Age and Experience in Formula One

Join the thousands of heat pump owners feeling warm and fuzzy. I've lived here twenty years, I ain't moving, so I thought better future proof me own. We started a trend, the old streets applying for the government grant now. With the energy it saves, I don't know what's better off, the planet or my wallet? And Eddie's a little bookworm says it's three times more efficient than our old boiler. Feel all warm and fuzzy inside with a seven and a half thousand pound government grant towards your heat pump at gov.uk slash clean energy. Eligibility criteria applies the website for details. Some days it feels like your to-do list just won't quit. When life gets hectic, let Halfords take something off your plate. We're here when you need us. With trusted experts ready to help you tick off MOTs, servicing, tire fitting, and more. See your cars ready for whatever's ahead. So why put it off? Get in touch or drop in today. Book online at Halfers.com or give your local Halfords Garage a call and we'll sort it. So you can keep moving with confidence . Formula One drivers have to be mentally strong. They have to cope with pressure, recover from setbacks, ignore distractions and focus only on what they can control. We've had questions about how they do this and whether they have coaches to help them. Christina from California, Raquel and Sophia from South Africa, Sven from Zurich, Tomiko from New Zealand, Quinn from Alberta, Canada, Cameron from Florida, Kelly from Liverpool, Mariam from Georgia and Monica from we don't know where Monica's from have all told us they want to know more about this topic. So guess what? We've found an expert to answer them. Welcome to F1 Explains Hello everybody, welcome along. My name is Christian Hugh Gill. Now, physical fitness is just so important in F1, isn't it? A Grand Prix, it's an endurance challenge like running a marathon. Just look at a driver, you'll see how thick and strong their necks are. The Formula One cars put so much load into a driver's neck. That's truly unique in sport. It's so they can keep their heads still to focus, their vision, keep their vision stable as the car shakes them about, and so they can cope with the huge G-forces as they break and corner. I think it was the second ever episode of F1 Explains. Years ago, we looked at why Formula One drivers are so physically fit. I know it's a topic that interests you as much as it interests me. But the mental side, the mental fitness that the drivers need is just as important. They live busy lives with constant pressures, lots of emotion, highs and lows. How do they block all that out when they get in the car and focus on driving? We've got such a good example of it this year, haven't we, with the title battle between Kimmy Antonelli and George Russell? George has had to cope with the pressure of being labelled the favourite, and then the added pressure when so far it's not worked out like that with his less experienced teammate, this talent who everybody's saying is generational in Kimmy Antonelli winning four races in a row. How does George Cope with that? How does he stay level-headed? How does he bounce back from that? Well, that's just one example of where Formula One drivers have coaches to help them do just that. Now, Dr. Tommy Wood is lead scientist for motorsports at Hinza Performance. That's a company which has coaches working with almost every driver in Formula One. Tommy is an expert on how F1 drivers' brains work and how to get the best out of them. He's the ideal person to answer your questions . Well Dr. Tommy, firstly, welcome to F1 Explains. It's lovely to have you here. Thanks so much for having me. It's uh really excited to be here with you. I d often don't know what to call doctors. I struggle with this. Do I call you doctor Tommy or just Tommy? Well, just Tommy is not a preferred. Good. It was important to clarify. Tommy, tell us a little bit, give us a broad brushstroke of your job and how long you've been involved in Formula One? Sure, so uh I'm here as lead scientists for motorsport for Hintsa Performance. Uh Henta is a company that provides performance and medical support to several drivers and teams here in Formula One. I am a neuroscientist by day, and then I've spent the last sort of 10 or 15 years working with a variety of uh professional athletes in a variety of sports on all aspects of nutrition, recovery, performance. Just trying to make sure that, particularly with Formula One and Hintsa, that we're right at the cutting edge of science, doing the best that we can for our drivers to make sure they've got everything that they need to uh do what they do out on the track. We're gonna talk about brains quite a bit in this chat I think. Formula One drivers, they all have them, that's something they've got in common. That's an excellent start. What are their brains good at? Well well they're obviously very good at driving cars. Again it helps. Yeah. Um and that's not by chance, you know, it's essentially what they've spent their entire lives up to this point uh perfecting, you know, going through karting and the different and the different levels, and they've just spent so much time honing their ability to understand the car, understand how to move around the track, uh, keep an eye on everything that's going around them. And that's really where uh they excel, um, being able to handle