The life of an F1 reserve driver: Sim time, data crunching — and Candy Crush

Between the Racing Lines 🏁| Formula One is complicated, confusing and constantly evolving. This story is part of our guide to help any fan — regardless of how long they’ve watched the sport or how they discovered it — navigate the pinnacle of motorsports.

Every team sport has backups for the starting lineup, and Formula One is no different.

The series is often described as the pinnacle of motorsport, but these 20 drivers aren’t invincible. Illnesses and injuries do sideline them, opening the door for prospective drivers to show why they’re part of the F1 world. Nyck de Vries’ debut for Williams at the 2022 Italian Grand Prix after Alex Albon was hospitalized for appendicitis later landed him a full-time seat. Most recently, Liam Lawson nailed his outings with AlphaTauri (now RB) when Daniel Ricciardo injured his hand and underwent surgery last year.

But these reserve drivers are more than simple substitutes. While in the F1 wings, they also spend hours (we’re talking endurance race-level hours, sometimes) on the simulator and have unrestricted testing time as long as they’re in old machinery. And then there’s the ‘young drivers rule,’ which went into effect in 2022, ensuring they get some on-track time during practice sessions.

It’s all in the hope of proving they can handle and excel in the upper echelon of motorsports.

An awkward waiting game

“You drink a lot of cappuccinos, and you play a lot of Candy Crush on your phone, I’m going to be honest with you,” Alexander Rossi, a former F1 driver turned Arrow McLaren IndyCar driver, said.

The American dreamed of one day competing in F1 and moved to Europe as a teenager. He joined Caterham F1 in 2012 as a test driver and occasionally ran practice sessions, but they parted ways in mid-2014 after new investors took over the team. Rossi then joined Marussia F1 as a reserve driver that same year and finally made his F1 debut the following season for five of the final seven races of 2015.

“You drink a lot of cappuccinos, and you play a lot of Candy Crush on your phone,” Alexander Rossi said of the F1 reserve driver life. He’s now racing in IndyCar. (Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

“It’s a necessary role because it’s your first foot in the door of a Formula One team as a junior driver. It is an important role because guys do get sick, guys do get hurt. There’s a lot of things that can happen in life, right?” Rossi said. “It’s not often that the reserve driver comes into play, but ultimately, you go into the weekend preparing and participating as if you’re going to race the car.”

Nearly everything the full-time F1 driver does, the reserve driver does as well. Rossi said. “You go to all of the same briefings, you go to all the same meetings, you do the track walks, you train with the same physio, you eat the same food, you’re on the same schedule. You just don’t get to drive. So while the guys were doing the cool things and driving, you’re sitting either in hospitality or on the pit stand, drinking your cappuccinos, playing Candy Crush.”

To get a shot at competing in a grand prix, something bad, like an injury or illness, usually has to happen to the full-time driver. Haas’ reserve driver, Pietro Fittipaldi, said, “It’s for sure, strange. You never want to wish anything bad on anybody, and then when something does happen, it’s like, you’re happy that there’s the opportunity, but at the end, you’re friends with the race driver.” He made his F1 debut in 2020 after Romain Grosjean sustained injuries from his fiery wreck in Bahrain.

After qualifying, a reserve driver’s job for the weekend is essentially done. It’s the driver that qualifies in F1, so if they can’t compete in the GP, nobody can replace them. (IndyCar allows for such substitutions, as it’s the car that qualifies.) Pato O’Ward, one of McLaren’s IndyCar drivers and a reserve driver for the Woking-based team, said he jokes with his friends that he’s an F1 “benchwarmer.”

“You get to jump into a Formula One car from time to time, which is never a bad thing,” O’Ward said. “And the rest of it is, it’s probably the worst part of the job, I’d say. I know, I shouldn’t be saying this, but it’s a lot of sitting down and just listening to experiences that, well, you truly aren’t experiencing. You’re just hearing what someone else is kind of feeling.”

Debriefing and practicing

Once an on-track session finishes, drivers and engineers sit down to comb over the data and discuss the car’s setup and strategy, identifying ways to improve performance. Reserve drivers can also sit in on the meetings, but O’Ward said it’s mainly staying silent and listening, “which I personally hate.”

He wants to be in the car, experiencing the drive. Reserve drivers can ask questions, but O’Ward prefers listening to the full-time drivers because “I feel like when I’m not the one in the car, I learn from what they’re saying.” He added, “It’s very simple things. I feel like a lot of people make it so much more complicated than what it actually is. But it’s like, Yes, I get it’s Formula One, but it’s just another race car. And it’s just another car that you need to wrap your head around.”

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Each team’s reserve driver role looks different, and experience can open up opportunities to add responsibilities. Fittipaldi joined Haas in 2018, became the official reserve driver the following year, and now plays a more active role in the analysis and driver feedback. During qualifying last season, he watched Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hülkenberg’s onboards with an engineer. They’d pass feedback to Magnussen’s race engineer, like if he was braking too early in a corner.

