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Has there ever been a Formula 1 question you’ve been afraid to ask? Well, there shouldn’t be. There’s no such thing as a bad question at McLaren, that’s why we’ve got Formula 1’s most knowledgeable nameless racer, the #FifthDriver, who acts as our anonymous trackside pundit and analyst.

Although their identity will always remain a mystery, the answers to your questions shouldn’t. In a sport as technical and as complicated as Formula 1, no fan can be expected to know everything, and here at McLaren HQ, we reward curiosity. Quite literally – the best #FifthDriver questions from every round are given a prize.

If you want to get involved, keep an eye out on Twitter in the lead-up to every grand prix. Ahead of each round, we'll ask for questions on Twitter. Simply reply with the #FifthDriver hashtag and we’ll see it.

Seeing as we haven’t got a race for short while, we got the #FifthDriver to go through all of your questions from the season so far and select the ones they think you most need to know the answers to.

@sofee_elizabeth: Why can’t the cars be transported already assembled?

It’s tempting to say ‘Because then the mechanics would have too much time to play football’ but there are a couple of genuine reasons as well. Chief mechanic Kari Lammenranta has done it more times than anyone, so we’ll let him answer.

He says: “On a flyaway, we have to take the car apart because otherwise, it would be too long to fit into a standard flight container. Things are a little easier in Europe when we’re travelling by truck, and we have, on rare occasions, built the cars at the factory before putting them into the transporters.

“The reason we usually won’t do that is because there are always upgrades coming, and so we have to build the car as late as possible. If the car was built up on Monday before going to the track, it would be out-of-date by the time it ran on Friday.

“Another reason is that we rarely have power units at the factory, except at the start of the season when the cars are first being put together. Those are maintained by Mercedes HPP between the races and are delivered back to us here at the track.”

@Angel4_717: Did Oscar get completely the same garage crew as Daniel Ricciardo had in the previous seasons?

The crews haven’t changed. Oscar’s inherited the race engineering team and mechanics that work on that side of the garage. There’s always a little bit of churn as people come in and out, and people might cross the garage as they get promoted, but basically, that crew can be traced back through Daniel to Carlos Sainz to Stoffel Vandoorne to Jenson Button.

There is also a little bit of rotation creeping into the operation. It’s always been the case that people would come in from the factory for a one-off race, as cover, but with the increasing demands of the calendar – and also after the catalyst of Covid – there’s a more formal process of acclimating extra engineers and mechanics.

@AndyRobinson100: When the team bring an upgrade, and we are 0.5 seconds quicker, are the drivers or the team able to know where that 0.5s comes from?

The physical data is clear to read – but interpreting it is still something of a dark art that requires skill and experience. With the amount of telemetry pouring off the car, it’s relatively straightforward to compare laps, and see exactly those things: braking 10m later, carrying an extra 5km/h through the apex, getting on the throttle 0.2s earlier and so on.

The difficulty comes from the human and environmental offsets. Has the track temperature gone up 2°C? Was there a gust of wind, or a stronger following effect? Has the track rubbered-in? Did the driver do a better job? It’s not so bad with something like a new front wing design, where the driver will do a lap, stop in the pits for five seconds to fit the new wing, and go straight back out to do another lap – something like a rear wing, brake ducts, and upgraded floor etc., might be a 25-minute change, which means a much bigger margin for error.

It's why assessing new parts tends to be a multi-faceted exercise. Offline simulations produce absolutely repeatable laps, followed by driver-in-the-loop sims, which add a little more empirical data, followed by track testing, which, if everything is working as it should, should mostly be validatory. If the data generated on track matches what the sims have suggested you should see, then you’ll trust the numbers are accurate, and the gains you’re seeing in lap-time are genuinely coming from the upgrades.

@plug_in_baby_x: Are there strategic reasons for teams doing a track walk?

