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There are 24 rounds in a Formula 1 season, but many more races. There’s the race to sign the best drivers, the race to upgrade the cars, the actual race – and then there’s the race between the races, which comprises everything that happens between each Grand Prix.

Many might think that once the drivers clamber out of their cars and the team packs down the garage, things slow down a little - but far from it. Our team at track continue working long after the Chequered Flag, whilst those who didn’t work the race click back into gear on Monday morning.

For different people, that means different things. Some will be diving deep into the weekend’s data, breaking it down and deciphering it, while others will be working on the latest set of upgrades or preparing freight for the next race, whenever that might be. Then there’s our content team, who – with the help of Dropbox’s secure and reliable syncing and sharing capabilities - will be working through the hours of videography and photography captured from the weekend.

All of this comes with time pressures, hard deadlines and the risk of our IP (intellectual property) being leaked, which is why it’s important that none of this begins before a thorough debrief of the weekend just gone, to ensure we’re continually improving on our practices, working smarter, and being vigilant with our use of technology, which is central to how we work.

“Even if you are celebrating, you're always learning,” says our Chief Operating Officer Piers Thynne, who focuses on delivering day-to-day performance at the factory. “Every time we run the car, we are learning and evolving our understanding of how we can make it better. It is all about marginal gains - the improvements of what we do as a team are happening all the time.”

Speaking from the McLaren Technology Centre between triple headers, the race between races is happening around us as we speak. As we await the final three season-defining races, we spent some time with Piers and the team to get a fuller picture of the work that goes on away from the track between Grand Prix weekends.

Culture is key

Our upgrades for the season are all complete, but circuit-specific parts are still being produced in the background of our conversation, whilst another team is already working on next year's car. It’s late into the season, but energy remains high, and the factory is a hive of activity. Everyone is focused and clear on their roles and responsibilities. This culture is critical to lasting the course of a long and testing Formula 1 season.

“What is fantastic about this team is our people,” Piers says. “There are highs and lows in Formula 1, so it is very important to keep a calm and steady ship. We conduct lots of conversations with our people all of the time in order to unify the team, whether they are trackside or back in the factory. Staying connected, with the help of technology, ensures that we are calm when things go wrong, which often happens, and that we work through problems collaboratively to focus on the best outcome for the team.

“What is great about working in a high-performing Formula 1 team is that there are great people everywhere. We all pull together, form collaborative groups, and work on problems together. That way, you’ve got lots of angles on a problem, which allows us to deliver the best and fastest solution.

“We are immensely proud of our culture and actively protect it at all times. We're very, very clear on what we do as a team. We focus on projects that can contribute to making the car go faster. That's it. If you can't link what you’re working on back to that, then maybe you’re not on the right path. We are having good conversations between managers, leaders, and all of the staff at all levels to ensure that this remains the focus at all times. Ultimately, that is what we are measured on as an organisation.”

The development race

Producing upgrades is one of the most significant and time-consuming responsibilities at the factory between rounds, and it’s something that, in recent years, we’ve become increasingly efficient at.

In 2023, our upgrade packages took us from the back of the grid to the front at an unprecedented speed. Then, in 2024, they’ve allowed us to become regular race winners and Championship challengers, and ensured we keep pace with our rivals at the front of the grid.

Each of our upgrades this season – the last of which was installed ahead of the Mexico City Grand Prix - has played a vital role, but the most impactful was delivered ahead of Miami. This was our first major package of the year and has been season-defining, resulting in our first Grand Prix victory since 2021.

“When we tested the culmination of the multiple parts, the performance was very, very clear to see,” says Piers, looking back on the Miami Grand Prix upgrade. “We then looked at how we could deliver that at the earliest time possible.

“There was a really interesting point in the first meeting where everybody looked at each other and was a bit overwhelmed by the quantity and scale of it. So, we stopped the meeting, told everybody to go away and think about it, and revisited it the next day. When we came back, we started to break the problems down into chunks and worked out how we could do tasks concurrently. That enabled us to unlock some of the incredibly complex resource challenges that we had.

“It’s really important to have a plan and work to it. Everybody knew what they were supposed to do, and everything was executed calmly. That enabled us to bring the upgrade forward by one whole race. The parts all arrived on time, we built it, legality checked it, and ran the project.

“The results that then came from that meant that it was very easy for everyone in the team to correlate that with the effort it took to deliver it. Coming into the factory the following week, everyone was asking ‘can we do it again?”

The race week checklist

As well as producing new parts, the team will also service existing ones to ensure they’re still at their best. This will typically be done on a Monday at the start of the week, following an initial debrief of Sunday’s race. All departments, from engineering to marketing, will review the weekend and analyse their work to ensure we’re continually learning and improving. Any form of gain, however trivial, could be critical. When racing at the front, the fine margins can make a huge difference.

On a race week, the focus on a Tuesday will switch to race preparation and ensuring all the freight is packed up and ready to be shipped on the Wednesday. Once this arrives at track, the team will continue with their race prep, alongside car build, initial setup, and legality checks. On a Friday, attention will then shift to the track, with two Free Practice sessions.

Whether using design software, sharing files, or working through online checklists, none of this could be done without using some form of technology.

Protecting our IP

When working at such speed, the likelihood of mistakes increases dramatically, and so huge levels of concentration are required from the team to ensure they don’t slip up. But it isn’t only human error that Piers and the team need to account for, it’s technological faults as well. Most importantly, IP retention. Lost IP could result in another team obtaining and using our ideas against us.

So much of what we do day-to-day involves working with sensitive IP. This includes the information collected from the car, which uses approximately 300 sensors to gather more than 250 million performance-enhancing data points, to the designs of our upgrades. Every time a new part is produced, our Brand Creative team - who design our car's livery - will have access to the blueprints to make the required adjustments to our livery.

Even the content our creators are capturing at the factory and the track could be sensitive and will go through a rigorous approvals process before being published publicly to ensure we’re not releasing any IP.

That’s where Dropbox comes in. They protect our content team's videography and photography by safely and securely helping the team sift through a terabyte of content per weekend, whilst their AI-powered search product, Dash, allows us to quickly and easily find critical files. This means our teams can download, share, and work on all of the files they need, no matter where they are in the world, without fear of it being leaked to a competitor.      

“IP retention is hugely important, so digitally, we ensure we have a secure method of sharing,” says Piers. “We manage our data very, very carefully and ensure that we are controlling how we store and transfer our IP, whether that is data on the car’s setup, or data on car parts.

Never too high, never too low

All of this work is being completed amid the ups and downs of a Formula 1 season. Whether Sunday’s result was good or bad, the following week’s work cannot be impacted.

“Everyone wants to win, and we are all pursuing excellence, so when things go wrong, we just want to find the root cause and fix it,” Piers says. “Failure is part of the process, and we’re very comfortable having honest discussions when things go wrong.

“Having a no-blame culture is imperative for us. When things go wrong, it’s a set of circumstances that have created that scenario, so we need to understand it, learn from it, and ensure it can’t happen again. We work together to learn from the losses, and we go again.

And before you know it, we’re back where we started on a Monday, and the cycle has begun again.

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Speed isn't just for the track. The McLaren F1 Team uses Dropbox to race against time every week, streamlining data sharing and content approvals. Get a behind-the-scenes look in The race between races.