Press (x) for doubt
I’m calling bullshit on this one. For two reasons:
- AFAIK there has never been a female chief mechanic on an F1 team. F1 is so starved of women in leading roles it would probably hit the news.
- F1 cars are so vastly different from Road cars, I doubt it would even be of any help. Marc Priestly, a former McLaren F1 Mechanic, describes in his autobiography how any time a relative asked him to look after his car he would tell them he doesn’t know shit about roadcars and how he has to bring his car to an actual mechanic aswell.
Now it might be that OOP misremembered the actual role of the person or the racing series they worked in, and the person might just have had an interest im roadcars outside of their work.
You mean people would make things up on the internet for clout?! Clutch my pearls!
You know what…
I don’t even think you actually have any pearls!
Definitely if real bro misremembered. I’m an architectural technologist but people will still often say I’m an architect.
I don’t know why this Marc Priestly fellow would not understand the basics of working on a road car. They’re incredibly uncomplicated and if he couldn’t figure them out I’d be surprised(and maybe a little worried). Most likely is that it’s the same reason a lot of mechanics have shitty cars; they spend all day working vehicles and don’t have the time and energy to work on their own.
He probably would have been able to figure it out, he just didn’t put in the time. What Inwant to say is if you work on F1 cars doesn’t necessarily mean younknow how to work on road cars.
As someone who works on road cars because mechanics are expensive and I have the tools, I’d still amazed if someone didn’t understand them but did understand F1 cars. Maybe they don’t want to, like I said before, but they’re seriously not complicated for the most part. For a certain list of jobs I’ll take my car to a trusted mechanic but that’s usually because they have the tools and I don’t have the time, otherwise it’s pretty easy to just follow the instructions.
Another consideration is that expertise in a domain highlights ignorance. I’ve known experts who refuse to dabble outside their expertise because they’re keenly aware of how much they don’t know and feel they’d be doing a disservice to the requester if they agreed to help out. Better to leave it to the right experts.
That’s a certain kind of person. I’m not like that. I don’t mind breaking things so long as their mine or it’s agreed to up front. Some people are more anxious about these things though. I’d guess none of us know the fellow, so it’s all speculative anyway, but it’s possible this angle is the source of refusal.
For sure, when it comes to other people’s stuff at least. I’m at a point where I’m about to heavily modify a guitar into a different instrument but for other people I’ll only do very simple jobs. Still, I do it all on my own stuff.
I can’t really comment on the rest of what you said but calling modern day road cars uncomplicated is kind of ridiculous. The technicians are pretty much electrical engineers at this point. Between software and can bus stuff, cars are ridiculous right now. It’s making it very difficult for independent mechanics to work on vehicles.
That’s just a load of horse-hockey that older mechanics say because they hate modern vehicles. Techs are not electrical engineers just because they understand how a multimeter works and many places will just replace harness and stuff wholesale instead of repairing them, to the point where if I want to make one of my side signals work again I’m going to have to cannabilize a parts car for that section. Even still, it’s just lining up the wires and busting out the solder and heat-shrink.
I have a 2015 BRZ and do the work in my parents’ driveway. I know my car is less complicated than an Audi or VW but from personal experience those cars are garbage designed by engineers of questionable skill but a large budget.
The main reason independent techs have a hard time, I’d imagine, has more to do with how weirdly packaged the wires could be and without manufacturer support(for a warranty job, say) it might get financially difficult. Unplugging harnesses is not that hard otherwise.
So you only work on your one car, admit other vehicles are more complicated, but say only older techs complain about current cars? And who even said anything about complaining. You’re way off base my friend.
Yo the first claim was that the F1 mechanic takes their own car to a mechanic. So, that part is equivaleny and very “on base”. I also already conceded that I totally get it if they just mechanic stuff all day and don’t want to go home just to work on their own vehicle. Modern vehicles have more parts, for sure, but they are not prohibitively complex, especially for a professional race car mechanic. Besides, those big jobs rarely happen, if ever, and most of the time you’re just changing brakes, spark plugs, headlights, etc. and any schmuck with some hand tools and a Youtube video should be able to do that as long as they aren’t brain-dead.
So I don’t know why you’re looking to be so mad, maybe you feel like you’re part of the “brain-dead” portion and are feeling attacked, but buddy I’m consistent and staying relevant to the conversation.
The F1 thing has nothing to do with what I said. And yes, many of them are prohibitively complex, including software. Which is why the right to fix stuff even exists. I run a shop at a high end dealership. We are well beyond spark, fuel, and air being the only.relevant contributors.
“Yo the first claim” refers to what prompted me to enter this thread.
You run a shop and you don’t understand that simple, common jobs are easy enough to handle on your own? That, or maybe you work for a manufacturer so bad they regularly see vehicles come in for insane problems?
I dunno, I drive Subarus and they’re super easy, even a pleasure, to work on and there really hasn’t been much getting in my way so far. I fully agree that nothing should be locked away and people deserve the right to do their own repairs but even with that not being the case I also don’t completely give up on small jobs because a repair I’ll never do is not currently possible.
I have to take out like 3 parts in my truck to get to the lightbulb to change it. That’s not super approachable. Then don’t even get me started on the electrical systems and what board controls what system. I like working on engines and such, cars are full of so much more now though.
