Rob Smedley tells “pussyfooting” F1 race engineers to “grow a pair”

Rob Smedley believes F1 race engineers spend too much time “pussyfooting around” to try and keep their drivers happy.

Smedley is best known for being Felipe Massa’s long-time race engineer at Ferrari. The pair had several iconic radio exchanges, with Smedley typically frank and amusing in his delivery with his distinguishable and strong Teesside accent.

The 51-year-old memorably told Massa during the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix: “Felipe, baby, stay cool”.

Smedley also delivered Ferrari’s famous coded team orders instruction to Massa during the 2010 German Grand Prix, telling the Brazilian: "Fernando [Alonso, teammate] is faster than you. Can you confirm you understood that message.”

And Smedley feels race engineers have become too careful with their words when delivering messages to their drivers.

“In general, I think in Formula 1 now, there’s too much pussyfooting around,” Smedley told The Red Flags podcast.

“Like, the way the radio messages go to the driver – I don’t watch every single race, but the races I watch, I’m like, fucking grow a pair, man. Just tell him what you need to tell him, right?

“You give any narcissistic sociopath an inch and they’ll take a yard, right, so don’t give him that inch to start with. Don’t give him this fact that I’ve got some kind of inferiority complex here and I’m going to tell you something and maybe you’ll do it… No, mate, we’re at work, right? I’m going to tell you something, you do it.

“When my boss tells me something, I do it. That’s the way the world works. And if we don’t do that, right, as long as we’re not working for narcissists and sociopaths and they’re telling us to do the wrong things, if we don’t do that in a high-pressure environment like this, the whole thing’s going to get spun out. It’s going to get spun off his axis.

“So let’s just kind of get down these ground rules for how we all engage. The rules of engagement, how we talk to each other.

“There’s a lot of this stuff like: should I make a decision? Should I ask this driver to move over or that driver to move him? Will his feelings be hurt?

“Look, you’re only ever going to get one driver at the end of the race who’s happy, right? You can’t please all of the people all of the time. So just fucking grow a pair and get on and make the decisions that you need to make.

“I think that’s true in Formula 1 and it’s true in life. You’re kind of like walking on eggshells and you daren’t make a decision, you just end up in the worst possible place.”