Bulls’ Guide To: The Pitwall
01
Introduction
So, who gets the “best seats in the house” - as Team Principal Laurent Mekies once called them.
This varies from team to team and takes into account that, while the personnel on the pit wall have senior roles, the decision-making process in modern F1 does involve many more inputs than in the past. That means that depending on the team, race engineers could be in the garage rather than the pit wall, sticking close to performance engineers and data analysts.
Elsewhere, the Team Principal might relinquish their seat to allow the race engineers to have a more complete overview. In the end, pit wall roles do not directly reflect hierarchy but are defined by the optimisation of workflow. And that’s how ours works.
In general, our pit wall on race day will feature:
Even though everyone on the pit wall is sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, they’re still communicating via the intercom– an F1 circuit is simply too loud and busy a place to get by with shouting alone – but sometimes a tap on the shoulder or pointing to a particular piece of data on a monitor can be useful.
Rich Wolverson’s position is nearest the pit entry and that gives him a clear view of the car arriving in the pit lane and allows him to prime the pit crew– either for a pit stop or to pull it back into the garage during Free Practice or Qualifying. At the other end of the wall are the Race Engineers, GP for Max and Richard for Isack. GP also has an overall responsibility for Race Engineering functions, so he sits next to Head of Strategy Hannah, who, in turn, is next of Stephen Knowles who liaises with the FIA on all matters during the race. To his left are Team Principal Laurent Mekies and our Technical Director Pierre Waché.
02
Rich Wolverson – Head of Race Team Operations
Richard Wolverson
© Vladimir Rys
03
Pierre Waché – Chief Technical Officer
4 min
Get To Know: Pierre Waché
04
Laurent Mekies – Team Principal
3 min
Get To Know: Laurent Mekies
05
Stephen Knowles – Lead Engineer - Strategy
3 min
Get To Know: Stephen Knowles
06
Hannah Schmitz – Head of Strategy
4 min
Who is Hannah Schmitz? | Get To Know Our Team
07
Gianpiero Lambiase – Head of Racing
Gianpiero Lambiase in Bahrain Testing 2026
© Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool
08
Richard Wood – Race Engineer
3 min