Just a couple of days left until the new Formula 1 season, 2018 season, and it’s the right time to see what happened in F1 teams regarding the key staff structure as compared to the 2017 season. This text is the evolution of my analysis I compiled prior to the 2017 season, this year I’ve added always interesting financial informations for 2017 for all F1 teams, and the estimated values and durations of the F1 driver’s contracts. In addition to the F1 team, in the table “2018 Who is Who in F1 ” I have placed four “teams” that are necessary for the normal functioning of Formula 1: FIA, Liberty Media (FOM), Pirelli and Honda Racing. Like last year, I included 11 key players in every F1 team and FIA, while for the Liberty Media, Pirelli and Honda Racing I put only some of their most important persons. In the last, 12th row are also people who left before the start of the 2018 season leaving to another F1 team (or in these 4 added “teams”) or completely left Formula 1, such as in the case with Dave Greenwood, the former Kimi Räikkönen’s race engineer who moved to WEC with the former F1 Manor Team, which in 2017 due to the excessive costs in Formula 1 moved for the World Endurance Championship. All in all, I have followed 30 „newcomers“ in the F1 teams (or the FIA, Liberty Media, Pirelli and Honda Racing). Of the 14 people who left prior to this season, 6 of them completely left Formula 1.

Personally, with F1 drivers who are of course the “top of the iceberg“, as an engineer I’m most fascinated by the „shadow people“ who conceive, design, produce, and maintain the F1 cars for the maximum performance. Without this group of geniuses, neither the F1 drivers on the track could show their skills. Let’s just look at the example of a phenomenal F1 driver, double world champion Fernando Alonso, who could hardly connect the “start and finish of the race” in the three-year troubled period of the McLaren and Honda partnership. Whether the switch to the Renault engines for him it will be the new period of top performances or not – we do not know yet, but we know which people are doing their best to make this possible; McLaren team and Renault engine specialists who are responsible for the functionality of their power unit package within the British team. The recently completed pre-season testing, despite the bad weather, especially during the first 4 days, at least makes it clear that something in Fernando’s case really does change positively. Still, McLaren has again had problems with the new Renault power unit similar to the Honda period, but that’s understandable because only a few months have passed since Renault landed at McLaren. But Fernando set the third fastest lap time, just behind the two Ferrari drivers. And that’s a great news. The problem is just how the teams have presented them on these pre-season tests, but Mercedes certainly did not show all its trumps for 2018 before the championship starts. However, I would like to point out again – this article I have not imagined as a homage for the upcoming F1 season, but it is a dedication to the people behind all these, this year’s even faster cars, and they rarely are under the spotlights, except for a few we already knew!

Below the main table there is also an “annex” or an addendum to the main table where you can find some other important people within each team but did not fit in the main table. This does not mean that they could not “go up” in the main table, but despite all the possible lamentations about the structure of a F1 team, much is based on differences in compared to the usual uniformity of a F1 team. But more on this article, when I’ll present their finances and other stuff for each team.

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It should also be said that it wasn’t an easy task to compile a list of all personal changes of the team’s key people though I had the contact emails of all 10 F1 teams and sent them a decent query to send me a list of 15 most important people of their team, their function and confirmation of the departure or arrival of some new important people to the team. Of course, like in everyday’s life, the smallest teams have sent me the confirmed information: Haas, Sauber, Toro Rosso,Force India,… Williams have redirected me to their newly updated website. ..and some of the teams I had to contact several times. The Renault F1 Team sent me their most important people after my third request. I thank them! After another attempt, Red Bull replied, “Unfortunately, we do not provide such information to the public.” The biggest F1 teams Mercedes and Ferrari did not even bother to answer after a few attempts at all, although they have put their contact emails on their official site … Try asking them something, aha … Their PR service was a big disappointment for me, but it’s like this every year. Also McLaren; zero points!

a) 2018 “Who is Who in Formula1”

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In the top row you’ll find the name of the team, followed by the illustration of their F1 car. And again consider that it is too early to have a uniform silhouette of all 2018 F1 cars, because at the first race in Melbourne, there will be certainly some “face lifted” cars different from those we have been able to see in Barcelona during the pre-season testing. The most obvious example is the “Pink Panther” Force India’s car, if it is judged by the announcements. It is expected that they will soon get a new owner, or at least a new name. Let’s wait another week so we’ll see. Below are the links to official F1 team websites. After that, the place of their headquarters , or some additional factory, if any. There is also the number of employees of one F1 team. Then there is a row with the team principals, below are the CEOs, advisors, F1 team owners.