everything that it takes to drive the car, of course, but then you've got multiple strategies uh in play, uh, you know, multiple plans depending on how things go. You're obviously navigating 21 other cars uh around you, you're uh speaking to the pit wall. And so they're actually really good at taking in these multiple streams of information and uh understanding what to do at any given moment in time, a lot of it has become sort of automated, right? They've spent so much time uh figuring this stuff out that um that gives them a little extra bandwidth to do the thinking that they need to do at the time because you know they have such a good understanding of the of the car and all the different uh parts of what it takes to to drive it. Stay with me on this right yeah my fiance he's very good at frustrating ly good at if I'm telling him about my day uh and he's reading a work email in my head I'm like he's not listening he's not listening annoyingly he always is he then if I say have I got you he'll then recall everything I've said for the pre vious five minutes. I'm terrible at that. Uh-huh. If if someone's talking to me and I'm reading a working or reading a text, I'm not listening. Oh me too, yeah. 100%. So Formula One drivers have to multitask, right? And you just said taking in different pieces of information. Yeah. Can we therefore assume that F1 drivers' brains are just better at the multitasking element of it, driving the car, picking your braking spot, taking in strategy information, talking on the team radio, are they just a better, have they got better multitasking brains? In real ity, if we if we just think more broadly about the human brain, in reality, humans can't multitask. And what I mean what I mean by that is we cannot fully focus on um multiple things at a time that require our full attention, right? So uh your um partner being able to do emails and listen to you, neither of those things takes necessarily a huge amount of of bandwidth. But if you were trying to do two things that require a huge amount of attention, you can't do two at the same time. So where I'm going with this is that the skills that it takes to bring in and use all these different pieces of information, they're not different tasks. They're all directed at the same thing. So it's become like one bigger, more complex skill. It's kind of like uh you know, people who can um play the guitar and sing at the same time, right? They're not multitasking. They've built one bigger skill uh doing two things at the same time, right? So I think a lot of what the drivers are doing, they've over time built this bigger skill where all these things are directed in the same place. If you then, you know, were asking them to try and speak a different language or you know figure out what they wanted to have for dinner, right? That's a that's a separate skill that they haven't sort of built in. So it's not really multitasking, it's this one bigger complex task that they've managed to layer all these pieces together. Sure, and that makes a lot of sense. This is a broad question, I'm aware, but what would you say the main mental challenges are for Formula One drivers? There's obviously um the the different tactics and things they have to do plus react to what's going on uh around them . Um and so that that that plays a big part. Um and then this particularly makes a big difference as the race goes on. So as you start to accumulate physical fatigue, you're sort of um buffer of um extra capacity that you have to think about all these things and strategy and and listen to the pit ball, that starts to diminish a little bit. So it's often towards the end of the race, as they're becoming fatigued, that the you know So some of it's automated, like a lot of uh you know, dri driving the car, but that can change as you know the the rules and different things change in in terms of how you deploy different aspects of the car. So they have to relearn that. So maybe right now there's a little addition, additional bit of cognitive work they're having to do because you know things have changed in Miami compared to earlier in the season. Um but then it's really as the race wears on where things start to become more of a struggle and you have to concentrate a little bit harder just because the the fatigue is is having an effect. Now we've spoken so much about the drivers' use of their brains on the track. As a Formula One journalist, I've always been firmly of the opinion that a huge amount of the battle within the sport is a mental game off the track as well. And regular listeners to this podcast will be bored of me banging on about this. But I used to race carts when I was young. Yeah. I wasn't very good at it. There's a reason I now talk about Formula One and not do it. Uh-huh. But I I firmly believe that i couldn't cope with the mental side of things off track I got too nervous I got too hepped up how much do you guys look to help drivers with the mental side of Formula One off the track as well as the mental demands on it? Yeah, so this is a big part of what the team does and you know I am one part of a very big team and you know other people within that team include professional sports psychologists who are working you know with our drivers um one-to-one on all of these different aspects. So thinking about yes performance on the track but then also you know how are they managing