Hamilton is assisted by spies in his title clash with Verstappen

F1 teams have a crew of professionals working hard back at the factory, in addition to personnel who are present at the circuit during a Grand Prix weekend. At Mercedes, this entails several students listening in on other teams’ radio communications, such as’spies.’

In order to obtain the best possible outcome during a Formula 1 Grand Prix, an F1 team must put up a complete operation not only at the track, but also in its own factory. Personnel on the circuit maintain close contact with those at base, whose main responsibility is to analyze data.

The Sun paid a visit to the Mercedes factory during the US Grand Prix, where they had a look inside the Race Support Room thousands of kilometers away from the circuit in Austin. Hundreds of employees look into everything you can think of in terms of data.

Up to 30 manager is in charge of different data channels that offer information about Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas’ cars. Around ten ‘spies’ are working at the same time. They decipher the competition’s code language, transcripts, and team radios, which they then pass on to their superior. The latter is in contact with those on the track, who can then adapt the strategy accordingly.

Student ‘spies’ volunteer to help Mercedes

Toto Wolff, Mercedes’ team boss, describes the Race Support Room as the team’s “remote brain”: “Whilst we are racing, everybody in the RSR keeps the machine moving.

“When we’re sleeping, they are learning so we have a car and an engine that goes faster than anyone else.”

Volunteers, students, are the spies, and they’re sorely needed. The Race Support Room’s Dominique Riefstahl explained: “It’s extra manpower, because listening to 20 car feeds’ worth of people talking, you just need ears to monitor all of the TV feeds, you need eyes on the ground.”

Joseph McMillan, Senior Race Strategy Engineer, added: “The students are doing things like listening to all the radio comms and transcribing, so we can see all the text, and clipping videos.

“They volunteer at the weekends because it’s cool.”

The Race Support Room is very crucial to Lewis Hamilton.

“The RSR is so important for the team and how we function through the weekend,” Hamilton said. “When we do our big comms meetings, the RSR team are on the other line listening in and we are just one big team.

“The guys in the RSR back at the factory are doing a huge amount of simulation, preparation, finding answers, downloading information and understanding that information so we can make the right choices on a weekend.

“They are a super-important extension to what we do at the track as we have limited numbers and are integral to us achieving our goal which is winning races.”

Hamilton will almost certainly benefit from this support as he battles Red Bull’s Max Verstappen for the 2021 World Championship.

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