Exclusive – Pagenaud and Pourchaire discuss their strategic roles at Cadillac and Mercedes

You are development pilots for Mercedes Benz and Cadillac. Can you explain what that involves?

Theo Pourchaire : My role is to optimize the car's setup as much as possible during race weekends. We call that the race support. In practice, it takes place from Thursday to Friday. First, we watch the sessions, listen to the drivers' debriefs to understand what they'd like to change on the car. Then, we talk with the engineers, and I spend at least six to eight hours in the simulator after Free Practice 2. We test a lot of things and pass all this information on to the team on the track. To give a concrete example, I'll soon be doing the Miami Grand Prix in the simulator.