The Mechanic: The Secret World of the F1 Pitlane

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And yet, without the technical knowledge, competitive determination and outright obsession from his garage of mechanics, no driver could possibly hope to claim a spot on the podium.

The Mechanic: The Secret World of the F1 Pitlane - AbeBooks The Mechanic: The Secret World of the F1 Pitlane - AbeBooks

That's not to say the F1 crew is just a group of highly skilled technical engineers, tweaking machinery in wind tunnels and crunching data through high-spec computers. I take a deep breath, fighting the urge to move back to a safer distance … Lewis’s barely in-control car moves in hot, missing me by centimetres and screeches to a stop. All I've learned is that to be a good pit-stop mechanic (ie, change wheels, change nose cone, fuel up) you have to be able to do one thing really well, like hold something up in the air, or wield the gun that takes the nuts off the wheel and to be a team player. Which was good because within those years at McLaren I experienced all kinds of drama: Grand Prix wins and soul-destroying losses; controversy and scandal; cheating and espionage. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice.That his personality didn't change one bit when he became a star in Formula 1, that conformity never became part of his vocabulary even with all the pressure from sponsors and the huge sums of money that different parties invested into F1*, that he never got caught up in all the politics and personal agendas and that in a sport of such fine margins he managed to just have fun and, frankly, be a bit lazy and still very succesful kind of makes him stand out among the modern world championship winning drivers.

The Mechanic - Penguin Books UK The Mechanic - Penguin Books UK

In the high octane atmosphere of the Formula One pit lane, the spotlight is most often on the superstar drivers. But Lewis was just a young man entering a strange new world for the first time, and his responses were genuine. And after all the battles, the good times, the successes on track as well as the disappointment of not quite getting it over the line at McLaren, old friends hadn't forgotten each other.The suspension, as predicted, was fine structurally, even if the balance of the car seemed a little strange. In those relaxed practice situations I’d think, ‘Shit, if that happened in an actual race it’d be disastrous …’ Luckily, it rarely did, and trust, skill and nerve became the strengths my teammates and I relied on throughout my career. The gun unlocks the nut, trying to wrench itself violently out of my hands in the process, and my job’s halfway done before I can even register the sights, sounds and emotions smothering me. This work hard mentality also meant that they played hard and also drunk hard too and Priestley's book is full of stories about the races and the aftermath after a successful weekend, of hire cars trashed, the continual practical jokes that they played on each other and the drivers.

The Mechanic: The Secret - Yumpu The Mechanic: The Secret - Yumpu

Revealing the most outrageous secrets and fiercest rivalries, The Mechanic follows Priestley as he travels the world working in the high-octane atmosphere of the F1 pit lane. Highly recommend to anyone who enjoys the sport, and I recommend both the book and Netflix series to anyone interested in becoming a fan! I look forward to watching him continue to push the boundaries in this field whilst inevitably looking for his next great life challenge. AS the budgets were so enormous, they would think nothing os flying the entire test team back from a track for a Christmas party and flying them back, slightly worse for wear and day later. I couldn’t look down to see what was going on because I was strapped in so tightly, but once I’d pulled up in my grid slot, I used what limited movement I had to scrape the mystery item along the cockpit floor towards me with my foot.To make a mistake was a painful experience, particularly because our actions were being played out and analysed in a very public way. He now a co-host on the channel’s studio based chat show, The F1 Report, as well as attending a number of Grand Prix events. The pressure of performing in front of worldwide audiences could bring with it real anxiety when I first started out as a young man, and I was always struck by the surreal nature of working in a job that I’d been fascinated by as a kid.