The track walk is more of a familiarisation exercise than anything else. The drivers want to physically inspect the track – particularly anything new – looking at kerbs, new bumps, marker boards, visual cues etc., They’ll be talking to their various engineers about which toggles to use at which corners, where is a good place to have a conversation during the race, or to do a switch change.

It’s also a good opportunity to make sure everyone is using the same language. For example, if the driver is calling a corner by its name instead of its number, it’s good to make sure everyone knows where that is.

There isn’t much strategy involved in this – but the team might discuss things that play into strategy, like how to attack the pit entry to minimise the pit-loss time, where would be a good place around the lap for the drivers to swap positions without losing time or providing an opportunity to anyone else, where the latest point around the lap that an instruction to box should be passed, and so on.

On top of this, it’s also an opportunity for the race engineers to have an uninterrupted hour with their drivers, and certainly when walking down a long straight it isn’t uncommon for the team to discuss anything and everything – strategy included.

@MewesKeith: How many crash helmets and race suits do the drivers have per race weekend? And do they have favourites?

Oscar has five race suits, five sets of fireproof undergarments and three helmets. That’s one fresh suit for each racing session. His helmets are set-up as two standard and one set-up for rain. He doesn’t have a favourite race suit – or at least isn’t admitting to it. The two standard lids are called the prime and the spare, but he doesn’t have a preference.

Usually, the driver only changes helmet if there’s a problem with the microphone. The one intended for rain has a different set of visor films fitted to help in what, we assume, would be lower light conditions. It’s also possible to have the various vents in the helmets closed-up for a wet day.

Lando is the same – except he has one extra race suit. He likes nice fresh one to jump into if there’s a red flag for rain on Sunday, and he’s been soaked.

@zoebrunt: What is the difference between Lando and Oscar's driving styles?

This is a fascinating topic, but it’s strongly coloured by the caveat that, over the last few years, the car has demanded a certain driving style, and thus not allowed for the sort of variations previous generations of drivers might have displayed.

On that note, it’s impossible to say what Lando’s natural preference would be, as he’s only ever driven McLaren F1 cars. Oscar, on the other hand has a slightly wider knowledge base.

Oscar likes to do a bit more combination braking-steering and carry more speed through a corner. Lando prefers to brake sharper, get a better entry and sacrifice a little on exit. At Silverstone, for example, you’ll likely see Lando going deeper into the corner at Brooklands but Oscar keeping a tighter line and having a better entry into Luffield.

There’s shades of BUT vs HAM in that – though Lando and Oscar are a less extreme example – and there isn’t a right and a wrong way to do it, but obviously some corners and some tracks will suit one style over the other. Other than that, there’s not much to separate them, which is useful for the team as it allows them to get more valuable work done on Fridays by testing across the cars.

@CFCSupreme: How do drivers balance being both teammates and rivals?

‘Balance’ is a really good word to use – because it absolutely is a balancing act. The absolute bottom line will always be that the team comes first, and that philosophy is hardwired into the structure of the race team – thus, while each car will have its own race engineering and strategy teams, there’s a level of oversight above that which ensures the drivers aren’t operating at cross-purposes.

Obviously, competition within the team is fierce. The drivers – and their race engineering teams – want to come out on top in the only battle that gives them equal equipment – but they understand their desire to race each other is going to be subordinated to the needs of the team, and there's very little unhappiness with this.

At the basic level, that means sharing information, splitting test items across the two cars, and perhaps asking one driver to take on an alternate strategy to allow the team a bet each way. The more obvious examples are when drivers are asked to hold position – as happened at Silverstone, for example – and not lose time fighting each other, or even asked to swap positions to let the faster car go.

…but a team can’t use that sort of tactic indiscriminately. There’s a question of morale – but also a strong desire to let them race. Without the Safety Car at Silverstone, we may have got to see Oscar and Lando scrap it out for second in the closing stages of the race, had Lando pitted during green flag running. They’d have been reminded to keep the elbows in, but otherwise, if there was no risk behind and no chance of catching anyone in front, we'd have seen them race.