these things off the track. And there's multiple different levels of that. There's the the direct sort of thought processes the the drivers have, then there's the sort of key relationships they have with the performance team, you know, with other people uh in their lives and then you the broader team and thinking about how to get everything set up so they have the right processes in place so that you know when they need to they're able to lock in and and get the job done. Can I give what I think might be an example of this but do tell me if I'm wrong. I bumped into Oli Behrman at the airport on the way home from a race at the back end of last year. We were chatting away and we were talking about his upturn in form. Yeah. One of the things because he had a very good end to last season, a really post- Yeah. Olly said that something he'd been able to do was recognize actually he wasn't getting to the location of the race early enough in the previous part of the season. Some drivers will leave it late so they can spend more time at home and that's what works for them. Ollie was thinking actually I needed to be particularly the flyaway races there a bit earlier climatised. He said that really helped him. Is that an example of getting your surroundings right to make your brain more relaxed for you to ultimately have success on the track? Yeah, absolutely. And each driver is gonna need something slightly different. So everything is very tailored to the individual depending on what they need. So an example there is, especially if you're traveling long distance, uh jet lag you know plays a plays a huge role. Um and so thinking about getting your body ready several days in advance, seeing if you can get your um you know your biology aligning so that you're like more alert at the r at the right times of day. Um this is a lot of work that that we do with our drivers is making sure they're set up several days in advance. And you can do stuff before you travel, but then equally if you if you get there earlier, you feel more comfortable, you know, you know your surroundings better, you've got time to actually focus on the stuff that you need to do in the sort of like day or two in the run-up to the race. So uh a lot of that can can make a big difference. It's absolutely fascinating. It is one of the areas of Formula One I find most interesting. Are there any other techniques that you find yourselves coming back to a lot, working with drivers a lot with regards to the mental challenges off the track? It really does depend on the driver. So everything is is very much very tailored to the individual. But you might be thinking about how can you build uh additional capacity so that you know when they're in the race or things go wrong, you know, do they have what they need to do uh to deal with it. So um you know the the uh psychology team might uh give them tricks or things to think about um like during the race, there there's gonna be um, you know, for each driver they have specific keywords or phrases that they might have with their race engineer depending on whether they need to reset or or think about something different uh as things uh go along. Um and then um with uh the coach and some of the other stuff that that we do, we might be thinking about how can we, you know, train the brain to perform under fatigue and there's lots of different ways that you can do that uh during training. Uh we do some things uh in virtual reality to try and layer on like an additional cognitive challenge. So you're kind of just used to your brain uh working under fatigue when it's uh you know when it's challenged so that you've got that kind of capacity to deal with it when you have it. Um and so we'll sort of tailor a a combination of those things depending on what something might need. You've given us a little flavour there, but I'm really interested in what that coaching that you offer the teams and drivers consists of. And I know you've just given a flavour. Yeah, yeah. But also when that takes place, is it of a race weekend? Is it in between races? Yeah, so um the majority of the drivers that we w work with have a hints of coach. So the that coach is embedded in the driver's life. So they're doing day-to-day nutrition, they're doing all the physical training, uh, they're organiz ing um you know work with uh the psychologist. If they've got a psychologist on their team there, they're they're organizing work with the medic. So we usually have a doctor, we have a doctor at every race. So, really, a lot of this is organized by that coach who is running all of this. So, overseeing all these different parts of performance, and then uh you they'll work with me and other aspects of the team, other people in the team to think about, well, how are we going to train with this point of the season? Are we going to change the physical training? Are we going to change the cognitive training? Are we going to change access to the psych psychology input. So it's really it's essentially continuous. So like the hints of coaches are really they travel with the drivers everywhere, they're training them between races, they're there, you know, they're the guys holding the helmet, holding the umbrella, like out on out on the uh in in the you know on the starting grid they really are sort of embedded in this whole process join the thousands of heat pump owners feeling warm and