It's Race Week!!!

When someone asks me what I do exactly for living, I reply: "I'm a Race Engineer." Which is like saying nothing for a lot of people. In this second episode of The Racing Journal, I will explain what a GT race week in Europe is like for a Race Engineer, day by day, task by task.

Tuesday - Preparation Day

Tuesday is the preparation day. Yes, the race week starts on Tuesday and ends on Sunday for most races, especially when two events are in two consecutive weeks. Tuesday is an important day because we are going to define all those things that will allow the race weekend to start in the most organized and peaceful way possible. First of all, the car start setup is prepared and sent to the workshop to be prepared by the mechanics in the workshop. Then, all the track sheets are organised. Track sheets will be used to take note of everything that happens during each session during the event, from each circuit sectors timing, to the changes in the setup to optimise the performance of the car, passing through any issue that can occur in a racing car during a race weekend.

Tyre plan for the weekend is another typical activity of the preparation day. In fact, it is the only way to decide the used tyres to bring to the circuit in order to follow the regulations and also to know if and how many new tyres will be bought at the racetrack (dry and wet, depending on the forecast for the event). In addition, data from previous events on the same track are taking into account and every information from previous years regarding the car and the circuit are analysed, in order to have a clear picture of what the issues has been and what changes were made to try to solve those problems, improving the performance under certain environmental conditions. Reviewing the previous experience made in that same track is very important to define the car start setup to be sent to the workshop. On the day of preparation, the forecast for the weekend is checked, especially for the time slots coinciding with the individual sessions of the category in which the car competes. Finally, the simulator is used to test the car start setup in the expected weather conditions. This last activity is very useful to get as close as possible to the driver's point of view: taking into account the limits of a simulation environment compared to what happens in the real world, it is possible to better understand the feedback of the drivers on the setup when they get out of the car at the end of the various sessions during the race weekend. After the data analysis of the events of the previous years have been covered, the start setup has been validated and sent to the workshop, the track documents are ready and the car has been tested on the simulator, we are ready to prepare our suitcase for the next day's flight. The preparation day can be Tuesday or Wednesday depending on the weekend sessions schedule.

Wednesday - Travel Day / Setup Day

Wednesday is normally the travel day if there are sessions at the track already on Thursday. If there is nothing scheduled until Friday, Wednesday becomes a preparation day, as described in the previous paragraph, and Thursday is travel day. In any case, the travel day is where you arrive in the country where the race weekend will be held. As soon as you land, you usually reach the circuit where the pitbox or tent is assembled and the car is prepared for the first session of the following day. A good use of the first few hours on the track is to prepare the run plan for the next day, so that the day's activities take place in the fastest and most organized way possible. A run plan includes the “strategy” of the next day's sessions: how many laps to do per session, when to stop the car for any changes, what changes you are expected to try, etc.

Thursday - Pay Tests Day

Thursday is the day of the Pay Tests, if any session is scheduled. These are unofficial paid tests that teams can choose whether to do or not. Obviously, it is in the team's interest to take advantage of all possible opportunities to test the car in order to have more time to improve the overall performance for qualifying and races. Pay Tests are not always scheduled in a race week. When they are not, Thursday becomes Travel Day / Setup Day as described in the previous paragraph.

After the car and the run plans have been prepared the day before, we arrive at the circuit two or three hours before the start of the first test session. The weather conditions are rechecked to confirm the tyres that will be used during the session, the strategy is reviewed with the mechanics and the drivers, the onboards and the data of the previous events on the same track with the drivers are reviewed, the cold tire pressures are decided and the car engine is on twenty minutes before the start. Radio check. The session begins. Driver in the car as per run plan, installation lap to see that everything works properly and start testing. If more than one driver drives the same car, both drivers normally get to test the same setup changes to the car to get double feedback and work in a direction in which both the professional and amateur driver can extract the best performance from the car and feel comfortable while driving. After the session, data is downloaded and the drivers' driving style and how the car behaved during the laps is analysed. How the car response to any changes in the setup has been is an important parameter to check because allow you to start thinking about what you can do to improve any eventual issue recorded. While the mechanics perform the set down of the car, taking all the measurements of how the car "moved" during the session, the engineer and the drivers have a debriefing of about half an hour where they talk about how the car has behaved and what needs to be improved to optimise its vehicle dynamics and overall performance. Normally, during the debriefing there is the possibility to do some driving coaching together with the professional driver, to improve the driving performance of the amateur driver or the professional driver himself, if comparing with his own driving the previous year or with other team drivers who recorded a better performance during the session. At this point, if another test session is scheduled during the day, the appropriate decisions are made on the car and the setup for the next session is prepared. When you have two tests of this type it is also possible to use the time of the two sessions to test different setups, such as qualifying and race, trying short and long runs respectively in the two tests. If, on the other hand, there is only one test, the preparation of the car will be oriented towards free practices the following day. The same goes for the run plans for the next day's sessions.

