19 May 2026 16:00 (UTC)
With a little bit of help from Lando, we explore how our drivers spend their time in the paddock when they’re not on track
There’s a joke that, despite it being trotted out two or three times a season, always makes everyone in the garage smile.
With a session due to shortly begin shortly, the No.1 Mechanic will tell the Race Engineer that the car is ready. The Race Engineer will look over his shoulder and note, somewhat drily, that it seems to be missing an important component. The universal laws of comedy demand that this be the moment the driver barrels into the garage, arriving exactly when they were supposed to.
Their schedule across the weekend is planned down to the minute – including the time it will take to get from their room in the Team Hub to the garage. At some tracks, such as Miami, this can mean a long walk through a crowded paddock, while at others, such as China, they’re based in the garage itself, so the walk is considerably shorter, and much quieter.
Flexibility is often required in the world of F1, but some deadlines are non-negotiable - the start of a session, an interview with your favourite broadcaster, and their schedule is built around these. Outside of this, there are many other activities, some more critical and others a little more fluid.
A driver’s diary across the weekend is packed – but what they’re doing when they’re not on track isn’t quite as obvious as a crew taking off a floor or fitting a fresh gearbox. Once they’re given the all-clear to jump out of the cockpit after a session, they’re on the clock, with a pre-planned schedule to fill their time until the next green light. The time between the sessions is a fixed quantity: on a Sprint weekend, it’s three hours on Friday between FP1 and Sprint Quali, then three hours on Saturday between Sprint and race. On a normal weekend, it’s two-and-a-half hours between FP1 and FP2, then two-and-a-half hours between FP3 and Qualifying. Armed with a copy of the schedule, you’ll know where the drivers are supposed to be for every minute.
The F1 lunchbreak is an interesting concept, given it rarely takes place over lunchtime, and no one in the trackside team has time for a sit-down break at that point in the day… but the historically appropriate terminology persists. In reality, the period on a Friday between FP1 and FP2, and on Saturday between FP3 and Qualifying is an intense couple of hours for the team, as it attempts to add performance to the car ahead of the next session. The drivers play an important part in this activity.
“The time between sessions passes very quickly,” says Lando. “The majority of it is debrief, and then discussions, especially with my Performance Engineer, where we go more into the detail of driving techniques.”
The debrief takes place in the engineering office. At a European round, that’s the large room in the Race Base, built on top of the car transporters. At a flyaway, it might be in the back of the garage or a hospitality building – though in reality, physical location isn’t particularly important, given everyone participates via intercom and many are working in Mission Control in Woking. Senior Racing Director Randy Singh leads the discussion. It’s a structured session, concentrating first on any changes to the car set-up that the crew need to know about as a priority, and then hearing feedback on the session just gone from the Race Engineers, Car Support, other interested departments and the impressions of the drivers.
The debrief segues into follow-on discussions about where to put the car for the next session. This will be based not only on the empirical experience of the drivers and their race engineering group, but also on work going on back at the McLaren Technology Centre, where the simulation team will be running variations of the session on track.
“We do this especially after FP1, says Lando. “What has worked on the simulator, what’s a bit different, and that takes us into discussions about what we can try in FP2. Then the mix is with the Race Engineer on what we want to try with the set-up. Do we want to make it more robust? Perhaps a little softer and nicer to drive – or should we go the other way and make the car stiffer? That takes up a fair amount of time.”
The driver and his engineers tend to be a tight-knit group, but some of the prep the driver does for the next session, he does on his own, in his private room. “I have my own time to go through videos and data and onboards [from the cameras fitted to the cars],” says Lando. “I analyse this stuff myself and put in place a little plan for what we want to do in the next session.”
The driver has to eat, and they’ll often want to say hello to friends, or they might have a marketing activity of some form, but they also need to take some alone-time to relax and clear their head: switching off from whatever is going on around a busy paddock is seen as the best way of ensuring they’re getting back into the car in the best frame of mind.
“In terms of importance, obviously debrief is always the priority post-session. Second priority is making sure that I'm rested, and I've had a bit of time to myself. Too much information, too many conversations, and too much chitter chatter are sometimes not a good thing. And so, the schedule ensures I have some alone time to chill out and prepare for the next session.”
What form the drivers’ chill-out time takes is very much up to the driver. Some drivers have a very specific plan - Lando’s more agnostic: “Sometimes I’ll listen to music, quite often I’ll have an afternoon nap – especially if we’re coming off a hard time change. I might watch a bit of golf or MotoGP, or if F2 or F3 is on track, I’ll watch that.”
There is always more for the driver to do than the driver has time to do, and so naturally, the way race engineering would like the driver’s time to be organised, and the realities of life in a sponsor-led, televised sports-entertainment industry, are a little different. For the most part, the drivers’ obligations beyond the cockpit are taken care of on Wednesday and Thursday, with a few smaller pockets of time carved out of the rest of the weekend for post-session interviews or meet-and-greets. These make up an important part of the weekend, and usually take place at the end of a day, rather than in between track sessions.
“It’s a tricky one because the sport exists because of marketing, our fans, and our partners are a priority – but at the same time, we’re here to do well and deliver our best performance,” Lando says. “You have to balance those requirements. I tend to push to spend more time by myself, or working with my engineers or perhaps just going over data by myself – but equally, sometimes I’ll be the one who wants to stop and have a chat with someone! But it’s less my job to make those decisions, more for those who understand what the correct balance is.”
While the drivers are off doing their thing, the crew in the garage will be working at full tilt, getting the car prepared for the next session. They’ll have given it a full visual inspection, removed the bodywork and the floor, perhaps removed the gearbox, completed any of the set-up changes delivered from the start of the debrief. Typically, the drivers arrive back in the garage 10-15 minutes before the next session is due to begin.
Their first job will be to take their helmet and HANS device, go to the scales, and get an accurate weight so their mechanics can properly ballast the car. After this, they’ll go to the engineers’ island, talk through any tweaks to the run plan, then get into their kit and into the car. This will be a couple of minutes before the green light or, if the plan involves a later leave time, a couple of minutes before the scheduled fire-up. If everything has gone well, they’ll be well rested, properly fed, and have a quicker car beneath them than the one with which they ended the previous session. They’ll get to provide their opinion on that shortly after the next Chequered Flag, when the cycle begins again.