Ok? So take them out, then? Like, I agree that cars are being packaged in some unfriendly ways but honestly I’ve always driven Subarus so it’s not really an issue for me as their engineers are actually considerate and clever enough to keep things simple(or at least relatively simple). I can even do my sparkplugs without having to lift the engine like everyone claims must be done(and maybe that’s a sign the bar is pretty low, I dunno) though either way, with iridium plugs it’s every 100,000km so whatever.
Modern cars have a lot of systems but ultimately if you just follow the instructions you can usually get where you need to go without much pain. Well, mental pain but you will probably bleed somewhere in there and that’s just part of the ✨experience✨.
Yeah, I brought up #1 last time this was posted.
As for #2, mechanics who get into F1 teams get in because they’re elite mechanics. And, you don’t become an elite mechanic without getting your hands dirty on a normal consumer-grade ICE car. Now, it’s true that modern consumer-grade cars have lots of electronic systems that require special diagnostic tools. But it would be ridiculous to suggest that an F1 mechanic couldn’t handle most of the standard maintenance tasks.
Now, what I could imagine is that an F1 mechanic might not want to spend their free time working on his own, or a relative’s car. Part of that is not wanting to do in your free time what you do for work. Part of it is doing work for free. But, I imagine a big part of it is the pain of working on a badly put together piece of crap. A F1 car is a work of art. The engines only last about 8 races, which is less than 24 hours of running. An F1 engine isn’t going to have any real buildup of gunk. Any loose parts will have been loosened from 2 hours of hard racing, not 5 years of sloppy maintenance. There will be massive amounts of documentation on every part in an F1 car, with engineers on call if you ever have questions. Working on a relative’s car is probably like working on an old POS computer with an outdated OS with all kinds of pop-ups, etc.
OTOH, I imagine a lot of the F1 cars are sometimes a pain in the ass to work on. Everything is designed around performance, and nothing is designed around ease of maintenance. There are probably a lot more sharp edges you can cut yourself on, nothing that’s easy to access like a dip stick or a washer fluid port. Plus, every time you’re working on one it’s with a big team in a high-stress environment. So, I would bet that sometimes an F1 mechanic would want to just slowly work on their own car at their own pace while listening to music or an audio book or something, rather than having the chief mechanic demanding updates etc.
So, in the end, I bet most F1 mechanics can fix most of the issues with their own cars or with relative’s cars, but mostly they don’t want to. They probably do fiddle around with their own cars sometimes when it’s fun. But, if it feels too much like work, or it’s frustrating, they’ll just take it to a “normie” mechanic so they can enjoy their time away from the track.
You’re baiting the mechanic.
If an old guy turns up with middle aged daughter they’ll assume she’s there to help and deal with the daughter. If somebody has gone to the lengths of bringing a friend to the MOT (it’s not somewhere you go for a date after all) it’s probably because they’re wanting help.
If she turned up by herself they would assume a more general knowledge of cars, which is still far below what she has but wouldn’t be dismissive.
Can you see how that might be fun, though?
Yes. It feels fun to make other people look stupid because you’ve misled them.
It’s not very nice though.
I think you’re assuming something that is not even implied in the text. There’s no misleading or presumption of feeling stupid.
Have you never made this kind of mistake? The cops don’t come out of the walls, you just get schooled for your snap judgement lol. You cop to it, blush, and try to be better. It’s funny.
Any former chief mechanic of a formula one racing team want to try this with me? Sounds fun. Must be female-presenting.
What is MOT’d
I’m guessing this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOT_test
Oh yep, in Australia we colloquially call it “the pits” as in “Gotta take the car to the pits” but I’d say the more universal term would be checking the vehicle’s roadworthiness, or taking it for a roadworthy.
We call it getting it “smogged” in Los Angeles as the concern is cutting emissions to reduce smog; though many of the requirements are naturally related to road worthiness too.
If it’s generally about emissions, remember to always go to a highway and drive the car in high revs (idk about automats but some of them at least have selectors or “at most first two/three gears”) for a few miles. Burns off a bit of excess that would show up when then inspector revs it.
Dad used to do it always and never got flagged for emissions. Other faults may have been there though.
Although this was on diesel idk how much it’d help on gasoline cars
Bunch of states have the same as MOT, called “inspection”.
There’s a Formula One racing team that had a woman for a chief mechanic? I don’t really follow F1, but I feel like I’d have heard about this.
Maybe he means Hannah Schmitz who has been Principal Strategy Engineer for Red Bull since 2021 (and was Senior Strategy Engineer for ten years before that).
If my friend told me the were senior strategy engineer I could well imagine remembering that as ‘chief engineer’ or ‘senior mechanic’. Also, she’s British, which would fit with MOT.
I got a chance to meet her at Zandvoort right before the 2022 GP (and the ensuing mess that happened if F1 fans remember). She is such a cool lady, and was very easy to talk to regarding the nitty gritty of F1 strat and behind-the-scenes stuff.
haha, that would be hilarious! If that is true and you could actually identify here by the mere fact that there is only one possible woman - that would be so amazing (and of course bleak, but also fun!)
Serious question: why do a lot of people lose their shit when someone uses the word “female” and sometimes it’s okay?
Adjective ✅
Noun ❌
Verb?
Let’s female this.
What are you, some kind of female lover?
Ever since that meme I’m stuck reading Female pronounced like Tamale and it’s the best thing ever
Seen this before, but I really hope they tried to upsell all sorts of crap. And then got educated on cars.
I don’t think you can really upsell anything at an MOT place, they just have to tell you what you need to fix and you do it on your own time. At least that’s how it is with TÜV in my country, which is the equivalent