fuzzy. I've lived here 20 years, I ain't moving, so I thought better future proof me home. We started a trend, the old streets applying for the government grant now. With the energy it saves, I don't know what's better off, the planet or my wallet. And that is your little bookworm. Says it's three times more efficient than our old boiler. Feel all warm and fuzzy inside with a seven and a half thousand pound government grant towards your heat pump at gov.uk slash clean energy. Eligibility criteria apply. See website for deta ils . How different is the coaching when one of your drivers is having a good time of it compared to when they're struggling? Because I can't think of a single driver on the Formula One grid. Even your greats like Max and Lewis have at times gone through rough patches. Yeah. How does that change when things are going well to not well? So what you see more broadly in like the sports performance psychology is that in order to you know those people who perform the best most consistently over time, try to avoid big psychological highs and lows. So like those big swings can actually make things you know tricky to kind of then get back on it and and and and go again. So actually the most important thing, and again this is sort of the purview of our of our sports psychologists is um try and have systems in place so that you keep everything consistent, right? So even when you win a race and something goes well, you're still gonna apply the same process where you analyze the data, you figure out what can you learn, what can you do better next time, and then you just apply that same thing even when things aren't going well. Um and that makes sure that you can always be consistent and try and maintain some of that psychological stability that we know is important for performance rather than uh the alternative is that if we change things and we're really reactive anytime something goes well or something goes wrong, you can sort of make things more variable, which can then ultimately impair performance over time. So it's really about building in systems so that things stay consistent even when things don't go well. And then the driver knows, right, this is what I do, regardless if something doesn't go well. And then we can have, you know, the s the the the psychology team might you know be there after a race, you know, allow the you know get the uh give the driver whatever he needs to sort of get back in the right mindset to then go back, speak to the engineers, understand the data, come back, take away some learnings and do better next time. Something that surprises people who are brand, brand new to Formula One is that Formula One drivers have to be physically fit. And in fact, the first time we had a hint of coach on the podcast was your colleague Anti in our first season doing this podcast, and we were explaining why Formula One drivers have to be so physically fit. We know that they do. Does their physical fitness and how strong that is at any particular point in time also a impact their how strong they are mentally at the time as well. Yes, uh absolutely. So on two different fronts, one is that we know that um physical fitness and physical strength directly affects cognitive function and cognitive performance. And this is like relevant to you and me as well as it is to to Formula One drivers, right? So we know that certain types of physical activities, so strength training, um, you know, high intensity interval training, which these drivers do a lot of, they support specific functions and aspects of the bra in. And then the other part of it is that if you have greater physical fitness, then particularly at the end of challenging races, you're gonna be less fatigued, so you've got more cognitive capacity to then deal with uh you know whatever's happening on track. It's really important to our to to emphasize that bit that you said there that it's the same for us because it's sort of a bit of a cliched thing that's rolled out when people are struggling with their own mental health. Yeah. But it's you've really brilliantly explained the actual science behind the whole thing of if you're feeling low, if you are struggling with your mental health, get yourself to the gym, get out for a run if you possibly can, you know, get that physical fitness. There's there's real science to it, isn't it absolutely. So, you know, in in some of the other worlds that I I work in, I do a lot a lot of work in, you know, uh helping people maintain, build and maintain cognitive function and and and mental health throughout their entire lives. And you're right that one of the best things that we have evidence for in terms of improving cognitive function and mental health is physical activity. There was a recent uh meta-analysis that compared all these different types of physical activity in in terms of how they improve uh depression symptoms in people with depression and dancing was by far the best. So like resistance training is work you know works, cardio works, walking works, uh, but dancing 'cause it's got a music component, a social component, right, it's fun, actually has a r has a really big benefit for your mental health. We do spoil our listeners. The things you learn on this podcast, they've tuned in thinking they're gonna learn about Formula One and they've left the podcast knowing that a a good dance is good for your health. 