What Does a Race Engineer Do, Really?

It's Not the Car

When INTC’s tape day rolled around, Sam was sick. He landed a nasty bout of food poisoning and went wreck-it ralphing. So we postponed our planned show, and then Ross and Jeff hit the mic to improvise.

Their topic? The driver-engineer relationship!

Questions answered in this ep: Why do you need an engineer, anyway? What makes that relationship crucial in pro racing? Should you be embarrassed if you can’t feel a change someone made on your car? What should you do if you’re the only person on your team—both driver *and* engineer? And more!

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. We call this format “Ross and Jeff Steal the Show.” It’s a good format.

Related trivia: Sam will be back on the show next week. If you don’t like that, you are wrong! This means you, Tom from South Dakota—we know you’re listening!

This episode was produced by Mike Perlman.

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⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Smithology: Thoughts, Travels, and Semi-Plausible Car Writing, 2003–2023⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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ABOUT THE SHOW:

It’s Not the Car is a podcast about people and speed. We tell racing stories and leave out the boring parts.

Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver and a world-renowned performance coach and author. Jeff Braun is a champion race engineer. Sam Smith is an award-winning journalist and a former executive editor of Road & Track magazine. Together, we explore the emotion at the heart of the machine.

We don’t love racing for the nuts and bolts—we love it for what it asks of the bag of meat at the wheel.

New episodes every Tuesday.