Then come the technical directors of F1 team. Following are the rows with F1 car designers, engineers, aerodynamicists, race engineers or race strategists. And there are new faces from other teams, in the green beneath their photos they are those who came from some other team or moved within the same team to a new position, such as Pierre Waché, the new technical director, reporting to the Red Bull’s CTO Adrian Newey. Then there are two rows with race engineers of each F1 driver in the teams. This year we have a novelty in comparison to all previous years; there will be not one but two race engineers for William’s Lance Stroll this year: Luca Baldisserri and James Urwin, who will switch at different races but always during the race only one of them will be active. The same with race engineers of Sergey Sirotkin; they are Paul Williams and Andrew Murdoch. The reason is that Williams thinks that because of a large number of races (in 2018 we have 21 races) only one race engineer would not be enough for the whole season!? I disagree with that, I have firsthand experience during my Rally Paris-Dakar races when I was part of the official Toyota team. The moment I got a new engineer, it took me a lot of time to get him to it, so that’s why my 2006 race was scorched.

The final row is “in red X“, they are the ones who left the teams before this season, including those who did this during 2017 season. It has to be said that none of the key people in the Mercedes, Red Bull and Force India teams left before the 2018 season. Most of „traffic“ was in Ferrari, and that is probably caused by the legendary “terror” of Marchionne’s over all the open-minded experts in such a large organization. The best example is Lorenzo Sassi, chief engine designer at Ferrari, who will now transfer his knowledge to the Mercedes. Not that they need it, but you never know how strong competition works. Of course he will have a gardening leave for a couple of months, but I’m quite certain that his “tongue works 130% per hour” regardless of whether he was sitting in the Mercedes engine factory in Brixworth or not. It’s a special case with FIA officials, last year’s deflection of Marcin Budkowsky who should officially start working in Renault, on the 1st of April… ha, ha, is not a joke! We will see what will happen to Laurent Mekies who had an important role in the FIA as Charlie Whiting’s deputy director of the race, as well as that role of the Safety Director. Of course not that he was a “security guard”, but one who cares about the security measures for the Formula 1 cars, the drivers, and the staff who are operating within the pits, as such.

There is a total of 136 people in the main table and 90 in the annex. For six of them I have not yet found the appropriate profile photo, but I’m quite sure I will do so in the near future.

In this year’s edition you can immediately notice some of my visual-design changes compared to last year. First of all, the columns of individual teams are painted in their official colors (according to Formula1.com, respectively according to the colors of the graphics marked by the teams in the broadcast on television). This is somehow much more impressive than last year. For all those who want to know more about Formula 1, I have also created two tables titled “F1 2017 & 2018 Team Color Hex Codes“. From them you can read “color hex codes” or RGB color codes (the red, green and blue color share in a certain color). I have teamed up from left to right according to the position of the constructor in the 2017 championship. So on the left the 2017 are the world champions Mercedes, then Ferrari, and Red Bull, and up to tenth ranked team in the championship – Sauber.

Well, I already mentioned in the headline that before this season there were some 40 changes in Formula 1 regarding the employees, but I have also put together a simple table in which you can see clearly who left the team and gone where and who came in team on which function. I’m sure there were a lot more departures, but as I’ve already said I was concentrating on those 15-20 most important people (except drivers) who run the F1 teams.

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b) The 2017 financial structure of all F1 teams

I have mentioned already how many people in F1 teams are employed, so I ranked the teams by the biggest and lowest number of employees in 2017; Ferrari 1.400, Mercedes 1.310, Renault 1.080, Red Bull 740, McLaren 690, Williams 575, Force India 405, Toro Rosso 400, Sauber 360 and the smallest team on the F1 grid is Haas with only 225 employees. Compared to last year almost all teams have employed new people except Red Bull who have the same number of people as in 2016. And McLaren who, due to the departure of Honda and the reduced budget, apparently had to let go some people and I assume it was partially some of them who had been contracted by Honda.

