Hannah Schmitz is Red Bull Racing’s chief strategist and plays a very important role in the battles that the team’s drivers fight on the tracks. To emphasize the importance of her contribution to the overall success, management sometimes sends Hanna to the podium for another trophy won by the team – this was the case in 2019 in Brazil, for example.
After Sergio Perez’s recent victory in the Monaco Grand Prix, Helmut Marko said: “Hannah, our chief strategist, deserves all the compliments. Calmly and confidently analyzing what was happening on the track, of course with the support of specialists based in Milton Keynes, she decided to stay on the track, although many had already pitted for slicks. Then Sergio did another lap very quickly on the intermediate tires, which ultimately became the deciding factor.
Schmitz is working with Will Courtney, Head of Strategy, a team of experienced race analysts. Hannah and Will take turns going to the Grand Prix, but then whoever stays at the Red Bull Racing base keeps an eye on events from the race control center in Milton Keynes on the weekend days. In Montreal, Schmitz is back on the team’s pit wall.
“I think this is a very interesting job! she thinks. “When you have to make a split-second decision, it keeps you sharp. Then you have about 20 seconds – it doesn’t seem like much, but over the course of the race it seems like an eternity – to wait and see if your decision has the desired effect.”
Hanna is a mechanical engineer by training, she studied at the University of Cambridge and in 2009 she got her first internship with Red Bull Racing. By the way, when she took the podium in Brazil in 2019, it was right after coming back from vacation to care for a newborn.
“It was a special moment, perhaps the best moment of my career,” admitted Schmitz. “I had just returned to work after the birth of my first child and it was important for me to prove that I could still perform my duties well. That experience was just fantastic.
I think many were once not ready to believe that I could do it, because a strategist has to instruct a large number of people what to do, and they have to obey you. It is not easy to gain such confidence – unfortunately it is even more difficult for a woman. But I hope that young women who want to work in Formula 1 will see that I can do it, so that they can too, and then there will be more diversity in the world of motorsport.
Source: F1 News
I’m Todderic Kirkman, a journalist and author for athletistic. I specialize in covering all news related to sports, ranging from basketball to football and everything in between. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, I have become an invaluable asset to my team. My ambition is to bring the most up-to-date information on sports topics around the world.
