Formula 1 seasons are becoming longer and more intense. The 11 teams visit five continents and must adapt to at least 16 time zones, making travel and fatigue additional performance variables.
The drivers have their own dedicated physiotherapists and regimens to help them cope with the demands, but each of the 600+ employees who bring the team to life every race weekend must work through long hours.
While many of them maintain general fitness and prepare physically for race weekends, they still have to perform at the same level as elite athletes.
This is why the TGR Haas F1 team turned to the experts at the University of Chicago to produce a first-of-its-kind study into the physical and cognitive demands placed on personnel across a full season.
Sponsoring an F1 team might seem odd for an educational institution, having done so since 2024, but it intersects perfectly with the values that F1 embodies and those of the world’s leading academic medical institutions.
“It seems kind of out there,” Andrew Chang, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at UChicago Medicine, tells Sector.
“But after thinking about it, what better platform is there than the world’s largest, most innovative and data-driven sport?
“We’re not putting a logo on the car and counting impressions. It’s really more about actually making a difference to an F1 team and being able to scientifically prove that we did.”
This is where the idea for the study was born, following discussions with Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu about improving the team’s operational performance during the challenging season.
“When we told Ayao about the idea and the potential for a partnership, he personally committed the team to participate in whatever we can do to understand human performance and behaviour,” said Chang.
“Likewise, we also want to see if we could tap into their brains and learn about how a very well-oiled, tightly knit F1 team operates, and what we could learn from that.”
Examining the human engine
The study, known as ‘The Human Engine’, will encompass staff from all functions within the travelling team at Haas, including mechanics, engineers, marketing, communications, IT, and hospitality personnel.
Data from the study is analysed by the team at UChicago Medicine, comprising four researchers and a research coordinator.
The Principal Investigator for the study is the University of Chicago Dean for Medical Education, Dr Vineet Arora, who notes significant crossover between F1 and the medical world, with individuals performing highly specialised work under extraordinary circumstances.
“These are both industries that depend on high-performance teams and on safety and reliability to get it right each time,” says Dr Arora.
“F1 has really evolved to have a lot of role clarity, where one person is backed up by another. Similarly, in healthcare, we have a person present at all times to fill a role, and also very specific roles and backup systems for when people get sick.”
One of the main focuses of the study will be sleep deprivation. Dr Arora specialises in this type of circadian science, which has recently become a performance factor teams can no longer ignore as time zones change weekly.
Although F1 has curfews on when teams are allowed to work on cars overnight (with four ‘jokers’ allowed per season), factors such as stressful days, working against your body clock, or simply being homesick all play a role in day-to-day performance.
The UChicago Medicine research team is gathering information on each individual’s chronotype and how they manage stress and burnout using wearable bands and rings.
This is backed up by real-time surveys during race weekends, which provide a much more accurate picture and context for the information that is limited to just data in wearable apps.
“That allows us to get really high-grade continuous data on people’s activities and their sleep and their stress levels,” says Dr Arora.
“Everyone’s had the experience of being in bed for seven or eight hours, then if you look at their ring or band data, it might show that they actually got some sleep, but they feel poorly. This is where there is a very important difference between objective – what the data shows – and how you feel.”
Recovery is also a big factor being examined. This year, F1 will have five double headers and two triple headers during the season, meaning there will be little time to rest in between races.
“We’re interested in how a triple header affects not just people in the moment, but also their recovery,” says Dr Arora.
“Whenever you have a sequence of high-energy things happening, you’ve got to perform at your peak multiple times, and you don’t have as much time to recover. So we’ll be looking into that.”
Beyond the pit lane
This data is collected on a rolling basis each month throughout the season, with on-site visits recently conducted at the Miami Grand Prix.
This is also where there is a crossover, because the University will use this data and compare it with validated real-world samples from the medical world to understand the impact different stress points have on performance.
For Haas, this data will be used to shape a healthier, sharper race team. But for UChicago Medicine, the implications extend beyond the pit lane.
“There’s just so much of this that could be applicable to any industry, not just sports – even our own doctors and residents who work very long shifts in a very high-stress and high-intensity environment,” said Chang.
“This is just a more unique way to figure out how much time zone shifting affects sleep? And how do we really figure out how that affects our overall wellness, and what are the correlations or causations? So I think it goes well beyond sport.”
As F1 continues to expand its global footprint, the physical limits of its workforce will inevitably be tested.
Haas and UChicago Medicine are proving that the most critical component in F1 isn’t made of carbon fibre – it’s human.
When the final data is delivered at the end of the season, it may well provide the blueprint for the future of high-performance teamwork, both on the track and in the clinic.
