INTERVIEW: Red Arrows meets Formula 1 at FOS Future Lab

Leading the Red Arrows is a colossal task, as Wing Commander Collins revealed: “My role is obviously commanding the Red Arrows. I’m not the team leader. I don’t lead the formation, but I’m in overall command of the unit. What people might not realise is that the Red Arrows are almost 150 people strong. So much like a Formula 1 team or a football team, or anything where you see just the tip of the iceberg on the track or on the pitch — or in our case, in the air — there’s a whole lot that goes on behind the scenes of that.”

The team’s Hawk T1 aircraft, an icon since the 1980s, presents significant hurdles. “The Hawk aircraft that we fly is 50 years old. It’s the original version, it’s completely analogue, there’s no head-up display, no moving map, no autopilot. We have the GPS bolted on about here, which looks like an original Game Boy, just a green screen with black lines on it,” Collins said. This outdated technology demands exceptional skill, with engineers maintaining a fleet of nine or ten aircraft that can fly simultaneously three times a day. “The challenge for our engineers, for managing the fleet of aircraft, even the age and so on, is a really big one,” he added.

“We carry an iPad as well, so it's kind of a tech fusion, if you like. But the challenges with that are that it's getting on a bit. It's a very simple plane, which means that for our engineers who travel around with us between displays, it's quite quick to maintain and to turn around, refuel and so on. But when we're flying across the world, we're flying around Europe, the fact is we haven't got much in the way of avionics helping us out.”

Collins compared the Hawk T1 to a “Caterham or, in my case, an MK Indy. No carpets, no doors, nothing going for it. But if you put them both on a track, arguably, you’d probably have more fun in the Caterham or the stripped-out little go-kart of a car. If you look at the Typhoon or the F-35, then that's a McLaren 720 or something.”

“We’re waiting for a decision at the moment.” Collins noted, concerning a potential replacement for the Hawk T1, the Hawk T2. “But the Hawk T2 at RAF Valley, which new pilots are trained on, is due to go out of service in a few years as well. So, whatever replaces that will probably come to the Red Arrows as well.”

Durcan, a former fast jet pilot turned McLaren consultant, laid bare the challenges of Formula 1 performance. Reflecting on the 2022 Canadian Grand Prix, where McLaren struggled with a mistimed double-stack pit stop during a Virtual Safety Car that cost Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris, resulting in respective 11^th and 15^th-place finishes, he dissected a similar pit-stop failure: “Could it be these other 16 factors, which is like, we didn’t train with the pit crew all weekend?”

His role focuses on forging elite teams, including working with Premier League outfits. “My main contribution to McLaren is really about anything that involves the way that we as a team work through a race weekend. It’s all about execution.”

Durcan’s test pilot background demands precision: “If you say something, that has got to be backed up with data and evidence, because everybody is coming from an engineering background.” His blunt critique of McLaren’s debriefing process sparked change: “I said, I’ve never been to England Rugby, I don’t know what the standard is; I’ve never been to Man City, but I imagine your debriefing against those is exceptional. But if you’re rating against how the best people in the world do it, from what I have seen and what I believe you are capable of, I rate it as unsatisfactory.”

The panel’s most electrifying insights focused on debriefing techniques. Collins described the Red Arrows’ “just culture.”

“The way that works is it’s a culture that you need to be brought into, which is very much the same in the RAF, what’s known as a ‘just culture’, where if you go in there, you are prepared to admit your mistakes, you want to admit your mistakes before anyone else points them out to you, because that’s how we get better.”

Using formation numbers keeps it impersonal, Collins adds: “In debrief we don’t call each other by name, we only refer to a formation number and that way when we’re debriefing and being reasonably robust with each other we’re debriefing number three and number six and number seven, we’re not debriefing an individual.”

Pilots compete to own errors: “The badge of honour in a debrief, when they’re looking at the big screen zoomed in in high definition, is to be able to identify and verbalise your error in front of everybody else before somebody points it out for you.”

Physical demands were also laid bare as Collins explained G-forces’ effects: “The blood is going to start draining from your head, the first thing you’re going to see is your vision narrowing and going grey, then the vision will go black but you’re still conscious and then after that you’ll lose consciousness.

“There have been cases where going into ‘the merge’, which is where two aircraft point towards each other and then turn hard to start fighting, people have actually broken bones in their neck by having their head in the wrong position.”

Durcan compared this to Formula 1. “The average human head, when you pull 9g in a jet, is the equivalent of having a fully grown adult sit on your head as you go around.” He shared a quip with Lando Norris, who said, “Steve, do you know what, that’s great, that’s fascinating, but you try doing all of that at 220mph in 5g around the corner.” Durcan’s reply: “Wow, it must be so great to go so slow with so little g.”

The focus on high-stakes performance drew direct parallels to Top Gun, the iconic film that inspired the pair as childhood friends to become fighter pilots. “We both watched Top Gun one day when we were kids, and we’re like, right, we also want to be flying jets and playing volleyball in San Diego,” said Durcan. “Turned out that the sand we were seeing was Afghanistan, Libya, and other lovely desert environments in the world.”

The discussion also highlighted Top Gun: Maverick’s authenticity, with Collins explaining, “The filming for Top Gun 2 and a lot of that was done in the back seats of actual aircraft in two-seat Hornets. You can see Cruise’s face, in some instances, actually under significant g for the filming, so they spent a lot of money putting movie-quality cameras in the back of the US Navy Hornets.”

Comparing the ages of F1 drivers like 25-year-old Norris with Red Arrows pilots, Collins added: “I probably hit the front line in my early to mid-20s, which is probably about the same now, because of the experience level we require in the Reds, but the youngest pilot is probably 35. And this might surprise you, but the most experienced pilot on the team is 55.”

FOS Future Lab’s role in sparking innovators shone through. As Durcan emphasised, “there are so many resources now open to kids, this being one of them that kind of pushes them.” Collins added: “Seeing young people being inspired in STEM areas is something that the Red Arrows are passionate about, so seeing it happen first hand here is fantastic.”

As the Red Arrows prepare for a potential aircraft upgrade, and McLaren refines its strategies, the Randox Studio at FOS Future Lab discussion revealed the relentless drive for excellence. From gruelling physical challenges to transformative debriefings.

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Photography by Chris Ison, Kirsty Jayne Russell, Max Carter, Jason Hedges and Nick Dungan.