“It happens from the second the lights go off” - Vowles on the post-race debrief

The post-race debrief is a critical process for any Formula 1 team — and Williams Racing are no different. A deep-dive into the data gleaned from our visit to Hungary will be well under way, as preparations continue for Spa this weekend. But what exactly does the debrief involve? Team Principal James Vowles provided some insight into that question during the latest episode of The Vowles Verdict, presented by Kraken. James began be touching on how Williams use data during the race itself, saying: “During the race life we've got between 30,000-50,000 channels of data that we're able to see and process and look at — and we do. “We don't look at all 30,000-50,000 of them, but we do look at a subset of them, mainly around what the cars are doing, what the drivers are doing and what the tyres are doing. “Obviously it’s not one individual looking at that. Each one will be looking at their own specific area, and it allows us to make corrections live in the race. “If we start seeing elements of driving style that will help us on the tyre, that's fed back. If we can see elements of racing line gear usage, curve usage, we'll feed that back as well — live, fundamentally. “So that data has a real live performance application. But further to it, what it has is an application of how we understand how to improve going forward. Not just for the next race, but for all of the subsequent races of the year.”

That number-crunching is a continuous process, as James explains: "It happens from the second the lights go off. That's where we start looking at the data, and that's where we start the learning. “Even by the post-race debrief, we've already had an opportunity to consume quite an amount of that data and understand what we can feed back on already. “Then, really over the course of the next few hours, we're analysing that data — both in Grove and at the track — and that continues through Monday and Tuesday as well, because there's a tremendous amount of wealth and information in there, and you don't want to leave any stone unturned. “In terms of the debrief, it will start with the engineers providing feedback from their side — where we were in balance, what we did on changes, what were the global problems on their side of the garage, which can either be performance or reliability or a combination of both. “The driver will then effectively provide a debrief from their side, about what was good, what was bad, where we need to improve, what we need to be looking at and how we could have helped them more. “It's not focused on the instantaneous ‘you did this wrong’ because that's not the culture we embody within Williams. “But, more importantly, those items will be picked up in a huge number of forums afterwards. This is about ‘how do we go quicker?’ — and that, fundamentally, is quite a deep question. “It's one that allows you to understand the depths of car setup, car development and tyre usage, and that has an application across the season." The team’s analysis isn’t limited to the immediate aftermath of any given race weekend, however, with additional discussions over the following days. “There are further forums that take place,” James continued. “One is typically on a Monday after the race, one typically on a Wednesday-Thursday — depending on if we have a back-to-back or a triple-header race — where we then go through a complete summary of each of the individual areas, be that strategy, be that reliability engineering, be that performance engineering.  “[It’s a case of] here is what we've learnt, and here is how we're going to take this learning forward. “And it's an open forum where you display all of the issues to everyone, so we can learn together.” To discover more about what was discussed on the latest episode of The Vowles Verdict, tune in below, or catch up with our previous editions from throughout the season.