I’m guessing this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOT_test

Message Of The’Day

Nah, it’s a vehicle safety inspection all cars over a certain age must go through in the UK before they’re legally allowed to be on the road.

I don't think you can really upsell anything at an MOT place, they just have to tell you what you need to fix and you do it on your own time. At least that's how it is with TÜV in my country, which is the equivalent

I recently swapped out the starter solenoid on an old Ford truck (and it eventually worked)! And I feel I'd probably rock a dress if I tried. We can give it a shot, but no promises it goes like you imagine.

You mean people would make things up on the internet for clout?! Clutch my pearls!

1. I 100% agree
2. yes, F1 cars are vastly different, but the fundamental principals stay the same. Also, someone who works in car racing has likely a high interest in cars and knows a lot about them, even when it's not directly relevant to the job. Similar to how a software developer likely knows how to set up a printer (or at least more likely than the average Joe) even though it's absolutely not their job.

Yeah, I brought up #1 last time this was posted.

As for #2, mechanics who get into F1 teams get in because they're elite mechanics. And, you don't become an elite mechanic without getting your hands dirty on a normal consumer-grade ICE car. Now, it's true that modern consumer-grade cars have lots of electronic systems that require special diagnostic tools. But it would be ridiculous to suggest that an F1 mechanic couldn't handle most of the standard maintenance tasks.

Now, what I could imagine is that an F1 mechanic might not want to spend their free time working on his own, or a relative's car. Part of that is not wanting to do in your free time what you do for work. Part of it is doing work for free. But, I imagine a big part of it is the pain of working on a badly put together piece of crap. A F1 car is a work of art. The engines only last about 8 races, which is less than 24 hours of running. An F1 engine isn't going to have any real buildup of gunk. Any loose parts will have been loosened from 2 hours of hard racing, not 5 years of sloppy maintenance. There will be massive amounts of documentation on every part in an F1 car, with engineers on call if you ever have questions. Working on a relative's car is probably like working on an old POS computer with an outdated OS with all kinds of pop-ups, etc.

OTOH, I imagine a lot of the F1 cars are sometimes a pain in the ass to work on. Everything is designed around performance, and nothing is designed around ease of maintenance. There are probably a lot more sharp edges you can cut yourself on, nothing that's easy to access like a dip stick or a washer fluid port. Plus, every time you're working on one it's with a big team in a high-stress environment. So, I would bet that sometimes an F1 mechanic would want to just slowly work on their own car at their own pace while listening to music or an audio book or something, rather than having the chief mechanic demanding updates etc.

So, in the end, I bet most F1 mechanics can fix most of the issues with their own cars or with relative's cars, but mostly they don't want to. They probably do fiddle around with their own cars sometimes when it's fun. But, if it feels too much like work, or it's frustrating, they'll just take it to a "normie" mechanic so they can enjoy their time away from the track.

Definitely if real bro misremembered. I’m an architectural technologist but people will still often say I’m an architect.

I don’t know why this Marc Priestly fellow would not understand the basics of working on a road car. They’re incredibly uncomplicated and if he couldn’t figure them out I’d be surprised(and maybe a little worried). Most likely is that it’s the same reason a lot of mechanics have shitty cars; they spend all day working vehicles and don’t have the time and energy to work on their own.

Adjective ✅

Noun ❌

Maybe he means Hannah Schmitz who has been Principal Strategy Engineer for Red Bull since 2021 (and was Senior Strategy Engineer for ten years before that).

If my friend told me the were senior strategy engineer I could well imagine remembering that as 'chief engineer' or 'senior mechanic'. Also, she's British, which would fit with MOT.