100%. You're welcome, everybody. You're welcome. Um now we're in a a time in Formula One that's unusual because we we've we've got an an older driver. Uh you know, Fernando Alonso at forty four is now quite comfortably the oldest Formula One driver in modern times. Uh compare that to say Arvid Limblad, who I believe is the youngest on the grid at the moment, he's just 18. How much does age impact mental fitness, mental strength? Because one of it sort of feels like one of the great wonders of Modern Formula One that how Fernando sta ys so well excellent how he stays performing at this very top level of sport at forty four is an age where traditionally if he was playing soccer he'd have long retired by now. We know, other sports you could say the same rugby, basketball, but Fernando is still here, still performing. So I think there's multiple at there's multiple aspects to this. The the first is that if you want to maintain physical performance over decades as he has. And you see this in other sports as well, right? We've had uh Tom Brady in football, you've got LeBron James in basketball, like people who have uh maintained really the highest level of performance over really long period periods of time, they've the f the first thing they've done is they've kept performance and their sport their their focus, right? So that that's often what happens in you know other high level athletes , you know, they start to make money, other opportunities come up, other you know, they they start working on the on the next thing. Whereas these guys have really maintained a lot of focus on, you know, on on their sport. And then it's thinking about becoming much more focused in terms of training. So knowing like each individual training session or everything they do has a very specific focus. When you're younger, you're just gonna get better naturally, and you don't necessarily think about all the different inc intricacies of training and all these things that that can have an effect. As you get older that gets more important. So they get really good at targeting specific things that they're trying to do and then when they do that they have more time to recover and like recovery is gonna play a more of a role as you get older. And yeah we do know that um as you get older you you tend to lose some strength on average, you lose some aspects of cognitive uh function, so like processing speed in particular uh declines a a little little bit bit, probably later, right? You know, maybe a little bit older than Fernando is right now. But one thing you gain is wisdom, and I think that's probably what uh uh Alonso has more of than anybody else on the grid, is you have so much accumulated exper ience. Um he's you know spent so much time thinking about this and and you know working in this area that if he has lost the step physically which I there's not really much evidence that he has, but if if he has, he can overcome that by you know having a better understanding of the environment and you know racecraft and all those kinds of things. It it's again applying the science to it, knowing very specifically what does impact the brain when you are older and targeting that and explaining that which is what Fernando and Lewis as well of course who's an older driver i is able to do so well. And and speaking of older drivers, most people listening to this podcast will have heard a Formula One commentary by Martin Brundle at some stage. Martin's always spoken a lot about how in his era of Formula One the drivers weren't friends. The drivers weren't well no we're not we're not only not friends, but not necessarily friendly to each other. Yeah Does that mentality change surprise you. Do you w do you have to not be friends with someone to beat them? Has that changed at all? Because there are certainly people out there that think that is a change in mentality that you you can beat someone and be friends with them. Yeah I I I think that well we know that that happens that they because they are beating each other or and competing with each with each other um giving giving no quarter to to uh you know people that they are friendly with off the track on a on a day-to-day basis. So very much when when they're on the track, um I I think you can say that there's you know they're not considering their relations with other people. They might be thinking about the other person in terms of their driving quality or their driving style, right? They're gonna know um you know have some idea of how to kind of battle an individual on track. But outside of that, you could think that there is the possibility of some benefit of um knowing and being friendly with people who are going through the same thing as you, right? It's a very um time-intensive, travel-intensive, potentially lonely sport, right? Because you know, you're by yourself in the car, and you you're you obviously have a teammate, but that's your maybe your primary rival. So if there's an opportunity to you know speak with and spend time with somebody who understands what you're going through, that could potentially be beneficial , you know, in the long term. I don't think that influences what happens on track. But for your mental health over time, there's there could potentially be some benefit there. So you do think that it is possible for me and you, for example, to be friends, to go out for dinner, to see each other at the race