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How far would a Formula 1 team go to find performance gain? The simple answer is: as far as it takes. The car upgrades that find tenths of a second are vast, seismic improvements, but that doesn’t stop everyone from chasing down the marginal advantages. In our series, 0.1% Solutions, we explore the minute details that keep F1 at the forefront of modern technology.

Prior to leaving the garage, bringing the car to a state of readiness involves a repeatable system of protocols. It’ll involve a green board from engine and system techs, and a formal communication from the No.1 mechanic to Race Engineer.

But there’s also a more informal shorthand that notifies the engineering staff and driver.  When set-up changes are completed, final fasteners secured, fuel is in, wheels are on, any mechanics with a spare pair of hands will grab a spray can and a cloth: the car fires up and heads out having just received a thorough polish.

This isn’t an aesthetic choice – or, at least, it isn’t an entirely aesthetic choice. There may be a tiny fraction of performance in having the car free of dirt. It’s easy to scoff at the idea that a fleck of mud might have a tangible impact on a 900kg car travelling 5km at upwards of 340km/h – but it does.

You only have to look at the 2024 Canadian Grand Prix where the pole and P2 time were identical to a thousandth of a second, George Russell starting ahead of Max Verstappen by virtue of setting his time first. It’s a rarity to see identical times separating the front row (this was the first since 1997), but somewhere on the grid, it’ll happen once or twice a season. There’s plenty of near-misses too: the 2020 Spanish Grand Prix was a close-run thing for us, with Lando squeaking into Q3 ahead of Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari by a mere two milliseconds.

So, is a clod of dirt stuck to the bodywork worth that two-thousandths of a second? It is – but there are other, bigger reasons to reach for the polishing cloths as well. Tom Stallard, Director, Human Performance, is Oscar Piastri’s Race Engineer and heading into Qualifying, in his pre-session notes, he’s likely to issue a (largely superfluous) reminder to the crew to clean the car whenever they can.

“It's not worth much, milliseconds perhaps, but one of the things you gain when polishing the car is that you check for any tyre marbles stuck in the bodywork and wings, any pieces of circuit debris, peeling stickers or tape – and all of those would add up to a lot more,” he says.

“We’re really very proud of the car, so polishing an already clean panel tends to be an automatic gesture – but it’s also a method for checking it over carefully. In that regard, it’s a bit like taping the bodywork: the gain is less than the accuracy with which we can measure aerodynamic forces on the car – but we still do it because we know it's the right direction.

“We polish partly from pride in the car and partly to check for anything bigger than just a black smudge, because that could affect the aerodynamic performance.”

So, if you see the car being polished during Qualifying, take it as a sign that everything is proceeding in an orderly fashion, and the car is ready to roll – but also understand it isn’t merely busywork: there’s a marginal gain in applying that elbow grease, and with the front of the field so incredibly compressed, every millisecond really does count.