© Vladimir RysBulls Guide To: The PaddockEveryone’s seen the paddock, but what goes on in F1’s inner sanctum?
AsFormulaOneheadstotheCircuitdeBarcelona-CatalunyatherearemanyreasonsforustotakealookintotheinnersanctumoftheF1paddock.It’sacircuitwe’vevisitedoftenandthereforeknowallaboutitspaddock,butalsobeinginEurope,it’swhereyoucanusuallyfindthefinearrayofmotorhomesondisplay.
Inside The 2021 Paddock© Getty Images
‘A good paddock’ is a phrase that’s cited frequently in relation to a racetrack, but it has a multitude of different meanings. Some paddocks, because of their size and configuration generate a really good atmosphere, others are run efficiently – though again, everyone’s view on what that entails changes according to need – or have easy access for personnel and materials.
The uniting thread is that a good paddock is the one that allows everyone to get on with the business of operating a Formula One team with the minimum of fuss. That’s the Circuit de Catalunya in a nutshell.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a paddock as: an enclosure adjoining a racecourse where horses or motorcars are assembled before a race. While we’re somewhat worried that the editors at the OED believe horses are assembled, the rest of it is correct. Or, at least it it’s correct as far as it goes.
The role of the paddock in F1 has expanded beyond its origins as a hardstanding containing space and garages where cars could be assembled. It still fulfils those functions – but it does a couple of other things too.
You know the basics of this – but they’re worth stating again. The standard layout of a motor racing paddock is a long rectangle. Along one long edge is the pit building, with the rear entrances to the garages on the bottom level, with access through to the pit lane. Above that is whatever the circuit deems necessary: could be office or conference space, could be hospitality, could be a grandstand – but it is deemed to be outside the paddock.
The two short edges would have gates – though F1 tends to shy away from using both. The other long edge is defined by the team’s motorhomes or, on flyaways, whatever tent, temporary structures, or permanent hospitality units are provided.
Despite calling this the ‘standard’ layout, there’s an awful lot of variations on the theme. Spa, for instance, is a double-decker paddock crammed into the La Source hairpin with the garages on higher level, and staircases down to the motorhomes below.
Harbour Master I© Getty Images
In Monaco, the paddock in on a quayside and physically separate from the garages and pit lane, which are reached via a walkway, over the Rascasse corner. While the order of the garages doesn’t (usually) change and is based on Constructors’ Championship order from the previous year (Mercedes nearest the pit entry, Williams nearest the pit exit) the motorhomes don’t always correspond with their positions. Sometimes this is because of limited space; sometimes it’s because FOM don’t like the drivers being able to scuttle swiftly from motorhome to garage without running the gauntlet of guests and media.
NotAppearinginthisArticle
Perhaps the best way to define what’s inside the paddock is to explain what isn’t. A lot of the race weekend goes on outside the paddock and many people with full-time jobs at F1 races, don’t ever go inside.
Not inside, for instance, are the support races, who will have their own paddocks, with their own pit-buildings at the very posh circuits, or awnings attached to the side of their trucks over rubber tile floors at others.
Also located outside are the TV compound, the medical centre, fuel dump, helipads, most of the team’s freight, the truck parc, the public stages from which the drivers meet their fans, and the thousand other things that an F1 race needs to function.
Checo Parks Up And Heads To The Paddock© Getty Images
The Paddock Club, home to VIP guests, isn’t inside the paddock, though the denizens will get escorted tours, and the media centre moves inside and out according to the layout of any particular track – in Barcelona it’s outside the paddock, on one of the upper floors of the pit-building, requiring the press to pass through a swipe-gate on the staircase to get into the paddock proper.
Access to the paddock is always via a swipe gate – unless you’re driving a service vehicle. Everyone has a hard card, issued either for the individual race or for the seasons, with different colours denoting different functions (some, for instance, will allow you further access from the paddock into the pit lane, onto the grid, into race control etcetera).
If you don’t have a pass, you’re not getting in – which makes for amusing videos every time an irate, helmet-clad driver, having left a broken car at the side of the track, isn’t allowed back in by an entirely indifferent security guard who really doesn’t care how many World Championships you’ve won.
The primary delineator between paddocks is location: European or flyaway. Within Europe (for a given value of ‘Europe’) teams travel by truck and set up their own, controlled environment in the paddock. Further afield, like a less-than-choosy hermit crab, we take whatever’s available. The two primary components of our European paddock kit are the Energy Station and the Treehouse. Both, in their own way, are ingenious.
What A Crib© Red Bull Content Pool
The Energy Station is our primary hospitality structure. The latest version, the Holzhaus, is a sustainable behemoth containing 1221m2 of floor space across three levels. It contains staff offices for the Team and AlphaTauri, ready rooms and showers for the drivers, a coffee bar, several actual bars, a large kitchen, restrooms, balconies, dining space for both teams, complete with a canteen-style serving station.
