Hanna, the woman behind Verstappen’s successes

You can’t afford too many mistakes. Of course it’s very difficult to always be on the right side, but I think we have very good boys and girls in the team. Now, our strategist, Hannah, is incredibly calm. It’s so beautiful”. are words of Max Verstappenjust after achieving success months ago in Hungary. The likes of which I can repeat two weeks ago after achieving his 14th on-course victory at the F1 Mexican GP. The Dutchman, a pure careerist, offered that praise to Red Bull’s chief strategy engineer in Budapest. he meant hannah schmitz. He knows that his decision has given him success, as it happened recently in Mexico.

Max’s victory at Hermanos Rodríguez was demonstrated by choosing the right strategy. Going out on the soft rubber and stopping to finish on the medium tire worked in his favour. Another task to add to Schmitz’s list.

Verstappen achieved his second title for many reasons that add to a winning team: for its quality, for the better development of the Red Bull car in the second part of the season, for better care of tires with this car, for the quick reaction from the factory to the first engine failures and for his best pit stop. And another important element is strategy.

In this last section, the Englishwoman became the main, the visible face with the director of race strategy, Will Courtenay, of a whole group working remotely from A NASA-style operating room the energy drink cadre has at its headquarters in Milton Keynes.

Important decisions in a second

“I think it’s incredibly exciting. You sit on the edge of your seat when you make a split second decision. So maybe you’re waiting 20 seconds to see if your decision paid off, and that in a race can seem like a lifetime.” explained the British themselves. That emotion was what Schmitz wanted to feel when he asked for change in the department. After taking a Master in Mechanical Engineering at the University of CambridgeArrived at Red Bull Racing as a trainee in 2009 and there it remained. He started in the aerodynamics group, but wanted to be closer to racing and asked for a change. Went to strategy and there it must have exploded.

To stardom in Brazil 2019

It rose for the first time before the eyes of the world in Brazil 2019. Only 20 laps to go. Bottas gave up and the ‘Safety Car’ came out onto the track. Verstappen was in the lead, so perhaps many thought it would be better not to enter the pits to avoid losing first place at the restart as the race was nearing the end. But Hannah did her math and bet big. He knows that whatever his decision is, Mercedes will do the opposite of Hamilton. He decided to make his driver lose first place on the restart by asking Max to come in and put on a new tire. And Max, with the better rubber, did the rest with his hands full on the outside of Hamilton at the start, with 11 laps to go. So Horner decided to have Hannah walk up to the podium to collect the trophy awarded to the team.

“She made the right decision in strategy and I felt it was right to reward her with the trophy and to be on the podium. I think the fact that she is an important member of our team is a great encouragement for working mothers”taught Christian Hornerand achieved that success after returning from her maternity leave after the birth of her first child.

The end of 2021 and enter more appointments of 2022

In 2021, history will repeat itself. The engineer is one of the main architects who are in the crowd Abu Dhabi World Cup Final, Verstappen will enter the pits and put on new tires. Hamilton didn’t and Max managed to pass Lewis on superb tires on the last lap to give the Dutchman his first title.

And in 2022, his decisions became key again. Not only in the previous Mexican GP. Naa Monaco, when he delivered a winning strategy to Pérez. But undoubtedly, another of his masterpieces is the Hungary 2022. The Ferrari seemed to be the favourite, but ended up sinking before the sanity of Hannah, who was able to risk more on Max’s approach as the Dutchman started 10th. With his team, after intense debate, he decided Verstappen went out with the softs and the pilot won.

“As it turned out, Sunday was colder than Friday and it also rained. On the way to the grid, drivers were already complaining about the lack of grip”, he said after the race. “The engineers said it’s not a good idea to start hard. We discussed it for a long time and in the end we decided to switch to soft. That was a successful choice of strategists as Verstappen and Perez quickly found their way forward.”. It looks easy, a look shared by Verstappen after seeing her act under pressure at the team wall: “She was incredibly calm.”

An example

More and more women are in the paddock with positions of responsibility in a world traditionally dominated by men, and examples like Hannah’s are important for this trend to continue to rise and for the next to come not who has to prove more than a male Build. confident in your position. “I think there are many people who at the beginning may not have confidence in you to do this job,” said the engineer on the Red Bull website a few months ago. “As a strategist, you have to tell a lot of people what to do and they have to listen to you, so you have to build that trust and I think as a woman, unfortunately that was the hardest. But Now I have respect and I hope that other young women who want to get into the sport will see that they can do it, that they can embrace it and we’ll see more diversity.”. They see in Hannah a mirror in which to see themselves