also get to do a lot of simulation and modelling.”

In recognition of her work in motorsport engineering, Watt was awarded the IMechE Motorsports Medal (Adrian Reynard Motorsports Medal).

Hannah Schmitz – Red Bull

Nowadays, people cannot talk about Formula One race strategy without talking about Hannah Schmitz. Schmitz is regarded as one of the most successful women in Formula One.

After graduating from the University of Cambridge with a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering, she started her career at Red Bull in 2009. As a Modelling and Strategy Engineer she researched and developed new simulation techniques whilst also producing testing reports on past performances to aid future strategy.

https://twitter.com/SkySportsF1/status/1554162565068062720

She is currently the Principal Strategy Engineer for the Red Bull’s Championship Team.

Her work with Red Bull has been essential to the team’s dominance over the last few years. She has many notable achievements in this role, including Red Bull’s 2021 and 2022 championship wins with Max Verstappen.

James Vowles – Williams

Before becoming Team Principal for Williams Racing, James Vowles was the Chief Strategist at Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1. In 2019, he became Strategy Director before moving to Williams Racing for the 2023 season.

Prior to entering the world of F1, Vowles aearned a Master’s Degree in Motorsport Engineering and Management from Cranfield University, in 2001. Vowles played a crucial part in race communications to provide guidance to Mercedes’ drivers, including Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.

In January 2023, he announced that he was leaving Mercedes to become the new Team Principal of Williams Racing, replacing Jost Capito, who stepped down in late 2022.

https://twitter.com/WilliamsRacing/status/1613876389433802756

Randeep Singh – McLaren

Singh graduated from the University of Oxford, with a First Class Honours in Engineering, Economics and Management in 2009.

According to his Linkedin, as part of his Master’s project, he worked as a strategist at Williams. Here he experienced designing a race strategy system for making pre-race decisions.

He has worked as a Senior Strategist and Head of Strategy in several Formula One teams, such as Williams, Force India, and now McLaren.

Singh currently works as Director of Strategy and Sporting for McLaren. In this role, he is responsible for race strategy leadership, adherence to and interpretation of the F1 Sporting Regulations, and representing the team in the case of sporting advisory meetings, summons, and infringements.

With an abundance of new talent coming into F1 and its other divisions, he leads the McLaren Engineering Graduate Scheme and placement programmes. These are some of the crucial opportunity points for teams seeking the best graduate engineers for the future.

This year, he celebrates eight years as a member of the McLaren Racing team. Recently, he is credited for the recent success at the Silverstone GP – which saw Lando Norris finish Second and Oscar Piastri Forth. This is the team’s best result of the season so far.

The world of Formula One comes with many moving parts, all contributing differently to the success of teams. Drivers often owe a lot of credit for race achievements to the teams’ strategic masterminds!

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Featured image courtesy of Jesper Giortz-Behrens on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here. 

Annaleece is an 19 year-old student journalist in her second year at the University of Sheffield, studying Journalism Studies. You can find her on Twitter at @JournoAnnaleece.

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