It can entertain several hundred guests with haute cuisine, while simultaneously feeding two teams primarily composed of hungry team members. And not forgetting the team favourite, homemade ice cream.
The history of motorhomes in the paddock is, like most things in F1, a story of something with humble and practical origins that got turned up to 11. Fifty years ago, the car transporter was a one-size-fits-all workshop, office and snack bar. Over time, as teams became larger, a genuine motorhome was added, or a bus with an awning and some garden furniture. That catering not just for the team but also for their sponsors and the teams started employing people – often husband and wife teams – to look after that side of the business.
The Energy Station Makes Its Debut© Red Bull Racing Honda
In the 1990s, the concept had been transformed, with the modern architecture of the motorhome built up off a base of multiple trucks beginning to arrive. And with every inch of space in the paddock spoken for, if teams wanted more room, they had to add storeys…
For engineers and garage crew, the motorhomes are very much a place to relax, rather than a place to work. The Energy Station is where our crew take their meals and pop in for a cup of tea. It isn’t a place where they work. That happens on the other side of the paddock, where the race team transporters are located huddled up to the back of the garages, containing offices, workshops and parts storage. Teams have been gradually improving how they use this space over the last few decades.
The New Treehouse For 2021© Getty Images
Every team’s transporters have a roof elevator, to provide an upstairs office the length of the trailer, and by the expedience of parking your two trucks of the edge of your pitch, there’s a handy open-air workspace between them that, while not officially yours, is nevertheless off limits to everyone else. Teams started putting down matting to make better use of this area and fitting an awning between the trucks to keep it dry. A decade ago, we took the next natural step by using our transporters as the base for a rather more substantial structure spanning the gap overhead – and thus the treehouse was born.
Our treehouse walls-in the space between the trucks, to be used as a tyre store. At one end we have a staircase leading up to the upper storey which contains the engineers’ offices and meeting rooms, where they will spend most of their weekend. The paddock is a busy place and largely a public place. By rising up above it, our engineers get a quieter environment in which to work undisturbed. Our treehouse is quite a bit larger than the name implies, though the latest version, debuted this season, does at least have a sustainably-sourced wooden roof.
The paddock at a flyaway is a very different environment. We can’t – or, at least, we don’t – take all of this kit beyond the reach of the European road network, and thus we rely on our hosts to provide alternatives. There is a great deal of variety in how this operates.
With the older circuits – places like Suzuka, for instance – designed on the same pattern as the European tracks and intended to accommodate trucks, it’s built to accommodate transporters – it’s a case of putting up temporary structures for hospitality and extending the garages rearwards to provide enough room to cram in desk space for the engineers. For many of the newer venues, built specifically for the purposes of hosting a grand prix, the hospitality structures are permanent buildings, built to accommodate an F1 team, with spaces for catering, entertaining and workstations.
Suzuka Circuit Entrance© Vladimir Rys
Does the type of paddock affect the way the team operates? It shouldn’t affect the racing side of the operation, but it will affect how the marketing and hospitality component of a team – particularly one of the larger teams – goes about its business.
The Energy Station is an enormous asset for that side of the business, for everything from hosting VVIPs, to sponsor launches, to media dinners, so these tend to be the busiest races for that facet of F1. A race like the USGP, in contrast, while obviously an event with huge potential for marketing, has to contend with the minimalist COTA paddock, where the teams operate out of surprisingly small breezeblock garages and hospitality tents. It simply can’t sustain the sort of large-scale marketing operation that goes on elsewhere. Thus, US activities – dinners, sponsor events etcetera – that would usually take place in the paddock, will instead move into downtown hotels, away from the track.
Quite how long this split with continue is currently a matter of much debate. 20 years ago, flyaways accounted for six races on a 17-race calendar. By the time Red Bull Racing came along, they were eight of 19. The percentage of flyaways has increased steadily ever since, with the number of European rounds static or falling, and new flyaway destinations being added.
The Downsized 2021 Energy Station© Getty Images
On 2021’s original calendar, flyaways accounted for 13 of the 23 venues. The truck-based kit obviously represents a significant capital investment: if it’s being amortised over a dwindling number of races, then the business-case for having it becomes weaker.
For the moment though, we have a split season with two very different types of paddock. In Barcelona, the circuit is celebrating 30 years since the track first hosted F1, with the 1991 Spanish Grand Prix marking its debut. That too was a back-to-back race with the Portuguese Grand Prix – albeit Estoril rather than Portimão.
Unlike in 1991, the advanced scouts were in Barcelona a week ahead of the race, busy constructing the garages and laying the foundations – literally, in the case of the Energy Station – for the Teams arrival. It’s an easier job than at many circuits because the Circuit de Catalunya is a ‘good paddock’ and the polar opposite of what the crews will face next time out in Monaco – but that’s another story.
