Kelly Racing reveals the high pressure role engineers play in Supercars

In the high pressure environment of Supercars, it’s a small group of people outside of the car who could have the biggest impact on a race.

IN the high pressure environment of Supercars, it’s a small group of people outside of the car who could have the biggest impact on a race.

They decide every part of strategy including when to pit, what tyres to use and when, how a car should be altered to suit each track, tweak it throughout a race to improve performance, identify race-changing faults that need fixing and so much more.

Driver using the wrong gear through a section? They will hear about it.

The engineers have arguably the toughest role in racing outside of the drivers and Kelly Racing general manager of racing Scott Sinclair, who has been in Supercars for 14 seasons and spent the majority of his career as an engineer, knows exactly what is required.

Kelly Racing General Manager of Racing Scott Sinclair. Picture: Supplied by Kelly Racing.

“There is a lot of planning involved but the planning goes out the window if there is a safety car or if there is a crash,” Sinclair, 37, said.

“Sometimes during the race you will be just sitting back thinking this is going fine then in a split second its chaos.

“You have to be as prepared as possible for that but there is a lot of pressure and you also have two cars that are ultimately competing against each other, even though we are from the same team, and one pit crew.

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“We have to share the pit crew among the two cars and in the best interest of both cars.”

The race engineer is the direct link to the driver while a data engineer is tracking a plethora of real-time information throughout a race and both are backed by an engine technician and strategy manager.

“There are about 80 sensors on the car, all the data is coming back so temperatures, pressures, speeds, brake temperatures, steering angles, gear positions, a whole range of things that we are looking at,” Sinclair said.

The Kelly Racing team, including engineers. Picture: Supplied by Kelly Racing.

“The guys have multiple screens that they rotate through.

“If they say something is wrong with the brakes we flick to a screen with the brakes, we have all the historical data from the previous section and laps to reference.

“For example, a driver says they have a long brake pedal then we can quickly see if it’s the front system that is causing that or the rear system and then we can help guide the driver from that.

“The timing system is looking at all the sectors around the track, how your performances are going in every single sector. This track is broken up into eight sectors.

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“The third component to it is the strategy component. Looking at when everyone else is pit stop occurred, when we think they are going to stop, how much fuel they took on and that is all calculated automatically based on the time they spend in the pit lane.

“We obviously know how much fuel we have put into our car and we input that straight into the strategy software and that tells us when we are going to run out, when we have enough room into the tank to put the fuel in to get home which is what they call reverse strategy window. All that is ongoing. The data engineer and race engineer are sharing the fuel responsibility.”

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With so much at stake and the dangers that the sport presents, Sinclair said engineers needed a level head despite the stress on the team.

“You really have to flat line with your emotions. We all get caught up in the pressure of it but it’s important for me especially to maintain that level heatedness, to keep the pit crew in control and communicate clearly because the moment the communication drops then we have mistakes in pit lane, the wrong tyres go on the wrong car or the tyres aren’t ready or something like that.”