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But these are just the dry figures, and the reality is somewhat different because it is difficult for these three big teams (Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault) to say that there are not some others at some project linked to the Formula1 involved. After all, if we look at Mercedes’s Lewis Hamilton statement a few days ago: “… on the W09 there were more than 1,500 people in Mercedes …“. Officially, “Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team” has 860 employees at Brackley and 450 in Brixworth, which means that this team has 1,310 employees, or 10 more than in 2017. It seems to me that these figures are clearly not what Mercedes F1 team make so powerful, there are obviously some others that are not quite visible in the official figures. On the other hand, the Haas team has only 225 employees, 15 more than last year. And again, the ratio between the smallest and the biggest team, which is not Mercedes, but Ferrari with its declared 1,400 employees (60 more than last year) is scaring: 6.22. Are the results of the Haas skinny? Here’s one of the reasons for this! Martin Brundle says about for the fourth team in 2017 constructors championship Force India F1 Team: “FOR POUNDS SPENT IN F1, [FORCE INDIA] ARE WORLD CHAMPIONS”, so for the money that Force India invests in Formula1, it’s exactly three times less than the Mercedes’s 327 million Euros or even less than the “biggest Formula One spender” Ferrari’s 395 million Euros. The Force India F1 Team is the world champion, by all means!

In this table there are also data on what the financial results of a particular team are, and all F1 teams are operating with “zero proffit”, except Red Bull, which is the only F1 team in “green” with + 5.6 million Euros, while McLaren is the only team with “minus” with – 11.2 million Euros. From this it can be seen that Formula 1 is not really a profitable business unless you count on big teams, which are also car makers, they are using Formula 1 as a good marketing platform for their core business, road cars or trucks production.

There are also data on the structure of the share of individual “contributors” in the budget of one F1 team. First of all, there is Formula One Managment that gives money from the prize pool, then sponsors, even some drivers (Stroll, Sirotkin, Ericsson, …), or some other sources of funding.

And finally, there are also the figures of how much this year’s entry fees is to be paid by a particular 2018 team. The total drop in payment is -3.6%. The structure of each team’s payments goes as follows: the basic amount per team is 516,128 US Dollars. Mercedes as World Champion has the obligation to pay 6,194 Dollars per point scored in the 2017 championship. While the rest of the teams have to pay 5.161 US Dollars per point scored. Although, do not take it just literally as a simple math operation, because if you take Ferrari who won 522 points in 2017 (5.161 x 522 is 2,694.042 US Dollars plus 516.128 basic tariffs. It turns out that they had to pay 3,221,170 but indeed they have to pay 4,653.720 US Dollars.). Regardless, I received this information from f1i.com, and the first ones from motorsport-total.de, so I take it to be verified and accurate.

c) The F1 driver’s contracts

The last table shows the values of the contracts of all the F1 drivers with their teams, which is of course the estimated value, the likelihood that these numbers will be correct and the expiration of their contracts with individual F1 teams.

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At first sight, the „fact“ that Kimi in Ferrari has a contract worth 40 million Euros for 2018 is not so likely, probably he has “only” 7 million Euros worth contract with Scuderia. The other data is more or less quite OK. We will see how Hamilton will continue to negotiate his new contract with Mercedes, as well as super-interesting case of Daniel Ricciardo talks with Red Bull about remaining with the team after 2018. He, in my opinion, is looking at potentially two free seats in top-teams; Mercedes if Bottas does not show more from what he showed in 2017, and quite a desirable driver’s seat in Ferrari. For the latter I’m not sure because we remember the relationship between Vettel and Ricciardo in Red Bull in 2014, so I’m not quite sure that Vettel wants to “hit the same wall” once again. But maybe I’m mistaken. In any case, Red Bull is on the turn this year; staying with Renault or moving on, with still undefined powerfull and reliable Honda power unit. The Toro Rosso will show us how things will develop this year.

Well, this week we will see the start of the new 2018 F1 season, and now you are fully equipped to follow the Formula 1 in depth. This type of introductory article I think will be our standard for every next season of Formula 1, and I’m quite sure that this section of Formula 1 will not to be found somewhere else on the net than just on the F1puls.com and I hope you like it.

Yours sincerely,
Zvonimir