Behind our trackside garage crew is a network of mechanics and technicians whose expertise keeps our F1 cars built to the same impeccable standards, however hectic the calendar. As we shine a light on Originals, together with our Official Lubricant Partner, Valvoline, Aston Martin Aramco Head of Build and Car Assembly Mark Gray takes us behind the scenes at the AMR Technology Campus to reveal the experience, precision and know-how required to turn the latest developments into a race-ready car.
How do we build an F1 car? The response is one of those annoying 'it depends' answers – because we don't always do it the same way. The standard approach is the one that surprises many fans: the team arrives at a circuit on Tuesday, armed with good intentions, a build plan, and a great many parts, but nothing resembling an actual Formula One car. Across Wednesday and into Thursday morning, the two crews of mechanics and technicians build their cars in situ, fit power units delivered to the track by Honda. The cars have a first fire-up on Thursday, ready for first practice on Friday. On the other hand, at some races, the cars will arrive more or less fully assembled. Perhaps not quite ready for fuel and tyres, but certainly a long way down that road.
In the latter case, the cars have been assembled by the Build Team back at the AMR Technology Campus. In the former, the build team will have put together all of the sub-assemblies that are shipped to the track, ready for the trackside team to do their thing. In either instance, our team of mechanics at the track work hand in glove with their counterparts back at Silverstone.
Sometimes, however, the mechanics of the Build Team are right there at the track. This is how we managed to have a catch-up in Budapest with Mark Gray, Head of Build and Car Assembly. Mark's a familiar face in the F1 paddock, for many years having been a mechanic for our team.
As is commonly the case, after decades on the race team, he moved into a factory role, bringing all of that trackside experience to bear in the race bays, while also training the next generation of mechanics and expanding our pool of veteran hands, should the trackside team need support.
The Hungarian Grand Prix saw the launch of our B-spec AMR26. Less of an upgrade, more the case of an entirely revised car. Unlike the (northern) winter months, when the trackside team will be at the AMR Technology Campus, learning everything they can about a new car, with a B-spec, or an upgrade, the trackside team is away racing while that is being put together.
In theory, the team could pull in the trackside mechanics and technicians between races to learn about the new car, but that’s generally kept to a minimum. The F1 season is long, starting this year with testing in January and scheduled to end in December. For the team to function at its best, the trackside crew need some time off between races. They need to be fresh and focused at the track – and thus, the Build Team took the lead with the B-spec car – including Mark arriving with it at the track.
"These are two brand-new cars," he says. "They've been built in the AMR Technology Campus, including the power units. That's quite rare, but Honda shipped two engines back from Spa (the previous race) with some of their technicians, and some of the race team also came back to the factory and joined my crew to build the cars up.
"Whenever we build the cars at the AMR Technology Campus, the idea is to have them ready to run. It's not quite possible for everything – some items, for instance, are sealed by the FIA, meaning we're limited in what we can do – but the idea is to do as much prep as we can in the comfort of our excellent facility, so that when the car comes out to the track, it's the least amount of work for the trackside team."
How did I get here?
Deceptively youthful for an F1 veteran, Mark’s path through the ranks follows a familiar pattern. "I'm a mechanic by trade, and started out with an apprenticeship as a road car mechanic – but I loved motor racing and F1 in particular. Because racing was what I wanted to do, I got involved with smaller teams: some GT racing, Formula 3, and then, in 2003, I got the chance in F1 with Jordan Grand Prix – which eventually morphed into our current team.
"Back then, it was usual for the youngsters to start in the test team and learn that way. It was the plan for me, but the day I started I was told I needed to go out to Barcelona to help the race team because someone had been taken ill. I did that race and never actually went testing, which is unusual!
"I started in the race team as a No. 2 Mechanic on the T-car (the Third, or spare, car), worked my way up, became No. 1 on the T-car, then moved across to a race car, as front-end mechanic, then rear-end mechanic, No. 1 mechanic and then, for many years, chief mechanic. After that, I ran the test team for a few years, until testing was banned, and went back to racing.
"It's been an enjoyable career, lot of travel, lot of commitment – but when the team decided it needed a stronger support network at the AMR Technology Campus, this opportunity came up, and I stepped back to take it."
It's that depth of experience that makes Mark an Original in every sense: a mechanic who has spent more than two decades learning the job hands-on, building knowledge that cant simply be passed down in a manual. Today, he's passing that knowledge on, helping train the next generation of mechanics and strengthening the support network behind the race team.
Part of the job for the build team is to be a support network for the race team, and not just in the build of the cars but also in training mechanics coming through the system.