Friday - Free Practice Day

Friday is normally the free practice day. Depending on the championship, you can have one or two free practice sessions, called FP1 and FP2 respectively. It may happen, in some circumstances, that there are also qualifications on the same day, but keep in mind that the work does not change: simply after the last free practice session there will be the preparation for qualifying described in the next paragraph.

Starting from the results, data and feedbacks of the Pay Tests, we continue with the run plan for free practices. They are very important because they represent the last chance to define what will make the car fast or not during qualifying and races. Also in this case, with two free practice sessions you can try different setups to better prepare both the qualifying car and the race car. The pre and post session procedures do not change from what is described in the Pay Tests of the previous paragraph. Normally, several pit stop and driver change simulations are done during free practice sessions to make sure that the minimum pit stop time calculations are optimised so as not to waste too much extra time during the pit stop during the race, but at the same time stay within the rules and avoid heavy penalties for being too quick in pit stop procedures. At the end of the day, after analyzing every detail of the performance during free practice, we prepare the setup for Saturday's qualifying.

Saturday - Qualifying / Race Day

Saturday is typically qualifying day. In some cases, it's like having Race 1 in the evening shortly after qualifying. The qualifying car was already prepared the previous day and the bulk of the work is now up to the drivers. After the qualifications have taken place (normally two qualifying sessions, one for the professional driver who will start Race 1 and one for the amateur driver who will start Race 2), the sectors are analyzed and compared with those of the direct competitors, data, set down to the car and debriefing/driving coaching with the drivers. If you have Race 1 on Saturday, you prepare the setup for the race and go to the line up between twenty and ten minutes before the start of the race, depending on the championship regulations. On the grid, the pressures are checked after the out lap and, if necessary, a pressure bleeding is carried out to bring the tire pressures back to a level that allows to reach and maintain the desired hot pressure target tested in the previous days. in the correct time and manner during the first race stint. During the race, as in any other session, the Race Engineer's task is to stay at the pitwall, ready on the radio for any type of communication or decision to be taken instantly when the race variables cause the strategy to deviate from the one planned. Pit Window Open. Time to decide when to call the professional driver who started the race in the pits for the driver change. In the ideal of things, being the fastest professional driver, you want him on the track for as long as possible, but there may be variables so this is not always what is done. At the time of the pit stop, you change driver and (respecting the minimum pit stop time imposed by the regulations) you return to the track with tyre pressures at target and amateur driver in the car that will go until the end of the race. At the end of the race, the technical procedures are the same as described for the other sessions after the Parc Fermè, because there is still Race 2 to run and it is not certain that the car is exactly the same as in Race 1. In the best case, yes, you celebrate a victory or a podium and there is little to do but make sure that the car of Race 2 is the same that brought the good result of Race 1. But, unfortunately, this does not always happen and, if something did not work in Race 1, we try to have a more competitive car-driver package for Race 2.

Sunday - Race Day

Sunday is Race Day. Whether Race 1 has already been run or both races are still to be run, the procedures remain the same as described in the previous paragraph. After Race 2, there is a quicker analysis of what happened both from the data and with the drivers and, after the set down, the pit box is dismantled and prepared to go home. In some cases, Sunday is also Travel Day. In others, especially if Race 2 is at the end of the day, Travel Day is Monday.

Monday - Travel Day / Report Day

Monday can be a Travel Day, where you go home if you have not done so on the Sunday evening after Race 2. Normally, when there are no races immediately the following weekend, as soon as you return home you take the day off and prepares the report of the weekend just finished on Tuesday. In many other cases, you have to leave early for another race, so as soon as you return you prepare the report and the race week starts again on Tuesday with Preparation Day, as described at the beginning of this article. The Race Report contains the "story" of the weekend: changes to the setup, sector analysis and lap times, analysis between the two drivers, car behaviour discovered during setup changes, mileage and tyres selection for the next event, issues and incidents, list of components to buy and work to be done before the next race, etc. In short, everything that happened during the weekend and everything that needs to be done for the following weekend to avoid problems and try to optimize performance for the next race right away.

