To Be Or Not To Be...A Race Car Mechanic?!

Two days with a top flight racing team.

My daughter is planning to go to university to study Mechanical Engineering next year. My mate Dave used to be a mechanic for one of the modern day legends of Formula 1. Dave was the guy you saw on telly changing the tires during a race. And when you couldn’t see him he was rebuilding the car. Boss man of spanners and all things ‘make it go faster, lower, straighter, tighter.’ Even his lawnmower purrs like a Porsche.

I thought it might be fun to try and get some work experience with a racing team. For my daughter. Obviously, not for me. Why would I want to go and spend a day with racing drivers spinning cutting-edge racing cars at 170mph? However, I figured she would need accompanying on this hazardous trip.

My mate Dave made a phone call, sent me a number and the name of someone called Boyo and we were sorted!

We have just returned from two days work experience in the garage and on the Silverstone track with one of the best racing outfits in the world. Thanks Dave.

Some things we learned:

1. The doors in garages are generally open (unless they’re not) and it can be a very cold place to work in winter.

2. If you want to drive a racing car around Silverstone (or pretty much any other major track), you need a license and £15k, just to kick things off. Want the track all to yourself with no-one else about. That’ll be another fifteen big ones please.

3. Pranged the car? New nose cone? That’ll be £20k, thank you very much.

4. It’s a sport where you need some serious cash to play. Rich kiddies roll up.

5. Your racing car seat is made from some liquid stuff in a tin, mixed with some other liquid stuff in a bottle. It’s poured into a plastic bag. Then you sit in it, in the car, for ten minutes. Don’t move or you’ll mess up the mould. The mechanics then stick some black gaffer tape all over it, to make it look a bit nicer. You weren’t sitting in the ideal position? Need a new one? That’ll be ten minutes and £2k please.

6. Mechanics spend A LOT OF TIME on the road. Loading, unloading, driving to testing sessions at different tracks, loading back up, going home and making the cars all nice again. On repeat.

7. Racing cars are designed to brake using mostly downforce rather than the brakes. The downforce only works when you’re going really fast. Drive them slowly and it’s not unlike sliding down the stairs on your bum with your pants full of marbles.

8. Going around corners at 160mph is like having your granny stand on your neck - whilst you’re lying on your side, trying to watch telly.

We had an amazing time. We spent a day in the pits at Silverstone, watching carbon-fibre, supercars being stripped and put back together in thirty minutes, by some of the best mechanics in the world. They were wizards with tools and cable tie (and gaffer tape). Then some kids, who looked younger than Toni-Rae and small enough to be blown over by a puff of wind, stepped up, donned their helmets, slipped into their Savile Row racing suits, gaffer-taped buckets and hit the send button.

Best day ever…oh yeh, and some brilliant work experience.

Thank you very much to Boyo and Double R Racing for having us.