Opportunities for the next generation
The F1 landscape for mechanics in 2026 is very different to where it was twenty years ago, with the traditional routes to learning on the job – via a test team and a T-car – now closed off. As cost-saving exercises, T-cars were banned at the end of 2007, and in-season testing was ramped down over the next few years and effectively banned also.
The Sporting Regulations recognise the need for apprentices and make provision for on-the-job training (16 opportunities a year for ‘trainee personnel’, with no individual allowed to attend more than three races), but the old ladder, through which mechanics would advance by moving off the race team into more responsible positions in the test team, is gone. There are limited opportunities for this with running showcars, but much of the onus for training now falls onto the Build Team back at base.
"We're set up in the AMR Technology Campus the same way the team is at the track,” says Mark. I’ve got a No. 1 mechanic, and we have No.2 mechanics working physically on the car, then the sub-departments all have lead technicians.
"Part of the job for the build team is to be a support network for the race team, and not just in the build of the cars but also in training mechanics coming through the system. We can train the next generation of mechanics and get them to the track to experience what goes on. At the Technology Campus, we can teach them about the car, but we can’t teach a race weekend. They have to be at the track, and they have to be embedded with the trackside team for that.
"It lets the trackside team develop confidence in the abilities of the young mechanics, but also allows us to gather feedback: where is this person at? What do we need to work on? We want to get them to the stage where they’re ready to go racing, with us and them confident in their abilities.
"After doing the build at the Technology Campus, they’ll sometimes follow the car out to the track – we have three members of the build team here at the Hungaroring. They know the car, but they’re now learning about the race weekend format, and how to work with the team in the garage. When an opening on the race team appears, we’ll have the right person to slot into it."
Support
Inevitably, this leads to a little blurring of the boundaries between the trackside team and the team at the AMR Technology Campus – which is exactly what the team wants to happen – but both sides of the operation still have specific responsibilities carved out.
Of course, bringing the B-spec car adds an extra layer of complexity to the job, but for the Build Team, every race is busy. Preparation for a race begins when the previous race is in progress, with parts typically starting to flow back to the AMR Technology Campus on Friday evening, after FP2. When they arrive at the Technology Campus, which may be after the event, the build crew distribute them to the various departments, with parts often taking a route through multiple specialties. That might be anything from ultrasound examinations in the Quality Control department to a run through the paint shop for body parts.
The key to doing it well, says Mark, is good communication. "We need to make sure that we understand why that part is coming back, so we need to work closely with the race team. The worst case is that we all miss something and it sits on a truck and heads to the next race – or worse departs as airfreight – so there's a constant dialogue between the track and AMR Technology Campus.
"Pre-race, we'll do the allocation work, and tell the race team which parts need to be used on which car. That can be a little non-specific – we might send five identical parts and it doesn't matter which one is used – but we need to record it.
"Post-race, when all of those parts come back to the AMR Technology Campus, we'll service, repair and turn them around, either to go straight back out, or into a rotation. Obviously in the cost-cap world, we don't retain vast stores, so often we'll have a couple of days – or perhaps only 24 hours – to turn these parts around, which can be something of a challenge!"
Doubles and triples
The number of races has trended upwards in recent decades, from a calendar of perhaps 16 races at the start of the century, to 24 races now. Back-to-Back races have become standard, and now every season also includes a few triple-headers. Philosophically, the last generation of F1 cars was built with double-headers in mind, with many parts (albeit with plenty of exceptions) designed for a two-race cycle between inspection or maintenance intervals. That's shifting now, with parts being designed for a longer life – but the triple-headers, and fewer opportunities to get back to base, still present challenges.
"We'll do the triples as best we can. It's not always the same, because sometimes the specification of car changes so much between tracks that it's not really the same car anyway – but often on triples, and even for doubles, some of my crew will fly out to do some of the build trackside. Probably not the first race, because the parts will be fresh, but certainly the second or third, when the race team are pretty tired.
"My crew will arrive before the trackside team, normally on a Monday or Tuesday, and work with the race mechanics on Tuesday and Wednesday as an extra pair of hands, or do jobs on parts that we either couldn’t bring back to the AMR Technology Campus, or didn’t want to – because shipping parts back here is expensive and requires extensive documentation and in many instances, it’s cheaper or easier to send people to the parts."
Both updated AMR26 cars completed the full race distance in Hungary, finishing 13th and 14th. The bare result perhaps didn't excite much comment from the outside world, although it underlined an encouraging step forward in terms of performance and that the team is on the right development path.
Internally, getting both cars home is always seen as a positive by the people responsible for building the cars, especially as it allowed the team to really assess the new components over a Grand Prix distance. But in F1, there's never much time to enjoy the moment: for everyone involved, the post-race procedures kick into gear immediately: the trackside team begin stripping and cataloguing the cars, and the Build Team back at the AMR Technology Campus begin preparations to go again.
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