Williams spoke about the team’s racing engineers

During the Grand Prix, fans can hear radio conversations between Williams drivers and their racing engineers, and the British team decided to talk about these specialists in more depth.

Alex Albon teams up with James Irwin and Franco Colapinto teams up with Gaetan Jegault. It is the engineer who plays a key role in the communication between the driver and the team; he is a kind of intermediary in this communication.

In the Williams garage, the racing engineers have a special place, which the team calls the ‘Engineer Island’, from where they pass messages to their drivers, listen carefully to their reactions and based on their comments the team’s technical team ensures make sure decisions.

The race engineer’s job is not only to help his driver get the most out of the car, but also to set up the driver to achieve the best possible results. Usually messages are sent to riders on straight stretches, when they have more opportunities to react quickly, change the position of the necessary switches, without being distracted from the process of braking or cornering.

After the session, the driver and his engineer analyze the collected information and look for opportunities for improvement. And at the team base, each in their own role, they work together on the simulator and continue the process of optimizing and fine-tuning the machine together with other technical specialists.

James Irwin has been working with Alex Albon since he became a Williams driver. their collaboration began ahead of the 2022 season.

Before Formula 1, James worked in the GP2 youth series and in 2014 he moved to Williams. In 2017 he was Lance Stroll’s race engineer and subsequently worked mainly with George Russell.

Frenchman Gaetan Jégot joined Williams Racing in 2019 from ART Grand Prix and has extensive experience in multiple racing series. He very effectively helps Franco Colapin to master the intricacies of Formula 1, because the young Argentinian is just starting his career in the World Championship and has only completed a few six races. But he earned points in two of them – in Baku and Austin.

Previously working in the same capacity with Nicholas Latifi and Logan Sargent, Gaetan got his first experience of working with Colapinto when he held his first practice session behind the wheel of a Williams car at Silverstone last July.

However, the most observant fans may have noticed that during the Mexico City Grand Prix, another engineer’s voice was heard on the radio: Ed Regan was working with Franco that weekend. With the 2024 season having a record duration, the team decided to change the coaching staff, so Ed worked with the Argentinian in Mexico City and with Albon in Brazil.