For all the hundreds of millions F1 teams collectively spend on producing upgrades to their cars for that last drop of performance, sometimes overlooked is just how the squishy organic material who is actually strapped in to drive this 180 mph missile is feeling mentally.
Whilst awareness of driver mental health is something which has been raised in recent times by the likes of 2025 world champion Lando Norris, something discussed even seldomer is how the rank-and-file on the factory floor are getting along.
Quite often, it is wrapped up into one big overarching term – ‘the culture of the team.’
But what is the ‘culture of the team’ and how exactly do you go about building one to propel you onto grand prix success, and eventually world championship glory?
It is a fascinating topic, one which leading neuroscientist, and founder of ‘Brain Matters’, Dr Marcia Goddard has explored in an eye-opening new book, Driving Performance, officially launched recently at the Red Bull factory in Milton Keynes with ApexF1 invited along to hear from a panel discussion featuring the likes of Goddard, F1 design legend, and Cadillac executive engineering advisor, Pat Symonds, former Ferrari, Williams, and F1 engineer Rob Smedley, and former Red Bull mechanic Calum Nicholas.
At the heart of it was Goddard’s new book, in which she breaks down 10 key areas of what it takes to build a successful culture – but entwined with an easy-to-understand neurological understanding of what a human is thinking or fearing at any given time in the life-cycle of an F1 season.
The 10 areas covered by Goddard range from ‘A Clear Communication’, a ‘No Blame Philosophy’ to ‘Autonomy over Hierarchy.’
Throughout the book, the strength of conveying her message about what can be a very technical and tricky to understand language of neuroscience is the use of case studies, rooted in recent and memorable episodes from F1.
For example, in ‘No Blame Philosophy’, Goddard uses Mercedes’ meltdown at the 2019 German Grand Prix and the reaction from Andrew Shovlin to explain why the no-blame culture is so important and learning from the mistakes of placing Lewis Hamilton on dry tyres on a wet track and the farcical pit-stop, can yield better results long-term.
Also, highlights were the examples given by Symonds, a frequent contributor for F1 anecdotes to support Goddard’s analysis of when he recommended a change in design for a gearbox and one engineer’s rather blunt first reaction and the coming together of the F1 ecosystem to produce COVID-19 ventilators in the early days of the pandemic.
Goddard also uses the 2021 F1 season throughout the book as excellent staging posts for her thoughts, including an excellent breakdown of Lewis Hamilton’s immediate human instincts reaction to the final lap of the Abu Dhabi GP – and then in another chapter, the ‘how they were both right’ breakdown to the Silverstone collision between Hamilton and Max Verstappen and the war of words between Mercedes and Red Bull – read Toto Wolff and Christian Horner.
The book also looks to the future of the workplace, with a chapter dedicated to the growing trend of AI and how this will impact F1.
There are some minor issues in terms of ‘Americanisms’ such as ‘tyre’ being spelt ‘tire’ or inconsistencies in Charles Leclerc’s name, as despite being correctly spelt ‘Leclerc’ near the start, it does move to ‘LeClerc’ latterly, but given the strength of the book and Goddard’s research and analysis, this is a minor point.
Overall, Driving Performance by Dr Marcia Goddard is a fascinating read, not just for followers of F1, but in any workplace. The very fact that Goddard has used a lifelong love of F1 to ground her analysis makes for an eye-opening and revealing experience – one which can easily be transferred to any workplace environment.