What is described is obviously a typical week, many things can be different depending on the category and championship in which the team you work for participates in, but in general this is a real Race Week. The Race Engineer job is the one where you never stop learning and gaining experience. You learn from your mistakes to optimise performance in similar situations in the future and, especially, you never stop looking for the limit because winning is always one of the best feeling

in motorsport, even if you are in a situation where it happens often.

Davide De Russis

The Racing Journal

The Racing Journal is a blog of Motorsport stories told by our founder Davide De Russis about particular episodes and what's behind a race week end. Today we would like to tell you how A Cup of Racing is born in 2020, giving a presentation of the storyteller.

It all started in 2009. Perhaps in 1992, when I was born. But first let me introduce myself: I'm Davide De Russis, Founder and Race Engineer of A Cup of Racing. With The Racing Journal, I will tell yo everything that is not the tip of the iceberg seen on a Sunday afternoon at the tracks around the world. I will try to convey the emotions related to the smell of high octane petrol and what it feels like to be "the voice in the driver's ears".

But how do you become a Race Engineer? With 4 main attributes: passion, commitment, effort, and making a lot of mistakes, but always learning something.

I've always had a deep passion for Motorsport. As I said, it all started in 1992: 29 years ago, I was born and since childhood on every Sunday afternoon I looked forward to seeing Formula One and anything that had wheels and engines that were broadcast on TV. I grew up like this, bread and Motorsport. Initially, like all children, I wanted to be a racing driver. Then, growing up, I was more and more passionate about two important questions: “how racing cars are made?” and “what can I do to make them go faster?”. All this blossomed during my teenage life period, when, after school, the afternoon were spent fixing my motorbike, tuning it to improve the performance. During summer working as a mechanic with a family friend who owned and still owns an authorised Ford garage near my home were the reason for reaching the end of the school year. Because, yes, the desire to study was minimal when I went to school. Things have changed when deciding what to do next. I was in the third year of scientific high school, things were going very badly because there was no idea about studying and the hours spent traveling around on a motorcycle were always longer than my study time. In this way, I realised that if I wanted to use my passion and do that hobby I've always had as a job, which was improving the performance of wheeled vehicles and engines, I had to commit more. There was "to get under". Not sufficient marks subjects completely recovered at the end of the year and the last two years of high school where studying was no longer something to do in your free time, but the main job of the day. All this to enrol at the University, in that faculty I passed in front of every time I went, with my parents, to visit my brother who had moved to Turin to study Computer Engineering. Faculty with limited places per year, just 75 places: Automotive Engineering at the Politecnico di Torino.

Admission test that is not as good as I expected (I certainly could have prepared myself better), I deny myself access to the faculty. However, I enter my second choice (Mechanical Engineering), knowing that in order to try to move to Automotive Engineering the following year I would need to have a certain number of university credits acquired at the end of the year. New city, new life, new goal, it seemed. The following year I moved (this time passing the admission test) to Automotive Engineering and entered the SquadraCorse of the Politecnico di Torino which designs from a "blank sheet", builds, and runs a single-seater in Formula Student. Imagine yourself, the choice on how to spend the time between designing a real racing car and studying for exams of the first years of engineering, which are not exciting, on what it fell on. I lose the year to work in Formula Student. I learnt more than what the university has taught me in just a few months of true Motorsport, even if at a student level. I was beginning to understand that the university it serves to have the famous "piece of paper" that qualifies you as an engineer, but that only with the study I would never have had the opportunity to put myself in the position of Track Engineer I have always dreamed of. So, while I try to recover the exams, I left Formula Student and I started looking for specialized courses in Race Engineering that give me a real working imprint in a non-student motorsport environment, allowing me to put into practice what I have learnt at university up to that moment. I found a company in Milan which was in charge of Race Engineering, technically supporting several teams of different categories around Europe and the world. I followed a specialised practical course in Race Engineering with them and I managed to get an internship. This gave me the opportunity to start to travel to work in Motorsport as a support for the company's most experienced track engineers. I followed tests and races in Lotus Cup Italia 2017, in the CTCC 2017 in China, and I try to make my contribution from home for the 2017 BTCC races. The experience I acquired during the year is limitless. I learnt a lot about how to develop a racing car, what characteristics the different categories of cars have and how to use them to optimise performances. I also learnt that, at times, communication and team building are the biggest problem to overcome in order to achieve the desired result. But, above all, that understanding what mistakes have been made, why certain things have happened and how to analyze a race weekend to avoid the same mistakes is the best way to improve always and in any case. From that moment on, I understood this is an approach I can apply to many things, even outside Motorsport. It can be a way of life and I decided to adopt it.