weekend, or even away from the race weekend. But then when you put the helmet on and the visor goes down, totally change mentality and totally switch up that mindset. Yeah, yeah, I think so. And that's I mean that's the job you're there to do. Um and I think that um you know lots of people have things that they perform at and that becomes the the thing that that they focus on and then you know outside of that they can have uh they can have good relationships and you know that like both of you uh uh approaching so say if you're talking about in a relationship with with two drivers, right? Both of them would approach that relationship in the in the same way. So like no hard feelings, you both have a job to do and then you can decompress afterwards. On a similar note to that, one of the things I got asked most in Formula One last year was about the relationship between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. They were teammates, they're fighting for a title, they fought right to the very end . And this also came into the equation with Lando and Max, who was also in that title fight, because we know they get off But there is a real mutual respect and they like each other. How different and how challenging is that relationship in Formula One with your teammate? That you know you've got to beat this person and work with this person? How do you negotiate that within the drivers you coach? So that's very much gonna be uh you know an individual thing again uh with the the driver and then whoever's working with them on say the sport on the sports psychology side. Um and I think in reality, um a lot of what you hear on the outside is just, you know, people like to to to to stir things up a little bit i it adds some intrigue. But yes, we we we have examples through history where we've had more acrimonious relationships, think about um Rosberg and Hamilton, you know, at Hamilton L Alonso at Mc at McLaren and Lewis Hamilton's first season. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And and I still I I still think it goes back to what we were saying earlier is that you know, the vast majority of it is when you're on track, you're getting your job done, you don't really think about those things because all you can really can this is what really what goes comes down to you can only control your own performance or you can only control the processes that you go through that affect your are you affect your performance. So um any work that might be done with somebody on that front is just making sure that they're able to do that. So if if things do come up, you're not allowing it to uh to affect you on the track. I've got two more questions for you, Tommy. Just just firstly finally, if you could summarize what it is you guys do and why it's so important to be so mentally strong in Formula One, how would you summarise it in a few bullet points? What's the key here? There's probably two or three main things that are really important . So one is um preparing the athlete physically, right? So this is something we do through physical training, maybe there's some aspects of uh cognitive training, we do uh blood testing , so uh we're doing a lot of uh nutrition strategies, thinking about supplements, just making sure that everything is like you have a good physiological um base to perform from. So this is this is one of the things that we talk about with drivers is how can we create um the base that you can perform from? So that's um everything around nutrition, sleep, recovery, training, like just create some robustness there you can perform from there. Then um then the next step uh really is that site psychology piece. So um again, this is this is not the work that I do because I'm I'm mainly in that kind of first bit. Uh plus you know, we might think about supplements and other things for for jet lag and and race weekends. But the the um then it's getting those pieces in place so that the drivers have these mental processes as they go through so that they're in the right zone when they need to be on the track. So they're probably those are probably the two things. One is that kind of baseline physiology, health, physical fitness kind of area, and that comes with the medical piece. And we have a an amazing set of doctors who kind of do that and then that that sort of like that that mental piece just putting those processes in place. Tommy, it's been so interesting talking to you. I've so enjoyed it. Just finally, I know our listeners will be as curious as I am to know a little bit more about you personally. We know what hints to do, but how did you get involved in this world and how did you get to Formula One? Were you a fan? Tell us a little bit about your journey. Yeah, so so I've been a Formula One fan uh my my entire life. Um I trained as a doctor in the UK, worked as a doctor for a couple of years, then I went and was doing a PhD in physiology and neuroscience. And while I was doing that, I helped build up a startup company working with a variety of different athletes, kind of doing what what I do for HINTSA right now, but uh doing uh blood testing, thinking about physical training, thinking about all these other aspects of health that affect performance. We had a podcast. Um the former medical director of um HINTSA, Luke Bennett, heard me on a podcast, uh sent me an email and said, Hey, do you want to maybe w wanna come and