“I was helping that process of giving driver feedback live throughout the session so that they can improve, and that as well, I gained a lot of experience in analyzing data and driver onboards, which is very beneficial for when I’m racing as well because I kind of became like an engineer on that standpoint,” Fittipaldi said.

He realized his perspective as a fellow competitor had value and that he could translate data to the full-time driver. Fittipaldi approached then-team principal Guenther Steiner and then-technical director Ayao Komatsu to ask about expanding his role, to “maximize what I do in the race weekend” after his first full season as a reserve driver. Analyzing the data also helped prepare him for practice sessions.

“I analyze first from the data where each driver was faster, and I write notes and make sure that I know how to maximize each corner,” Fittipaldi said. “And then I analyze a lot of the onboards and stuff to pick up references from the track, so that I know exactly where the brake references, the apex point is, and you do that homework.

“That helps me a lot to just basically get in and fast-forward the process of getting up to speed with the car.”

Simulator versus live racing

F1 team simulators really are top-of-the-line, providing drivers a mostly accurate virtual run – with the same F1 cockpit, wheel and pedals as the real car. “The simulator is very good because graphically, it’s very realistic,” Fittipaldi said. “The references in terms of using the signage boards and apex points to give you references is very, very close, if not identical, to real life.”

But some in-person racing aspects can’t be replicated virtually, such as the feeling of accelerating and G-forces. Fittipaldi added: “On the simulator, you go into a fast corner, you turn in, and the simulator moves a little bit, but that’s all you feel. And then in real life, you go in there, and your head is going completely the opposite way of where you’re turning.”

Simulator work is one component of a reserve driver’s role, and it looks different for each individual and season. Fittipaldi said the 2019 season was the most laps Haas recorded on a simulator, and he estimated that he had 80 simulator days, which lasted from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. with two to three breaks. “Each of those days, you do from 100 to 150 laps.” That’s easily around 12,000 laps, and for reference, an F1 season is over 1,000 laps when counting grands prix and sprint races.

Sometimes, the reserves compete in other motorsports series, limiting how much time they can spend on the simulator. But when schedules allow or if they opt to focus on being a reserve driver rather than racing elsewhere on top of the role, they spend extensive time on the simulator on Fridays of race weekends.

“On a race support on a Friday session, if we’re talking about we’re in the factory in the UK and the race teams in Australia, we could be on the sim from anywhere from starting at around 2:30 a.m. to finishing around 6:30 p.m. That’s a good 16-hour day on the sim,” said Jack Doohan, Alpine’s reserve driver. He finished third in Formula Two last season and won’t compete in other series this year.

As a Haas reserve driver, Pietro Fittipaldi plays an active role in analysis and drives the occasional practice session. (GIUSEPPE CACACE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

The simulator provides a way for teams to test different ideas that trackside teams may not have the capability or time to do, Doohan said. “We’re able to sort of shortcut a few of those paths, put a line through or tick off any potential options, which really help the engineers on track define what their plan will be before the second free practice session, or what they’re going to target for the third.”

The reserve drivers also get an opportunity to drive F1 cars in real life. The testing of previous cars (TPC) protocols don’t restrict how many hours or laps drivers do in previous-year cars, and this year, they’ll be able to test the 2022 vehicle — the first of the current generation after the regulation overhaul. Doohan has been testing the 2021 car since 2022, and after a session in Barcelona under his belt where he essentially did “a mini race weekend,” he can feel the “small differences.”

But it’s the closest thing to the real car on the track today. During his Barcelona test, Doohan did a 66-lap, double-stop race with three different tire compounds, and he’s got nine more test sessions scheduled at various tracks, including two days at Zandvoort and one day at Qatar.

“Really just trying to make sure that if I need to jump in the car, and when I do, then I’m more ready than ever,” Doohan said. “And then I can make sure that we do the best and, especially for when I do become a full-time driver very soon, that I’ll be making the most of it.”

The 2025 driver market should be hectic, with numerous F1 contracts expiring by season’s end. But there are plenty of talented reserve drivers waiting in the wings, like Lawson over in the Red Bull family, Aston Martin reserve driver Felipe Drugovich (who won the 2022 F2 title) and Sauber’s Théo Pourchaire (who won the 2023 F2 championship).

Being a reserve driver looks different across different camps, with various duties, and it also depends on experience levels. But the bottom line for all is the same.

“I’m here to shadow the drivers,” Doohan said, “and be ready to hop in the car at any given moment, which is what I feel I’m ready to do.”

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(Lead image: Joe Portlock – Formula 1/Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images; Design: Eamonn Dalton/The Athletic)