Pierre Waché

Pierre has been a member of our senior technical group since joining Red Bull Racing in 2013. He holds a PhD in Fluid Mechanics after studying at the Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine in Nancy and Georgia Tech, Atlanta. His academics speciality was bio-mechanical engineering, studying the interaction between cells in the bloodstream. He liked motorsports, "but my passion was more the technical aspects of science and engineering."

Michelin recruited Pierre in 2001 to study interaction between track surfaces and the rubber of their Formula One tyres. His interest was strictly at the molecular level but eventually he moved away from the microscope and took on more responsibility, becoming a project leader at Michelin, responsible for adherence and simulation for F1.

When the French tyre supplier pulled out of F1, Pierre moved to BMW-Sauber as a vehicle performance engineer, again working predominantly with tyres and suspension. He became head of the Swiss team's vehicle performance group, and then, in 2012, a member of Sauber's technical committee, responsible for race engineering and vehicle performance.

The Saubers of this era were famously competitive, thanks in large part to an ability to be gentle on tyres and run highly effective extreme strategies – and we gained some of that knowhow when Red Bull Racing recruited Pierre at the beginning of 2013. Originally our Chief Engineer – Performance Engineering, and also responsible for the vehicle dynamics department, he took on the mantle of technical director at the beginning of 2018.

Despite his route into F1 being less than linear, his decade and a half at the cutting edge of F1 has seen Pierre unquestionably bitten by the bug. "Why do I enjoy F1? Because it's the only place in the world where you have a real engineering competition – and for an engineer, this is wonderful. In a normal industry, the competition is on the business side. You try to sell more, make a better product of course, but you never compare the products like-for-like. Here you have the rules and you try to make the best product out of it. The only limitation is... yourself.

"The technical limitation is the brain – and for me, this is what makes me want to come to work every morning. You don't have to be a driver, or on the pitwall, or working on a pitstop, even back at the factory you are a competitor – and when you have a victory it's... fantastic."