Boardroom went behind the scenes with the BWT Alpine Formula 1 team for an exclusive look inside the team’s garage, aka, the high-tech heart of every race weekend.
When you think about Formula 1, you probably picture the cars flying around the track, the roar of engines, and the chaos of the pit lane.
But what happens inside the garages is just as intense, and it’s where pole positions are truly won.
I recently went behind the scenes with the BWT Alpine Formula 1 team to see what goes into building, operating, and breaking down one of the sport’s most advanced mobile workspaces. The garage is part lab, part logistics hub, and part nerve center for race weekend strategy.
Each F1 team travels with approximately 100 crew members, divided between two cars. The garage itself can be assembled in approximately six hours, thanks to its modular design, but the process begins days earlier. By the time fans arrive at the track, every tool, cable, and carbon fiber panel has been unpacked, scanned, and placed with precision.
And while the cars steal the spotlight, the garage is quietly running its own kind of race. As soon as the main event begins, some crew members start packing up equipment that’s no longer needed, prepping freight boxes, and labeling gear to ship to the next stop. By the time the checkered flag drops, the teardown is already halfway done. Within 48 hours, the same setup will be rebuilt on a new continent — a military-grade logistics sprint executed 24 times a season.
Even quality control runs on innovation. Every F1 team uses 3D scanning technology to create and maintain digital twins of their cars, ensuring that every reassembly meets exact performance and legality standards. It’s a crucial step in a sport where fractions of a millimeter can determine who takes pole.
The Alpine garage hums with purpose — data streaming, music blasting, engineers locked in. It’s the heartbeat of a global operation that never stops moving. The future of F1 may lean more into data, AI, and automation, but the human precision inside the garage will always be the sport’s most powerful machine.
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