I graduated in Automotive Engineering in 2017, after completing the various championships. It was time to decide what job I wanted to do for a living. Although the past year at the track has trained me and remained inside me, I decided that I cannot work in Motorsport without first trying other job positions. I found a 6-month internship as a Mechanical Designer in a small company in the Canavese area which designed one-off show cars. I worked as a designer more than anything else, but that makes me learnt how to professionally use design softwares and, above all, that I'm not made to spend eigh hours behind a PC designing components . After the three months of internship, I definitively decided that Motorsport is the area in which I want to work. Unfortunately, in Italy, with just a Bachelor's Degree you are not sufficiently qualified to work in the right places. It was time to emigrate.

I completed the application process for an Oxford university, Oxford Brookes University, which holds a Master's Degree in Motorsport Engineering. Among the courses, a lot of aerodynamics, vehicle dynamics, and race engineering. Lots of practical engineering and lots of connections with Formula One teams that are all based in that part of England, where Oxford is the centre, The Motorsport Valley. Unexpectedly, they admitted me. It was September 2018 when I said goodbye to Italy and moved to England. To date, one of the best choices I have ever made. I have sacrificed a lot over the past 3 years, but what I gained as experience in my job and for what concern people I have around me since living in the UK, they make up for in a big way. I finish the Master's Degree course in Motorsport Engineering at Oxford Brookes University in the twelve months scheduled and even before I graduated, the interviews in Formula One and beyond began. Eventually, M-Sport hired me as a Junior Race Engineer for their Bentley GT3 project. Certainly, less famous than the Ford WRC project, but still a high-level company in Motorsport from which I can learn at very high levels. Exactly what I was looking for. So far so good, but a global pandemic arrived. It is in fact March 2020 when I officially started working for M-Sport in the Bentley Factory Team. Time for a test at Paul Ricard for the World GT Challenge 2020 and Covid-19 made me lose the job I tried to have for years. After a month.

In a period of stop for everybody, where sport and tourism have been negatively affected maybe more than other sectors, try to be a Race Engineer with all that goes with it in terms of travel and life in a sporting environment was quite difficult. So, from home I started to get more interested in that part of Motorsport that has always been there, but which, before Covid-19, nobody had never really been considered as a real part of Motorsport: Sim Racing. I worked for an Italian Sim Racing team, giving technical support on setup, driving coaching, and performance management. In this way, I got the idea: it was nothing different from what a Race Engineer normally does in the real world, although the approach is different. The feedback from the team members was great, the performances improved and we all learnt something, session after session. Thus, A Cup of Racing was born, with the idea of ​​creating a place where Motorsport and Sim Racing can technically co-exist. An amateur or professional team, as well as the single individual passionate about Sim Racing, can have the technical support of a race engineer who has worked on real tracks, with real teams and drivers over the years. The experience is unique, especially if thought the other way around: A Cup of Racing can be the point of contact that never existed between real motorsport and Sim Racing. 2020 ends with good results in Sim Racing and victory as a Team and Second Place in the Trophy category of the 2020 ADAC GT4, with me as Race Engineer responsible for a Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport.

Excellent conditions for starting 2021 which are confirmed with Sim Racing where, supported by A Cup of Racing, a partner team dominates the Split 2 GTE Class of the 12h of Sebring 2021 on iRacing until an accident two hours from the end put us out from the race when the gap from P2 was one lap and a half. For real Motorsport, it took a little longer to get some confirmation from the work carried out from 2020, but in the end I have become the main Race Engineer for a Scandinavian team, racing in GT4 Scandinavia with a BMW M4 GT4. No pre-season tests, no idea of ​​how the team is structured, nor what the level of the drivers is. After the first race we were first in the PRO-AM championship for both teams and drivers with a victory in Race 1 and a third place in Race 2. But we will be able to tell about this later. The focus now is on keep fighting from the leadership of the PRO-AM GT4 Scandinavia championship. Furthermore, 2021 represents my first experience with Formula 4 as a Race Engineer, as A Cup of Racing will be at Paul Ricard in late October for the 2021 FIA Formula 4 Motorsport Games.

This is who I am, what I do for living and how I got to where I am today. So much to learn more and to be achieved in the coming years, but you can read it following The Racing Journal episode after episode, anecdote after anecdote, to discover together what is behind a winning or losing race weekend.

For the rest, as it has always been in this amazing world which is Motorsport ...

… KEEP PUSHING!!!

Davide De Russis