Audi's crew shakeup has helped in a more seamless performance on pit lane and under the awning. (Photo: Marshall Pruett) » More Photos

Audi’s Chemistry Experiment

The complex chemistry of a winning racing team is hard to find, and even harder to perfect. As they shared with me today, the ingredients in last year’s championship yeam needed refining and improving to better their odds of success against Penske Racing in 2008. A complete shakeup of staff and their roles—what car they worked on, who they reported to, and even what role they played was reviewed and altered in the name of performance, a team representative told me.

“It was a group idea. One of the things that precipitated it was every time we lost a crew person; we tried to make better an improvement in that role. We had to bring some new blood in; we lost a couple of guys during the year last year just to family issues or health matters or whatever and our long time colleague and number one mechanic for years retired out of the team and left his number one position open.

“So we had to find somebody to come in and do that. And what we decided to do was to take, kind of, the established relationships with some of the people and just change them up a little bit and put different people in different cars that they've worked with previously and to really try to make everybody look at it with a fresh approach.

“I've worked in quite a few teams and I don't know the race team that really... where you truly have... You always end up with cameraderies and competitions in between the teams and so forth. It's natural. You have 30 people on each car trying to be the best. There's only one who'll be able to make it. So we had a couple- I wouldn't say- problems, but we had some tension last year a couple times that had to be dealt with and so we decided that what we wanted to do was take a really fresh approach on it and just put people- regardless of relationships and so forth- in the positions that they suited best.

“And that would allow the new guys that were coming in to the team for the first time, the best opportunity to adapt to situations 'cause they would have to know or have the knowledge of a relationship between one guy and another and so forth. So we've just said, ‘Look, we're gonna shake it up, put the best people in the best positions, try to make the two most equal teams that we could possibly make,’ and I've got to say that I'm delighted with what happened because what happened then is that- just kind of the natural progression of things- there’s now a much higher level of cooperation in between the two cars.

“So that the air of cooperation amongst the whole team has gone up and there's really been genuine happiness reflected from both sides that they're satisfied with how it's going. They like their new positions and everybody's quite good and it's also allowed the new guys to really blend in there quickly because they didn't have to tiptoe around a bunch of established dogs or worry about people using an excess of authority or tenure to control things.”

Audi has seen their chemistry experiment pay off in better communication and a stronger sense of direction and duty for Audi. (Photo: Marshall Pruett) » More Photos

Although it might appear to the outside world that racing teams are filled with soldiers all pulling in the same direction, it’s not abnormal for crewmen of similar age, location, or interest to form closer bonds than they do with other team members. Breaking up those small groups was part of the chemistry change.

“We didn't have to break up big cliques or do anything like that; it was never that bad, but we needed to shake things up to get people out of their own small camps. You're all trying to be the best and we've had to make sure that we explained to the team that the decisions that the management are based on putting Audi the farthest up it can be, regardless of who or what or how many times or whatever. Whoever can get the farthest to the front is the car we're gonna support the most and if it's one car one week, another car the other, so be it. That's how it is and what I've also seen is a really high level of enthusiasm between both teams when we were fortunate enough to win a race at St. Pete and at Long Beach. The number 2 car was just as happy as the number 1 car. So it really worked out great for that. So from that point of view, it's been a good thing.”

While audi has become synonymous with advanced sportscars, it’s all the more interesting to learn that theur quest for success has been filtered down into optimizing the non-mechanical aspects of motor racing—how their team works together and altering the chemistry until is was just as impressive as their cars have been.